The Best New Books Out This Week
Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Not everything is for everyone, but there is something for everyone.
A Quick and Dirty Guide to the Attack on Libraries
No post will ever be able to encompass the full scope of what’s happening to schools, libraries, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, but here’s a quick snapshot of some of the biggest (and most bizarre) updates. Sadly, all of these stories are real.
The Most Popular Celebrity Book Club Books on Libby the Past Month
Our friends over at Libby—the ebook/audiobook/digital magazine app that services 22,000 public libraries across the US—have been sharing some very interesting data on its readers these past couple of weeks. We’ve already looked at the romantasy books most circulated on the app this past month, as well as the overall most circulated books on the app in March. Now, we’re looking at book club books, specifically celebrity book clubs, which have had quite the resurgence the last few years.
The Best New Books Out This Week
In new books, there is Authority: Essays, Andrea Long Chu’s collection of essays that looks at authority and opinions; Wild and Wrangled, another most likely future bestselling Lyla Sage western romance; The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman, a reprinting of a controversial Harlem Renaissance novel; and Nahia by Emily Jones, a prehistoric Europe-set romantic epic.
In the featured new releases, there is a sexless Japan, a rich historical mystery set in Bombay, a rekindled uncertain London romance, and Golden Girls mystery…
Everyone Should Read This Book That Made Me Want to Tear Out My Hair
I learned so much from the book I’m recommending today. I also had to take so many deep breaths while reading it. I wish I’d had access to and taken more classes focusing on literature from the Harlem Renaissance when I was an English major in college way back when, but the one class on African American lit that I did get to take introduced me to some of the figures in this book about the “Midwife of the Harlem Renaissance”–Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few. I never heard mention of Jessie Redmon Fauset, this historical fiction novel’s central figure.
These Queer Books Are Finalists for the 2025 Hugo and Lodestar Awards
The 2025 Hugo and Lodestar Awards finalists were announced last week, and they include quite a few queer books! These are some of the biggest awards in the SFF space, and let’s face it, we all know that queer sci-fi and fantasy books are a step above. Let me know if I missed any: these are just the ones that jumped out to me as titles I recognize. I was happy to see at least 14 queer books on this list—in fact, I think there’s only one book in the Lodestar shortlist that isn’t queer.
