Free Republic

Suddenly almost all the Michael Connelly detective novels featuring Harry Bosch have appeared on You Tube.

A good first line is not always necessary because who stops reading after one sentence? But it can be extremely useful in building expectations for the style and characterisation that will follow. While book jackets can indicate a broad genre, that line can define the subgenre. The opening may establish the tone, character, location, era or season but it can also pull a reader into the realm of the story that follows, and often into the head of the protagonist or into an alternate reality. When we open a book, we are ready to embark on a journey. The starter...

They're the books we know we’re meant to have read – but which many of us are too daunted by to actually pick up and start. That hasn’t stopped nearly half of Britons from pretending to have devoured classics in an attempt to impress others. An overwhelming 95 per cent of people find reading older novels and plays hard work, a poll has found. However many said they bluff their literary knowledge to appear more intelligent.

Three romance novels that Stacey Abrams penned almost two decades ago will soon be hitting bookshelves once again. The trio of titles by the Georgia Democrat and voting rights activist will be reissued by Berkley in 2022, the publisher announced Tuesday. The book series, which includes the titles "Rules of Engagement," "Power of Persuasion" and "The Art of Desire," were written under Abrams's pen name, Selena Montgomery. Abrams, 47, called her first novels "incredibly special" to her. "The characters and their adventures are what I'd wished to read as a young Black woman - stories that showcase women of color...

The below free libertarian novels are presented in alphabetical order by author, and include explicit libertarian themes like the defense of private property, gun rights, individual choice, and free markets.

I had the opportunity to interview author J.P. Redding (a pseudonym) shortly after his first book “Off Grid” came out. Initially, I thought it was a survivalist book. The subtitle “Is there anywhere to hide from the surveillance state?” suggested that. It turns out that it is a science fiction book, as well.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled reviews to warn readers who have absorbed my annual praise for Daniel Silva’s usually exquisite novels. Like clockwork a new book featuring Israeli spy hero Gabriel Allon has appeared each July. But I feel painfully obligated to say this: Despite Bob Woodward’s “Can’t put it down” recommendation, you should save your money and not pick up Silva’s latest, The Order (Harper, published on July 14).

Up until the last thirty years or so, reading was the most common form of entertainment. These days, technology has been steadily replacing the entertainment of reading a good book. According to a statistic from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Center for Educational Statistics, fewer than half (48 percent) of adult Americans read literature for pleasure. Reading on a regular basis, however, provides amazing benefits to the health of our brain and our mental well-being. Reading has the power to reduce stress, whereas other forms of media tend to increase stress. TV and the Internet require...

The “space race” was a competition, but with only two rivals — “us” and “them.” And this odd partnership, or dance, spilled over into realms of the imagination, particularly the novel. In the aftermath of Sputnik three towering and best-selling works of fiction by dissident Russians — “Atlas Shrugged,” “Lolita” and “Doctor Zhivago” — were published in quick succession, crowded into an 11-month span, from October 1957 to September 1958. Today, all three still live on, each a universe in itself, read and discussed — and fought over — as if written not in prose but in hieroglyphics or code.

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community which books need to be turned into TV Shows. Here are some of the best responses...

Jackie Collins, the beloved best-selling novelist, has died, PEOPLE has exclusively learned. "It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one of a kind mother, Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer today," the Collins family tells PEOPLE in a statement. "She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over 4 decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we...

This is nothing more or less than a complete vanity. My sixth book is out today and I am thrilled with it. I started my journey as a self-published writer just over two years ago and look forward to doing this as a career for the next few decades. My latest novel is called 'EMP': In a flash of searing light, the world changed. A massive solar flare has crippled the modern world and brought chaos and destruction. David Hartsman is stuck in the remote farm town of his youth on what was expected to be a short visit to...

It certainly makes for a good story: a scrappy kid from Baltimore flunks out of an English class at what is now Loyola University Maryland only to become an international bestselling author. The problem is that the oft-told tale concerning Tom Clancy is just as fictitious as Jack Ryan. “It was an urban legend that just wouldn’t die,” said Carol Abromaitis, the English professor accused of giving Clancy an F in her class. For decades, Abromaitis urged English majors to let others know the truth. Her efforts bore little fruit. “One major said to me, ‘Of course not. It makes...

Why are Thrillers named such? That’s largely up to the talent of the writer. They have to grab us and not let go for hundreds of pages. The best of them draw many details from the real world. Even in all the action and far-from-our-own-life-as-possible events happening to the characters, it’s those truths that hook you even further. They draw you in, get you thinking or upset you. Tom Clancy is known for coming up with details in his techno-thrillers that seem almost too real. Sometimes prophetically so. They have even caught the attention of the military, wondering how he...

A Philadelphia mother wants her son’s high school teacher fired after he bought the teen the novel Fifty Shades of Grey for in-class reading. Maya Ladson says she was shocked to find a copy of the racy read in her 14-year-old’s book bag back on March 9. That shock turned to outrage when she found out how he got the book. “The minute I found out about it, it raised concern,” the mother told NBC10.com Thursday. “This is not OK to me. This is major.” Ladson's son, who is a 9th grade student at Eastern University Academy Charter School in...

Years after the racism of The Turner Diaries inspired Timothy McVeigh, the Patriot Movement has embraced a new bestselling series. J.M. Berger reads closely to see what they say about race and government in America. An American Nazi Party volunteer recently produced a three-minute online video promoting the group’s platform. It spotlighted issues like the national debt, gas prices, domestic oil drilling, and America’s wars. Almost as an aside, it mentions affirmative action. And despite some provocative imagery, the video never mentions the words Jew or black, or any related ethnic slurs. A white nationalist blogger praised the video for...

severed from tradition and reali life, literature as it is taught in universities is strictly an intramural game.

More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in. The winners of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles...

Conservative radio host Savage, the author of Trickle Up Poverty and other nonfiction bestsellers, makes his fiction debut with a thriller sure to score a bull's-eye with its target audience, the followers of his talk program, Savage Nation. Jack Hatfield, a freelance TV producer who lost his top-rated opinion show, Truth Tellers, thanks to a liberal media smear campaign, is filming a piece on the San Francisco PD's bomb squad when a call comes in about a bomb found at the site of an auto accident. The mayor and the FBI play down a possible Arab link, and an unlikely...

A New York couple rushes toward the Hudson River at the end of a January day, eager to see the sunset. They crave a view of nature because the Manhattan they live in sits partly behind a wall, a barricade built to block rising waters. The sun will slip below the battlement at 4:23 p.m., winter days ending early because the Earth's orbit has shifted. It's a vision of the future in the novel that won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction.