Since 1941 the Wayne State University Press has published over two-thousand titles that explore a number of topics from literature, to history to politics. Senior Director Stephanie Williams joined the program to discuss its offerings this season.
Weaving together the legacies of early Black Christian women, author April C. E. Langley explores how faith, poetics, and spirituality have shaped Black activism in the United States. Langley provides a dynamic close reading of the speeches, letters, poems, and sermons of three foremothers of modern Black women’s social justice movements—Phillis Wheatley, Maria W. Stewart, and Jarena Lee—and highlights the resistance strategies emerging from their use of religion as a means for imagination and potential liberation.
Rebecca Kosick chronicles the rise, work, and legacy of the Alternative Press, a grassroots art and poetry publishing initiative founded in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. Operated by Ken and Ann Mikolowski out of their home, The Alternative Press published original countercultural artwork and poetry by nationally renowned artists, including Alice Notley, and Robert Creeley, and Detroit-based powerhouse artists, such as Jim Gustafson, and Donna Brook.
Kosick’s research reanimates the Alternative Press’s unconventional publications with more than one hundred full-color images, while illuminating the national impact their avant-garde interventions had at the intersection of politics, art, and life in the twentieth century.
Dudley Randall was one of the foremost voices in African American literature during the twentieth century, best known for his poetry and his work as the editor and publisher of Broadside Press in Detroit. While he published six books of poetry during his life, much of his work is currently out of print or fragmented among numerous anthologies. Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall brings together his most popular poems with his lesser-known short stories, first published in The Negro Digest during the 1960s, and several of his essays, which profoundly influenced the direction and attitude of the Black Arts movement.
In the 1930s, Rose, an Ashkenazi Jewish woman, married Zebedee Arnwine, an African American man. This memoir weaves the genealogical and historical journeys of Rose and Zebedee with discussion of Rose and Kinberg’s Jewish ancestry in Romania and Ukraine and investigates their mutual decisions to settle their interracial families in Michigan.
Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.
WDET strives to cover what’s happening in your community. As a public media institution, we maintain our ability to explore the music and culture of our region through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
NEW YORK (AP) — Some people see the glass as half full and some as half empty. Marc Shaiman is something else entirely.
“I’m not even happy with the glass,” he says with a laugh.
The award-winning Hollywood and Broadway composer and lyricist cheerfully likes to call himself an “Eeyore” and “a card-carrying pessimist” despite many of his biggest dreams coming true.
“Just as soon as something good happens, something bad’s going to happen,” he tells The Associated Press. “I am always waiting for that other shoe to drop, and it inevitably drops.”
His career and personal ups and downs are on full display this winter with Tuesday’s publication of his memoir, “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner,” which is filled with funny stories from a man who has helped fuel popular movies and musicals for decades.
“I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot and I’ve been lucky enough to have an outrageous longevity. I thought, ‘Let me write it down, finally,’” he says.
This cover image released by Regalo Press shows “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner,” a memoir by Marc Shaiman. (Regalo Press via AP)
Tales of Bette Midler, Stephen Sondheim and the ‘South Park’ guys
The memoir charts the New Jersey-born musical prodigy’s rise from Bette Midler’s musical director in his teens to scoring such films as “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Mary Poppins Returns” and Broadway shows like “Hairspray” and “Catch Me If You Can.”
He’s worked with Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Luther Vandross, Raquel Welch and Rob Reiner, sparred with producer Scott Rudin and had a spat with Nora Ephron (“I’m certain she’s in heaven, telling all the angels she doesn’t like harps,” he writes). He also played at the White House and was a force in the early days of “Saturday Night Live.”
There was the time in 1999 that he got legendary composer Stephen Sondheim so high on pot at a party in his apartment that the iconic composer collapsed three times. “I’ve killed Stephen Sondheim,” he thought to himself. (Sondheim asked him to tell the story only after he died.)
He tells the story of hearing Meryl Streep repeatedly working on a song for “Mary Poppins Returns.” Moved, he and his writing partner, Scott Williams, knocked on her door to say how impressed they were by her dedication to rehearse. “Well, guys, fear can be a powerful motivator,” she told them.
