[{"id":276741,"date":"2026-09-18T05:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276741"},"modified":"2026-09-19T06:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T10:58:10","slug":"does-evil-exist-and-how-do-we-recognize-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/does-evil-exist-and-how-do-we-recognize-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Evil Exist (and How Do We Recognize It?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful\u202f…\u202fis the great and most universal cause of our moral sentiments.
\n<\/em>\u2013Adam Smith
\n*<\/em><\/p>\n

One recent summer afternoon I received an email from a British podcast production company concerning, they said, \u201ca project in development involving modern manifestations of the concept of evil.\u201d They had found my book on the subject helpful. Would I be open to a short conversation off the record? After having put the subject aside for most of two decades, I was about to begin work on this book, so we met on Zoom a few weeks later. The serious young man asked if I\u2019d heard about that case of cannibalism in Florida.<\/p>\n

My face fell, and I did not hide it. \u201cIf that\u2019s what you\u2019re interested in, I can\u2019t help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

It should have been clear from the book itself, which doesn\u2019t mention a single instance of cannibalism or serial murder or any of the gruesome cases that fill tabloids and true crime shows all over the world. \u201cCases like these are very rare, and they distract us from evils that are much more common and much more dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking war in order to stay in power. Cutting aid that will cost poor people\u2019s lives in order to lower rich people\u2019s taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d he granted. \u201cBut did you hear about this one? An ordinary man in an ordinary town killed a couple in their garage and was captured while eating their faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you wonder how that could happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

To call evil banal is to call it boring, and if it is boring, its appeal is limited. Few things are less erotic than a fungus.<\/p>\n

\u201cPsychologically? Neurologically? There was once a mass shooter who was found to have a brain tumor. Maybe science will discover causes, since we aren\u2019t going to find reasons. But I\u2019m interested in the reasons for less spectacular cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said he was a werewolf. Did you ever read about the werewolf trials? Like the witch trials in the Middle Ages?\u201d<\/p>\n

We would always rather externalize evil than examine it. The first witch trial in Ireland took place in Kilkenny in 1324, but people who were suspected as sources of suffering have been murdered since prehistory. It\u2019s a way both to explain suffering and to expiate it. By portraying evil as something so outside the range of normal human behavior that most of us find it not just wrong but disgusting, we avoid hard questions about less gory crimes. Horror films and increasingly brutal crime stories reveal the very large market for the subject.<\/p>\n

There are cynical explanations for their commercial success: People are hardwired to enjoy watching cruelty, even if they\u2019re too frightened to participate themselves. Less grimly, you may take the fascination for rare and grisly crimes as a substitute for the question many cannot formulate or face: What accounts for less dramatic forms of evil that have become so common they serve as background for the lives we quietly inhabit? We focus on those who take pleasure in cruelty because they are seldom who we are\u2014\u00adand because we are loath to recognize that the greater evil is the conviction that there is no good.<\/p>\n

Hannah Arendt was prescient in understanding the desire to believe in evil as involving \u201csatanic greatness.\u201d Her work on the problem of evil was the search for an account that would undermine its appeal as something grand, maleficent, and terrifyingly sublime. The diabolical is ambiguous and often frankly sexy; the ridiculous is not. So she wrote in a famous letter to her friend Gershom Sholem:<\/p>\n

Evil possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste to the world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface.<\/p>\n

To call evil banal is to call it boring, and if it is boring, its appeal is limited. Few things are less erotic than a fungus.<\/p>\n

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil <\/i>received more, and more furious, commentary than any other work of twentieth-\u00adcentury philosophy. Arendt herself complicated matters by calling it journalism instead of philosophy, which added to the misunderstandings. Its point was not that evil is banal, but rather that those who perpetrate it are. Thirty shekels, another ring on the bureaucratic ladder: The reward for which many are willing to sell their souls can be stunningly small. Unable to picture evil as anything other than devilish, critics accused Arendt of excusing the perpetrators and blaming the victims. Decades of friendship, including that with Sholem, were undone in the controversy.<\/p>\n

Arendt\u2019s account of evil was developed as she observed the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major architects of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Devoid of any hint of satanic greatness, the balding, nearsighted bureaucrat on the stand in Jerusalem looked more like an accountant than anything else. He wasn\u2019t driven by personal hatred or pleasure in cruelty. He was punctilious in refusing to profit from stolen goods and had done nothing but what was expected of him after joining the SS in 1932. The one time he observed a gas chamber in action, he swore that it made him sick. Dostoyevsky\u2019s sniveling devil comes closest to portraying the man chiefly responsible for organizing the Final Solution. Not malevolence but thoughtlessness was behind Eichmann\u2019s deeds. He merely, wrote Arendt, did not realize what he was doing.<\/p>\n

This last claim was false, as the German philosopher Bettina Stangneth proved in her 2011 book Eichmann Before Jerusalem. <\/i>Unlike Arendt, Stangneth had access to recordings made in 1956 in Argentina. In a series of lectures Eichmann told other exiled Nazis the truth about what they had hitherto called \u201cThe Auschwitz Lie.\u201d Protocols of every meeting were made, corrected, and signed by Eichmann himself. At those meetings he resisted every suggestion that he\u2019d been the sort of mindless civil servant he performed at his trial, and he said his only regret was his failure to murder all 11 million Jews in Europe. So much for the claim that he didn\u2019t know what he was doing; Arendt, like many, had been fooled by the role he played in hopes of escaping the gallows. But her fundamental point remains: Evil acts are seldom committed by monsters. All they require is an ordinary person who abandons integrity.<\/p>\n

Arendt\u2019s radical claims still stand, in principle, though not for the man Adolf Eichmann. The role of intention in determining claims of genocide is fiercely debated. According to Raphael Lemkin\u2019s definition, a war crime becomes genocide if it involves the \u201cintent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.\u201d But how do we decide when destruction is intentional? Orders can be equivocal, statements ambiguous, instructions murky.<\/p>\n

However we evaluate the aims of those who give the orders, no genocide would ever be committed without countless people following those orders without intending much of anything at all. Like other cases of mass murder, the Holocaust could never have happened without the willing participation of millions of people who were not particularly committed fascists or fascists of any kind. They were simply willing to accept whatever demands made their lives easiest. If they reflected at all, it was likely to produce the thought: If I didn\u2019t do it, someone else would<\/i>. This thought is a handy excuse. It is also usually true.<\/p>\n

In 1961 the social psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to understand how millions of Germans had been complicit in mass murder. In a series of experiments, hundreds of subjects were told they were participants in a study examining the role of stress in learning. They were instructed to give electric shocks to learners they could not see. In fact, the learners were actors; the shockers were the subjects of the experiment. Nearly half of them failed miserably. Even as the actors shouted in counterfeit pain from the next room, the subjects continued to administer increasingly intense shocks they\u2019d been told could lead to unconsciousness or even death. Nor did they need encouragement or threats from Nazis in uniform. White coats and the four-letter word Yale<\/i> were all that was needed to convince them they were serving the cause of science. Milgram concluded:<\/p>\n

If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-\u00adsized American town.<\/p>\n

The methodology of Milgram\u2019s experiments as well as similar ones has been recently questioned and the numbers disputed. The results are still dispiriting enough: Half of those tested were willing to follow what they thought were orders to torture.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In 1959 the Austrian philosopher Gunter Anders initiated a correspondence with Claude Eatherly, one of the pilots involved in the bombing of Hiroshima. He\u2019d read that feelings of guilt over his role in the mass slaughter led the former pilot to a nervous breakdown. The correspondence helped convince Anders, who fled the Nazis for American exile in 1936, that different kinds of evil cause different kinds of harm. Crimes like those committed at Auschwitz pose greater threats to the human soul; what happened at Hiroshima is a greater menace to life itself. To lead a child to a gas chamber demands a hardness of heart that must be cultivated. Few of us are born that way. (Don\u2019t forget that the gas chambers were invented to spare soldiers the qualms that less mechanized forms of murder might produce.) Dropping a bomb on a child who cannot see you is easier than looking her in the eye. (Prisoners executed by firing squad are not blindfolded for their sakes but to spare their executioners a final accusing glance.) Still it\u2019s heartening to learn that even from a great height, Eatherly was troubled. One could argue this gives us some hope for humankind.<\/p>\n

Anders did not classify evils as better or worse, but he wanted to distinguish them. Others are inclined to rank evils according to the amount of savagery evident in the perpetrator, not to the damage inflicted on the world. It\u2019s a relic of the assumption that doing evil requires evil intentions, a view Arendt\u2019s work was meant to demolish.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the first photos of the Abu Ghraib tortures were published, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared:<\/p>\n

