Don’t worry about the Booker Prize’s self-esteem. Fashioning itself "the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction," the Booker awards £50,000 to "the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland."

The finalists for the 2025 Booker Prize have been revealed.

• Audition by Katie Kitamura
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• Flesh by David Szalay
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

🏆 The winner will be announced November 10.

Kate Fuggett is the author of one of the best memoirs of the year, Alive Day. And even though it is a moving, harrowing, and quite beautiful story of struggle and survival, that is not what this post is about.

For her next project , Fuggett is fundraising to restore and kit out a beat-up 1950 Ford pickup to become The Banned Wagon (+5 points for wordplay), a traveling bookstore charged with getting banned, censored, and otherwise under-known books in front of people who need them.

I’ll let her own words inspire you to consider kicking in a few bucks:

The Banned Wagon isn’t just about selling books. I have a background in teaching writing to high school and college students, and I plan to use that experience to turn the truck into a hub for workshops and events, where we’ll dig into the truth behind banned books, talk about why they’re being challenged, and show people they aren’t as scary as some want them to believe.

This project is bigger than me or this little, old truck. It’s a rebellion against the war on knowledge, right in the heart of the South where it’s needed the most. It’s a rebellion against censorship. Against ignorance. Against apathy. And against the erasure of voices and histories.

Kate Fuggett, may your efforts succeed.

💸 Support The Banned Wagon on GoFundMe.

Photos courtesy of GoFundMe

G Adventures offers small-group trips designed for real immersion. Travel from Paris to Rome by rail, crossing three countries with ample time to savor culture, food, and history along the way. Traveling by train means it’s a journey, not a race, and you get plenty of reading time built in. Plus, it’s more affordable than you might expect.

Explore the Paris to Rome adventure or any G Adventures itinerary.

Twilight first landed on shelves and pierced teenage hearts 20 years ago this Saturday.

Originally published September 27, 2005, the book’s sales, much like its yearning-filled plot, were a slow burn. By the time Breaking Dawn came out in 2008, Stephenie Meyer was a household name, and teen readers in the pre-hashtag world were declaring their allegiance to Team Edward or Team Jacob the good old-fashioned way: on bumper stickers.

It can be as hard as Edward’s stone-cold skin to grasp just how major the Twilight phenomenon was.

• The four-book Twilight Saga has sold more than 160 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages worldwide.
• Stephenie Meyer was the bestselling author in the US in both 2008 and 2009.
• Meyer moved about 60 million units in those two years alone.
  • That’s about double Colleen Hoover’s total estimated sales from more than 25 titles combined.
  • It’s more than four times the estimated sales of Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series.
• Social media was new and not yet widespread. This juggernaut was primarily driven by IRL word-of-mouth magic.

You can draw a straight line from Twilight to today’s romantasy boom. Bella and Edward inspired gobs of fanfiction, including E.L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey, which, with its BDSM-infused billionaire romance, took "spicy" books mainstream. These sparkly vampires ran so TikTok’s favorite dragons could fly. – RS

If fall makes you want to buy school supplies and send your crush a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils (IYKYK), we’re willing to bet you also enjoy a cozy mystery.

These are the top 5 cozy mysteries in North American public libraries, according to Libby.

1. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
2. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
3. Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
4. The Maid by Nita Prose
5. Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

🏚️ Looking for something spookier? Here’s a haunted house novel that reads like a movie.

Celebrate the diverse array of Latine and Hispanic voices across the diaspora whose stories shape culture by listening to audiobooks.

There’s a story for every mood and reader, from Isabel Cañas’s The Possession of Alba Diaz, a chilling tale of a demonic presence awakening in a Mexican silver mine, to Natalie Guerrero’s My Train Leaves at Three, a heartfelt coming-of-age story set in Washington Heights, and Mia Sosa’s rom-com When Javi Dumped Mari, about best friends, hidden feelings, and second chances.

Latine Heritage Month is September 15-October 15.

While we celebrate Latine books all year round, we’ll take any opportunity to highlight debut authors. Here are 3 to get you started:

• Archive of Unknown Universes by Ruben Reyes Jr. – A genre-bending, multiple-timeline story about two families during the Salvadoran civil war
• An Amateur Witch’s Guide to Murder by K. Valentin – Queer romantic fantasy with a missing demon, a murderous cursed nepo baby, and a deadly magical conspiracy
• Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez – A horror set in the Everglades, where two old friends reunite for a weekend during which nothing is as it seems

📒 See more Latine debut authors, and sign up for our Latine Lit newsletter to stay informed.

We’re in Oscar season now, friends.

One Battle After Another, one of the most anticipated films of the year, hits theaters tomorrow. Based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, which imagines Reaganite America’s fall into a fascist police state, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest endeavor certainly looks timely and bracing.

Anderson is no stranger to adapting Pynchon’s notoriously unruly fiction—he took a crack at Inherent Vice in 2014—and it will be fascinating to see which elements of the noisy, drug-fueled, genre-blending novel he preserves.

🎧 Learn more about the book that inspired One Battle After Another on this week’s episode of Zero to Well-Read.

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bell hooks , aspirational in so many, many ways.

Read the interview where she said this.

🍷Wow your book club with customized wine recommendations tailored to your taste.**

⬇️ Bookstore sales are way down in Washington, D.C., where federal troops have an increased presence.

🪄 Summon a reading list of Harry Potter alternatives.

🍿 Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia, due out next year, will be scored by Mark Ronson.

💕 Pick up a slow-tease romance inspired by Jane Austen.

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

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

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