“I’m mostly just trying to show how human everyone is — even these bold-faced names,” Shaiman, a two-time Grammy winner and two-time Emmy winner, says in the interview.
Shaiman isn’t above mocking himself, as he does for becoming an inveterate pothead and cocaine user. “I should go into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the only person who put on weight while being a cocaine addict,” he writes.
There are stories about how a misunderstanding over an unpaid bill with Barbra Streisand left him shaken for days and the time he insulted Harry Connick Jr. (Both would later reconcile.)
Then there was the time he found himself dressed in an ostentatious powder-blue suit and feather boa alongside Matt Stone and Trey Parker on a red carpet for “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” — they were dressed as Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez.
One lesson from Shaiman: ‘Show up’
One lesson Shaiman hopes to teach aspiring artists is to go for it: “What you can do is show up. Show up to everything. Say yes to everything because I’m a good example of that.”
He tells the story of Midler organizing a world tour and offering his services but being told she was only hiring local Los Angeles people. So he withdrew all his money from the bank, hopped on a flight from New York and called her from a phone booth: “I’m in L.A. Where’s rehearsal?”
“Even if you don’t get the job, keep your spirit up because someone in that room is going to remember you for another thing. That’s the thing I think to really learn from the book,” he says.
As a sign of Shaiman’s pull on Broadway, the audiobook will feature performances by Crystal, Short, Matthew Broderick, Megan Hilty, Nathan Lane, Katharine McPhee and Ben Whishaw, among others.
“I had included a lot of lyrics in the book and then I suddenly realized, ‘What, am I going to sing them all or speak them all?’ So I started calling friends, some who had sung those songs and some who had sung the demos,” he says.
Crystal met Shaiman at “Saturday Night Live” and quickly hit it off. In a separate interview, Crystal called his friend funny and quick to improvise, with an almost photographic memory of music.
“Look at his range: From ‘Misery’ to the beautiful score from ‘The American President.’ And I brought him in on ‘61(asterisk)’ and then the ‘Mr. Saturday Night’ score,” Crystal says. “He’s just so uniquely talented as an artist.”
Despite being a Tony Award winner in 2003 with “Hairspray” and earning two other nominations for “Catch Me If You Can” in 2011 and “Some Like It Hot” in 2023, Shaiman is flustered by Broadway.
His last two shows — “Smash” and “Some Like It Hot” — earned great reviews but closed early, a victim of high costs and fickle audiences.
“I wish the shows kind of stunk and I could go, ‘Oh, man, that really stunk. People are really not liking this,’” he says. “But when they’re enjoying it?”
Shaiman really has nothing else to prove and yet he laughs that his skin has gotten thinner — not thicker — over the years. He’d like to take it easy, but that’s not what Eeyores do.
“I don’t know how well I’ll actually do with retirement, but I’d like to give it a try.”
FILE – Marc Shaiman appears at the 74th annual Tony Awards in New York on Sept. 26, 2021. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — From her house up high in Colorado’s Elk Mountains, author Shelley Read can only look out in amazement at the worldwide success of her debut novel, “Go as a River.”
“There were upward of 30 translations already secured before the novel was introduced in the U.S.,” says Read, a fifth-generation Coloradan who lives with her husband in Crested Butte, in a home they built themselves. “And that is when I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ It’s thrilling, scary, magnificent.”
Published in 2023 by Spiegel & Grau, “Go as a River” received little major review attention beyond trade publications when first released and its honors are mostly regional, including a High Plains Book Award and a Reading the West Book Award. But her novel has been a hit in the U.S. and well beyond, appearing on bestseller lists everywhere from North America to Scandinavia and selling more than 1 million copies. Mazur Kaplan, co-founded by producer Paula Mazur and independent book seller Mitchell Kaplan, is working on a film adaptation. Eliza Hittman, whose credits include the award-winning “Never Rarely Sometimes Only,” is expected to direct.
