Keir Graff is Executive Editor of Booklist Publications and the author of six books. His most recent is the middle-grade novel, The Phantom Tower (2018). Follow him on Twitter at @Booklist_Keir.
With Chicago experiencing genuinely arctic weather (and the Arctic warmer than usual), most sensible citizens are waiting it out indoors. ALA’s offices are closed through tomorrow, and Booklist employees who have made it home from the Midwinter Meeting in Seattle are hunkered down at home. What to do with an unexpected reading day? Well, personally, […]
I was very saddened to hear the news that Sam Savage died last week, just days after the publication of his most recent book, An Orphanage of Dreams. The wit, intellect, artistry, and humanity of his books was truly inspiring—as was the fact that his career as a published author began at age 65. The […]
Jonathan Lethem’s The Feral Detective publishes today—and, given that it is set in the days following Donald Trump’s 2016 election, can it be any coincidence the book comes out during the midterms? As the Booklist reviewer (ahem, me) writes in his starred review: Set in the days surrounding Donald Trump’s inauguration, this echoes with Phoebe’s […]
Two things about the books on this list. One, the titles are great. From Planet of the Umps to You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League (and no fewer than two books titled Let’s Get It On), you’d almost think the authors’ careers had included countless hours of downtime in locker rooms thinking about […]
Follow the action at 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and improve your understanding of the other kind of football. The group-stage games are coming fast and furious at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and like most sports fans, you’re thinking only one thing: Yes, but what should I read? Fear not, for I have […]
On Thursday, Russia and Saudi Arabia will kick off in game one of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and like most sports fans, you’re thinking only one thing: Yes, but what should I read? Fear not, for I have selected 32 titles, one for each team in the finals—and all but one published since […]
Good things come in threes—the number used to define a bona fide trend (even if it’s years in the making). With the publication today of Adrienne Kisner’s Dear Rachel Maddow, it’s time to inform you that our dear authors are using epistolary titles with celebrity recipients: Publishers Marketplace also recently announced the acquisition of We Love Anderson […]
What a Character! In a recent post, I touched briefly on Hemingway’s influence on crime fiction and shared three books whose plots are derived from a real-life unsolved Hemingway mystery. But Hemingway, whose life story often reads like fiction, has served another purpose for mystery novelists seeking inspiration: Many of them have decided to use […]
The Curious Case of the Hemingway MacGuffin Ernest Hemingway may not have written mystery fiction, but you can blame him for a lot of it. It’s possible that, after Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, no other author has had as much influence on the way would-be tough guys punctuate their crime fiction. (You know. What […]
Sometimes I want to immerse myself in a 400-page thriller; others I pine for a pocket-sized paperback that can be devoured in a single sitting. And while nearly all crime fiction once fit that description—from Georges Simenon and James M. Cain to Mickey Spillane and Jean-Patrick Manchette—these days, short crime novels are the fugitive kind. […]