💰Maybe let's not recommend books for rich people

Exciting books to shout about, whether or not you're rich.

͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌ ͏ ‌

May 19, 2026 | View Online | Join All Access | Listen

We are book nerds here at Book Riot. But we are not every reader, so we are always looking for ways to cover books to reach as many people as we can. So every year, we do a survey of BR readers to see what and how they are reading. To show our appreciation for your time, everyone who completes the survey will be entered for a chance to win a $50 USD ThriftBooks Gift Card. Complete the survey by May 31st here. And thanks for reading.

Spread the word. Share this email with friends.

THE HEADLINE

JP Morgan’s odd summer reading recs for the wealthy

We here at Book Riot know our way around a book recommendation list. And I myself do like a good book about work, business, and economics. But I don’t think it would have occurred to me in a million years to write a list of book recommendations for rich people. But apparently JP Morgan has been doing this for 27 years.

This year’s selection of 14 books is supposed to....this: "Summer is a time to step back, recharge and reconnect. In that reset, perspective sharpens, ideas take shape and clarity emerges with a renewed sense of energy and momentum."

First of all, this has more than whiff of AI-generated prose. Back to back three-item serials is certainly something a human can do, but combined with a fuzzy faux-profundity, the odds that these words came from a human, at least primarily, plummet. Also, "clarity" here "emerges with a renewed sense of energy and momentum." Can clarity have a sense of energy? I think maybe clarity can provide energy to a person, but somehow we have strayed from humanity here. I wonder why. Hmm.

And then there are the selections themselves, which include a book of lemon-centered recipes for some reason . And Han Kang’s, brooding, mysterious, and to this reader, quite dark Light & Thread. The unsigned JP Morgan blurb certainly includes words that describe what is in the book, but doesn’t resonate at all with my reading. It is quite bit stranger than "how creative work and everyday life shape purpose and meaning" and quite a bit more elusive and puzzling than "finding meaning, and light, after darkness." Perhaps unidentified book recommender at JP Morgan genuinely thinks this book should be read by the wealthy. I am deeply skeptical.

But if some billionaire picks up Han Kang because of this list, then well-played JP Morgan content marketing division.

NEW RELEASES

The return of hope after a period of despair

That’s what respair means when it is used as a noun, but I prefer the verb: "to have hope again." Respair is not the opposite of despair but the place you arrive when you’ve come through it, when you have lost hope and kept going.

In the essays collected in On Witness and Respair, written between 2008 and 2025, Jesmyn Ward reaches back for this obsolete term as she writes herself into the future and allows us to come along: "Come sit with me. Let me tell you a story."

Personal reflections—on Ward’s childhood in Mississippi and why she decided to return, on raising a Black son in the U.S., and on surviving personal tragedy and the pandemic—sit alongside literary criticism, cultural commentary, and odes to the writers and bookish spaces that shaped her.

Ward bears witness to Black life and Black art, to pain and beauty, to suffering and salvation. She invites us to share her vision, and she gives us permission to witness ourselves, our communities, and our world with hard-earned honesty. She writes about the return of hope and of returning to hope. Every piece is a gift from one of our greatest living American writers.

Also hitting shelves this week:

💥 A blockbuster LitRPG fantasy gets its first graphic novel adaptation

🌈 An iconic graphic memoir about queer life gets a deluxe annotated edition

🙌 Reluctant adventurers set out to win God’s favor in a singular and chaotic novel earning comps to Chain-Gang All-Stars and Martyr!

🪏A stolen artifact implicates a museum with organized crime in a debut novel of memory, love, and history.*

📖 A novelist and literary blogger makes the case for why the great books still matter and what they have to offer

➡️ See more of the week’s most exciting new releases. — RJS

*A message from our sponsor.

TOGETHER WITH JACK CAMPBELL AND AETHON: VAULT

Squad Kill is an action-packed military science fiction adventure, from New York Times bestselling author, Jack Campbell.

