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Meet Libby. The one-tap reading app from OverDrive. By downloading Libby to your smartphone, you can access thousands of eBooks and audiobooks from your library for free anytime and anywhere. You’ll find titles in all genres, ranging from bestsellers, classics, nonfiction, comics and much more. Libby works on Apple and Android devices and is compatible with Kindle. All you need is a library card but you can sample any book in the library collection without one....

Bestselling author of All the Bright Places Jennifer Niven calls emerging talent Shivaun Plozza’s charming and romantic second novel “from cover to cover swoon-worthy, moving, deep, and funny”! Contemporary Young Adult novels are probably my favorite thing to read. I don’t need there to be any romance, but I don’t complain when there is. What I do require is a sense that the romance—and everything else about the book—feels realistic....

My favorite subscription services are those that relate to reading—with good reason! I don’t need to tell you, Book Riot readers, that bookish people tend to be, well, very enthusiastic about reading. As such, in our present digitally-driven economy, it’s no surprise that such services are available in abundance. We’ve profiled some of our favorites before, but here I’d like to profile one near and dear to the Book Riot family: TBR....

If you remember your very first crush… In Shug, Han’s first novel, Annemarie Wilcox (or “Shug,” as her family calls her), thinks there’s nothing worse than being 12 years old. She has a crush on her best friend, Mark, who clearly prefers her older sister. She is too tall, flat-chested, and her mother is nothing like the other mothers in their small Southern town. Seventh grade quickly proves not to be all she was hoping it to be when she is forced to tutor unpleasant Jack Connelly, all of her friends are suddenly going out with each other, and she’s the only one without a date to the seventh grade dance....

If American history told with a light, smart-alecky touch sounds like your bag, here’s a suggested reading order. Start With Her Essays Readers new to Vowell would do best to begin with her essay collections Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World and The Partly Cloudy Patriot. Both are uneven but bring plenty of laughs. Highlights from the former include an explanation of Vowell’s obsession with The Godfather (which culminated in watching it every day in college), and an essay on Vowell’s and her sister Amy’s visit to the sites involved in the Trail of Tears, the infamous forced relocation of Native Americans in the mid-1800s (Vowell is part Cherokee; 1/8 on her mother’s side and 1/16 on her father’s)....

The cool thing about fictional reality TV is it can be pushed to its limits. For example, Hunger Games features a society rallying around the televising of young adults murdering each other for entertainment. Others are set in space, feature impossible challenges, and raise the stakes because of it. Without the limitations of reality (or perceived reality anyway), the drama is heightened, the betrayal all the worse. Not only do you get the drama and in-fighting, but often you also get life-or-death stakes!...

Congressman Mike Johnson (Louisiana) introduced the “Stop the Sexualization of Children” Act into the House this week. The bill would “prohibit the use of Federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.” The bill would disallow funding for any organization — from libraries to schools to medical facilities and more — offering any materials or programming related to “sexually oriented material” to people under the age of 10....

My reading of Which One is the Bridge is that it’s a collection centered around memories. While the poems deal with topics that range from the sweating summers of Brooklyn, the tender moments of relationships, and coming out to loved ones I read them all as memories that Theonia is sharing with us. There’s no denying that Theonia is talented at creating scenes with careful phrasing but as a reader I was constantly aware that the poems that I loved, the ones that I truly connected with, were poems that I was in someway directly related to....

The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss I. Cannot. Stop. Talking. About. This. Book. I love it like Dobby loves socks. I will try and keep my description down to five adjectives: amazing, strange, dark, poetic, beautiful. I’d say haunting, too, even though that adjective is overused. BUT SERIOUSLY. This book – I can’t even. As I told Rebecca, it’s the skull fucking you didn’t know you needed. It’s about the Civil War, but it’s like a fever dream, and there is lots of death, and bones and alligators (natch....