Read’s 300-page novel spans from the 1940s to the 1970s, and centers on a 17-year-old Colorado farm girl’s ill-fated romance with an itinerant Indigenous man and how it haunts and changes lives for decades to come. “Go as a River” proves that some books can break through without high-profile endorsements or author name recognition. It also adds the 61-year-old Read to a special list of first-time authors — from Frank McCourt to Louis Begley — middle aged or older who finally get around to that book they had been meaning to write and receive wide acclaim.
“What she’s done is unusual,” says Spiegel & Grau co-founder Cindy Spiegel. “Every now and then someone comes along who has a vision that they’ve held for many, many years and they really do write it down. Most people don’t.”
A native of Colorado Springs, Read is a graduate of the University of Denver who has a master’s degree from Temple University’s creative writing program. She is a longtime educator who parsed and absorbed so many books, with works by Virginia Woolf and Czeslaw Milosz among her favorites, that one of her own inevitably came out on the other end.
A teacher with a story of her own
For nearly three decades, she taught writing and literature among other subjects at Western Colorado University. During that time, a character kept turning up in her thoughts, the germ of what became her novel’s protagonist, Victoria Nash. There was something about Victoria, an empathetic quality, Read related to. But she had her career and two young children, and “was just trying to keep my head above water as a super busy mom and with a lot of very intense challenges.”
With Victoria unwilling to leave her be, Read began jotting down notes on Post-its, napkins and other papers that might be around. With her husband’s encouragement, she took early retirement and committed to completing her book. She had written stories in her early years, but had never attempted a full-length narrative.
“I had no idea where it was going. I had no intentions about where it was going, because I had never written a novel before,” Read says, speaking via Zoom from her home. “Once I figured out this was going to be a novel, I was like, ‘Oh no!’ I have studied novels thousands of times throughout my life, but I never even considered that I would write one.”
Read stepped down in 2018 and by the following year had finished a manuscript, drawn in part from such historical events as a 1960s flood in Iola, Colorado, and from her lifelong affinity for the local landscape. First-time authors of any age struggle to find representation, but during a 2017 writers conference at Western Colorado University, Read had met Sandra Bond, a Denver-based agent. A “Colorado girl,” Bond calls herself.
“We hit it off immediately,” Bond says. “We have very similar backgrounds in growing up in Colorado.”
Writing is rewriting
Read’s manuscript “knocked my socks off,” Bond remembers, but it wasn’t an easy sell. The second half of the book “didn’t quite meet the standards of the first” and Bond didn’t have the editing skills to fix it. “Go as a River” was turned down by 21 publishers before Spiegel signed it up. Spiegel & Grau, which began as a Penguin Random House imprint and reopened in 2020 as an independent a year after PRH shut it down amid a corporate reorganization, has worked with authors ranging from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sara Gruen to Iain Pears and Kathryn Stockett.
“I had a feeling Cindy might be able to see how to guide Shelley in revising the second half — what was really working and what wasn’t and why,” Bond says.
Spiegel and Read worked on revisions — the finished version is entirely from Victoria’s perspective; the original draft shifted narrators midway. Meanwhile, the publisher showed the manuscript to the international agent Susanna Lea, who “read it one sitting” and quickly arranged for meetings with foreign publishers. It was mid-July, and she remembers tracking down publishers in Norway and Finland and other parts of Scandinavia at a time of year when book executives usually are on vacation.
“Suddenly, they were all reachable,” she says.
Read is working on a second novel, set in southeastern Colorado, where her homesteader-grandparents lived. Meanwhile, royalties from “Go as a River” allowed her a few indulgences, from installing solar panels on her house to a little travel, not to mention paying off college tuition for her son and building up the family retirement savings.
“Not too sexy,” she acknowledges. “We’re still do-it-yourselfers, & I still drive an old Toyota pickup. The main thing about the royalties is that I get to be a writer for a living, and that is a dream come true.”
This cover image released by Spiegel & Grau shows “Go as a River” by Shelley Read. (Spiegel & Grau via AP)
Andre “Dre” Dukes is a living example of what happens when you get a second chance in life. Dre grew up in Detroit on the eastside and watched once thriving neighborhoods collapse.
Dre lived a rough life, growing up in Detroit riddled with gun violence and drugs. He battled addiction and spent a decade in prison. Since his release, he has changed the way he approaches life. He works at recovery centers, and with at-risk kids and teens.
