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Every December, when the Portland sun disappears, my mental health depends on a steady stream of sugary-sweet holiday rom-coms. While I love the low-budget movies (unlicensed new pop songs with auto-tuned jingle bells! Every scene obviously filmed in the same McMansion, even the ones that take place at "work"! Chemistry between romantic leads that lands anywhere between "wooden strangers" and "sizzling Christmas miracle"!), and while I love the high-budget movies (better music and settings, but chemistry can still be a struggle!), there's no replacing a holiday romance book. Nothing warms my heart more...

While putting this post together, I realized that the original song this is based on, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” needs very little amending to become horrific: why is someone gifting their lover so many different kinds of birds? That can’t be safe? But we love notching the horror up whenever we can, so in our version of the song — a list of holiday-themed horror novels — we’re exchanging drummers for zombies, leaping lords for mutilated bodies, and milking maids for debaucherous yule lords...

It’s the end of another year spent looking forward to long walks, tedious chores, and sleepless nights, because those are great times to listen to audiobooks. Every second spent in silence was a waste! I’ll do better next year, I promise!

Why am I always ignoring friends and family to listen to another chapter or two? Because of the books on this list (and many others, too. Possibly too many). A well-narrated book is a thing of joy, and here are some of the best that 2023 had to offer...

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...

2023 was such a great year for fiction! We had the hardest time narrowing down our list of the best fiction books of the year, but after much debate, we settled on these 23 (an appropriate number for 2023, we decided). The books on this list take place in Hawaii, Argentina, the Hamptons, a Palace in the desert, and a land of milk and honey. We’ve got campus novels and high-concept museums, fictional biographies and black holes, ugly publishing truths and gladiatorial dystopias...

If there’s one thing you know you can rely on, it’s the good taste of Powell’s booksellers, which is soundly reflected in this year’s collection of nonfiction books that we thought were the best from this past year. On this list, you’ll find bookstores and hot dogs, doppelgangers and wolves, celebrities and shitty crafts. These books explore questions of identity, belonging, community, resistance, capitalism, colonialism, to name just a few of their topics; they’re tender and hilarious and heartfelt and insightful...

There’s a primal power to combining words with pictures and bookstores in 2023 saw that power being used to beautiful effect. This year we’re highlighting graphic works that run the gamut of genres and age groups.

Below are books about coming of age and books about grief; books about navigating difficult situations and books about giving in to the absurd; works of horror and works of quiet beauty. And then there’s Monica, which does all of that at once...

In a world as scary as ours is, sometimes you need to sink into a terrifying story to distract yourself. Which is where our list comes in: the best horror of 2023, as determined by Powell’s booksellers, experts in all things macabre and eerie and unnerving. On this list, you’ll find books about vampires and vaqueros, monsters and slashers, curses and carnivorous houses, mermaids and jellyfish and even Tom Cruise.

Get your late-night-reading-oil ready, because you won’t want to put any of these books down. Without further ado: the Best Horror of 2023....

As a person who tries to avoid spoiler alerts, romance surprised me a little bit — knowing that a happily ever after is most likely at the end of the story should annoy me. But it turns out that I really, really want to know how these crazy kids figure it out, even if their love is broadcast on the first page. These books contain a lot of twists and turns and surprises — secret exes turning up out of the blue! overcoming generational trauma! vampires! — and knowing everything ends up okay makes the journey...

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions…" — George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

Washington issued a proclamation on October 3, 1789, designating Thursday, November 26 as a national day of thanks.

Perhaps George Washington picked the third Thursday in November because he didn't want another holiday on the calendar too close to the Fourth of July or crowding his own birthday in February. American Thanksgiving has morphed into a holiday...