Written by Dabney GrinnanI’ve just finished reading for the I don’t know how many-th time Joanna Bourne’s Spymasters series. And, somewhat startlingly, they seemed to speak very clearly to our ...
Written by Dabney GrinnanBook publishing has again shifted and for this, we can thank two behemoths that begin with A: Amazon and AI.AI is now part of every aspect of publishing. It designs ...
Written by Dabney GrinnanI’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead right now and, to my surprise, loving it. That’s not usually my experience with Pulitzer winners; more often than not, I ...
Written by Dabney GrinnanIt’s that time of year again. You know, where Goodreads nominates a bunch of books for the Goodreads Choice Awards and many of us are shocked–and not in a good way–by the ...
Written by Dabney GrinnanI have never been great with traditions. In my adult life, I’ve worn very few Halloween costumes, I’d be happy to buy pre-cooked Thanksgiving food from the grocery store, ...
Tell the truth: Do you wish we could go back? Because lately, it feels like many of us are looking to the past with longing. We pine for yesterday somehow feeling that the past was better—love was ...
I review books for a living — which these days makes me something of an anachronism. Reviews, once a way to think out loud about art, are increasingly treated as just another genre of marketing. ...
We’re nearly halfway through the 2020s, and romance has never been bigger—or harder to pin down. It dominates bestseller lists, fuels the publishing industry, and inspires endless debate over what ...
For many years, one of the ways women encountered men—beyond family, school, and daily life—was through books. The novels most often assigned in schools treated male characters with complexity and ...
Grief is the price of love. This phrase, popularized by Queen Elizabeth II, is on my mind today. This week, the life of a close friend, an amazing woman, was snuffed out by that cruel mistress of ...
Lately, I’ve been thinking about babies in romance novels. Not as plot twists or conveniently timed disruptions—though a surprise pregnancy can still complicate things in interesting ways—but as a ...
With the death of Madeline Hunter, historical romance loses one of its sharpest minds and quietest radicals. Her books were among the first that made me feel like the genre could be as layered and ...