“Street-Wise and Real Talk” By Andre “Dre” Dukes
He has been motivated to make an impact to ensure the next generation of young Black boys have a blueprint to follow and learn a better way to escape their issues.
“Street-Wise & Real Talk” is an autobiographical guide for boys who simply need to feel seen and heard. It’s a fictional, age-appropriate book for at-risk youth that focuses on consequences and not glorifying crime.
Dre spoke with The Metro’s Tia Graham about “Street-Wise & Real Talk.”
The Muslim Mavericks is a new children’s nonfiction biography book series highlighting the contributions of Muslims across the world.
The first book features actress, comedian and disability advocate, “Maysoon Zayid The Girl Who Can Can.”
Pulitzer Prize–nominated Muslim reporter and author Dr. Seema Yasmin says the series hopes to dispel stereotypes of Muslims, while creating positive representation in stories.
“What I’m trying to do with this series is show that Muslims are not a monolith… there’s nearly two billion of us on the planet,” she says.
Muslims in media
Yasmin says she was inspired to create the series when she realized there were few children’s chapter book series about Muslims.
“Throughout history, Muslims have contributed so much to the fields of science and exploration, mathematics, comedy, film, Hollywood, all of the things,” she explains.
She says people’s first impression of Muslims is on TV or film, usually as someone scary.
“It explains the kind of sentiments and misunderstandings that people have about Muslims and what better way to dispel that than by introducing young readers to Muslim characters early on,” she shares.
She wants readers to connect with people like Maysoon Zayid, a girl who grew up in New Jersey in a Palestinian American home, as a disabled person with big dreams.
“It was really important to me to introduce young readers to these themes of imagining their future, dreaming big, conquering the impossible, and what to do when people tell you that you’re not good enough,” she says.
Islamophobia
Yasmin says Islamophobia, the fear of Islam and Muslims, is rampant.
“The Islamophobia just feels like it is on steroids right now. For many of us old enough to remember September 11, 2001 and the aftermath of that, what Muslims and just generally brown people lived through, the environment right now is feeling like that,” she shares.
She says people are getting “steeped in these misconceptions of an entire community,” she further explains.
She hopes the series will introduce readers to a range of Muslims to help tackle Islamophobia.
Yasmin has a background as a medical doctor and a former journalist.
She says the next book in the series will come out later this year.
Support local journalism.
WDET strives to cover what’s happening in your community. As a public media institution, we maintain our ability to explore the music and culture of our region through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
The music landscape has changed a lot since the turn of the 21st century. Not just styles, but how we consume music. Nothing illustrates that better than the rise of the indie music scene.
DeVille talks with WDET’s Russ McNamara. Click on the link to listen or read selected excepts below.
Listen: New book looks at ’00s indie rock explosion
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RM: So why write this book?
DeVille: There’s many different sort of through lines that are being traced here. One of them is technology. It’s a subject that I think is really complex and really fascinating, and it involves a lot of my favorite music ever.
This stuff that has been kind of chronicled and debated online for years in blog posts and social media posts and a lot of the documentation of it is starting to disappear, because websites just go offline, or people delete their social media accounts. And so I wanted to create a little bit more permanent record of some of these things that happened—some of the ways that these bands broke through, some of the conversations that were being had around this music.
One reviewer compared it to like a yearbook that you look back at and you get some fond memories, and you get some cringe, but yeah, it’s kind of like a history of my listening as an adult.
Russ McNamara, WDET: In the book, you mention the TV show ‘The OC’ which was a popular teen soap opera in the early ’00s. How much did that show’s soundtrack play into the rise in indie rock?
Chris DeVille, author of “Such Great Heights”: I was surprised as I was writing the book, how much it became like a shadow history of the evolution of the Internet over the last couple of decades. And you know The OC thing, it’s like they’re putting these bands in front of a much bigger audience. Like Death Cab for Cutie is like a fairly obscure band at the time, and then this character on this popular teen show is like making his whole personality that he loves Death Cab for Cutie.