What happened at Abu Ghraib was not right. But it\u2019s not the same thing as cutting off someone\u2019s head in front of a video camera.<\/p>\n

True enough; it\u2019s not the same thing. But only if you think that evil has an essence do you draw the conclusion Rumsfeld wanted us to draw: that one of those actions is evil and one is simply too bad. We\u2019ve heard similar claims from those who defend Israel\u2019s continuing war on Gaza:<\/p>\n

Israel is fighting a war of self-\u00addefense to ensure that nothing like Hamas\u2019s attack can ever happen again. Those who filmed themselves raping and murdering civilians are not even human; they\u2019re animals.<\/p>\n

You may take President Isaac Herzog\u2019s remarks on October 8, 2023, to be offensive to animals, but he was not wrong to say the two kinds of terror were different. The terrorism committed by Hamas on October 7 and the subsequent destruction of Gaza by Israeli forces are not the same. One of these evils had the mass murder of civilians as its intended goal; the other claims that its victims are unfortunate accidents. One of them was the product of individual will, the other of complex systems that make it easy for individuals to evade scrutiny. One of those evils was highly visible through films of blood-\u00addrenched homes and interviews with survivors. The other has been hidden by banning media coverage, so the world has seen nothing but cell phone videos made by Palestinian journalists risking their lives to record them. What they have shown is horrendous enough.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s natural to hope we\u2019ll find an essence connecting these different kinds of evil, for that would give us hope for a definition of it. Who wouldn\u2019t like to whip out a formula that enabled you to judge this action as evil and the other as merely wrong? Or if you believe, as I do, that Hamas\u2019s attack on October 7 and the subsequent destruction of Gaza are both evil, what core do they share?<\/p>\n

The wish is understandable, but there\u2019s little reason to think we will find the key that we seek. Previous definitions of evil are so broad as to be almost meaningless\u2014\u00adSaint Augustine defined it as nothingness\u2014\u00ador so narrow as to exclude everything but the particular form of evil you have in mind. Both Rumsfeld and Herzog show how easy it is to confine the definition of evil to that which is done to your people\u2014\u00adand ignore what is done by the tribe you call your own.<\/p>\n

Evil is not alone here. Most important concepts, like justice or beauty or judgment, elude definition. Though it\u2019s usually the first thing people want from philosophers, it\u2019s often the last we can offer. Thinkers as different as Theodor Adorno and Ludwig Wittgenstein, two of the most important philosophers of the last century, argued that definitions of vital and contested concepts are futile\u2014\u00adprecisely because they are vital and contested. Philosophical concepts are subject to change, which is how philosophy makes progress. It also means that such concepts can be defined only in relation to each other, as part of a view as a whole. Definitions are useful in subjects like mathematics, whose components are fixed enough to stay put. Adorno set out his views in an introductory lecture at the University of Frankfurt, and ended with the advice to give up formal definitions of philosophical concepts: \u201cThe task of a philosophical treatment of terminology can be only to awaken the life congealed in the words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein proposed to abandon the appeal to essences for the concept of family resemblance. It\u2019s a deep analogy, for you usually recognize members of a family, though you can\u2019t trace your recognition to the shape of a mouth or the slant of an eye. What most people want from philosophy is closer to what DNA reveals about families: the absolute proof that this <\/i>is a case of evil, or heroism, or love. Most of us who do philosophy began by hoping to find definitions too. But if evil comes in too many forms to reduce to an essence, it doesn\u2019t make philosophy helpless. Rather than seeking a recipe, we can learn to identify evils through careful analysis that proceeds case by case.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way to ensure that we don\u2019t overlook evils that fail to fit our worldview, or decide that one evil is an excuse for another. To explain something is not <\/i>to excuse it, despite centuries\u2019 worth of claims to the contrary. For many, recognizing the evils Hamas committed on October 7 obviated the need to understand them. For their critics, understanding it as a response to the brutal occupation precluded calling it evil. We must seek understanding and still be able to conclude, with Israeli author and politician Avrum Burg:<\/p>\n

Nothing Israel did to Gaza justified the massacres of October 7, and nothing Hamas did on October 7 justifies Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

S\u2019expliquer n\u2019est pas se justifier.<\/i><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Without a definition, who\u2019s to decide what\u2019s evil? Do we wait for a sign from heaven?<\/p>\n

A world that worked as reason assumes it ought to would be a world of marionettes. In such a world, would morality be possible?<\/p>\n

Even if we had one, it wouldn\u2019t be much use, as we\u2019re told in one of the strongest passages of the Hebrew Bible. Sodom and Gomorrah have long stood as paradigm cases of crime and punishment. The Sodomites sinned and got what was coming to them; God turned their cities to rubble no one ever found. You needn\u2019t be a fundamentalist to sympathize with the Lord: The sin that He punished was the local demand to drag out and gang-\u00adrape two strangers whom the good-\u00adhearted Lot had offered to shelter. Some sources expand on the account in Genesis<\/i>, suggesting the Sodomites were not only immoral but positively antimoral. Their laws prescribed the death penalty for anyone who helped a stranger; after giving bread to a poor man, Lot\u2019s daughter was immolated on a pyre. Even Sodom\u2019s taxes were perversely regressive: Owners of two oxen were liable for one day\u2019s civic service, while those with one ox were liable for two.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to condemn the decision to wipe out such a vile crew\u2014\u00aduntil you asked the question that Abraham dared pose: What if there are fifty righteous people among the sinners? The judge of all the earth cannot be so unjust as to punish the guilty and the innocent alike! <\/i>There follows one of the most remarkable scenes in the Bible. Having persuaded the judge of all the earth to agree to the principle, Abraham proceeds to negotiate. Surely you\u2019re not a pedant? What if there are only forty-\u00adfive good people in the city? <\/i>Abraham bargains God down to ten. In morality, small distinctions matter. Moral judgment is not a matter of timeless fiats, even were they proclaimed by the Lord of Hosts.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons to love this story, not least because of its resolute universalism. Abraham\u2019s words\u2014\u00adLet not the Lord be angry if I continue, I who am but dust and ashes\u2014\u00ad<\/i>underline his dread. He risks his life, not for his tribe or his family, but for the sake of a principle that applies to anyone, anywhere. Innocents should not be punished along with the guilty. The story makes clear that even for those with direct connections to heaven, evil is not a theological concept. Abraham put his life on the line to give God a lesson in ethics.<\/p>\n

Bible readers may wonder how this fit with Abraham\u2019s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God\u2019s command, and philosophers have occasionally tried to reconcile the two stories with textual twists. But here as elsewhere, the Bible itself is magnificently equivocal. Though religious thinkers will fight fiercely to show one of the stories to be the one that religion really sanctions, each Abrahamic religion has signposts pointing both ways. Fundamentalists will claim that the moral code that follows from their faith needs no intellect to follow. But each of the three Western religions also has a rationalist strain that argues that if God gave us reason, he meant us to use it\u2014\u00adeven when that means calling him out.<\/p>\n

Abraham\u2019s standpoint at Sodom is not peculiar to monotheism. In arguing that things are not good because they are loved by the gods, but the gods love them because they are good, Socrates distinguishes religious from moral authority. He too risked his life for a principle. For undermining traditional religious authority, he was eventually sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

The principle they defend gives us a clue about understanding evil, for only opposing evil is worth the risk of a life. What\u2019s at issue is collateral damage, a term that came into use during the Vietnam War to obscure, through abstraction, that masses of civilians were being systematically blown to pieces. Here language does heavy work. The image of babies smashed to bits is likely to arouse protests like Abraham\u2019s. Collateral damage<\/i>, like Final Solution<\/i>, is too foggy to arouse anything at all.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s return to the just world hypothesis, a proposition we can neither believe nor entirely abandon. Evidence that the world is not<\/i> just is so vast that we notice only when happiness and virtue are wildly out of balance: A child is killed, through violence or neglect; a tyrant prospers without penalty or regret. In both cases, your indignation expresses that what people do in the world, and what the world does to them, should be somehow connected. Those who are righteous for its own sake should be rewarded\u2014\u00adnot merely with a satisfied mind but with some of the happiness the world can bestow. Those who are rotten ought to suffer\u2014\u00adnot merely from a guilty conscience, which they show little sign of having anyway, but from something the world can impose.<\/p>\n

Until the mid-\u00adeighteenth century, what we now call natural disasters were called natural evils, partly because they fell on the just and the unjust alike. Nowadays accounts of floods and earthquakes emphasize contingency: This person was saved by missing a train, that one by sleeping off a hangover. They also underscore the virtue or the innocence of the victims: This one rushed to save a child, that one was celebrating her honeymoon. You may not believe in the innocence of childhood, but the death of a child will always seem more tragic than others for the thought: Whatever faults she had, they cannot have merited a life cut so short.<\/p>\n

