Sanora Babb is unlikely to be your immediate answer when asked “who wrote the Great American Dust Bowl novel?” Instead, you’ll probably think of John Steinbeck, and his classic The Grapes of Wrath. That’s what I thought, at least, before I saw this fascinating Twitter thread by Skyler Schrempp. It turns out that Sanora Babb
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Before I picked up Sarah Adler’s debut novel, I had no idea that what I needed in life was a love story about grounded flights, olive oil spills, broccoli trivia, precisely three tablespoons of cremated remains and that weird thing where you always run into people you know at the airport. If you’re in the
I was scrolling through TikTok recently when I stumbled across a video recommending some morbid nonfiction. As a genre, I hadn’t really considered it before, but the term so perfectly describes much of what I’m drawn to in the world of nonfiction. True crime has never been my thing. I get the appeal — I
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything At a reading in 2022, I heard poet Jane Wong describe her obsession with time-lapse videos of rotting fruit. Her poetry collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, is full of the physicality of food, informed by Wong’s research into the Great Leap Forward, which was a
The Cure has been my favorite band since I was about 14. This was not too long after Wish came out, and while I enjoyed “Friday I’m in Love,” it was pretty far on the light side of pop for my 8th grade punk-grunge taste; I liked it, but I listened to Nirvana and the
Researching and reading books for this piece has been an unexpectedly needed experience for me. I may be speaking for myself, but when I think of “Asian horror” my first thoughts are of works in translation and their movie adaptations that make me want to pour bleach on my eyeballs. And I say that as
With Pride just a few weeks away, it’s time for library workers to start thinking about the where, how, when, and what of their book displays. We know that queer books remain among the most targeted in the current book ban ~curation~ wave and we also know that Pride displays have historically been among the
In 1881, Jacci Reed is only five years old when a man attempts to kidnap her from the steamboat her mother, Irena, works on. Badly wounded during the confrontation, Irena takes Jacci aboard the Kingston Floating Palace, a showboat tied up beside them. There, Jacci’s actor grandfather tends to her mother and Jacci gets a
Eighteen-year-old Imogen Scott obviously knows who she is. She’s a top-tier people pleaser and “the kind of person who has a favorite adverb (obviously, obviously).” She’s straight but a visible ally, having attended every Pride Alliance meeting at her high school and consumed as much queer media as she can. As Imogen, Obviously opens, Imogen
Have you ever created a leaf rubbing? Or painted one side of a natural object and then pressed it to paper to make a mirror image? If so, you’ve engaged in nature printing, an ancient practice that marries scientific documentation and art. Fossils are a kind of nature print, and leaf prints were featured on
In this era of domestic thrillers, a novel about a functional, loving family can feel refreshing and downright unexpected. Extraordinary circumstances severely test the bonds of one such family in Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me. Hannah Hall’s adoring husband, coding genius Owen Michaels, vanishes on the same day that his company is
In When You Can Swim, readers explore the joys of swimming in various bodies of water—oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers and more—in a text set primarily in conditional statements (the “when you can swim” of the title), as spoken by a parent to a child. This phrase is a refrain that conveys the abundant possibilities and
Geniuses seem to inhabit a world apart from mere mortals like us. But they don’t, as the irreverent and entertaining Edison’s Ghosts makes clear. Debut author and science writer Katie Spalding has mined history, biography and psychology to turn the cult of genius on its head, shining a sassy light on the idiosyncrasies of some
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not immediately bring World War II to an end. Bestselling author Evan Thomas (Ike’s Bluff) explains why in his superbly crafted military and diplomatic history Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II. “This book is a narrative of how the
Jen & Sylvia Soska (Rabid, American Mary) have joined forces with Tubi for Festival of the Living Dead, a new horror movie based on George Romero’s classic zombie film. Deadline reports that Ashley Moore (I Know What You Did Last Summer) and Camren Bicondova (Gotham) will star in the film, inspired by the original Night of the Living Dead. In
Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products announced each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more. Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week! The Toxic Avenger Collection 4K UHD Box Set from Troma Troma will release The Toxic Avenger Collection on August 29.
All ten episodes of “The Muppets Mayhem“ dropped on Disney+ earlier this week, sending beloved Muppet band, The Electric Mayhem, on a musical journey to record their first album. In true Muppet style, the journey comes with a slew of notable cameos, including a shocking horror crossover we never would’ve anticipated in a million years. A surprising uncredited
The Ringu franchise has a much more convoluted history than most people realize, with Koji Suzuki’s original novel actually being part of a genre-bending trilogy that differs greatly from the established mythology of the films. In fact, before Sadako ever made the leap to the big screen (and consequently overseas), her first live-action appearance was