Osiris “Oz” Aquino is an under-prepared Navy officer put in command of seven castoff Marines on a research starship dispatched to an alien planet. Signs of intelligent life abound in the form of ruined cities and skeletal remains. The only living things are adorable aliens dubbed squonks. It all seems run-of-the-mill, until it isn’t...

“The best bug hunt since ALIENS. What a read!” --Scott Sigler (New York Times #1 bestselling author)

For fans of Aliens and The Forever War, Squad Kill is an action-packed, sci-fi adventure, now available wherever books are sold.

ON AIR

A one-of-a-kind word-of-mouth hit

Robin Wall Kimmerer wasn’t expecting anything when she sent the manuscript of Braiding Sweetgrass to small nonprofit publisher Milkweed Editions in 2010.

She wasn’t expecting much when the book was published in 2013 with an initial print run of 8,000 copies and no marketing budget to speak of. She never imagined that 13 years later, the book would have sold nearly 3 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages.

The story of Braiding Sweetgrass’s success is a story about the power of independent booksellers and word-of-mouth recommendations between readers. It’s also a story about recognizing that so much about the modern world is broken and about a collective longing for different, better ways of engaging and connecting. Kimmerer’s unique blend of Indigenous wisdom and scientific practicality offers a compelling alternative.

🎧 Hear our conversation about this powerful read on Zero to Well-Read.

BOOKS ARE MAGIC

The book that changed Emma Straub’s life

Courtesy of the Syndicate X Library

For a million dollars, we never could have guessed the book novelist Emma Straub would cite as a transformative read that influenced her confidence, taste, and body image.

It’s a work of humor, but Straub took it "so seriously" as a kid, as she told Chris Collins during a recent appearance on Books That Changed My Life.

The key lesson from this life-changing read? "What matters is your supreme confidence in yourself. Being authentic to yourself is everything. And if anyone else doesn’t see it, it’s their problem."

Straub, a beloved fixture in the literary community, also shared insights from her experiences as an indie bookstore owner—she and her husband run Books Are Magic, which has two locations in Brooklyn—and the hilarious cruise that inspired her latest novel, American Fantasy.

🎬 Find out what book Straub was talking about, and you can enter to win a signed copy of American Fantasy while you’re at it.

TOGETHER WITH BRAMBLE

Death’s Daughter is a scorching new paranormal romance from USA Today bestselling author S.A. Barnes.

This first book in the all-new Children of the Old Ones series is perfect for readers who love the reimagined mythology of Neon Gods, the dark academia atmosphere of Ninth House, and the supernatural romance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

After a lifetime of chaos, Jocasta has finally found something like a normal life at Beecher University (as normal as life can be for the only child of Death). But when Death names Jocasta his sole heir and students begin mysteriously dying around campus, she’ll do anything to protect the people she loves and the life she’s fought so hard to build...even if it means becoming a monster.

This gorgeous deluxe edition features sprayed edges, designed endpapers, and a foil case stamp. Death’s Daughter is available now.

FORTHCOMING

Recent book announcements of note

It’s hard enough to keep up with all the books already out there, I know. But dammit if the prospect of forthcoming books isn’t somehow even more tantalizing than browsing a bookstore on new release day. Here are a few recent book announcements of particular note.

The Piano Teacher of Montparnass e by Heather Morris: Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz went supernova, and her next book looks set to ring many of the same bells with novel based on the true story of French piano teacher’s attempt to save a Jewish pupil. Crying already

The Enigmas by Emilia Hart: I’m not really sure what to call the books Emilia Hart writes. Some fantasy/thriller/historical fiction/timey-wimeyness that center women. Whatever they are, they work. And the next one takes place, it seems, at Bletchley Park. Swoons-in-history-nerd.

The Occidental Book of the Dead by T. Geronimo Johnson: First of all, T. Geronimo is just about the coolest name you can have as a writer. And maybe anything. Second, I cannot believe it has been more than decade’s since Johnson’s phenominal Welcome to Braggsville, which feels even more timely and incisive now. His latest sounds like it is going to to T. Geronimo Johnson things: formally inventive, darkly funny, and roundly and wickedly smart.