Nature may be blind to the moral judgments Abraham demanded that God respect, but distinguishing between guilt and innocence is the least we expect from reasonable beings. Some earlier assassins expected it of themselves, canceling plots that would have killed bystanders. Contemporary terrorists reject the division between the guilty and the innocent, the implicated and the helpless. By defying those distinctions, terrorists reproduce the worst of nature\u2019s rages. They create a world in which accident reigns, and fear is the rule.<\/p>\n

We know from our own lives how seldom happiness and virtue are in tune. (The fact that some of us know it better than others is just an instance of the problem.) Tragedies aside, some decent people lead happy lives and many do not; some wicked people suffer and many do not. But the assumption that happiness and virtue should be systematically balanced is implied in every moral critique. When we act righteously, we do so in order to bring the world closer to an ideal we will never know. Both our indignation when the wicked flourish and our sorrow when the righteous suffer have their source in this assumption.<\/p>\n

Crucially, our ignorance is not bliss. We must act on an assumption we can never know to be true. For that we should be grateful; only Disney could construct a world in which evil is always punished and good is always rewarded. Would you really want to live in it? Even if you have no objection to kitsch, just consider: A world that worked as reason assumes it ought to would be a world of marionettes. In such a world, would morality be possible? Could you decide to act for the sake of justice if you were certain you\u2019d be rewarded? You\u2019d likely behave better, but would it be for goodness\u2019 sake? Refraining from doing wrong solely to avoid punishment is the virtue of a slave.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, the conception of fundamentalist theology, which threatens eternal hellfire for anyone who defies its commandments. Those of us who no longer raise our children with sticks often have resource to carrots: If you clean up your room,<\/i> you can go to the playground. <\/i>What we seek, however, is to gradually educate children who distinguish right and wrong themselves, whether or not we are there to offer treats or sanctions. A world in which right was always rewarded, and wrong always punished, could never be a world of free adults.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era<\/a> by Susan Neiman. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Susan Neiman. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful\u202f…\u202fis the great and most universal cause of our moral sentiments. \u2013Adam Smith * One recent summer afternoon I received an email from a British podcast production company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4677,"featured_media":276798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43092,43095],"tags":[112196,20605,9178,6353,48184,12598],"class_list":["post-276741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-newsandculture","category-politics","tag-call-it-evil-understanding-the-trump-era","tag-evil","tag-morality","tag-philosophy","tag-susan-neiman","tag-w-w-norton-and-company","story-type-philosophy"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Zz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/shadows.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275924,"date":"2026-09-18T05:09:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275924"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:38:26","slug":"the-lonely-girls-vegetable-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-lonely-girls-vegetable-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lonely Girl\u2019s Vegetable Patch"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never expected horses to become a theme in my life. When I was a young girl, I didn\u2019t see them as animals so much as a child\u2019s bedroom aesthetic, something that other girls\u2014not me\u2014 chose to decorate their school binders with. The first time I met a horse up close, at a state fair, I was overcome by the unexpected smell of it. It was salty, dripping with thick saliva that did not strike me as icky, but somehow hard earned, like motor oil. A man\u2014probably the owner of the horse\u2014asked me if I wanted to sit on the horse\u2019s back. I pondered this. Now that I understood the proportions of such an animal, sitting on it seemed like serious business. I worried that I would not fit the part. I might make a strange face while I was up there. I might not understand the deeper significance of what it meant to sit atop a creature with as much presence as a horse seemed to have. The man interpreted my hesitation as fear and told me that it was okay. Maybe next year I would be bigger and braver. As soon as he said \u201cbigger and braver,\u201d the horse let down his penis until it nearly touched the ground. It was pink and flakey like a sunburn. All around us, people laughed out of discomfort\u2014I imagine because I was standing eye level to it and I seemed like a sweet child who maybe didn\u2019t deserve the shock, and what else could you do but laugh? Until then, I had not been aware of the crowd, or that the whole interaction had been observed by so many strangers who now thought that I was a coward.<\/p>\n

I took the next morning off to drive Nico\u2019s parents to the airport. They acted like they were doing me a favor by letting me drive a car for once and said that as long as I replaced the gas in the tank, I could use it to move my belongings to the apartment that they still believed was lined up for me. On the drive back into town, I rolled down every window, letting the wind thud against my open hand, whip my hair, dry out my teeth. Even with all that air on me, I still felt trapped. The steering wheel looked preposterously bulky. The icons on the dashboard seemed unnecessary, the way outdated technology can appear na\u00efve: Don\u2019t the buttons know they can be smaller?<\/em> Instead of bypassing Main Street to avoid traffic, I rolled through at a comfortable speed. Here was the benefit of the metal box: I could spy on Buster\u2019s Caf\u00e9 and the used bookstore without giving myself away. The bookstore was dead as always, but the caf\u00e9 had added a new element. A sandwich board with a balloon attached. TOMORROW, it read. My thoughts turned cottony, my hands stuck hot to the wheel.<\/p>\n

The next day was windy. The horses were on edge, snorting as if to filter the chaos. Voices were tossed around like buoys. Diane was a blender of hair and plaid, while Aurora moved solidly, pushing a wheelbarrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a Taurus,\u201d she told me by way of an explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh wow! I\u2019m a Libra!\u201d Diane said, because she thought we were just throwing out signs for fun. Tristan, in the middle of putting down new wood shavings, looked at me shyly through the dust clouds. Had he missed me on my day off?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look\u2014\u201d he said, coughing. \u201cInteresting.\u201d It was because I was wearing a very thin layer of concealer and two flicks of mascara, and I had chosen a shirt that fit me. I told myself that I had taken these steps because I would not have time to change before going to the caf\u00e9 later. As if I had an appointment with the place. I was tense. I gave Tristan a jumpy reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t call me interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

We had two trail rides lined up that morning, but one turned out to be a mom wanting a pony ride for her four-year-old son. Tristan assigned it to the autumn girls because it only involved leading the pony around the property, then giving the kid a sugar cube, telling him to hold his hand flat so he wouldn\u2019t be bitten. I was envious. Didn\u2019t they know that walking circles was my specialty? I threw myself into the work of getting the horses ready for the other trail ride, going over the basics with the riders\u2014a mother and teenage daughter this time\u2014and leading the way up the trail. The wind did not relent. Manes and tails were a mess. There was a pillow fight in my eardrums. All the while, I was thinking about the caf\u00e9, imagining that it would be Cleo herself behind the counter, steaming milk, tamping espresso grounds, chatting casually with customers. There was not much about my little excursion that I could plan\u2014how many options does one have in a coffee shop? So, it came down to my entrance: my pace and style of walking through the door, and whether I would find a table first, or go straight to the counter. Would I talk to her right away, or let my presence slowly build, my eyes dancing in her direction until she asked me a question? Was I from around here? A college student? Were those muck boots on my feet? I imagined her looking me up and down and understanding from my plainness and my shrewd expression that I did not fit with the summer girls or the autumn girls. I was of a separate category, one that I barely understood myself. We were almost to the clearing where the trail ended when the tree limbs ahead seemed suddenly fuller and darker. Black shadows expanded and floated down, and I thought, with alarming serenity: The branches are falling on us. I saw right away that it was only a group of turkey vultures, hopping down from a tree like black umbrellas onto a dead squirrel. They positioned themselves in a dark council. (Later I would learn that it is called a committee<\/em> when vultures gather and a wake<\/em> when they close in to eat something, and I would tell far too many people this fact.) The mother gasped, which I thought was a strangely delayed response. I halted my horse and turned to look at her. She had her hands in fists, holding the reins up by her face, as if to shield herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re horrible!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re horrible, I thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cFun fact,\u201d I said to the grimacing mother, \u201cif you get too close to a turkey vulture, it\u2019ll projectile vomit on you. Roadkill.\u201d I turned back toward the path and urged my horse forward before I could see Tristan\u2019s disapproving face. I had, earlier and with amusement, considered what it would be like for me to become obsessed with Cleo, but it had already happened. I was so eager to get to Buster\u2019s Caf\u00e9 and lay eyes on the woman that I was becoming irritable, resentful of anyone who was in my way.<\/p>\n

We were mostly quiet for the rest of the ride, hearing only the strange yawning of tree trunks in distress. When we were done, the mother handed me a tip and smiled apologetically before getting into her car. This caused me to feel such remorse that I went into the stable and pressed the bills into Tristan\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is up with you?\u201d he asked, not angry. (Heaven forbid he react poorly to anything.) \u201cI have my period,\u201d I lied.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you need some dark chocolate with paprika?\u201d Diane asked. She was in a stall, leaning on a pitchfork. \u201cI have some in my bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course you do,\u201d I snapped. She wilted only slightly. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you head home early,\u201d Tristan suggested. I felt like an unruly child banished to the outdoors: liberated and skittish with guilt.<\/p>\n