Stereogum Managing Editor Chris DeVille
It’s like giant platform, but then they lose cool points with some people, as you know, sort of a more norm-y audience discovers this band, but it’s definitely, there’s no doubt that it was a huge like funnel, bringing a bunch of bands to a much broader audience
RM: What about the added accessibility of file sharing sites like Limewire and Napster?
CD: Whatever platform you were using to pirate music I think contributed to the accessibility of stuff. Stuff could blow up, even if it didn’t fit into a particular radio format, or it wasn’t getting past the MTV gatekeepers. It didn’t have to fit into any existing niche or existing format to blow up. It could just catch fire and go viral on these file sharing servers.
I mean, the same thing was still true when iTunes came in and kind of formalized and commercialized the process. You could still have a song that people would download it like crazy.
RM: Which indie bands benefitted the most from this setup in the early 00’s?
CD:Arcade Fire was definitely the biggest. The other dimension that I talk a lot about in the book, is Pitchfork. And just like the power that Pitchfork had to make or break someone’s career. If they gave something a 10.0 people were just going to jump on it and worship it. And if they kind of talked smack about a particular band or completely panned a band, then there were instances where that basically ended someone’s commercial prospects. And so like Arcade Fire were like the perfect storm.
RM: So where is indie rock at now? Is it dead? Does the genre really mean anything anymore?
CD: Over time, indie became like more of a genre, and then the genre itself started to change. But I think what we saw happen in the 2010s is sort of like the indie goes pop thing. It was like a bubble, and it really did pop. We still have these sort of like boutique pop stars like Clairo.
We had artists that came out of the indie world become pop stars of a sort because of stuff like Tiktok. Like Mitski is a good example of that where she’s coming from, from the indie rock infrastructure, and she is making music that jumps across genres a little bit.
There’s a hunger for bands that have a little bit more of an edge to them, that are a little bit less smooth, a little bit willing to be weird or noisy. That’s what you see with a lot of the biggest indie bands today – ones that have gone against that sort of, like Spotify-friendly, passive-listening experience. There’s now a hunger for music that’s a bit more abrasive, something that will jolt people out of their stupor.
Music wants to evolve. It wants to find new audiences. And so the whole idea of like, gatekeeping and having the right audience versus the wrong audience, like, that’s something that factors into the book too.
Support local journalism.
WDET strives to cover what’s happening in your community. As a public media institution, we maintain our ability to explore the music and culture of our region through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
The holiday season is the perfect time to get lost in a good mystery or thriller.
A particularly well-crafted one can take your mind off the stress that comes with the end of the year, and the books make great presents for friends and family (or for yourself — you deserve it). They’re also a staple of airport bookstores, so it’s easy to find one to keep you company on your next flight. (Maybe don’t pick a T.J. Newman novel in that particular circumstance, though.)
Finally, you’ve got a lot to choose from — we combed through a bunch of bestselling mysteries and thrillers published this year, and found 32 standouts.
You’re bound to find something to keep you on the edge of your seat.
British author Feeney is one of the most reliable thriller authors in the game. Her new book follows Grady Green, a London author whose wife, Abby, goes missing near a cliff; a year later, Grady goes to a small Scottish island, where he spots a woman who looks exactly like Abby — and then things get even weirder.
“Best Offer Wins” by Marisa Kashino
This darkly funny novel follows a publicist desperate to find a house in Washington, D.C., and who keeps losing bidding wars. When she finds the perfect home, she decides she’ll stop at nothing to get it. Kashino’s debut novel became a bestseller after being selected for the “Good Morning America” book club.
The 20th novel in Penny’s massively bestselling series of novels featuring Armand Gamache, a Quebec police inspector, sees the lawman and his associates discover a terrorist plot involving domestic terrorism and officials in high places.
L.A. author Clark’s third book featuring Trevor Finnegan, an ex-LAPD cop who now works as a private investigator, finds his hero trying to find out who killed his half-brother’s girlfriend in Malibu — and uncovering a large-scale conspiracy.
