Books

Books

One of the this year's biggest fiction releases is now available in a gorgeous new collectible hardcover edition. Sunrise on the Reaping, the fifth novel in Suzanne Collins' best-selling dystopian series The Hunger Games, received a Collector's Gift Edition on November 4. Now, less than a week later, the Sunrise on the Reaping Collector's Gift Edition is on sale for $24.74 (was $33) at Amazon.

Their twosome ruptures when Tara, who has travelled to Paris for an auction, wakes up on what should be the morning of November 19th to shimmers of déjà vu: the headlines in the newspaper look familiar; at breakfast, the same hotel guest drops the same slice of bread. A horrified Tara soon realizes that she is living in a repeating November 18th, while Thomas and the rest of the world go on without her.

Big themes swirled in thoughtful, even intimate, conversations Saturday at the sold-out Portland Book Festival. Headliner Rebecca Yarros talked about how her work centers on themes of inclusion, representation, and authoritarianism, as well as about what it's been like to ride a huge wave of book sales that has altered the publishing industry in some ways. Nicholas Boggs and Mitchell S. Jackson mused about love and the creative process.

In 2020, a prize-winning English poet and teacher who worked as a writer-in-residence with young refugees published a book about her experiences. Reviews were warm. Sales were strong. It won awards. A year later, Kate Clanchy's book suddenly came on the radar of a small number of other writers, who criticised her for some supp­posedly racist or otherwise belittling depictions of her students.

We were all neighbors in one of the many settlements that had sprouted up in the city, and we had been waiting there for everything to be rebuilt. Or that was what the officials kept telling us-to stay where we were so that they could begin restoring the city. But no one seemed convinced that the city would ever be restored, and this was a big reason people came and went, looking for someplace better.

I always loved spending time at Midtown Scholar. It is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. It's a converted old theater with cozy wooden walls, several floors of books, a stage, a balcony filled with little tables and a coffee shop. Midtown Scholar is also one of poet Kate Baer's favorite bookstores. So on a rainy day last week, we met there to talk.

At the turn of the 20th century, a young Sicilian woman who will soon marry a "rich American" presents two postcards, supposedly from the United States, to a village elder. The first depicts a man holding a wheelbarrow that contains a massive onion, so large that it dwarfs both the wheelbarrow and the man. The second postcard displays a tree that is bursting with coins, as if money is sprouting from the branches.

Viewed through one end of the lens, the two new autobiographies from the sporting legends Boris Becker and Bradley Wiggins might seem like classic tales of the downfalls of two deeply flawed heroes who then claw their way back to redemption. But viewed through the other end of the lens, we see troubling portrayals of an extremely inhumane and, at times, unsafe world of sport where talent is no saving grace, in fact it's more of a liability.

2 In what combat sport are competitors divided into east and west? 3 Which force is based in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhone? 4 In hospitals, the Bristol scale is used to classify what? 5 Which English rugby player has been immortalised as a Barbie doll? 6 What begins at Theresienwiese on the first Saturday after 15 September? 7 The River Irwell separates which two cities? 8 Which band played with red flowerpots on their heads?

As the parent of an 18-month-old, I've been reading a lot lately. That is, if your definition of reading includes thumbing through sheets of increasingly careworn and spittle-soaked cardboard, reciting the 30 or 40 words that compose each tale from memory, and pausing innumerable times to acknowledge any shape that may evoke the holiest of trinities: ball, bug, star. At first-when I had a mere 10 months of experience in this arena-I believed that reading to my child would be straightforward, if a little repetitive.

"I am the way into the city of deep downpression," Canto III begins. "Let go off of all hope, all who come in here so." "Downpression," for those not in the know, is a Rastafarian term, and such Caribbean vocabulary permeates Goodison's thrilling new version of the medieval masterpiece.

There is perhaps no better setting for a recreation of "The Polar Express" story than Durango, Colorado, a mountain town home to a vintage steam train. The steam locomotive, which was built in the early 1920s, makes the journey over the mountains between Durango and Silverton year-round. But, during the holidays, it transforms into The Polar Express for a special seasonal experience, transporting passengers to the "North Pole." This year, it's running on most days between Nov. 21, 2025, through Jan. 3, 2026.

The Berkeley Public Library Comic Con is back for its third year! Over 30 local artists and vendors will be in attendance, and 11 workshops will be held throughout the day on insights from East Bay BIPOC cartoonists, how artists have worked in large projects such as Star Trek and Marvel, how to make your own zines and comics, and more.

The story of America's motels begins, as travel journalist Ellie Seymour reminds readers, exactly a century ago in 1925, when architect Arthur Heineman opened the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo, California. The term 'motel' itself was born out of necessity, as 'Milestone Motor Hotel' simply didn't fit on the rooftop sign. Offering private garages and hot showers, it catered to the rise of automobile tourism and set the blueprint for a phenomenon that would flourish after World War II.

