There were many things Tyler Wetherall didn’t know while growing up. She didn’t know her real surname until she was nine years old. She didn’t know her dad was a criminal. And she didn’t know the reason her family had moved 13 times in her short life was because they were fugitives from the FBI. […]
Jennifer Jones Austin, New York City native, nonprofit executive and child advocate released her debut book “Consider It Pure Joy” on March 1 with book signings in New York City followed by a book tour stopping in cities across the country. On March 19, Jones Austin signed books and spoke at the Brooklyn Historical Society. New York City […]
“These words feel like experiences. Some are personal, most are enlightening, but all connect. Connect on a higher level. A spiritual level.” –Kendrick Lamar Shauna Barbosa is a Boston-raised poet whose debut poetry collection “Cape Verdean Blues” is making waves in the literary world. She is currently embarking on her “Cosmic Journey Tour,” where […]
“Brooklyn women wore black T-shirts and scuffed shoes and unwashed hair and somehow looked impossibly chic. I, in contrast, felt like a Carrie impersonator from Omaha on the ‘Sex and the City’ bus tour.” — Chapter 6 of “A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out” The workplace drama in Sally Franson’s debut novel “A Lady’s Guide […]
“Love and Death in the Sunshine State” has been called “a smart, engrossing true-life noir that weaves meditations on love and the literary life, all set amid the palm trees and seedy motels of Florida’s steaming coastline” by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. While the book is set in Florida, its author, Cutter Wood, lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He […]
Writer Ron Hutchinson recently left California for the East Coast. He currently lives and writes in Brooklyn and says, “Over the past two years I have been participating in a study to determine how fast you can drain a bank balance by renovating a brownstone in Brooklyn! I’m also in the process of becoming Irish-American. […]
Mari Andrew started doodling when she worked at a bakery — and she took some license with the display case labels. When customers noticed and began telling her the drawings brightened their days, Andrew realized she could use her hobby to connect with people. After hitting a rough patch in her late 20s, she began […]
President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, daughter of the late Gov. Ann Richards and featured speaker at the Women’s March on Washington Cecile Richards has spent a lifetime fighting for social justice and women’s rights. Called a “heroine of the resistance” by Vogue, Richards shared her story after years of […]
Back in December, Bookbeat covered the very first “Litost: An Evening of Music & Reading”. Created by Angela Sundtrom, Litost was organized to showcase original writing and musical performances by individuals who do not read their work publicly often. In case you missed it, the full story can be found here. The event was such […]
“The 2016 presidential election felt, in some ways, like a referendum on the value of women (and people of color and immigrants and refugees and Muslims … the list goes on), one that we had lost. On the evening of Nov. 9, I walked in a daze under the gray, drizzly haze that seemed to […]
From Kim van Alkemade, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Orphan #8,” comes a new and exceptional work of near-history fiction — “Bachelor Girl,” a gripping story about the destructive power of secrets and the redemptive power of love — set in New York City and inspired by a true historical event. “Bachelor Girl” will be […]
Abby Hanlon’s popular “Dory Fantasmagory” chapter book series has readers clamoring for the next installment, but thankfully, they will not have to wait long. With three books in the series available to read in seventeen languages around the world, young readers and their parents have discovered, as noted in a starred review from Publisher’s […]
Unlike the stories of the most visible Division I college athletes, Bushwick resident Amanda Ottaway’s story has more in common with those of the 80 percent of college athletes who are never seen on TV. In her forthcoming book “The Rebounders,” Ottaway follows the college career of an average NCAA Division I women’s basketball player […]
The Ten Commandments are a pervasive yet divisive part of American culture. Religious conservatives champion them, even if they don’t always adhere to them in practice. The more religiously liberal and secular members of our society often bristle at what they may perceive as antiquated restrictions on their moral and intellectual freedom. Yet, this ancient […]
In “The Scribe of Siena,” debut author Melodie Winawer transports readers to medieval Italy, where the past and present collide and a 21st-century woman discovers love — and a plot to destroy Siena. In this transporting love story and gripping historical conspiracy — think “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” meets “Outlander” — accomplished neurosurgeon Beatrice […]
Award-winning author Jesse Ball, named one of the Best of Young American Novelists in 2017 by the literary magazine Granta, joins Ecco’s list with “Census” an evocative novel about family, free will, grief and the ways we see those who are different from us. Courtesy of HarperCollins Ball, whose “A Cure for Suicide” was long-listed for […]
The cover of “The Girl on the Velvet Swing” features a photograph of Evelyn Nesbit in 1900. Photo courtesy of Little, Brown and Company The publication of “The Girl on the Velvet Swing” comes at a time when sexual harassment is being taken seriously and punished in a way never seen before. Everyday women are […]
All photos courtesy of Penguin Random House There are some children’s books that inspire people of all ages with their profundity, and “Sakura’s Cherry Blossoms” is no exception. The book touches on such universal themes as the immigrant experience, feeling out of place in a new setting and the love in intergenerational relationships. Its February […]
“What of the past is remembered, celebrated, and mourned is at the core of national identity — and the process of what is told and not told is often a function of power,” writes historian Jeanne Theoharis.“And the task of honoring can also be a form of stripping and silencing.” Theoharis is a distinguished professor […]
When published in hardcover in 2017, Elif Batuman’s debut novel, “The Idiot” dazzled critics and readers alike. Even Greta Gerwig, actress-now- movie director of indie sensation “Lady Bird,” named it one of her favorite books of the year, saying “She [Batuman] accomplishes in this novel what I’m always trying to do in film: make the […]