When Cleo was a girl, she went to one of those schools taught by nuns, where you could get in trouble for breathing. Cleo got in trouble for trying to poison the water fountain. She was always an overachiever.<\/p>\n

When she was twelve, she raised a pair of prizewinning steers, which her father made into hamburgers on her thirteenth birthday. She has been a vegetarian ever since.<\/p>\n

Cleo had an emergency appendectomy at fifteen. When they put her under, she claimed to have seen the future: a world where technological implants were the norm, but only men were allowed to have them.<\/p>\n

Knowing everything that I knew about Cleo, I could not imagine her as anything less than ferocious: well structured, proud eyes. Anjelica Huston, Angela Bassett, Sigourney Weaver. Images of these women spun in my head like the portraits of queens. I could see all my weaknesses through their eyes. It made me want to clean under my fingernails, sit up straight, brush the back of my tongue.<\/p>\n

I parked the Vespa in a public lot two blocks from the caf\u00e9 and walked up the sidewalk with my helmet tucked under my arm. I liked to think that it gave me a certain unconscious swagger, but I am not sure that the rest of me\u2014muddy boots, skinny arms, flat hair\u2014supported this. Still, I walked like someone on a mission, passing the bookstore and checking my reflection brazenly in the many-paned window. That girl is on a mission, I thought. Let Byron see me and wonder what I am up to. Ahead, the sandwich-board balloon, swaying in the wind, said, This way, this way<\/em>.<\/p>\n

She was already looking at me when I walked in, which startled me so much that I forgot my plan entirely and approached the counter before finding a table first. I fell in line behind a large man with a blond, braided beard who I would one day know as Amos, but who, in that moment, I was only using as a buffer so I could collect myself. Soon, I would know practically everyone in that place\u2014by drink order, first name, and private nickname. It\u2019s funny to compare your first impression of a space to the intimate knowledge of it as time passes. Standing in line, hiding behind the big man, I saw the shop as spare but inviting, like a rectangle of sunlight on a hardwood floor. I had no idea how dramatically that impression would change through experience, as if experience were a can of spray paint, complicating every surface with all the moments I\u2019d spend there. The big man paid for his drink and stepped away, and for a moment Cleo had her back to me while she prepared his order. I knew it was her, even though it could have easily been an employee\u2014who was to say that the real Cleo wasn\u2019t in the kitchen, in the back office? There was still the possibility that all of this had been a colossal instance of jumping to conclusions on Tristan\u2019s part, and that the name Buster had been chosen at random for its mass appeal. Who wouldn\u2019t like a place called Buster\u2019s?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of bike do you ride?\u201d She had turned around, and was leaning her elbows on the counter, pleasantly and unhurried, even though it was obvious that the place was packed, the line behind me still growing. \u201cI\u2019ve had my eye on a little mustard-yellow Honda. Listed online,\u201d she continued. I knew that she had seen my motorcycle helmet. I knew that she was expressing interest in this thing that she assumed we both knew something about\u2014that is, riding motorcycles\u2014but I could not figure out what to say. My mind was filled with what Tristan had put there, and yet empty at the same time. I forgot how much I was or wasn\u2019t supposed to know, how to act like I was totally ignorant of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a Vespa,\u201d I told her. Then: \u201cBut I had to get my motorcycle license to ride it.\u201d She liked this, and I sensed that she approved of my need to tell her, as if we both desired to be tougher than your average scooter girl. She was cuter than I expected. Short, with wild, curly hair held back with a twisted scarf. Her features were small and direct, and I suspected that if she had been wearing makeup, the result would have been too on point. There were the hoop earrings that I had heard about, the flash of mica in her left eye. I was unexpectedly moved to see these things. I felt a rush of fondness toward Tristan for being truthful and reliable, then a similar fondness for Cleo for unknowingly keeping her end of the bargain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of coffee do you like to drink?\u201d She wanted me to order, of course, to keep the line moving, but the question felt personal, playful, and somehow flirtatious. I was moved a second time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHot?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

I sat in an armchair by the front window. It was all that was available. I regretted that I had not thought to bring something to read, or at the very least a newspaper that I could pretend to look at. But I had a decent view of the counter and the caf\u00e9\u2019s steady stream of customers. I watched them wait in line and grow impatient, especially as it became clear that there was only one person taking orders, making drinks, and working the register. I was worried that someone would complain about the wait or storm out, but with every person it was the same thing: When it came their turn, Cleo smiled and somehow bewitched them into passivity. From where I sat, I could see her face and the way her eyes were filled with genuine mirth\u2014which is not a word that I have ever wanted to use, but was the only one I could find to describe her. Her front teeth were turned slightly inward in way that made her smile utterly captivating. I wanted to see it again and again, as if it were a mechanism that I was trying to better understand. When she had handed me my mug, winking at my request for \u201chot\u201d coffee, I had felt as though she was totally invested in me, and that she had appreciated my deadpan humor, as if no one else that day had thought to ask for coffee so cleverly. You\u2019re not fussy<\/em>, her eyes said to me. And I like that about you. <\/em>I soon realized that I had not been the only person to have this experience. From my armchair I could see each new customer turn away from the counter, cup or pastry in hand, visibly lighter than when they had walked in.<\/p>\n

At last, there was a lull in the crowd, and I watched Cleo cleaning up from the rush. She brewed more coffee, loaded the dishwasher, and stacked the trays from the display case that were now empty. The lingerers brought their dirty dishes to the bus tub, wiped their mouths one last time with a napkin, and waved to Cleo, their faces saying, Nice job! Thanks! Good luck! <\/em>Was it possible that Cleo was known already throughout town and that all these people had come to support her on her first day? It seemed improbable to me, but perhaps no more improbable than the notion that she had won over an entire town of strangers. I would conclude later that it was a little bit of both, which I guess was the only realistic option. Eventually, it was just me and a man with large headphones. I supposed I was waiting for him to leave, although I couldn\u2019t say what I planned to do once I found myself alone with Cleo. I was so disoriented that I did not even know what time it was. Maybe the shop was already closed and Cleo was politely waiting for us to clear out. I stood and brought my cold mug to the counter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Vespa Girl,\u201d Cleo said. \u201cHow was it?\u201d She took the mug from me in both hands. That was one of her moves; when she handed you something\u2014a cup of coffee, a book, a muffin\u2014she held it close to her chest first, both hands around it, as if warming it for you. It was the same for objects that she received\u2014a borrowed pen, a hair scrunchie. This was not something that Tristan had told me, but something that I would learn for myself. I hadn\u2019t thought about Tristan all afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was good,\u201d I said. \u201cSufficiently hot.\u201d Cleo seemed to look me over. I wanted to say more, to somehow justify my presence or to make myself interesting in her eyes. But, again, I couldn\u2019t think of anything. My mind was as whitewashed as Nico\u2019s basement. A feeling came over me then, like the feeling you get when you\u2019re about to hear yourself confess a secret. I\u2019m afraid of my job. I am running out of time. No angle of my life shimmers. <\/em><\/p>\n

I was saved by the door opening and slapping shut behind me. A man with a closely trimmed white beard approached the counter, waving a five-dollar bill animatedly like a child excited to buy an ice cream cone.<\/p>\n

\u201cGot any coffee left?\u201d he asked. He looked so sincere that I wanted to hide. I quickly moved out of the way and got my helmet from under the armchair. Somehow, I knew that this wasn\u2019t for me. Whatever this was.<\/p>\n

\u201cBye, Vespa Girl,\u201d Cleo called. I left her behind the counter with the rosy old man. Even though Tristan had told me the logistics of her marriage, it did not occur to me that the man might be her husband, that she would have anyone so wholesome and ordinary in her life.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

From <\/em>The Lonely Girl’s Vegetable Patch<\/a> by Genevieve Plunkett<\/em>. Used with permission of the publisher, Amethyst Editions\/The Feminist Press. Copyright \u00a9 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never expected horses to become a theme in my life. When I was a young girl, I didn\u2019t see them as animals so much as a child\u2019s bedroom aesthetic, something that other girls\u2014not me\u2014 chose to decorate their school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":275925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25508,3,43074,43076,26764],"tags":[27660,111872],"class_list":["post-275924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-fiction","category-excerpts","category-fictionandpoetry","category-from-the-novel","category-novels","tag-genevieve-plunkett","tag-the-lonely-girls-vegetable-patch","story-type-daily-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Mo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/9781558613713.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277185,"date":"2026-09-18T05:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277185"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:28:19","slug":"what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-18-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-should-you-read-next-here-are-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-9-18-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily St. John Mandel\u2019s\u00a0Exit Party<\/em>, Ben Macintyre\u2019s\u00a0Redwood<\/em>, Kate Atkinson\u2019s\u00a0Our Noble Selves<\/em>, and Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor\u2019s\u00a0End Times Fascism<\/em>\u00a0all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.<\/p>\n

