📚 Fluky and Kafkaesque

Five publishes and a bestselling author sue Meta over AI copyright infringement

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May 7, 2026 | View Online | Join All Access | Listen

🙊 We spoke too soon when we declared on Tuesday that the 2025 book awards season came to a close with Monday’s announcement of the Pulitzers. Yesterday morning, Barnes & Noble revealed the shortlist for their children’s and YA book awards, voted on by booksellers from around the U.S. Time is meaningless.

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THE HEADLINE

Five publishers and author Scott Turow sue Meta over copyright infringement

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

The battle over whether and how tech companies can use copyrighted materials to train their AI models continues as five publishers and author Scott Turow have filed a lawsuit against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.

Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage are the publishers leading the suit.

The complaint claims that Meta engineers used pirated copies of books and journal articles to train its AI program Llama

Meta executives admitted to using illegally obtained materials in a previous suit.

To date, judges have been unsympathetic to authors’ and publishers’ claims that AI models cause "market dilution" by introducing a flood of AI-generated books to online retailers like Amazon.

Last June , in a similar case against Anthropic, a federal judge in California ruled that the tech company’s use of copyrighted materials to train its large language models was allowed under fair use doctrine, but only if the copyrighted works were obtained legally.

This finding left the door open for claims about pirated works and ultimately led to Anthropic agreeing to a landmark $1.5 billion class action settlement to authors whose books they had pirated.

Claiming those damages is turning out to be easier said than done, as authors describe a "fluky" and "Kafkaesque" system.

Will it make a difference in this case that Meta’s Llama confirms that it was trained on specific copyrighted material when asked, or that it can provide summaries so detailed that "they replace the original work for many readers or consumers?" We’ll be watching closely. — RJS

ON THE RADAR

The It Books of May 2026

Summer reading season officially begins in May—don’t ask why, we don’t make the rules—and with it comes a real smorgasbord of new books. Bookstore decision paralysis is a real thing, so we’ve created a highly scientific vibes-based process of elimination to determine the It Book of the Month.

The ideal It Book rings four bells:

🔔 Art - Is it good?

🔔 Acclaim - Will it contend for awards and best-of lists?

🔔 Sales - Where’s the money?

🔔 Zeitgeist - What’s the buzz?

This month’s contenders include a new novel from the author of The Help, a modern blend of fable and horror from a National Book Award-nominated writer, David Sedaris doing David Sedaris things, an Oprah-approved novel from a Booker-winning author, and a buzzy debut about a community processing an apocalypse that didn’t happen.

🎧 Hear our conversation and find out what was crowned It Book of the Month.

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TOGETHER WITH AUTHORS EQUITY

What does fame actually cost you?​

Joshua Bassett knows. By the time the world was watching, the damage was already done: 286 failed auditions, sleeping in his car, his body and mind quietly breaking while Hollywood praised his talent. Rookie is the reckoning he spent five years writing.

Part poetry collection, part coming-of-age memoir, Rookie explores many things we still don’t discuss openly enough, including child sexual abuse, addiction, body dysmorphia, PTSD, and a near-fatal health crisis that forced him to confront what his life was actually built on. Written in verse with the candor of Jennette McCurdy and the self-awareness of Elliot Page, it arrives, against all odds, at redemption.

Bassett narrates the audiobook himself, making for an especially intimate listening experience.

ADAPTATION NATION

The current crop of adaptations is all over the place

Fall tends to be peak adaptation season, as so many awards contenders hitting theaters (and increasingly streamers) come from books. This summer feels a little different, both in the number and range of the adaptations that seem like they are everywhere. Here are a handful making headlines.

Summer movie season kicked off on May 1st with The Devil Wears Prada 2. This instant blockbuster is of course the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel. It’s fairly rare to get a sequel to an adaptation that is not based on another book, even though there are other books that followed, notably Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns .

Everyone in my house is lined up for The Odyssey. The internet is already memeing and doing its thing. There are even thinkpieces about the choice of accents. It is going to be so cool to have mainstream culture out there sailing the wine-dark sea.

Pro wrestlers and internet sex work are the flashy hooks for Margot’s Got Money Troubles , but at its core, this is a series about family and not really caring how you make it work as long as you make it work. It’s a good adaptation, but I will say the most boring possible thing a book reader can say: the book was better.

Finally, a high-school syllabus staple leaps into a remarkably immersive and appropriately dark four-part series now available on Netflix. William Golding didn’t know the term "toxic masculinity," but he would have recognized it, and though Lord of the Flies does not address the current moment directly, it feels all the more powerful for it.