“The Dentist” by Tim Sullivan
In this novel, British filmmaker and author Sullivan introduces his readers to Detective Sergeant George Cross, an investigator who’s on the autism spectrum. Already a success in the U.K., the series launched in the U.S. in October and will continue rolling out books in 2026 (the follow-up, “The Cyclist,” is in stores in January with more coming in February, March and beyond).
“Count My Lies” by Sophie Stava
Southern California author Stava’s debut novel follows Sloane Caraway, a habitual fabulist who lies her way into a job as a nanny for a rich family, and discovers they might not be who they seem. Hulu is developing a limited series adaptation of the novel, starring Lindsay Lohan and Shailene Woodley.
“Dead Money” by Jakob Kerr
Lawyer and debut novelist Kerr drew on the 15 years he lived in San Francisco for this novel, which follows Mackenzie Clyde, a problem solver who works for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and who tries to solve the murder of a tech startup CEO.
The latest novel from prolific British author Jewell hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. It follows three women who are drawn into the orbit of a handsome, mysterious man who might be harboring dark secrets.
“Don’t Open Your Eyes” by Liv Constantine
Constantine is actually the pen name for two sisters, Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine, and their debut novel, “The Last Mrs. Parrish,” is in the works as a film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jennifer Lopez. Their latest novel follows Annabelle Reynolds, a woman with a good life who is beset by nightmares that start to come true.
“Exit Strategy” by Lee Child and Andrew Child
The 30th novel featuring ex-Army police officer Jack Reacher — and the sixth since Andrew Child came on to write or co-write the series launched by his brother — sees the towering vagabond helping a young man with a gambling addiction who is being blackmailed by a shadowy criminal.
“The First Gentleman” by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
The third novel by the former president and the thriller king, following “The President Is Missing” and “The President’s Daughter,” tells the story of Cole Wright, a former professional football player who has been accused of killing his girlfriend almost two decades ago. Complicating matters is that Wright’s wife happens to be the president of the United States.
“Fog and Fury” by Rachel Howzell Hall
L.A. author Hall is known for her standalone novels and her series of books featuring Detective Elouise Norton. She kicked off a new series this year with this novel, which follows Sonny Rush, an L.A. cop turned private eye, who hopes to escape her former life by moving to a calm seaside town. Those plans go awry when the body of a teenager is found by a hiking trail.
“Gone Before Goodbye” by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben
Witherspoon has long been connected to literature as the founder of her mega-popular book club. She teamed with thriller author Coben on this novel about a former Army surgeon who takes a job treating a Russian oligarch. Complications, needless to say, ensue.
“Happy Wife” by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores
A pick for Jenna Bush Hager’s “Today” show book club, this novel follows Nora Davies, a 29-year-old woman in Winter Park, Florida, who marries Will Somerset, a wealthy lawyer and single dad. The day after Nora throws a birthday party for her husband, he disappears, and she goes in search of him.
British television host Osman scored a huge hit with his debut mystery novel, “The Thursday Murder Club,” which Netflix recently adapted as a movie. His latest novel, the fifth in his series of cozy books about crime-solving retirees, sees them trying to find a man who has disappeared and possibly been kidnapped.
“The Intruder” by Freida McFadden
Physician and author McFadden is having a big year: A film based on her bestselling thriller “The Housemaid,” starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, is scheduled to open on Christmas Day, and she’s published three novels in 2025 alone, including this one about a woman who finds a young girl, covered in blood and grasping a knife, outside her isolated cabin.
“Julie Chan Is Dead” by Liann Zhang
This debut novel by the Canadian author shot up the bestseller lists shortly after its release; it tells the story of the title character, a supermarket cashier who discovers the body of her identical twin sister, a popular influencer, and proceeds to pretend to be her — only to discover she was keeping some seriously dark secrets.
“King of Ashes” by S.A. Cosby
One of the most prominent breakout authors of the past several years, Cosby has developed a reputation as a master of the Southern noir genre. His latest novel follows a family being stalked by a dangerous drug gang; it is being developed as a Netflix series backed by the production companies of Steven Spielberg and Barack and Michelle Obama.
