Set in a version of Cape Town in the years after the First World War, this sure-handed, gothic-tinged novel tells the story of Soraya, a young Muslim woman who works as a live-in housekeeper for an elderly English widow. Soraya has "a fanciful mind" and is able to see ghosts and communicate with spirits, including previous domestic workers. Much of her time is spent preparing the house, "a strange place full of fright,"
Banned as it's been, everybody knows what The Bluest Eye is about: a little black girl who wishes she had blue eyes. That's not really a spoiler. Besides, Toni Morrison didn't care about spoilers. In fact, she gave away the whole plot of her very first novel in its opening narration: "Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby."
Competitors must attempt to answer 240 questions, such as the following, from 2022: "Playing for Bangalore against Pune in the IPL in April 2013, who set a new record for the fastest century in professional cricket by reaching 100 off 30 balls?" If it makes you feel better, the median number of correct answers the year of that test was 64.
On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, instead of sharing clothing hauls or skincare routines, creators are sharing their book stacks or media diets promising to make their viewers "disgustingly educated" in a matter of minutes. For further optimization potential, take note of these brain hacks to improve memory (so that your time cracking open Plato's Republic won't go to waste).
This is for that friend that finishes the Wordle in three tries and solves the purple clues first in Connections. League of the Lexicon reminds me a bit of Trivial Pursuit - players or teams take turns asking everyone questions from a double-sided card with answers on the back. Questions come in five categories and cover synonyms, word origins, spelling, definitions, archaic words, grammar, linguistic trivia and more.
The Secret Day My yesterday has gone, has gone and left me tired, And now tomorrow comes and beats upon the door; So I have built To-day, the day that I desired, Lest joy come not again, lest peace return no more, Lest comfort come no more. So I have built To-day, a proud and perfect day, And I have built the towers of cliffs upon the sands; The foxgloves and the gorse I planted on my way;
The most important thing for you to know is that by the time Ser Duncan rides into Ashford Meadow at the start of this series, the people of Westeros have grown tired of the Targaryens. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set over 200 years into the Targaryen dynasty, and about 70 years after the devastating civil war depicted in House of the Dragon.
You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone.
An ancient Egyptian papyrus held by the British Museum has been cited as possible evidence supporting some of the Bible's most controversial claims about giants. The 3,300-year-old document, known as Anastasi I, has been in the museum's collection since 1839 and has recently resurfaced on the Associates for Biblical Research, renewing interest in its possible links to biblical accounts. The papyrus describes encounters with the Shosu people, said to stand 'four cubits or five cubits' tall, up to eight feet in height.
Michael is best known to many queer audiences for his sharp, confessional style of comedy that's long centered vulnerability, self-awareness, and the tension between how we're expected to behave and how we actually function-with an occasional touch of raunchiness along the way. That sensibility carries into Attention Seeker, which approaches ADHD with humor and real-life honesty rather than with stigma.
Had Fatima Bhutto been left to her own devices, her devastating forthcoming memoir would have been almost entirely about her relationship with her dog, Coco. I know it sounds nuts, she laughs. And it's true that being dog-crazy doesn't quite track with the public perception of Bhutto as a writer, journalist, activist and member of Pakistan's most famous political dynasty. But the pandemic had forced something of a creative unravelling and when Bhutto took stock, she found herself only really able to write about Coco.
As the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan approach, a strange rumor about cardboard beds in the Olympic Village has started to circulate online once again. While the "sex-proof" bed rumors have been debunked time and time again with vigorous jumping videos and official statements, the close proximity of young athletes in top fighting form continues to attract steamy speculation. Some locals and spectators have even changed their locations in dating apps in hopes of a chance encounter with an Olympian.
Jack Kerouac's original typescript scroll for On the Road the 37 metre (121ft) long roll of paper on which he typed his defining Beat novel in a three-week burst will go under the hammer at Christie's in March, with a sale estimate of 1.8m to 2.9m ($2.5m to $4m). The scroll is one of the centrepieces of the Jim Irsay Collection, one of the most extensive private collections of music, literary, film and sports memorabilia ever assembled.
