Madeleine Wickham, creator of the Confessions of a Shopaholic series, which she wrote under the pen name Sophie Kinsella, has died at the age of 55. She had been living with glioblastoma since 2022.

Writing under both her given name and pen name, Wickham authored more than 30 books for adults, teens, and children and sold more than 45 million books worldwide. Confessions of a Shopaholic , which came out in 2000, helped launch the early-aughts chick lit boom and paved the way for other marquee titles like Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed (2001) and Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada (2003).

Wickham was both of-the-moment and ahead of her time. While the particulars of Shopaholic are undeniably Millennial, the vibes prefigured today’s rom-com BookTok phenomena and reminded publishing that, however light its subject matter may appear, women’s fiction is a serious force in the world of books and reading. - RJS

If you’ve heard anything about Hamnet, the new film based on Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, it was probably something about it being the backstory for Hamlet . And while that’s true—at least in O’Farrell’s richly imagined version of history—it’s not the whole story.

Hamnet is a story about growing up and out of difficult family circumstances, falling in love, creating a family, and creating art. It’s a story about womanhood and motherhood and marriage. And, yes, it’s a story about loss, pain, and grief.

Maggie O’Farrell’s book does some things only books can do, and this film does some things only films can do. It’s a fascinating work of adaptation, and it has just been nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Picture.

🎧 Hear my conversation with Book Riot’s managing editor Vanessa Diaz about what makes Hamnet so special, the key differences between the book and the movie, and how to tell if it’s for you. - RJS

Greek mythology, but make it feral.

Blood of Hercules is back—darker, steamier, and even more unhinged—with Bonds of Hercules, the highly anticipated sequel from New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Mas.

Alexis never asked to become Hercules. Now she’s bound to two husbands she can’t trust, thrown into a brutal Gladiator Competition, and racing toward a truth that could topple the gods themselves. Team Professor or Team Mentor: who will she choose? The gods want her broken. Her enemies want her heart. And readers? They want answers.

Featuring sparkling sprayed edges, character-art endpapers, a foiled board, and more, this special edition delivers on every collector impulse.

Everand and Fable have shared the results of their 2026 State of Reading Report, which examines subscribers’ activity over the year as well as their survey answers. Here are some of the most interesting findings:

• 🗣️ The most common source of book discovery is “people I know personally,” outranking social media and ebook/audiobook platforms.
• 📚 Almost three-quarters of respondents said reading has become more popular this year.
• 📖 They’re also reading more: the majority of respondents read more in 2025 than they did in 2024, rising to 64% of 18-24-year-olds.
• 🗓️ Subscribers are incorporating reading into their daily lives: the average reading streak was 29 days!
• 🌶️ Spicy books are most popular with Gen X readers and least popular with younger demographics! —DE

This is one of the most exquisite works of nonfiction I’ve read in a long time, perhaps in my lifetime, and it’s about a chapter of U.S. history that deserves the time, care, and attention to detail it received in this book.

The Warmth of Other Suns is about the Great Migration, the massive migration of Black Americans from the South to the North in search of safety, a better future for themselves and their children, and freedom from Jim Crow. Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson is our guide through this seminal, underacknowledged history and the lives of three of its unforgettable participants.

The book unites oral history, narrative from our three protagonists, and scholarly examinations of the migration to engage readers in the nuances and complexities of this piece of history, and to emphasize that these weren’t masses in motion but individuals and families fleeing oppression, lynchings, lawlessness, and thievery, and who, made powerless in every other way, saw freedom and the wresting of some control over their lives in a big move to the cold North.

I loved this book so much it made me want to re-read Black American fiction from this era through new eyes. The perspective it gave me on what happened then and what’s happening now is priceless, and I’ll never forget the minute and major details of the stories that brought history to life. -SW

Read more about this remarkable book.

SuperGifters, earn an early holiday treat and get 75 bonus points with every order of 3 or more books while you wrap up your gift list, plus enjoy free standard shipping on orders over $15.

After what feels like a lifetime of being told (yelled at?) to be more productive, I’m ready to enter my soft era. I want this for you too, friend. One way I’ve softened things up and slowed down is by romanticizing my reading life.