Canadian author Prose took the mystery world by storm in 2022 with her bestselling novel “The Maid,” about Molly Gray, a hotel housekeeper suspected of murdering a wealthy guest. In her latest book, Molly learns that she owns a lucrative artifact, just before it’s stolen in a brazen heist.
“Murder Takes a Vacation” by Laura Lippman
Lippman is best known for her novels featuring Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan (soon to be a television series). Her latest book focuses on a side character from those books, Muriel Blossom, who meets a man on her flight to a vacation to France; he turns up dead not long after.
“Nemesis” by Gregg Hurwitz
L.A. author Hurwitz launched his popular Orphan X series of thrillers, featuring Evan Smoak, an ex-assassin who now helps people who need it, in 2016. The 10th installment in the series finds Smoak trying to track down his former best friend to get revenge after a betrayal (and an 11th is coming in February).
“The Proving Ground” by Michael Connelly
Attorney Mickey Haller is back in the eighth installment of Connelly‘s The Lincoln Lawyer series of novels, which has been adapted into a Netflix series starring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. In this novel, Haller files suit against an AI company after its chatbot advises a teenage boy to murder his ex-girlfriend.
“Not Quite Dead Yet” by Holly Jackson
Jackson is well known to young readers for her popular A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder books. This year, she made her adult fiction debut with this novel — a “Good Morning America” book club pick — about a woman assaulted by an intruder, who learns that she will die of an aneurysm, and has only a few days to solve her own murder.
Rose had a massive hit with her 2020 novel “The Perfect Marriage,” about Sarah Morgan, a defense lawyer whose husband is suspected of killing his mistress. In this follow-up, Sarah is dealing with infidelity on the part of her new husband, just as the case against her first one is reopened.
“She Didn’t See It Coming” by Shari Lapena
Lapena had a breakout hit in 2016 with her thriller “The Couple Next Door.” Her latest novel tells the story of a woman who disappears without a trace from the luxury condominium she lives in with her husband and daughter.
“The Unraveling of Julia” by Lisa Scottoline
Beloved legal thriller author Scottoline’s new novel follows Julia Pritzker, a woman still reeling from the murder of her husband in a mugging, and who is shocked when she finds out that she has inherited a large sum of money, a vineyard, and a villa in Italy from someone she doesn’t know — and finds herself embroiled in a deadly conspiracy.
“Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)” by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Sutanto introduced her titular amateur sleuth — an elderly owner of a San Francisco tea shop — in the 2023 novel “Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.” In this follow-up, Vera is determined to solve the murder of a social media influencer with a shadowy past.
“We Are All Guilty Here” by Karin Slaughter
You might know Slaughter as the author of the Will Trent series of novels that have been adapted into the ABC show starring Ramón Rodríguez. Her latest novel kicks off a new book series, focusing on Emmy Clifton, a sheriff’s deputy in a small Georgia town searching for two missing teenage girls.
Reese Witherspoon gave her imprimatur to this novel about a man and his children who live on a remote island near Antarctica, and who discover a woman who has washed ashore after a storm — and who might not be who she says she is. Amazon named this the best book of 2025.
“The Widow” by John Grisham
Grisham needs no introduction to legal thriller fans who have long read his novels like “The Firm” and “The Pelican Brief.” This year, he published his first-ever whodunit, about a lawyer representing Simon Latch, an elderly widow who is murdered, leaving Simon as a suspect.
“You Belong Here” by Megan Miranda
In her latest thriller, the “All the Missing Girls” author tells the story of Beckett Bowery, a woman who has done her best to stay away from the Virginia college where her parents taught, and where a tragedy upended her life. When her daughter receives a full scholarship to the school, she realizes that she can’t escape her past.
There are plenty of great mysteries and thrillers out in 2025. (Courtesy of the publishers)
Authors, readers and publishing industry experts lament the underrepresentation of Hispanic stories in the mainstream world of books, but have found new ways to elevate the literature and resolve misunderstandings.
“The stories now are more diverse than they were ten years ago,” said Carmen Alvarez, a book influencer on Instagram and TikTok.
Some publishers, independent bookstores and book influencers are pushing past the perception of monolithic experience by making Hispanic stories more visible and discoverable for book lovers.
