The new robot overlords have been busy this week. Here’s a look at the latest chaos in publishing:

Still TBD: the class action lawsuit filed by five publishers and author Scott Turow against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.

Everybody and their mother is reading Theo of Golden, which Allen Levi self-published in 2023 and has sold more than a million copies since Atria re-released it in October of last year.

You might not know Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s name, but if you’ve ever talked about critical race theory or intersectionality, you’ve heard of her work. Her new memoir, Backtalker, is climbing charts and has already resulted in some of the most interesting author profiles of the year.

Also on the May Hot List:

🎧 Hear our conversation about these and more trending titles.

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“I cannot let these doctrines be the face of my education.”

Book bans and curriculum censorship have been raging in Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown Area School District since 2021.

Kylee Wood, a high school junior at Elizabethtown Area High School and the co-founder of the EAHS Student Activism Collective, is taking action. In a new Book Riot exclusive, Wood shares insights into the school board’s ongoing efforts to suppress student education and the myriad ways censorship is negatively impacting students’ rights.

On the removal from curricula of three books and one poem the board cited for “mature themes” they deemed “too troubling” for students:

It is clear to me that these removals aren’t about student safety or “parental rights,” (there was always an option for a parent to opt a student out), but about control. And what the board wants to control is the perspectives we hear: the voices of the oppressed, troubled, and underrepresented.

On the board’s rejection of all suggested replacement titles except The Great Gatsby and Little Women:

It is my personal belief that the sole reason Little Women and The Great Gatsby didn’t join the ranks of removed books is because they are classics, automatically beyond scrutiny and “proven to be good.” To me, this is further proof of how little the board knows of education and literature. The themes worthy of condemnation in more modern titles were exactly what made their beloved classics so revolutionary. The classroom is exactly the place to explore these complex topics.

→ Read more about how Wood and her fellow students are fighting back.

You’re not alone if you’ve been intimidated by the work of Toni Morrison. Lucky for you, we’ve called in an expert.

Literary critic and Harvard University professor Namwali Serpell, author of On Morrison, popped by Zero to Well-Read this week for a conversation about how to approach Morrison’s famously difficult body of work.

Serpell discussed Morrison’s modernist experiments with form, the recurring themes of her work, and why feeling confused and unsettled by her books can be a sign that you’re on the right track.

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcatcher of choice.

Your gateway to dark romance.​

Navessa Allen’s #1 New York Times bestselling Into Darkness series starts with Lights Out, packed with high heat, hilarious banter, and a love story like you’ve never seen before. Caught Up ups the ante with voyeurism and play club kink. And Game On brings it home with enemies-to-lovers, scorching brat play, and laugh-out-loud banter that somehow makes it hotter.

Desire turns dangerous here.

Load your listening queue for the long weekend.

Sara Hamdan is the author of What Will People Think?, out this week from Holt Paperbacks. Below, she recommends three books by Arab American writers that influenced her work.

When times are difficult, I find myself turning to the arts—not for escape, exactly, but for recognition. There’s a particular kind of relief in seeing your inner world reflected back at you, in being reminded that even in uncertainty or distress, creativity can offer clarity, humor, and even joy. Writing What Will People Think? felt, in many ways, like an extension of that instinct: a way to explore the complexities of family and love with both honesty and lightness.

As a Palestinian American woman, I’ve always been drawn to stories that capture the duality of family life: the tenderness and the tension, the expectations and the humor we use to survive them. So many Arab American writers do this beautifully, offering portraits that feel specific yet universally resonant. Here are three books I love that explore those themes with heart, nuance, and, often, a welcome sense of wit.

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami is, at its core, a family story. While it begins with a tragedy, what unfolds is a layered exploration of grief, identity, and the bonds that hold a family together even as secrets and misunderstandings threaten to pull them apart. Lalami captures the emotional texture of immigrant family life with remarkable clarity and compassion.

In A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Rum examines the lives of three generations of Palestinian women, tracing how love and duty can become entangled in ways that are both sustaining and suffocating. It’s a powerful, intimate look at the weight of expectation, and the courage it takes to imagine a different life.

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan offers a sweeping, deeply human portrait of a Palestinian family across generations and geographies. With warmth and precision, Alyan captures how love persists through displacement, how humor and memory anchor us, and how family (no matter how fractured) remains a kind of home.

I’ll add a bonus book: Mona Awad’s Bunny is darkly funny and removes cultural identity from the central sphere of the story. 

Together, these books reflect the many ways we carry our families with us: through laughter, conflict, and, always, love.

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Did you know? Maria Semple’s father, Lorenzo Semple Jr, wrote the pilot episode of the original 1966 Batman TV series.

🎬 Read these books being adapted for the screen and stage in 2026.

🇺🇸 Study up for the United States’ 250th birthday with an America 101 syllabus.

😎 Build your summer reading list with picks from NPR.

🏆 Check out the winner of the International Booker Prize.

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Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Danika Ellis for copy editing.

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