Following some of the arguments in Ernest Becker's 1973 study The Denial of Death, he proposes that such crises are at least partly the result of the western reluctance to face mortality. In Britain, we eschew open coffins, for instance. When our relatives die, as my mother did two years ago, they die in a hospital rather than at home. We can hardly even bring ourselves to say die, preferring euphemisms such as pass away.
If Heaven, according to Talking Heads, is the place where nothing ever happens, the Bardo, according to George Saunders, is as jam-packed and frantic as Costco on Black Friday. We Saunders fans have been to the Bardo before that suspended state between life and death where, according to Tibetan Buddhism, a person's self-awareness helps determine what kind of existence they'll enter next.
You may know the story by now: Rachel Reid began posting what would become Heated Rivalryon the fan-fiction site Archive of Our Own, one chapter at a time. Eventually, the Halifax-based author reportedly removed the posts, reworked the book, submitted it to publishers, and sold it in 2019 to Carina Press, a digital-first imprint at Harlequin. While the first book in her "Game Changers" series found a solid fan base among romance readers, no one expected just how many more would join them.
Perhaps best known for taking over The Wheel of Time, Sanderson made his electric debut 21 years ago with. Now, more than two decades later, Sanderson's complex fantasy books, including the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are finally getting adapted for film and TV. As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, Sanderson's Mistborn books will be adapted into a series of films, while The Stormlight Archive will become a TV series.
While working on a graduate school paper on the mystical powers of coral, gemologist Anna Rasche ventured deep into the archives of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum's library. Coral is the most powerful material to ward off the evil eye-a belief Italians have held since ancient times. Romans often gifted newborns coral amulets to prevent sickness and bad luck.
In this collection of essays, reported pieces, and criticism dating back to the nineteen-seventies, Frazier's sharp eye for finding the complex in the quotidian is on full display. From tales about monster trucks and the Maraschino-cherry empire to musings about lantern flies and Lolita, the collection-much of which was published in this magazine-spotlights the vibrancy of topics often under-noticed. In the playful and diligent hands of the seasoned staff writer, these ordinary things feel extraordinary.
After finding this seam of gold, miner Michael dreams that his son will be able to go to school, rather than join the other children who work in the mine, like blind, bald rodents unearthing themselves in search of scraps of candlelight. In the novel, which won the 2023 Betty Trask prize, everything closes in on Michael: lungs clog, tunnels collapse, horse-drawn narrowboats are attacked by robbers in the sooty dusk. It's a vivid reminder of the cost, in bodily suffering, of resource extraction.
but there's something comforting about knowing that even an ultrarich woman can't make a man act right. You can come from a good family, bring a couple of enormous trusts into the marriage, make some kids, build homes in both New York City and Martha's Vineyard if you'd like, but he'll still leave if he wants to. There's something relieving in that obviousness, in that inevitability, as if no one can truly get heterosexual marriage right, even those with all the resources in the world.
Whatever you might think you're going to get from the familiar setup of Jennette McCurdy's Half His Age (a lonely high-school girl in Anchorage begins an extremely questionable sexual relationship with her teacher), any presumptions are dispelled from the very first page. When Waldo, the teenage narrator of the novel, observes her boyfriend's "slimy tongue that loop-de-loops over and over like a carnival ride, mechanical and passionless," she's setting a tone: irreverent, graphic, bilious.
I'm on a mission here. A collision with immensity awaits: the 2026 Moby-Dick Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Programming, scholarship, and-the event's steadily droning core-a 25-hour cover-to-cover reading of the great book itself. Hundreds of volunteer readers, in five-minute increments, from noon on Saturday to 1 p.m. on Sunday. A test of my fortitude as a listener, of my ability to keep my behind in a seat.
Illustoria is a print magazine for creative kids and their grownups. The magazine celebrates visual storytelling, makers, and DIY culture through stories, art, comics, interviews, crafts, and activities. This high-quality triannual publication is geared toward readers ages 6-12 and the young at heart. Illustoria is the official publication of the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers, publishing writing and art by young people alongside accomplished professionals.
Protagonist Edna Pontellier, heartbroken and hopeless, swims out into the Gulf of Mexico until her body tires and the water swallows her up. The act is impossibly sad, but it also feels as if it's not about itself. Or rather, it expresses something about the act, choice, of suicide that so often remains out of focus: how hard our world is to live in.