Brought to you by\u00a0Book Marks<\/a>, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Exit Party<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Emily St. John Mandel
\n(Knopf)<\/strong><\/p>\n

16 Rave \u2022 2 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed \u2022 1 Pan
\nRead an interview with Emily St. John Mandel\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ambitious and captivating \u2026 Crafting memorable characters is always a challenge, and Mandel doubles the task for herself with her two timelines. Even so, she succeeds \u2026 feels like the culmination of her career so far, combining the thrills and mysteries of the author\u2019s early crime novels with the expansive premises and speculative ruminations of later novels like\u00a0Station Eleven.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013Lincoln Michel (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Our Noble Selves\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/strong>by Kate Atkinson
\n(Doubleday)<\/strong><\/p>\n

6 Rave \u2022 2 Positive
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0Our Noble Selves<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAtkinson\u2019s lighthearted novel mines delicious humor from this mismatch of grizzled cynicism and national heritage.\u00a0Our Noble Selves<\/em>\u00a0is in part a workplace comedy \u2026 Ms. Atkinson deserves to be rated as highly as her countryman Ian McEwan. Like him, she boasts an immaculate prose style, a dry wit and a taste for narrative legerdemain. This splendid historical farce proves her versatility as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0The Rouse<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by China Mi\u00e9ville<\/strong>
\n(Del Rey)<\/strong><\/p>\n

4 Rave \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOver its 1,200 pages, the novel becomes a haunting of a haunting, a terror echoed and heightened over time. This terror grows familiar but not stale; the reader is allowed to live within it almost calmly and thus catch glimpses of other forces in the darkness. What Mi\u00e9ville has crafted in\u00a0The Rouse<\/em>\u00a0is an intimate epic, a controlled sprawl of history and emotional resonance. I felt it in my bones, the undeniable power of a jagged masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Jeff VanderMeer (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The Newer World<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Sebastian Barry
\n(Viking)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave \u2022 2 Positive \u2022 2 Mixed \u2022 1 Pan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPart Bildungsroman, part picaresque \u2026 It\u2019s an astonishing effect, especially when you consider the near-miracles Barry performs with language. In his hands it attains registers that can only be described as soaring; a vertiginous high wire of prose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Sara Collins (The Guardian<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n

\"Fallow\"<\/a><\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Fallow<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Sarah Anderson
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Rave \u2022 4 Positive
\nRead an excerpt from\u00a0Fallow<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cUnfolding into an utterly unexpected journey, Anderson\u2019s debut novel is an engrossing commentary on workplace culture, autonomy, and late-stage capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Patricia Smith (Booklist<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

**<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonfiction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Redwood:<\/a><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War\u2019s Most Extraordinary Spy<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Ben Macintyre
\n(Crown)<\/strong><\/p>\n

6 Rave<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe British writer Ben Macintyre has made an illustrious career of taking dusty government archives and transforming them into propulsive nonfiction thrillers \u2026 He has done it again \u2026 The book\u2019s last pages are its saddest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Joseph Finer (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Live<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
\n(Liveright)<\/strong><\/p>\n

4 Rave \u2022 2 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEntertaining, expansive, often surprising, and occasionally horrifying \u2026 Enlivened with an occasional touch of snark,\u00a0Live Laugh Love<\/em>\u00a0is both thoroughly researched and provocative as it raises questions about how contemporary American Christianity got where it is and where it may be going next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Margaret Quamme (Booklist<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"End<\/a><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
\n(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/strong><\/p>\n

3 Rave \u2022 3 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBold, clarifying \u2026 There have been endless academic disputes over whether such a broad definition of fascism is useful. Personally, I think we shouldn\u2019t get too hung up on terminology \u2013 the important thing is to write in a way that makes people alive to problems around them and leaves them feeling empowered to respond. The authors succeed on both counts \u2026 Their valuable contribution is to map out the frightening new territory in which we find ourselves, and point to an escape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Daniel Trilling (The Guardian<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Call<\/a><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Susan Neiman
\n(W. W. Norton and Company)<\/strong><\/p>\n

2 Rave \u2022 1 Positive \u2022 1 Mixed<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery sentence is worth reading in this compelling book. For readers who are horrified and want to understand how we got here, this book is an absolute must.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Ellen Gilbert (Library Journal<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick<\/strong>
\n(Henry Holt & Co.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

1 Rave \u2022 2 Positive<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201c[A] brilliant new study \u2026 In the short term, the best we can probably do about this concentration of wealth and power is see it and name it, and that\u2019s what Zidar and Zwick have done. I suspect we will be hearing much more about their work and its implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013John Lanchester (The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily St. John Mandel\u2019s\u00a0Exit Party, Ben Macintyre\u2019s\u00a0Redwood, Kate Atkinson\u2019s\u00a0Our Noble Selves, and Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor\u2019s\u00a0End Times Fascism\u00a0all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by\u00a0Book Marks, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews. *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":873,"featured_media":277188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[15654,13821,33508],"class_list":["post-277185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","tag-book-marks","tag-book-reviews","tag-the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6J","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Exit-Party-feature.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277194,"date":"2026-09-18T05:08:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277194"},"modified":"2026-09-18T11:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T15:33:17","slug":"going-inside-the-board-book-with-jon-klassen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/going-inside-the-board-book-with-jon-klassen\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Inside the Board Book with Jon Klassen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Klassen\u2019s books stay with kids. Maybe because they watch you saucer-eyed as you\u2019re reading them. His latest, The House With Nobody In It<\/em><\/a>, is a board book shaped like a house, with cutouts for doors and a classic stitchup between text and image: the words point out the objects in each room while stating there is \u201cnobody\u201d in the house. A ghost looks on. My kids, reared on This Is Not My Hat<\/em><\/a> and the Shapes<\/em><\/a> series, loved it, even though they\u2019re now 9 and 11. I suspect many adults have a hankering for a good board book, too.<\/p>\n

Klassen recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, receiving the life-changing news one morning quite by surprise (highly recommend listening to the phone call between Klassen and the entire jury). His work feels like it exists in its own space, allowing a darkness and dry wit that aren\u2019t always allowed in the gates of kidlit. He kindly answered some of LitHub\u2019s biggest questions about what becoming a parent confirmed about his ideas of childhood, the Swedish view of children\u2019s literature, and his process as a whole. It\u2019s a delight.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u200bJanet Manley:<\/strong>\u200b This book\u2019s format is just so satisfying. How did you make it happen? Was the publisher like oh NO he wants die cut and doors in the pages? Did you have to build a new (house-shaped) publishing factory? How big a deal is it to put out a book\/object like this?<\/p>\n

\u200bJon Klassen:<\/strong> If the publisher did have an oh NO moment, they kept it well-hidden. Board books, from what I’ve seen, have all sorts of tricks they can do. I wasn’t sure, and still am not quite sure, how ambitious something like this is. I kind of hope I never find out.<\/p>\n

\u200bJM:<\/strong> Moving through the book from room to room, the doorway of course takes you forward \u2014 this is so satisfying in The Very Hungry Caterpillar<\/em>\u2014was it inspired by anything in particular, and how did you figure out the 3-dimensional side of the story?<\/p>\n

\u200bJK:<\/strong> The movement from room to room was kind of inspired by very early video games, like the first iterations of Zelda, or going back further there was a game for Atari called “Adventure” about a castle. In these games, you see kind of a top down view of rooms or areas, and you go to the edge of the screen to where you see a door or a break in the forest or something, and then you choose to go through it and the screen changes and you’re in the next room or area. I remember as a kid being so scared by the idea that your character onscreen is standing in an open doorway, but you don’t get to see what’s in the next room until you’re in it on the next screen. Not only that, but anything IN the next room can see you in the doorway before you see it. This book doesn’t use that idea too much, but moving from room to room like that is in there for sure.<\/p>\n

\u200bJM:<\/strong> The other cardinal rule of a children\u2019s book (if you\u2019re attending conferences or listening to agents) is that they must have a character the reader can relate to, like them. The character\/voice in this book is very free floating. How did you pin it down?<\/p>\n

