books

Library binding is the best way to keep books in circulation.

A very, very specific set of standards can keep books from falling apart. But it's usually too expensive for consumers.

Some of your favorite writers faced rejection.

From James Baldwin to Gertrude Stein and beyond, literature’s most celebrated authors have faced stinging and ruthless rejections.

Anthony Burgess had difficulty creating his slang dictionary.

Penguin Books commissioned the work in 1965, but the "A Clockwork Orange" author only completed several hundred entries before discarding the project.

‘Little Women’ author Louisa May Alcott was also an early suffragette who fought against slavery and registered women to vote.

Here’s how to pepper your next argument with Shakespearean insults.

The cover of Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower.’

When Octavia E. Butler wrote her science fiction novel ‘The Parable of the Sower,’ she vowed to include only things that could actually happen.

Screenwriters and filmmakers made key changes to how these novels finished up.

You might be surprised to see how these movies end, even if you’ve read the books.

TheLibraryMap organizes 100,000 book titles in a way that’s visually pleasing and easy to navigate.

Novelists have used everything from real killers to newsworthy hostage situations to literal white whales to craft their fiction.

You’ll want to add ‘The Deep,’ My Heart Is a Chainsaw,’ ‘Our Share of Night,’ and ‘The Between’ to your reading list.

If you want to expand your horror reading beyond Stephen King, look no further than this list, which features everyone from Mariana Enriquez to Stephen Graham Jones and beyond.

Victor Hugo, Anne Rice, and Thomas Hardy were all believers.

Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Victor Hugo, believed they had communicated with spirits directly; others, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, had ghostly encounters they couldn’t explain.

The cover of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’

The true facts surrounding the classic work are as mysterious and intriguing as the novel itself.

The cover of Emily Wilson’s translation of ‘The Iliad.’

This all-new translation of the Homer epic is six years in the making.

Parents and politicians are trying to pull books off shelves at a record-setting pace.

The cover of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ by Ruben Toledo.

In true undead style, Dracula holds up well: He’s as creepy today as he was when Bram Stoker invented him in 1897.

Karl Aspelin, Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons

As is often the case when you look back into history, there’s more than one possible answer. But one of the leading contenders has a fairly predictable culprit: the Puritans.

From famous authors to a Roman emperor, these spirits sure had a lot to share.

The Dollar Baby contract is Stephen King’s way of helping film students adapt his stories without financial barriers.

You can play Dr. Seuss ‘Scrabble’ here or there—you can play it anywhere!

The cover of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’

Here are the nuts and bolts about Mary Shelley's 200-year-old tale about what can go wrong when people play God.

These spooky tales will have you thankful you live in modern times.

These stories need no contrivances to create places that are lonely and old, a place where bad things are kept hushed up instead of dealt with.

Charles Dickens gifted us with plenty of new words and phrases—including ‘not to put too fine a point on it.’

Clichés are viewed as a sign of lazy writing, but they didn’t develop that reputation over night.

Precursors to the story about the girl with the green ribbon were written by Washington Irving, Alexandre Dumas, and more famous authors.

Before John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre,’ the creatures were far from suave, sexy aristocrats.

‘The Vampyre’ is largely forgotten today, but it upended centuries of vampiric lore 80 years before Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’—and from its spooky beginnings to its scandalous misattribution, its history was as dramatic as fiction.

What Is ‘Library Binding’?

20 Famous Authors and Their Rejections

When ‘Clockwork Orange’ Author Anthony Burgess Wrote a Slang Dictionary

10 Fascinating Facts About Louisa May Alcott

You Bull’s Pizzle! Breaking Down 10 Iconic Shakespeare Insults

11 Fascinating Facts About Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’

15 Books Whose Endings Were Changed for the Movie

Don’t Know What to Read Next? This Comprehensive Book Map Can Help

12 Novels Inspired by Real Events

11 Contemporary Horror Authors to Read (Who Aren’t Stephen King)

9 Authors Who Believed in Ghosts

11 Strange Facts About ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde’

A New Translation of ’The Iliad’ Is Bringing a Truer Ancient Greece to Modern Readers

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2022

10 Blood-Curdling Facts About ‘Dracula’

What Was the First Banned Book in History?

Guided by Voices: 7 Books Supposedly Written by Ghosts

Dollar Baby: Why Stephen King Sells the Rights to His Work to Up-and-Coming Filmmakers for Just $1

Rhyming Is Encouraged in the New Dr. Seuss Edition of ’Scrabble’

11 Surprising Facts About Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’

6 Creepy Victorian Ghost Stories to Read Right Now

The Origins of 8 Literary Clichés

The Girl With the Green Ribbon: A Grisly History of ‘Headless Woman’ Stories

The Wild History of the Tale That Created the Modern Vampire (And No, It's Not ‘Dracula’)