It's about creative autonomy, deeper community engagement, and the rediscovery of storytelling on a writer's own terms. In this new ecosystem, fiction finds fresh formats, writers build loyal readerships, and the lines between hobbyist and professional blur in fascinating ways.
These are novels of displacement, longing and radical introspection, stories that ask readers to listen closely.
We’ve crossed a threshold. What used to be the stuff of speculative fiction is now a line item in the writing process: AI is here, and it’s shaping how we write, revise and even brainstorm.
But with the rise of tools like ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Claude, a wave of questions has followed. If a machine helped shape a chapter, is it still your voice? If it tightened your prose or fed you metaphors, do you owe your reader an explanation? And most fundamentally—how much help is too much?
In a world of infinite scrolling and 800-page epics, something strange is happening, books are shrinking.
Not in value or complexity, but in size. Novels under 200 pages, long confined to indie presses or experimental shelves, are quietly becoming bestsellers. They’re winning awards. They’re getting second printings. And perhaps most telling of all, readers are finishing them.
Led by Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz, this trio of young writers provided a fresh, glossy glimpse of urban excess. But beneath the designer clothing and drug-fuelled nights, there was something more: a generational manifesto hidden behind chic minimalism.
Didion wrote it in the aftermath of her husband’s sudden death; it isn’t a memoir of healing so much as a dissection of loss, precise, restrained, devastating.
From Dior’s limited-edition Dracula book tote to Dua Lipa’s Instagram book club and Kaia Gerber’s annotated paperbacks, literary flair is everywhere. Celebrities aren’t just posting reading lists for show; these curated collections have become a way to express identity, mood, and even political consciousness.
Read Mansfield Park.
Once upon a time, fantasy and romance lived in separate kingdoms. One was filled with dragons and quests; the other, with yearning glances and whispered confessions. Now? They’ve merged into a new, single, soaring genre known as "romantasy," and it's captivating Gen Z readers like few others.
Its influence is being felt throughout the publishing industry. I recently discussed this with a friend. He's a crime writer and is thinking about how he can weave elements into a new series.
It's not hard to see why. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, romantasy offers emotional intensity and escape in equal measure. With sweeping magical worlds and high-stakes love stories, it's a genre that doesn't ask readers to choose between action and intimacy. Instead, it says: have both.
Then came the controversy: the revelations that much of the book, which had been marketed as a memoir, had been fabricated, culminating in a televised public shaming by Oprah Winfrey in 2006. It wasn’t a memoir at all. More of a novel memoir mashup. A novior, if you like.
It was a moment that seemed to draw a line under Frey's literary future, banishing him to the margins of credibility. He was cancelled.
It was a reminder that the future of children’s fiction lies not just in big ideas, but in the pulse of regional voices, stories told in our own tongue, rooted in place and people.
McDonald’s novel does exactly that. It is both tender and raw, steeped in Scots dialect, wrestling with the myths of masculinity, brotherhood and belonging. Banjo’s voice catches you from the very first pages, and you just want to keep turning.
Amis, who died in 2023 at the age of 73 from cancer, was one of Britain’s most distinctive and dazzling literary voices. The son of Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim, he forged his own reputation as a bold stylist and razor-sharp satirist, chronicling the absurdities and moral disintegration of late 20th-century life with wit, intellect and a signature swagger.
Here are twenty-two songs that celebrate books and writers, featuring artists such as Kate Bush, Vampire Weekend, Nirvana, Radiohead, the Smiths, and Black Star.
If you’ve ever wanted to understand not just what happened in war, but why it happened, and how it felt to those who lived through it, military history is essential reading. These twenty books, focused on World War II and beyond, combine rigorous research with vivid storytelling. Some are sweeping epics; others zoom in on a single battle, soldier, or decision. All of them illuminate the wars that shaped the world we live in today.
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War novels, at their best, are not just about battlefields, but about the people who move through them, the memories they shoulder, and the hope that flickers even in the darkest hours.
Here are twenty novels, not only from World War II, but also from other conflicts, that shine a light and tell stories about conflict, compassion, and endurance. Each comes with a quote—a shard of truth, if you like—and a reason to read.