The rise of online book retailers and limited marketing budgets for stories about people of color have been major hurdles for increasing that representation, despite annual celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 in the U.S. There’s been a push for ethnically authentic stories about Latinos, beyond the immigrant experience.
“I feel like we are getting away from the immigration story, the struggle story,” said Alvarez, who is best known as “tomesandtextiles” on bookstagram and booktok, the Instagram and TikTok social media communities. “I feel like my content is to push back against the lack of representation.”
However, the National Hispanic Media Coalition estimates Latinos only represent 8% of employees in publishing, according to its Latino Representation in Publishing Coalition created in 2023.
Book are on display at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Brenda Castillo, NHMC president and CEO, said the coalition works directly with publishing houses to highlight Latino voices and promote their existing Latino employees.
The publishing houses “are the ones that have the power to make the changes,” Castillo said.
Some Hispanic authors are creating spaces for their work to find interested readers. Award-winning children authors Mayra Cuevas and Alex Villasante co-founded a book festival and storytellers conference in 2024 to showcase writers and illustrators from their communities.
“We were very intentional in creating programming around upleveling craft and professional development,” Cuevas said. “And giving attendees access to the publishing industry, and most importantly, creating a space for community connection and belonging.”
Villasante said the festival and conference allowed them to sustain themselves within the publishing industry, while giving others a road map for success in an industry that isn’t always looking to mass produce their work.
“We are not getting the representation of ourselves,” Villasante said. “I believe that is changing, but it is a slow change so we have to continue to push for that change.”
Breaking into the mainstream
New York Times bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a Mexican-Canadian novelist known for the novels “Mexican Gothic” and “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” is one of few Hispanic authors that has been able to break to mainstream. But she said it wasn’t easy.
A free books trolley sits in front of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Moreno-Garcia recalled one of her first publisher rejections: The editor complimented the quality of the story but said it would not sell because it was set in Mexico.
“There are systems built within publishing that make it very difficult to achieve the regular distributions that other books naturally have built into them,” Moreno-Garcia said. “There is sometimes resistance to sharing some of these books.”
Cynthia Pelayo, an award-winning author and poet, said the marketing campaign is often the difference maker in terms of a book’s success. Authors of color are often left wanting more promotional support from their publishers, she said.
“I’ve seen exceptional Latino novels that have not received nearly the amount of marketing, publicity that some of their white colleagues have received,” Pelayo said. “What happens in that situation (is) their books get put somewhere else in the bookstore when these white colleagues, their books will get put in the front.”
Hispanic Heritage Month, however, helps bring some attention to Hispanic authors, she added.
Independent bookstores
Independent bookstores remain persistent in elevating Hispanic stories. A 2024 report by the American Booksellers Association found that 60 of the 323 new independent bookstores were owned by people of color. According to Latinx in Publishing, a network of publishing industry professionals, there are 46 Hispanic-owned bookstores in the U.S.
The back reading room of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore is seen Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Online book retailer Bookshop.org has highlighted Hispanic books and provided discounts for readers during Hispanic Heritage Month. A representative for the site, Ellington McKenzie, said the site has been able to provide financial support for about 70 Latino bookstores.
“People are always looking to support those minority owned bookstores which we are happy to be the liaison between them,” McKenzie said.
Chawa Magaña, the owner of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore in Phoenix, said she was inspired to open the store because of what she felt was a lack of diversity and representation in the books that are taught in Arizona schools.
The main entrance of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore shows off colorful artwork, a theme throughout the bookstore, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
“Growing up, I didn’t experience a lot of diversity in literature in schools.” Magaña said. “I wasn’t seeing myself in the stories that I was reading.”
Of the books for sale at Palabras Bilingual, between 30% to 40% of the books are Latino stories, she said.
Magaña said having heard people say they have never seen that much representation in a bookstore has made her cry.
“What has been the most fulfilling to me is able to see how it impacts other people’s lives,” she said. “What motivates me is seeing other people get inspired to do things, seeing people moved when they see the store itself having diverse books.”
Chawa Magaña, owner of Palabras Bilingual Bookstore, poses with a few of her favorite books Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
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