With its puffy padded cover and surprisingly diverse recipes, Farideh Sadeghin’s The Hot Dog Cookbook is highly recommended for lovers of novelty and adventurous eating. ... Read full Story
Katee Robert concludes her Dark Olympus Series with a steamy triad of powerful women, plus a delightful sports rivals-to-lovers debut. ... Read full Story
Required reading for anyone who cares about women and justice, Unreasonable Women aims a powerful spotlight on our country’s continued failure to protect its most vulnerable. ... Read full Story
The Missed Connection, Tia Williams’ second-chance romance about an anxious casting director and the one who got away, is a rollicking good time. ... Read full Story
Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins share their experience crafting the unique, dual-narrator audiobook production of This Story Might Save Your Life. ... Read full Story
Whistler is exceptional: a reminder of how some people in your life may cause you pain, but if you love them, and they love you, that’s enough. ... Read full Story
Readers will relish the many grand, goofy, adventures found in Villa Coco, an enchantingly comic, poignant novel from Andrew Sean Greer. ... Read full Story
The slow-burn love square in They All Fall in Love at the End crackles into a roaring, uncontrollable fire as four characters face the question of how to thrive in the bleak landscape of contemporary dating. ... Read full Story
The Typing Lady, a collection of 11 stories published over the past two decades, is a welcome addition to Ruth Ozeki’s playful, inimitable oeuvre. ... Read full Story
“Zany” is not often used to characterize murder mysteries, but The Disaster Gay Detective Agency, Lev AC Rosen’s adrenaline- and hormone-laced romp through humanity’s darker corridors, provides levity galore. ... Read full Story
Through its depiction of deceptive behaviors and ideologies adjacent to real-life historic cults, The Book of Jupiter creates a suspenseful tale of resilience and hope. ... Read full Story
While it won’t actually bring ogres to their knees and save the family from ruin, The Sweetest of Lemons will sweeten your day—and that’s worth sharing. ... Read full Story
Rachel Karp hit the road to visit lesbian bars across the country and found that rather than being consigned to history, sapphic spaces are lighting up our future. ... Read full Story
Steven Pfau’s acutely self-aware memoir, Say Nephew, pays homage to his charismatic uncle Bruce and mediates on the mentorship of uncles in the gay community. ... Read full Story
The bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins mystery series strikes out in a different direction with Ghalen, a literary novel about love, loss and coming-of-age. ... Read full Story
The Midnight Train embeds an array of provocative questions about what it means to live a good life inside the heartfelt story of one man’s failures and successes. ... Read full Story
Spendin’ Time will remind you of your own cherished memories with a loved one—especially the silly little things that felt like nothing at the time—and encourage you to pass them on. ... Read full Story
Eli Raphael seeds her darkly dramatic coming-of-age tale with insightful teasers from her protagonist’s future self, amounting to a multilayered and impressive debut. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 8, 2026 is:
accoutrement \uh-KOO-truh-munt\ noun
An accoutrement is a piece of clothing or equipment that is used in a particular place or for a particular activity. In military contexts, accoutrement refers specifically to a soldier's outfit. The word can also refer to an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device. Accoutrement in any of its uses is often pluralized.
// They have all the accoutrements that a baker could ever want, including a robust collection of cookie cutters and a veritable wardrobe of vintage aprons.
"From the spectacularly colorful Parade of Flags ... to the customary dress and cultural accoutrements of the nations, we see just how rich, varied and wonderful are the backgrounds of these students who have traveled far to study among us." – The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Mississippi), 14 Apr. 2026
Did you know?
Accoutrement and its rarer relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter, respectively. The pair's French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "to put in place" and may ultimately trace back to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." Some etymological stitching is visible in another English word: couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves, is a direct French borrowing that ultimately descends from consuere.