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Here we are, with our final literature in translation round-up of 2023! And what a year it’s been, full of great books from around the world, all enthusiastically recommended by Powell’s booksellers. We’ll be back with a new post in January 2024, but until then, we hope you enjoy these eight new titles, released in November. On this list, you’ll find a tender novel about friendship from Mexico; “a sordid tale of a man on the run” from a Brazilian legend; a Lebanese-French author’s wild tale...

Every year, we like to celebrate Native American Heritage Month by featuring a list of recently published books by Native authors. This year, we’re featuring new titles that are filled with hauntings and curses, creatures and body horror, witches and missing children, Vikings and dragons, tradition and historical dispossession, apocalypses and landscapes corroded by grief. These stories are filled with questions about belonging, community, identity, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous identity...

In our third and final blog feature for this Halloween season, we’re featuring books that are filled with creatures and cryptids. In these books, you’ll find curses and family trauma, monsters of the deep and monsters of the mind, Bigfoot and deadly deer, anthropomorphic animals and Frankensteined children, mermaids and vampires. Happy Halloween, you lovely readers...

As I write this, the weather outside has gone from sunny to gloomy and rainy: perfect reading weather. To celebrate, we’ve pulled together a list of our favorite works in translation published this last month. On this list, you’ll find a tender and melancholy novella from Japan; a satirical novel about undocumented workers in Paris from an Ivorian author; an award-winning author co-translates herself from Italian, in a myriad of stories about Rome; an acutely, beautifully written story collection...

Today, we bring you ghosts and ghouls. Books that will make you feel like you just slept over in a haunted house and woke up in another dimension; books that will make the hair on your neck stand up, sure that someone’s watching you; books that will make you shiver, make your heart leap into your throat, and riddle your skin with goosebumps. Enjoy this selection of eerie...

Happy Friday the 13th, dear readers! And in October, no less, a month when sinking into our newest horror obsessions isn’t only recommended — it’s encouraged. Today, we’re kicking off a few weeks of horror-themed lists on the blog with one that focuses on all things fleshy, bloody, and meaty. In the weeks to come, we’ll be recommending more fright-season-appropriate books about creatures and ghouls and ghosts and cryptids for your reading pleasure. But for now, please enjoy this list of books...

In celebration of this year’s Hispanic and Latine Heritage Month, we’re excited to recommend nine (relatively) new nonfiction releases that we’re sure you’ll love. This list is filled with vital, polyphonic stories about love and community, colonialism and migration, ancestral history and Latine identity, land and movement, memory and loss. Looking for more?...

Banned Books Week (in 2023, the week spans from October 1–7) is an important time here at Powell’s. We believe in everyone’s freedom to read and to seek out and express ideas. When a book is threatened, our community is threatened.

This year, we are donating 20% of the sales on Powells.com of the 20 titles listed below, all of which are frequently banned or challenged books, to American Booksellers for Free Expression. ABFE's programming and advocacy work ensures...

For our final Book Preview of 2024, we thought we’d look at our list by the numbers (since math is such a bookseller forte). On this list, you’ll find 53 books, including 3 memoirs, 4 debut novels, 2 anthologies, 7 follow-ups to debuts that we’ve been rabidly anticipating, 5 new entries into beloved series, and 4 cookbooks. In their blurbs, Powell’s booksellers say words like love (22), funny (6), can’t wait (8), feral (2), spellbinding (1), legendary (2), change (4), hope (3), joy (3), horror/horrifying...

This month, we have nine new works in translation that we are so excited to recommend to you. On this list, you’ll find the story of “seemingly close, lifelong friendship” from France; a tender, heartbreaking novel from a late Brazilian author; a French treatise on creativity in crisis; two Japanese horror collections, one filled with a "creeping sense of wrongness,” and the other “haunting and surreal;” bruising autofiction from a queer, Russian poet; a French novel about the resilience and strength found among...