I think having kids just really reaffirmed the validity of that time for me. They are having real days, as important as mine or anyone else’s. I had suspected it, but it’s amazing to watch for real.<\/p>\n

\u200bJK:<\/strong> Another touchstone for this book, and a lot of the board book work I’ve been doing recently, is guided meditation. I don’t have tons of experience in it, but they put us in a few sessions in high school and I remember them really well. Those sessions, and these books, are told more in real-time, as opposed to hearing a story in the past tense. I really love the sound and feeling of present-tense writing, and the delivery of the person hosting those meditation sessions was always so flat and calm, even if something exciting might be happening. It’s almost like they’re in a trance and the neutrality in their voice is part of the whole thing. I think also there’s an academic quality to it in this book. If you did actually remove the ghost, it turns into a simple object-learning exercise, and a weird one at that. I like the idea of this book, if you can’t see the ghost, being a not-very-entertaining book that just thinks it is teaching you what a chair is.<\/p>\n

JM:<\/strong> Perhaps the meta reading was intended; perhaps not, but the house has no one in it* when the book isn\u2019t being read. It ceases to be a story unless the child is turning the pages. Am I right or wrong?<\/p>\n

*i.e., you can either count the ghost or the reader themselves as the wink wink exception to \u201cthis house is empty\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n

JK:<\/strong> That wasn’t intended, but I do like the idea that, say there was no ghost on the page in this book\u2014we as the viewer are still moving through it, unseen, in kind of a strange detached way, going through walls, and seeing the same day over and over. A reader of the book would feel a little like a ghost in there themselves. This ties into the idea that the narrator can’t see the ghost at all. Why can we, the viewer, see him if the narrator\/adult can’t? Can ghosts only see each other? What does that mean about us?<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>Did you have any rules for yourself when writing or illustrating this one?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>For illustrating, it wasn’t so much a rule, but I leaned heavier than I ever have before on the book as an object filling its own space on this one. The rooms are all solid click-filled colors\u2014besides the drawn things IN the rooms, I didn’t generate any art in the usual way. The cut out doors and windows, and what they frame, became just as much my “drawing” as the actual drawings, and that was really exciting. Letting the physicality of the book do a lot of the lifting was really fun.<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>\u201cNobody\u201d\u2014Margaret Wise Brown-informed?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>Probably! For a long time it was called “The Empty House,” but that didn’t really work because the house isn’t empty. It has things in it. And “The House With Nobody In It” is such a conspicuously odd thing to say if you really don’t think there’s anybody in there\u2014it nails the joke more clearly. But yeah, how could “Goodnight nobody” not inform it, right? That page is so ghostly.<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>You and buddy\/collaborator Mac Barnett have talked about the importance of being able to \u201caccess your childhood\u201d when writing or illustration for kids. Has having your own kids changed this for you?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>It should be said that I think for both of us, Mac and I, accessing our memories of childhood is an important part of it, but I don’t think it’s the only way people do this work, necessarily. I would totally believe some authors or illustrators wouldn’t put it like that, and that they get in there another way. But it’s been big for us, and for me on my own. So much so that I didn’t really think having kids was going to change the work, because it had been all about just going back and remembering. I think with the boys around, it just serves as an amazing deep reminder of the speed of those days, and how carefully they look at things, and also how different they are even from one another. It sounds strange but I still don’t think I’d say I make the books for them, exactly. It’s nice if they like them, but it’s still coming from the same place it always was. I think having kids just really reaffirmed the validity of that time for me. They are having real days, as important as mine or anyone else’s. I had suspected it, but it’s amazing to watch for real.<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>You use \u201clet\u2019s\u201d a lot in this book, and it strikes me as an instruction kids are used to and will acquiesce to. Thinking about misreadings and good faith readings from adult vs young readers, are children the more ideal audience?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>The “let’s” thing comes, I think, from working in a board book format, as opposed to a picture book. In picture books, you’re less sure of what the reading experience is going to eventually be. Is the work going to be read aloud to the audience by someone else? Is it going to be read alone by the reader to themselves? You don’t know. But board books are understood more clearly to be for a younger audience, often one that can’t read themselves. The more I worked in this format, the more comfortable I got with a kind of group speak, or a parental \/ authoritative voice that I knew was going to be involved. It’s kind of leading more than one person through the book in a way that sounds inclusive, but also kind of commanding. “Let’s do this.” “Let’s go over here.” The reader doesn’t have any more agency than the kid you’re saying “Let’s get in the car” to, but it hopefully sounds gentle anyway. I think that kids are maybe more likely to get a kick out of this sound because, like you said, they are familiar with it, but also because, here in this book, this instructional voice is wrong, or at least unaware of the main idea, and hopefully that’s fun and cathartic for the kid to experience.<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>I can\u2019t think of a more delightful phone call than the one you received by surprise one morning with the entire jury of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award committee on the other end. What did the honor mean to you, and what do the Swedes know about good literature?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>I’m honestly still getting my head around it. It was and is a huge honor. The best way I’ve found to try and understand it for myself is to think about the past winners whose work I like so much and who I’ve looked up to for years. To kind of conceive of it that way, that I’ve been asked to go and stand with them, is no less daunting and unexpected, but at least it feels more real than what felt like an entire country telling you that you’re great.<\/p>\n

I’d been traveling to Sweden for their conference in Lund the last few years, and those trips and the one recently for the award always showed a place with this very straightforward understanding of children’s literature as a valid form of expression and communication. The awards staff and everyone connected to it is very matter-of-fact about the importance of children and things that are made for them. They’re not overly proud of themselves for recognizing it, they just treat it as the truth. You don’t have to start a talk about your work with a little prologue about how you really can and should take this field seriously. The Swedes seem to, as an entire country and culture, already be there, and in that position they are able to have it hold complexity and nuance and sadness and anything else you might want to make stories about. It’s extremely encouraging and inspiring.<\/p>\n

JM: <\/strong>What shape is your house?<\/p>\n

JK: <\/strong>I live in a part of Los Angeles where they were excited about weird little flourishes like rounded doors and turrets for no reason, so our house has a turret that holds the front door, which is rounded. The rest of the house, besides the turret, is just a regular peaked-roof stucco place. But have a turret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jon Klassen\u2019s books stay with kids. Maybe because they watch you saucer-eyed as you\u2019re reading them. His latest, The House With Nobody In It, is a board book shaped like a house, with cutouts for doors and a classic stitchup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5129,"featured_media":277197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43072],"tags":[29685,72136,50,51157,54522,38381,112330,112331],"class_list":["post-277194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-in-conversation","tag-board-books","tag-candlewick-press","tag-interviews-2","tag-janet-manley","tag-jon-klassen","tag-kids-books","tag-lit-hub-parenting","tag-the-house-with-nobody-in-it"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Untitled-design-2026-09-17T135934.349.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276744,"date":"2026-09-18T05:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276744"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:36:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:36:02","slug":"antonella-lettieri-on-translating-roberta-recchias-all-that-is-left-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/antonella-lettieri-on-translating-roberta-recchias-all-that-is-left-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Antonella Lettieri On Translating Roberta Recchia\u2019s All That is Left of Life<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of 2023, I was approached to translate Roberta Recchia\u2019s debut novel All That is Left of Life<\/i><\/a>. The book was still a few months away from publication in Italy, and Recchia\u2019s name wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s radar yet, so receiving the manuscript felt a little like being let in on a secret. Intrigued, I agreed to read it over the holidays.<\/p>\n

Set in and around Rome during the 1980s, All That is Left of Life<\/i> is a choral novel that follows three generations of the Ansaldo family as they grapple with the aftermath of Betta\u2019s murder at just sixteen. It\u2019s the peak of summer, and Betta and her cousin Miriam sneak out of the house one night to go to a bonfire party on the beach, but only Miriam makes it back home alive. Marisa and Stelvio, Betta\u2019s parents, are plunged into the emotional mayhem of their senseless loss, but it is Miriam who carries the heaviest burden as she hides from everyone that she, too, was on the beach that night.<\/p>\n

When the memory of the violence becomes too difficult to bear, she turns to the sweet oblivion of drugs and quickly develops an addiction. Only when she hits rock bottom does she cross paths with Leo, a small-time drug dealer who will prove to be her salvation. With a story arc that spans three decades and a cast of unforgettable characters, All That is Left of Life<\/i> took Italy by storm and, with over 200,000 copies sold domestically so far, it\u2019s still on the bestseller list two and a half years after its original publication.<\/p>\n

All That is Left of Life<\/i> is a virtuoso study of how different people respond to grief and trauma, ultimately finding ways to overcome what feels like it should be impossible to overcome.<\/p>\n

