PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

We love the summertime. We love reading. We love reading in the summertime. We love yelling about the books we’re most excited to read during the summertime. Which is perfect, because it’s time for our third book preview of the year — the post where Powell’s booksellers get to yell about the summer book releases they can’t wait to see hit the shelves. Go ahead: hit that preorder button. Your future self will thank you...

We are so pleased to present to you this jam-packed collection of some of our favorite books in translation published over the past couple months. The selection includes an “epic historical novel of medieval Cairo” translated from the original Arabic; a Japanese novel filled with a vague, uneasy déjà vu; a Korean novel shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; “a brief, meandering account of the several rounds of IVF therapy” from an author based in Mexico City; a hybrid novel out of Switzerland...

In the first chapter of Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, the young d’Artagnan is sent out into the world armed with three gifts from his father: a yellow Béarn horse “without a hair in its tail,” 15 crowns in ready money, and a “recipe for a certain balsam…which has the miraculous virtue of curing all wounds which do not reach the heart.”

Not a bad thing to have if you’re determined to become one of the King’s Musketeers.

It is his mother who supplies the recipe. The action in Dumas’s adventure classic takes place in France between 1625...

There is so much to be said about the beauty and importance of queer literature, no matter the genre or when it was written. I was never going to be able to explain that importance and that history with just five books, but I did spend many weeks trying to find five that were good examples of the complexities and struggles and also the joy and beauty of queer authors, queer characters, and, overall, how it feels to be queer in the world we live in...

Here at Powell’s, we believe that “summer reading” means “whatever you feel like reading during the summer,” whether that means some good, juicy thrillers or some nonfiction about the (probable) end of the world. On this list, we’ve rounded up some recent bookseller favorites, so whether you’re in the mood for haunted houses, murder investigations, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers-again — we’re here to help...

Describe your latest book.
My latest book, The Brightest Star, was inspired by Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star during the early days of Hollywood. She boldly struggled against the anti-miscegenation laws and racism of the time, watching white actresses in yellowface get all the coveted movie roles while she was relegated to playing servants, damsels in distress, and dragon ladies. Still, Anna May made close to sixty films in her forty-year career that crossed over from silent films to the talkies...

This year for Pride, we're celebrating by highlighting some recent fiction and nonfiction that our booksellers have loved that engage with and celebrate the LGBT experience. The books on this list are filled with queer resistance and raw honesty, complicated histories and unexpected heartaches, sexual upheavals and small towns with secrets.

We believe that contributions from the LGBT community should be read and celebrated all year round, but in a year when the community — and its literature — are under siege, it feels especially important to champion these books...

Wondering what to read this summer? You know we’ve got you covered — with our annual midyear roundup! The post where the booksellers at Powell’s get to lovingly shout about our favorite books of the year (so far!). The 25 books on this list include occult nightmares and alt-histories, faes and garbage collectors and robotic nurses, murder investigations and love affairs and hot dogs. That's your summer reading sorted...