When Candice Millard wrote Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, she came at the story of James Garfield from a fittingly odd angle given his relative obscurity among American presidents. Millard recalls reading a biography of Alexander Graham Bell, who had invented the telephone but dedicated a tremendous amount of time and energy to developing a metal detector of sorts, called an "induction balance," for the purpose of locating the bullet lodged in Garfield's body. Millard writes that while it took her three years to complete the book, "it took only a few days of research to realize what Bell must have known - that President Garfield was not only a tragic figure, but one of the most extraordinary men ever elected President of the United States." That, in the end, became the book's driving purpose.

"When I'm writing fiction, I tend not to read fiction. I actually don't want other people's voices to sneak into my head," Rushdie said recently. That's not to say that other writers' books aren't an important part of his process-posing questions, providing instruction, and offering models of characters. Not long ago, he joined us to discuss a handful of works that have offered guidance for his own writing, including a novella that appears in " The Eleventh Hour," his latest book,

Of all the seven deadly sins, envy is the last to be commodified. You can understand why unlike lust, anger or even sloth, it's not something to admit to. In his Allegory with Venus and Cupid, Bronzino depicted envy as an ugly green hag, clutching her head and howling impotently; now Instagram has allowed anyone online to gain access to images of the lifestyles of those richer, prettier and luckier than ourselves.

PinkNews caught up with Howarth to talk obsession, repression and writing queerness into mid-20th century Ireland... For readers new to your work, how would you pitch the new book in one or two sentences? It's a multi-perspective family drama set in rural Ireland in the 1960s. There's sapphic obsession, repression, a creeping sense of dread and a village that isn't sure what to do with the strange, wounded family who suddenly arrive [there].

Any avid romance reader can tell you their favorite trope. Some might point to intense tropes like love at first sight or forbidden romance, while others might choose playful arcs like fake dating or best friend's brother romances. For many, no trope is better than enemies-to-lovers, though. As they watch characters grow from loathing to all-consuming love, enemies-to-lovers readers often giggle and kick their feet at the first sign of tension between two opposing characters turning into something more than ire.

When Helen Garner was announced as the winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction in London on Tuesday night, the 82-year-old Australian author was 16,000km away in Melbourne, watching the ceremony on a live stream at home on what was for her Wednesday morning. When the big moment came, she heard the winner is and then the feed froze. We were going, Oh God!'

Seiichi Furuya is an image maker who, over the past few decades, has become well loved for the intimate portraits of his late wife Christine Furuya-Gössler during the seven years they spent together, first as a couple, then husband and wife and later as parents. Defined by their soft mundanity and Seiichi's clear dedication to the life he and Christine had built together, his images are backdropped by the strange brutalist beauty of East Germany not long before the wall fell.

"If there's one thing I learned, it's just how sophisticated and complex the work of defining words is," Fatsis says.

For people of a certain age, many a fond hour could have been spent flicking back and forth through Fighting Fantasy novels, trying to find the treasure and defeat the demons within. These written games were the precursors of the modern computer fantasy game, but the enforced slowness of flicking between the pages induced a sense of exciting anticipation as you spent a few seconds waiting for the result of your choice. You just don't get that pressing a button on a games console.

Following an HIV diagnosis in 2000, thespian-turned-lepidopterist Liam O'Brien leaned into his passion for butterflies as a source of wonder. After decades of observing, counting, and (responsibly) capturing these scaled winged beauties, he became an ambassador for the species. In his debut book Butterflies of the Bay Area and (Slightly) Beyond: An Illustrated Guide, O'Brien chronicles 135 varieties of butterfly with vim and vivid hand-painted illustrations to introduce readers to the breadth and beauty of butterfly biodiversity of this region.

Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind Box Set is on sale for an excellent price at Amazon. Normally $80, the 1,104-page, slipcased collection is discounted to only $47.89. Nausicaa is Miyazaki's only manga series, and the hardcover box set collects the complete story arc. Amazon's current price essentially matches the best deal we've seen all year ($47.61)--and that deal didn't stick around for long. Amazon estimates orders placed today will ship within one to three weeks.

Earlier this month, I kept picking up and putting down Lily King's new novel, Heart the Lover. I love King's writing but the opening section was hard for me to take not in a grisly Cormac McCarthy or scary Stephen King kind of way but in an "Ugh, I remember being that girl, that age" kind of way. Heart the Lover opens in a college class of the 1980s.

In Eimear Ní Bhraonáin's new book 'The Dodger', she finds some sympathy from the victims of the Kilkenny hurling legend's scams

So we approach a new Irving with caution but still a small flame of hope, which burns hotter when we learn that Queen Esther a mere 432 pages returns to the world of The Cider House Rules. That 1985 novel is one of Irving's very best, set largely in an orphanage in St Cloud's, Maine, run by Dr Wilbur Larch and his protege Homer Wells. In The Cider House Rules, Irving wrote about abortion and belonging with colour, comedy and an all-encompassing empathy.

If you close your eyes and picture an artistic genius, chances are that the portrait will be framed by a Romantic ideal that took shape 200 years ago: an artist dedicated solely to his (almost always his) muse and transgressive appetites, breaking his era's rules both moral and artistic, remaking society with his art. But this vision of genius is a poor fit for many great artists, and it tends to obscure what makes them and their work special.