Alexandra Quinlan was just 17 years old when she was accused of brutally murdering her family. Within a few months, she was cleared legally, but the negative media coverage was so intense that she had to change her name. She thought she had successfully started a new life. But the past wouldn’t let go of […]
A murder mystery with serious buzz
First-time novelist Charmaine Wilkerson is making waves in the mystery space, combining a juicy cold-case murder with a delicious cake recipe. Truly, what more could a novel need? Black Cake (and its television adaptation, which premieres on Hulu in November) is an absorbing tale of secret identities, family history, and loss. Let’s take a closer look. Long-Buried Secrets […]
Who’s afraid of who?
When you’re an ex-convict who’s desperate for a job, you’ll put up with anything. Even a live-in housekeeping role where your “bedroom” is a dark and dingy attic that locks from the outside. What could Millie Calloway do but accept the job? Plot Twist Millie’s new boss Nina Winchester supposedly has it all, but something […]
When the worst happens
Solomon Northup’s ordeal began when he woke up in the dungeon. He had been a free Black man who thought he was taking a job as a traveling musician. Instead, his “employers” had drugged him and smuggled him out of New York, and when he regained his senses, he found himself chained to the floor. […]
The Creator Who Was Almost Destroyed
Victory City was almost a posthumous novel. In August 2022, after more than 30 years of living under the threat of assassination, the novelist Salman Rushdie was viciously stabbed by an attacker at a public speaking event. Rushdie lost an eye and suffered from other injuries, but he survived to see his new novel get rave […]
A Journey Worth Taking
Take a break from the news and get your week off to a good start with a nourishing coming-of-age story about the spiritual journey of a young man in ancient India. Step into the world of spiritual quests and self-discovery with our Instaread on Siddhartha. East Meets West Written by Hermann Hesse — a German-Swiss writer, poet, […]
A Next-Level Gaming Story
How would you like to be a professional game player in a utopian space society? Sounds better than sitting at home on your PlayStation, right? Here’s the scene in The Player of Games: Having mastered every tactic and strategy, Jernau Morat Gurgeh finds that he has become bored with easy victories. So he decides to go on […]
Engineered Happiness?
We’re living in an era when some of the wildest plots described in science fiction stories sound. . .well, a little too much like contemporary life. Take Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, for Instance. The book describes a future in which people are brainwashed to be happy by taking a drug called soma. An Extremely Banned […]
The Answer To The Ultimate Question of Everything
New in the Instaread library: one of the most famous books in all of science fiction. Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy follows Arthur Dent’s improbable hitchhike across the galaxy with his alien friend Ford Prefect after the Earth’s destruction. The Tour Begins Arthur’s journey takes him from the President of the Galaxy’s ship to a […]
The First Rule of Fight Club…
You know how it is. Sometimes guys just want to beat each other up for recreational reasons. Step one: gather a group of the fellas, preferably in the basement of a bar. Step two: take off your shirts. Step three: punch each other very hard. No, this isn’t really what people did for fun in […]