Jackie Loves Boom-Boom by Chantal V. Johnson: Johnson’s Post-Traumatic was one of my five favorite novels and the most impressive debut novels I have ever read. Johnson’s characters are unruly, resisting, breaking, and otherwise scribbling over the boxes there are supposed to be in. That her sophomore novel is going to be a road-trip book about finding a lost grunge music icon feels like a gift for me specifically.

AUTHOR RECOMMENDATIONS

The more literature we read, the more we understand the jokes on The Simpsons

photo credit: riel Sturhcio

Paige Lewis is the author of Canon , out today from Viking. Below, they discuss three of the books, movies, and TV shows that influenced their debut novel.

Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day: When I was an editor for my undergraduate newspaper, I had the opportunity to interview Don Hertzfeldt, who was touring a few dozen theaters with his animated feature film, It’s Such a Beautiful Day.

While I remember nothing about that interview (sorry, Don), I can clearly remember the absolute awe I felt while at the screening for It’s Such a Beautiful Day , which follows the life of Bill, a man suffering from an unidentified form of memory loss. Hertzfeldt narrates the film and, while I can’t say too much without spoilers, I will say that his role and behavior as the film’s narrator highly influenced the voice of the narrator in Canon.

Gwendolyn Brooks’s Annie Allen: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks has been a wildly important influence on Canon . Brooks’s book is split into three parts, each following a different section of the life of the titular Annie Allen, a Black woman growing up in Chicago. The middle section, an epic with the incredible title “The Anniad”, follows Annie’s journey through a relationship irrevocably affected when her beloved is sent off to war and comes back with PTSD.

I remember reading “The Anniad” for the first time and having my understanding of the hero’s journey completely challenged and expanded. This epic isn’t about the soldier, it’s about how his behavior affects the journey of the actual hero, Annie. The relationship between Annie and her mother in this book also helped me to make sense of the mother/child relationship in my book.

The Simpsons: The first ten seasons of The Simpsons are the reason I’m a writer. When I was young, I often experienced art and literature through the lens of The Simpsons—the first time I ever heard Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was when James Earl Jones read the poem in its entirety during the very first “Treehouse of Horror” episode. Soon after, I asked my mom for a copy of Poe’s complete works, and I carried that gilded book around my middle school like a Bible.

This sort of discovering literature through Simpsons parodies and references continued well into adulthood. My husband, Kaveh Akbar, who I first met because of our shared love of The Simpsons, likes to say that the more literature we read, the more we understand the jokes on The Simpsons. It’s absolutely true! Without The Simpsons, there would be no Canon.

TOGETHER WITH MICHAEL CHATFIELD AND AETHON: VAULT

"Once this crazy ride starts, you’ll never want to get off." -Matt Dinniman, author of Dungeon Crawler Carl.

From best-selling author Michael Chatfleid, T he Two Week Curse is the first book in the addictive million-copy bestselling "Ten Realms" series, where tactical military science-fiction combat meets high-stakes LitRPG progression fantasy.

Follow the journey of Erik and Rugrat, two combat-hardened soldiers who are transported from Earth to the mystical Ten Realms after contracting the "two-week curse." The story details their rapid adaptation to this new reality, where they utilize their military discipline and modern medical knowledge to master magic, alchemy, and smithing.

The Two Week Curse is out now. Order yours today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Nora Ephron, born May 19,1941

Did you know? Ephron’s 2006 essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, appeared on The Guardian’s Best Books of the Century List.

CRITICAL LINKING

You are now free to roam about the internet

👀 Learn about Australia’s infamous literary hoax.

🌈 Build your Pride Month TBR by signing up for the Our Queerest Shelves newsletter!

💥 YA Comics in Spaaaaaaaaaace.

🎁 Are deluxe editions becoming the "fifth format"?

🕶️Adam Driver is probably not serious about writing a counter tell-all. Probably

⏳Researchers find oldest English language poem.

🧍🏽‍♂️Are dad books a dying breed ? (Reader, they are not. They are just changing).

END NOTES

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

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

Got a tip, question, comment, or story idea? Drop us a line: thenewsletter@bookriot.com