Irish fiction to enjoy on Saint Patrick's Day and all year long, featuring picks by Sally Rooney, John Banville, Vanessa Kelly and more. ... Read full Story
In Everybody Says It’s Everything, Xhenet Aliu returns to the small-town Connecticut setting of her debut novel, Brass, to deliver the story of a family who seem to have little in common with one another. ... Read full Story
Nicole Cuffy takes the fearlessness of her excellent debut, Dances, to a whole new level in O Sinners!, which explores the allure of a California cult. ... Read full Story
Sameer Pandya’s Our Beautiful Boys is an incisive and thoughtful novel that speaks to contemporary culture and unearths some timeless truths about the good—and bad—kids inside us all. ... Read full Story
Ghosts and doppelgangers abound in Stuart Nadler’s poignant, ornate tapestry of a novel, which shifts among the perspectives of members of a Jewish family originally from Vienna. ... Read full Story
Kristen Arnett’s comic romp, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, centers a 28-year-old lesbian stoner with a passion for clowning rivalled only by her passion for MILFs. ... Read full Story
In The Expert of Subtle Revisions, Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s oddball intellectual characters are buffeted about by all kinds of crazy passions, which have everything to do with the workings of their beautiful minds. ... Read full Story
Each and every beautifully written word counts in The Paris Express, Emma Donoghue’s thrilling, thought-provoking historical novel inspired by a real-life railway disaster. ... Read full Story
Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 11th novel, Theft, is a profound examination of lineages, legacies and lies, centering on three people coming of age in Tanzania as part of the first generation not born under colonial rule. ... Read full Story
In her thrilling historical novel, The Paris Express, Emma Donoghue takes readers on a doomed train ride at the turn of the 20th century. ... Read full Story
Faith Takes the Train gently reminds us that sometimes kindness is as simple as a sandwich, uplifting even those among us who are most prone to getting bogged down by the woes and complexity of the world. ... Read full Story
Set during World War II, Ace, Marvel, Spy and Midnight on the Scottish Shore chronicle the stories of two women whose lives are testaments to the power of courage during times of upheaval. ... Read full Story
Tiana Clark’s searching second poetry collection, Scorched Earth, embraces “too muchness” as a pure expression of the politicized body, history and art. ... Read full Story
Award-winning poet and essayist Tiana Clark lets us peer into the process behind her second collection, Scorched Earth—an exquisite book that reckons with history and rings with joy. ... Read full Story
A breathtaking journey through the seasons, Wind Watchers will fill readers with joy and inspire them to get outside, no matter the season, to experience the wind once more! ... Read full Story
Martha S. Jones’ moving memoir, The Trouble of Color, traces her family’s history back five generations and will change the way readers understand race. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 30, 2025 is:
insouciance \in-SOO-see-unss\ noun
Insouciance is a formal word that refers to a feeling of carefree unconcern. It can also be understood as a word for the relaxed and calm state of a person who is not worried about anything.
// The young actor charmed interviewers with his easy smile and devil-may-care insouciance.
“Gladiator II is OK when Denzel’s off-screen, but sensational when he’s on it. ... What makes the performance great is its insouciance; it’s both precise and feather-light. And it’s what a great actor can do when he’s set free to have fun, to laugh at himself a little bit. ... Denzel’s Macrinus is gravitas and comic relief in one package.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 22 Nov. 2024
Did you know?
If you were alive and of whistling age in the late 1980s or early 1990s, chances are you whistled (and snapped your fingers, and tapped your toes) to a little ditty called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin, an a cappella reggae-jazz-pop tune that took the charts by surprise and by storm. An ode to cheerful insouciance if ever there was one, its lyrics are entirely concerned with being entirely unconcerned, remaining trouble-free in the face of life’s various stressors and calamities. Such carefree nonchalance is at the heart of insouciance, which arrived in English (along with the adjective insouciant), from French, in the 1800s. The French word comes from a combining of the negative prefix in- with the verb soucier, meaning “to trouble or disturb.” The easiness and breeziness of insouciance isn’t always considered beautiful, however. Insouciance may also be used when someone’s lack of concern for serious matters is seen as more careless than carefree.