Books

Books

While the Akira manga has been available in print for decades, a new Akira Hardcover Edition kicked off earlier in 2025, offering the most authentic presentation of Katsuhiro Otomo's groundbreaking sci-fi saga. If you've ever wanted to experience the full Akira saga, this is one of the best ways to do so--and as luck would have it, you can save a few dollars on these premium hardcover releases. Four volumes

Sixty years before a gaunt and deluded nobleman from La Mancha was overdosing on tales of derring-do, visiting his madness on those around him and single-handedly rewriting the rules of fiction the deeds of another heroic knight had already made literary history. Though completely eclipsed by Don Quixote, Cristalian de Espana, which was first published in 1545, has a unique claim to fame. Its 800 pages, bristling with swords, sorcerers, dragons and damsels, make up the earliest known work by a female Spanish novelist.

In 1941, during the German occupation of France, the then relatively unknown writers Jean Bruller and Pierre de Lescure came together to edit, publish and distribute a book called Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea). The story centred on two family members who refuse to speak to the officer occupying their house - their way of maintaining control of a tense dynamic and a rejoinder to the Nazi propaganda campaigns and newspaper censorship widespread in France at the time.

Every leader leaves their mark on the hearts and minds of a workforce. This can go one of two ways: leaders can leave behind a legacy of inspiration, or infuriation. Based on thousands of perspectives collected from around the globe, Adam created a systemic formula for choosing and earning the lasting impact you want to have on others. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Adam Galinsky, in the Next Big Idea app or view on Amazon.

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho.

The Great Christmas Tree Race by Naomi Jones, illustrated by James Jones, Ladybird, 7.99 Star always goes on top of the Christmas tree until new decoration Sparkle kicks off a race. Who will win: Lights, Bauble, Snowflake or Reindeer? A festive picture-book caper with a child-pleasing twist. The Boy Who Grew Dragons: A Christmas Delivery by Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, Templar, 12.99 Tomas, Lolli and the dragons in Grandad's garden

Some spines are better turned inward. A pederast might hide away Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, in which a middle-aged German author ogles a lithe young Polish boy. A hyper-literate rapist should camouflage his copy of A Clockwork Orange with a more consensual dust jacket. It is therefore curious that the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein-who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors-flaunted his supposed love of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It's a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can't yet replicate, though it's still quite mathematical in nature, with new hires guided in tuning their scores to the site's standard. Then, Whichbook users can indicate their own current preferences with a set of sliders to find a set of books that match.

The industry's success was far from inevitable. For a long time, indie bookstores were struggling. In 1995, when Amazon opened as the "Earth's largest bookstore" and started undercutting the prices at brick and mortar stores, readers quickly started shopping online. Small stores, which were already facing competition from chains like Borders, started to close. By 2009, the number of independent bookstores across the country had dropped to an all-time low. Experts predicted that the industry would collapse.

"Awakening yourself to the whispers of rock", she says, "can transform the way you connect with and understand the world".

An entire library board in North Carolina has disbanded over a single trans book. The Randolph County Board of Commissioners dissolved its nine-member library board over a picture book about a trans boy, which initially caused backlash because it was located in the children's section. County spokesperson Amy Rudisill said the governing body for the county made the 3-2 decision earlier this week, hearing from about 40 people.

Reading your child a bedtime story-or making one up yourself-has so many benefits, but there's one that is often overlooked: Bedtime stories create powerful narratives in your child that you choose. (For more on narratives and why they're crucial for parents to know about, see this post.) How stories become narratives Children's stories affect kids on an emotional level. For instance, let's take the common absent-parent-returns-home story.

In that case, maybe the spiritual instruction you need emerges in the famous final lines of George Eliot's 1871 novel Middlemarch: the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Anthony Bourdain has always had a way with words, but his writing didn't always surround cooking. Before he was giving his unfiltered opinions on all things food and the restaurant industry, Anthony Bourdain was penning mysteries. In 1995, five years before his iconic debut of " Kitchen Confidential," Bourdain published his very first crime-fiction novel. Titled "Bone in the Throat," the suspenseful novel takes readers into the mafia world via stereotypical kitchen mayhem.

The locked-room mystery-otherwise known as the "impossible crime" mystery-is not to be confused with the closed-circle mystery often associated with the queen of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha Christie. The classic "country house during a blizzard" setting with an array of suspects, each of whom might have committed the murder, is a closed-circle setup, as is Christie's Orient Express train, and the steamer in Death on the Nile. In a locked-room mystery, it seems that no one could have done it and escaped undetected.

Mainstream comedy is frankly in a bit of a lull right now. Sitcoms and theatrical comedy movie are disappearing, few comic novels are getting published, and comedy podcasts are just comedians interviewing other comedians. It's perhaps of little surprise, then, that the best nonfiction comedy books released in 2025 were focused on the past - comedy's history, themes, and steadfast examples of greatness and insight.

At thirty years old, I have been teaching yoga for a third of my life. In my corner of the world, it's almost like a clique. Everyone knows who's who, and what's more menacing is that everybody seems to know each other's business. Of course, there are pluses and minuses, but for the most part, it feels more like a popularity contest than a viable career.

Thammavongsa was born in Nong Khai, Thailand, in a Lao refugee camp. The family moved to Toronto when she was one year old. She grew up in a one-room apartment with her parents and brother; when she was fifteen and her parents decided to open their own business, she, her mother, and brother spent months sleeping in the family van to make the transition work.