One of my most vivid memories of my time with All That is Left of Life<\/i> is not a translation memory at all, but of reading it for the very first time. I was in the middle seat, flanked by total strangers, flying back to Italy for Christmas, full of the anticipation and tension that going home at that time of year always stirs, and there I was\u2014crying my eyes out over Marisa\u2019s grief. I was only about a quarter of the way in (those who\u2019ve read the book will know the exact passage), but I already knew that I wanted to translate the novel. I finished it the following day, and it took all the professionalism I could muster not to write to the commissioning editor on Christmas Day to say that I was in.<\/p>\n

All That is Left of Life<\/i> is a virtuoso study of how different people respond to grief and trauma, ultimately finding ways to overcome what feels like it should be impossible to overcome. The excerpt<\/a> on Lit Hub<\/i>, which comes immediately after Marisa\u2019s piet\u00e0-like scene that still makes me cry inconsolably, is a wonderful example of Roberta Recchia\u2019s craft: in fewer than a thousand words, we witness the reactions to the murder from Betta\u2019s closest family, the police, and the town at large. New characters are introduced, many interesting details are offered, yet the narration never loses its focus, every sentence adding to the characters\u2019 mounting sense of powerlessness in the face of such a tragic death. This was one of the biggest challenges I had to face\u2014translations \u201cphysiologically\u201d tend to expand, but for me it was very important to keep the tautness of Recchia\u2019s propulsive storytelling intact.<\/p>\n

This was my second full-length translation, and it taught me many important lessons about my own process. It was by working on it that I learned that, for me, the first draft is really just a fact-finding mission about the challenges that each book is going to throw my way, and that those problems will only find their solutions over the course of many drafts, as the tone and the voice of the novel in English hopefully crystallize into a coherent whole.<\/p>\n

Readers might think that once all the words are on the page, the translation is basically done, and the translator only needs to go through it once or twice to make sure that everything reads well. That might be the case for other translators\u2014we are all different and work in different ways!\u2014but for me, a first draft is just a chance to slow down and really<\/i> read the book, and that is especially important in a pacy page-turner like All That is Left of Life<\/i>, where appreciation for the more delicate nuances can be overlooked in our yearning to know what happens next.<\/p>\n

Translations \u201cphysiologically\u201d tend to expand, but for me it was very important to keep the tautness of Recchia\u2019s propulsive storytelling intact.<\/p>\n

On finishing my first draft, I realized that I could implicitly trust the novel\u2019s unstoppable drive forward to render well in English, and that it was the small details that I had to pay most attention to instead: the word-level repetitions from one chapter to the next that shape the characters into existence, the details of a tiny gesture or expression that speak volumes to the emotional landscape of the protagonists, the connotations of social class and privilege in the dialogue that reveal the speakers\u2019 implicit biases. Thanks to this focus, and over my many re-readings and drafts, I\u2019ve come to love some minor scenes in the book perhaps more than its pivotal plot points: Stelvio and Marisa in the dairy, Leo in the library, Marisa\u2019s jealousy of Maria Grazia…On a first read, All That is Left of Life<\/i> tears your heart apart with its sweeping emotions, but its true grace is in the balance it achieves between big, choral moments and smaller, more intimate ones.<\/p>\n

All That is Left of Life<\/i> came out in Italy while I was still elbow-deep in its inner workings, and watching its first readers react to it was thrilling, as well as filling me with a sense of responsibility towards a book that it soon became clear was going to be a smashing success. With this novel, Roberta Recchia has earned an army of die-hard fans: booksellers keep recommending it, book clubs love it, social media is abuzz, and word-of-mouth is as strong as ever. Recchia\u2019s second novel, Io che ti ho voluto cos\u00ec bene<\/i> (I, who loved you so much), came out in Italy last year. I don\u2019t want to say too much about it, but readers who have loved All That is Left of Life<\/i> will be interested to know that it revisits some of the same events from the perspectives of a different set of characters. I am so excited that readers in North America, too, now have the chance to read one of Italy\u2019s biggest publishing successes of recent years, and so honored to have had the privilege of acting as the go-between.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All That Is Left of Life<\/a> by Roberta Recchia, translated by Antonella Lettieri, is available from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of 2023, I was approached to translate Roberta Recchia\u2019s debut novel All That is Left of Life. The book was still a few months away from publication in Italy, and Recchia\u2019s name wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s radar yet,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32134,"featured_media":276789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43073],"tags":[111641,111639,13990,5495,8305,111640,454,731,21825,5934],"class_list":["post-276744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-on-translation","tag-all-that-is-left-of-life","tag-antonella-lettieri","tag-italian-literature","tag-italy","tag-literature-in-translation","tag-roberta-recchia","tag-scribner","tag-simon-and-schuster","tag-translated-literature","tag-translators","story-type-italian-literature"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19ZC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/city-view-of-rome-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277186,"date":"2026-09-17T11:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277186"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:19:07","slug":"here-are-the-winners-of-the-2026-dayton-literary-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2026-dayton-literary-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Here are the winners of the 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize."},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation<\/a>, which celebrates \u201cwriters whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace,\u201d announced the winners of the 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize (for books published in 2025).<\/p>\n

For fiction, the winner is The Sunflower Boys<\/a><\/em> by Sam Wachman<\/strong>; the runner-up is Charlotte McConaghy’s <\/strong>Wild Dark Shore<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The nonfiction winner is Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church<\/a><\/em><\/strong>; the runner-up is\u00a0Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism<\/a> <\/em>by Eve L. Ewing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The winners will each receive a $10,000 cash award, and the runners-up will take home $5,000.<\/p>\n

As was previously announced<\/a>, Ann Patchett has also been named as this year’s recipient of the Foundation’s Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, which is \u201cbestowed upon a writer whose body of work reflects the Prize\u2019s mission of fostering peace, social justice, and global understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, which celebrates \u201cwriters whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace,\u201d announced the winners of the 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize (for books published in 2025). For fiction, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":177514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43201,43092,43646],"tags":[1863,58523,32121,64488,104342,104628],"class_list":["post-277186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-news-newsandculture","category-newsandculture","category-the-hub","tag-ann-patchett","tag-charlotte-mcconaghy","tag-dayton-literary-peace-prize","tag-eve-l-ewing","tag-kevin-sack","tag-sam-wachman"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6K","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/daytonliterary.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277157,"date":"2026-09-17T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277157"},"modified":"2026-09-16T15:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T19:46:19","slug":"heres-the-longlist-for-the-2026-national-book-award-for-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/heres-the-longlist-for-the-2026-national-book-award-for-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction."},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the National Book Foundation<\/a> announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction. These ten titles were selected from a pool of 451 books submitted for consideration by their publishers. This year\u2019s judges for Fiction are Matt Bell, Caro De Robertis (Chair), Danielle King, Akhil Sharma, and Diane Wilson.<\/p>\n

The finalists in all categories will be announced on Tuesday, October 6, and the winners revealed at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 18.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, here\u2019s the 2026 Fiction longlist:<\/p>\n

Hannah Lillith Assadi, Paradiso 17<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nKnopf \/ Penguin Random House<\/p>\n

Kimberly Blaeser, Red Ants<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nCounterpoint Press<\/p>\n

Edwidge Danticat, D\u00e8y<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nKnopf \/ Penguin Random House<\/p>\n

Juli\u00e1n Delgado Lopera, Pretend You\u2019re Dead and I Carry You<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nLiveright \/ W. W. Norton & Company<\/p>\n

Louise Erdrich, Python\u2019s Kiss<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nHarper \/ HarperCollins Publishers<\/p>\n

Marlon James, The Disappearers<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nRiverhead Books \/ Penguin Random House<\/p>\n

Valeria Luiselli, Beginning Middle End<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nKnopf \/ Penguin Random House<\/p>\n

Alexander Maksik, Passengers<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nEuropa Editions<\/p>\n

Kenan Orhan, The Renovation<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux \/ Macmillan Publishers<\/p>\n