Farrow’s reporting in The New Yorker helped uncover allegations of sexual abuse against film producer Harvey Weinstein. For this reporting, The New Yorker won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, sharing the award with The New York Times. Catch and Kill widens that lens and in Farrow’s own words is “a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse.” Farrow and his sister Dylan Farrow are estranged from their father Woody Allen because of her allegation that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was a child....

I remember being so excited that there were people in my cartoons who looked like me and my family. I grew up in rural Georgia, but my family is Lebanese, and looks very Lebanese, to the degree that throughout high school, as the county expanded into a suburb and new students moved in, I was constantly asked, “Where are you from?” “Are you mixed?” and “Where’d you get that suntan?...

Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan I read this years ago, and certain images still haunt me, especially those concerning the formidable mother-in-law of this bewildering novel. The haunting nature primarily takes the form of (you guessed it) bees and mist in this story about a young woman’s fierce struggle to keep her family together in the face of an abject childhood and daunting family of in-laws. Setiawan’s lyrical use of magical realism renders this story a mixture of fable, fairytale, and psychological mayhem....

Before we get into the books, let’s talk about some of the trends we’re seeing for horror in the first month of 2023. First of all, looks like oranges, reds, and yellows, are the vibe for cover designs. Are the hot pink and bright purples of 2022 horror over? I guess we’ll have to keep an eye out on horror to come to track that. What else can you expect from your January 2023 horror novels?...

I use a fancy (and pricey) Stanley Cup now, thanks to the fact it holds carbonation nicely, and I’m a seltzer drinker. I keep a couple of other tumblers and water bottles around, too, in my car and in my yoga bag, so that I do have access quickly and don’t need to rely on disposable cup/seeking out a smaller option. And though I’m satisfied with my collection, I am tempted to add a bookish tumbler or reusable bottle to my stash....

Each of the following comics is considered among the best of Spider-Man comics to date. Again, that’s a lot of time to cover; especially when the first two-thirds were created during a time when Marvel kept the Spider-Man creative team exclusive to its inner circle, which was predominantly white men. Fortunately, we are now seeing more diversity in the creative teams, encouraged by the diversity in characters as well. Want to know more about Spider-Man’s villains across the years?...

Whether they’re sashaying down the runway, serving unforgettable looks, or lip syncing for their lives, these queens are bonafide entertainers who are also blazing a trail for queer artists and performers. And their performances on the show, all incredibly varied, can provide some great inspiration for your reading life. Once you take the quiz, find your result below to see what book pairs perfectly with your inner queen. We’ve got moving memoirs, hilarious essay collections, historical mystery, modern poetry, steamy romance, and more fantastic books paired with some of the most beloved winning queens....

These are new, enthralling discoveries for kids, and getting to be the unicorn who unveils them is a treat. Occasionally, though, the children don’t fully grasp those concepts on first exposure, which can be especially complicating for children who really, really, really want to do the right thing. Such was the case with my buddy Polo, an earnest, eager reader who…well, here’s what happened. Details have been edited to protect coherency, and names have been changed to protect the absurd....

After finally being released from America’s unjust incarceration camps, young adult activist George Takei met two of his heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt. I felt the awe he must have felt that day when I met him to talk about his graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy. Although categorized as a graphic memoir, to me this is a history book which should be taught in every history class across America....

This draconian bill is among the dozens being implemented in states across the US that take the power of the professional librarian away from their job and puts collection development into the hands of lawmakers. While debating the bill in the House, Democratic State Representative John Ray Clemmons asked Republican State Representative Jerry Sexton what he would do with the books deemed “inappropriate” for the collection. “I would burn them,” he said....

In Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, 15-year-old Vanessa’s first love is her teacher, a 42-year-old Jacob. Jacob cleverly exploits her hormonal teenage mind and her deepest desire for admiration. He breaches all boundaries and starts touching her inappropriately in class, much to Vanessa’s pleasure. He quotes Nabokov and starts calling her “My Dark Vanessa.” He gifts her Lolita, which Vanessa becomes obsessed with to a point when she confuses her own memories with those of Lo and Humbert....