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Grisham fans, take note: Penguin has released the first chapter of Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, which will publish on May 25. Children’s Books Editor Ilene Cooper will review Grisham’s first foray into children’s literature on Booklist Online on release day, and we’ll also feature her review in the June issue of Booklist.

Just a quick stab (shrieking violins!) today. Vampire Rising, the first book in the new Alex Van Helsing series, is right in line with what you’d expect from a boy-centric middle-grade update on the famous character: a 14-year-old with a famous surname learns his lineage, a teacher reveals himself to be an operative in a [...]

One hundred years ago today, on April 21, 1910, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, world-famous then as he still is by his pen-name, Mark Twain, died. Curiously enough—at least for ponderers of the possibly, if improbably, portentous—in one respect 1910 exactly resembled the year of his birth, 1835. In both years, the comet called Halley’s after the [...]

Ready? All together now: Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Tony! Happy birthday to you! Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, debuted in Marvel Comics in March, 1963. Two years later, in April, the man who plays him in the movies, better known as Robert Downey Jr., made his own [...]

The Orange shortlist has been announced: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel The Very Thought of You, by Rosie Alison The Lacuna,by Barbara Kingsolver Black Water Rising, by Attica Locke A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore The White Woman on the Green Bicycle,by Monique Roffey

Colleen Mondor is one of Booklist’s many ardent, expert, and versatile freelance reviewers. I rely on Colleen to cover all kinds of topical nonfiction, with a strong emphasis on books about nature and environmental concerns and Alaska, where she lived for a decade or so after college. Colleen grew up in Florida, not far from [...]

Despite the grim subject matter, I smiled when I read A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman, when the author, Lisa Shannon wrote of meeting Alice Walker in the Congo when they were both visiting Women for Women International. Weeks before I’d read Walker’s book, Overcoming Speechlessness: [...]

In part one we talked about some of the big- and small-screen adaptations of Dracula. But you vampire fans out there know Bram Stoker’s famous fiend isn’t the only literary bloodsucker. In Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), a vampire tells his story — two centuries’ worth of love, hatred, life, death, and pulse-pounding excitement [...]

The $100,000 Ruth Lilly poetry prize was awarded to Eleanor Ross Taylor by the Poetry Foundation for her lifetime of achievement. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine had some wonderful things to say about Taylor: Her slow production (six books in 50 years), dislike of poetry readings (“It seems to me that it’s all for the [...]

Precious, the movie based on the 1996 novel Push, by Sapphire, is a faithful adaptation of the book — which means you should expect an emotionally draining story, hard-edged characters, and some unsettling language and imagery.   Here’s a look at the movie: The movie is very good, but the book gives you things the movie [...]