Here are some tips for making your reading life more romantic, but what really hits for you will depend on you:

Make Space: Block out time on your calendar, put your phone on do not disturb, and get even more intentional about your Me Time with something like this reading log (which you can make a copy of and edit).

Find Your Place : For a time, I would spend all of my Saturday daylight hours at my local library after a really pleasant walk through the neighborhood. The slowing down to get there and the subsequent staying meant I saw new things and became a little more connected with my community. You might want to go to some other third place, like a favorite or new-to-you café, a museum atrium, or an indie bookstore.

• You can also, of course, just designate a new place as a reading space wherever you live. I’ve decked out my bed with bigger, comfier pillows and a light projector, which has resulted in some truly relaxing reading sessions.

Engage with Your Reading in New Ways: Try annotating if you aren’t doing so already, or stop annotating if you are. Personally, I’ve started using a voice note recorder, which helps me with flow.

• Another way to linger and better absorb what you’re reading is by adding some social component. Try a Reading Rhythms event where participants bring whatever they want to read while they hang out together, or simply meet up with a friend to share silent reading time and light conversation.

Read Books That Remind You to Pause : You can romanticize reading any genre, but cozy books just hit different. Japanese people even have a specific genre name for them, iyashikei, or “healing-type.”

• I recommend Cat + Gamer by Wataru Nadatani, Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith, and The Way of the Househusband by Kousuke Oono.

🛁 Whatever you do to romanticize your reading should shape your reading life into a more intentional and mood-lifting activity, one that will have you appreciating it—and life in general—a little more. - EE

🎁 It’sbig. It’s beautiful. It’s packed with photos of the world’s best bookstores and a history of the publishing culture that shaped them.

Jean-Yves Mollier and Patricia Sorel’s Bookstores of the World is a deluxe gift for discerning bibliophiles that will class-up your coffee table and instantly double the value of your IKEA bookcase. Go ahead and treat yourself. We won’t tell.

Tailored Book Recommendations is the ultimate gift for everyone on your list —from the dedicated book nerd who devours every genre to the hesitant reader looking for a starting point. Here’s how it works: Your gift recipient fills out a simple, quick survey about their reading likes and dislikes. Then, our professional book nerds (yes, real people!) hand-select three books, just for them. Choose to gift the personalized recommendations alone, or go all out and have paperbacks or hardcovers delivered right to their door. Gift TBR today starting at just $18!

Like many ambitious 22-year-olds, Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Mantell were frustrated. They were avid literature lovers who were just getting their careers started and found themselves working for “people who were stupider than we were.” They had experience in both publishing and record production, so when they saw that Dylan Thomas would be doing a reading nearby, they decided to try to get him to record some of his poetry and make a spoken-word album out of it. 

And so in February of 1952, Holdridge and Mantell went to see Thomas at the Chelsea Hotel to make their pitch. Thomas agreed to a $500 flat fee plus 10% royalties on any records sold beyond the first 1,000. He recorded a handful of poems, but that only took up about 10 of the 45 minutes on the LP that Holdridge and Mantell had in mind, so Thomas suggested a piece he had already published in Mademoiselle, “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” 

Over the next decade, the album would go on to sell 400,000 copies, found Holdridge and Mantell’s multi-million dollar spoken word publishing company, Caedmon Records (named for the saint of English poetry), and invent the audiobook industry. In an interview honoring Thomas and those first recordings, Holdridge attributed the record’s success to students on the GI Bill discovering poetry and being amenable to buying records of it. “We didn’t have a network of sales agents then,” Holdridge said. “And they would just come right to our office to buy the record.”

You can listen to the original recording of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” as a regular song, albeit a 19-minute one, on Spotify and other streaming services.

✈️ Stay comfy when you take a break from in-flight read with the side-sleeper neck pillow Wirecutter won’t stop raving about.** 

🚫 The Supreme Court has declined to consider a Texas book banning case.

📘 Don’t miss these underrated gems from 2025.

👀 Peep the first look at Apple TV’s upcoming adaptation of Margot’s Got Money Troubles. Nick Offerman as a retired pro wrestler!

💰 Learn about a publisher’s $200,000 pledge to combat the decline in kids reading.

_{** 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, Jeff O’Neal, Sharifah Williams, and Erica Ezeifedi. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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