Morgan Thomas, Mad Eden<\/a><\/em><\/strong>
\nMCD \/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux \/ Macmillan Publishers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction. These ten titles were selected from a pool of 451 books submitted for consideration by their publishers. This year\u2019s judges for Fiction are Matt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":277162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43201,43092,43646],"tags":[112283,187,4503,90320],"class_list":["post-277157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-news-newsandculture","category-newsandculture","category-the-hub","tag-2026-national-book-awards","tag-fiction","tag-national-book-awards","tag-national-book-awards-longlist"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6h","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/nba-longlist-fic.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277183,"date":"2026-09-17T09:26:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277183"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:26:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:26:45","slug":"the-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers-nonfiction-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers-nonfiction-35\/","title":{"rendered":"The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature<\/em><\/a> by Emily Wilson (Liveright)
\n2. The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State<\/em><\/a> by Jill Lepore (Liveright)
\n3. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants<\/em><\/a> by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed)
\n4. The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/em><\/a> by John U. Bacon (Liveright)
\n5. Guinness World Records 2027<\/em><\/a> by Guinness World Records
\n6. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy<\/em><\/a> by Mary Roach (W.W. Norton)
\n7. The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss<\/em><\/a> by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris (W.W. Norton)
\n8. I Deliver Parcels in Beijing<\/em><\/a> by Hu AnYan (Astra House)
\n9. Is a River Alive?<\/em><\/a> by Robert Macfarlane (W.W. Norton)
\n10. The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life<\/em><\/a> by Helen Whybrow (Milkweed Editions)
\n11. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate\u2014Discoveries from a Secret World<\/em><\/a> by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone Books)
\n12. Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival<\/em><\/a> by Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton)
\n13. A Little History of Mathematics (Little Histories)<\/em><\/a> by Snezana Lawrence (Yale University Press)
\n14. Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature<\/em><\/a> by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian (Spiegel & Grau)<\/span>
\n15. No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism<\/em><\/a> by Jared Huffman (W. W. Norton)
\n16. A Resistance History of the United States<\/em><\/a> by Tad Stoermer (Steerforth)
\n17. The Book of Genocides<\/em><\/a> by Dana Mashoian Walrath (Harvard University Press)
\n18. Notes to New Mothers<\/em><\/a> by Rebecca Knight (Ed.) (W. W. Norton)
\n19. The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail<\/em><\/a> by Eric Jay Dolin (Liveright)
\n20. This Is The Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy<\/em><\/a> by Ben Wikler (W. W. Norton)
\n21. Man’s Search for Meaning<\/em><\/a> by Viktor E. Frankl (Beacon Press)<\/span>
\n22. All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror<\/em><\/a> by Peter Bergen (W. W. Norton)
\n23. Emo Revival: Community, Diy, and Rebirth in Post-Hardcore and Emo (2008-2018)<\/em><\/a> by Andrew Sacher (Clash)
\n24. A Philosophy of Walking<\/em><\/a> by Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gros, John Howe (Transl.) (Verso)
\n25. The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary<\/em><\/a> by Terry Tempest Williams (Grove Press)<\/span>
\n26. Triage<\/em><\/a> by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press)
\n27. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)<\/em><\/a> by Dean Spade\u00a0(Verso)
\n28. 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy<\/em><\/a> by Timothy W. Ryback (Atlantic Monthly Press)
\n29. How to Relax<\/em><\/a> (Mindfulness Essentials #5) by Thich Nhat Hanh (Parallax Press)
\n30. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses<\/em><\/a> by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Oregon State University Press)
\n31. Songs My Mother Taught Me: Why the Artist Must Take Sides<\/em><\/a> (Vanguard) by Saul Williams (Haymarket Books)
\n<\/span>32. S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome<\/em><\/a> by Mary Beard (Liveright)
\n33. Kobuk the Destroyer: And Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering<\/em><\/a> by Alex Davies (W. W. Norton)
\n34. The Wretched of the Earth<\/em><\/a> by Frantz Fanon (Grove)
\n35. These Truths: A History of the United States<\/em><\/a> by Jill Lepore (W. W. Norton)
\n36. How to Love<\/em><\/a> (Mindfulness Essentials #3) by Thich Nhat Hanh, Jason DeAntonis (Illus.) (Parallax Press)
\n37. How to Relax: Hardcover Gift Edition<\/em><\/a> by Thich Nhat Hanh (Parallax Press)
\n38. Ursula K. Le Guin’s Book of Cats<\/em><\/a> by Ursula K. Le Guin (Library of America)
\n39. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents<\/em><\/a> by Lindsay C. Gibson (New Harbinger Publications)
\n40. Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering<\/em><\/a> by Joseph Nguyen (Authors Equity)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature by Emily Wilson (Liveright) 2. The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore (Liveright) 3. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":266893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[27380,108921,107978,53909],"class_list":["post-277183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","tag-independent","tag-independent-press","tag-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers","tag-independent-publishers"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/NONFICTION-BESTSELLER.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277172,"date":"2026-09-17T09:26:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277172"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:26:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:26:27","slug":"the-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers-fiction-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-independent-press-top-40-bestsellers-fiction-35\/","title":{"rendered":"The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are this week\u2019s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers<\/a> for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association.<\/a> Compiled, designed, and distributed by The Independent Publishers Caucus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

1. The Calamity Club<\/em><\/a> by Kathryn Stockett (Spiegel & Grau)
\n2. The Odyssey<\/em><\/a> by Homer, Emily Wilson (Transl.) (W.W. Norton)
\n3. I Who Have Never Known Men<\/em><\/a> by Jacqueline Harpman (Transit Books)
\n4. The Birthing Tree<\/em><\/a> by Amanda Peters (Catapult)
\n5. The Poison Daughter<\/em><\/a> by Sheila Masterson (Slowburn)
\n6. John of John<\/em><\/a> by Douglas Stuart (Grove Press)
\n7. Heart the Lover<\/em><\/a> by Lily King (Grove Press)<\/span>
\n8. Stitched<\/em><\/a> by Eli McCann (Torrey House Press)
\n9. Fruit Fly<\/em><\/a> by Josh Silver (Crooked Lane Books)
\n10. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n11. Stoner<\/em><\/a> by John Williams (NYRB Classics)
\n12. On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)<\/em><\/a> by Solvej Balle, Barbara J. Haveland (Transl.) (New Directions)<\/span>
\n13. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 2<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n<\/span>14. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n<\/span>15. Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel<\/em><\/a> by Shuang-zi Yang (Graywolf Press)
\n16. Small Things Like These<\/em><\/a> by Claire Keegan (Grove Press)
\n17. I See You’ve Called in Dead<\/em><\/a> by John Kenney (Zibby Publishing)
\n18. Sipsworth<\/em><\/a> by Simon Van Booy (David R. Godine Publisher)
\n19. Lights Out<\/em><\/a> (Into Darkness Series #1) by Navessa Allen (Slowburn)
\n20. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n<\/span>21. Helen of Nowhere<\/em><\/a> by Makenna Goodman (Coffee House Press)
\n<\/span>22. The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)<\/em><\/a> by Rabih Alameddine (Grove)
\n23. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n24. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 6<\/em><\/a> by Beth Brower (Rhysdon Press)
\n25. The Berry Pickers<\/em><\/a> by Amanda Peters (Catapult)
\n26. Culpability<\/em><\/a> by Bruce Holsinger (Spiegel & Grau)
\n27. The Overstory<\/em><\/a> by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton)
\n28. Witch Hat Atelier 1<\/em><\/a> by Kamome Shirahama (Kodansha Comics)
\n29. The Employees<\/em><\/a> by Olga Ravn (New Directions)
\n30. Kindred<\/em><\/a> by Octavia E. Butler (Beacon Press)
\n31. Orbital<\/em><\/a> by Samantha Harvey (Grove Press)
\n32. Writers & Lovers<\/em><\/a> by Lily King (Grove Press)
\n33. Carmilla, Deluxe Edition: The Dark Sapphic Romance that Inspired Dracula<\/em><\/a> by Sheridan Le Fanu (Pushkin Press)
\n34. Victorian Psycho: A Novel<\/em><\/a> by Virginia Feito (Liveright)
\n35. Acid Green Velvet: A Novel<\/em><\/a> by Grace Krilanovich (Two Dollar Radio)
\n36. The Eye of Goliath<\/em><\/a> by Diego Muzzio (Pushkin Press)
\n37. The Honjin Murders<\/em><\/a> by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Vertigo)
\n38. My Brilliant Friend<\/em><\/a> by Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions)
\n39. A Short Stay in Hell<\/em><\/a> by Steven L. Peck (Strange Violin Editions)
\n40. Slow Horses<\/em><\/a> by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are this week\u2019s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association. Compiled, designed, and distributed by The Independent Publishers Caucus. * 1. The Calamity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":269719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[33671,187,108921,53909],"class_list":["post-277172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","tag-bestsellers","tag-fiction","tag-independent-press","tag-independent-publishers"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-1a6w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/fiction-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":277150,"date":"2026-09-17T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=277150"},"modified":"2026-09-17T09:01:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T13:01:43","slug":"lit-hub-daily-september-17-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-september-17-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: September 17, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1902, Bea Miles, an Australian woman known for her bohemian life and ability to quote any passage from Shakespeare (for a price), is born. <\/span>\n