And coming soon, The Marked Woman, based on the novel by Rosa Montero and Olivier Truc, comes to Netflix on June 5th. The movie is a psychological thriller that sounds like a bit of a mashup of Dept Q and The Bourne Identity, which were also excellent literary adaptations. — JO

LET ME UPGRADE YOU

Level-up your reading life

Book Riot All Access members get a pile of benefits, including unlimited reading on bookriot.com, recommendations for the Read Harder Challenge, and access to our New Release Index to curate your TBR. Here are a few recent highlights:

📚 Books to Read With Your Book Club to Stay in the Know

🌳 Books Marrying Memoir and Nonfiction with Nature

🥔 “Mashed Potato May” Will Change Your Reading Life

☕ Cozy Graphic Novels to Escape Into

🧚 Fae-Bulous BIPOC and/or Queer Romantasies

📖 Read Harder With These New Books Out in May

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TOGETHER WITH SOURCEBOOKS LANDMARK

Some family legacies skip a generation. Others won’t let go.​

L.C. Chu’s Library Flowers weaves a multi-timeline story across generations of mothers and daughters, tracing identity, race, and the push and pull of diaspora with breezy prose and a light, deft touch. Set in Toronto with richly drawn Asian characters, it is both a love story and a powerful reckoning with where we come from. Look no further for your next book club pick.

"An alchemical tale of family and self-discovery, with notes of pure magic." — Booklist

EBOOKS

What’s new on Kindle Unlimited

Your ebook queue called, and it needs some new books. Answer that call with these three romance reads, all available now for Kindle Unlimited users. We have a queer historical romance billed as Bridgerton meets The Goldfinch , the conclusion to a steamy plus-size romance trilogy following three friends over a sexy summer, and the latest in a contemporary billionaire romance series themed around the seven deadly sins.

How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles - A queer Regency romance between a humble shopkeeper who marries an elderly client to help disinherit her shady nephew, and the French aristocrat who intends to scheme his way into marrying her himself.

Big Girl Blitz by Danielle Allen - When a woman returns to her hometown to care for her ailing aunt, the last thing she has on her mind is romance. Enter the handsome football player she meets at a sports bar.

King of Gluttony by Ana Huang - A spicy contemporary romance between a billionaire heir to a culinary empire, and the childhood rival he can’t stand—and also can’t resist. —VD

AUTHOR RECOMMENDATIONS

How to write a memorable detective

photo credit: Andrea Stenson Photography

Uzma Jalaluddin is the author of the Detective Aunty series. Book two, Moonlight Murder, is out this week from Harper Perennial. Below, she discusses the mystery novels that helped inspire her detective main character.

When I sat down in late 2022 to finally write my own mystery novel, after debuting as a romance writer, I knew I had my work cut out for me. Mystery readers are a discerning, suspicious lot, their eagle eyes always on the lookout for clues and red herrings. I should know; for most of my life, I was that reader. After a few failed attempts, I went back and re-read a few of my favourite mystery novels.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: I first read this book as a teen, and I still remember my shock at the ending. This was the novel that made me look at mystery novels in a whole new light: a fun playground where an author could exercise their imagination, break rules, and bring readers along for the ride.

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz: This book—which is excellent on audio—is the first in Horowitz’s fantastic and very meta detective series, where the author himself plays the role of hapless Watson to the fictional detective Hawthorne. It’s great fun, and each book in the series is also an intricately plotted mystery.

Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan: Ausma is a good friend, someone who has spent many hours advising me when I decided to dive into crime fiction. The advice she gave me was sound, and based on a plethora of experience—she is the author of eight mysteries, across two series, including the gripping Blackwater Falls series—I highly recommend!

As a result of reading and enjoying some of the best that crime fiction has to offer, I wrote my first mystery novel, Detective Aunty, which was published in 2025, and the follow-up, Moonlight Murder, which was published in the U.S. on May 5, 2026.

The series follows Kausar Khan, a 50-something South Asian widow who lives in Toronto, and who is keen to launch her second act as an amateur detective, using her unique perspective and impressive powers of deduction to help her diverse community.

TOGETHER WITH BLOOM BOOKS

We are teaming up with Bloom Books to give away a $200 gift card to The Ripped Bodice to one lucky winner! To enter, simply fill out the form for a chance to win.

Bloom Books, a premier imprint of Sourcebooks, is the ultimate destination for “fan-first” fiction and bestselling romance. Home to viral sensations like Ana Huang, Lucy Score, and Lauren Asher, Bloom specializes in diverse, inclusive, and spicy New Adult stories that dominate the charts. Discover the TikTok-famous books and emotional page-turners that have redefined the modern “Happily Ever After.”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Robert Browning, born May 7, 1812

Did you know? Despite being fluent in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian by age 14, Browning was ineligible to attend Oxford or Cambridge because they were only open to members of the Church of England, and his parents were evangelicals.

CRITICAL LINKING

You are now free to roam about the internet

📺 Get your Jane Austen fix with a new Pride & Prejudice spinoff.

☕ Escape from reality with these cozy graphic novels.

🍿 Watch the latest trailer for the upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey.

🕵️‍♀️ Catch up on 2025’s best mysteries with these Edgar-winning books.

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END NOTES

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, Vanessa Diaz, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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