The death of men in literature has been greatly exaggerated

You’ve no doubt seen the headlines and handwringing proclaiming that men are being pushed out of the literary landscape: Men don’t read anymore. Men can’t get book deals. Men can’t even sit in a bar with a book without being accused of being a performative male.

Okay, that last one is real. (And it’s dumb. Let the fellas read.)

Data scientist and English professor Dan Sinykin, author of one of the best recent books about the publishing industry, dug into the numbers to look for the facts behind these feelings. The verdict?

After decades of underrepresentation, women have, in recent years, approached or just achieved parity, which is the backdrop against which we hear about fears that literary men are disappearing.

Across bestseller lists, book prizes, short stories, and the overall fiction landscape, yes, men are losing ground, but only because they have dominated the scene for, well, as long as the scene has existed.

If this panic—women catch up and men freak out—sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Sinykin’s findings echo Dale Spender’s famous study, documented in the book Man Made Language, that found that women are perceived as dominating a conversation when they took up as little as 30% of the airtime.

One exception: women may be dominating literary fellowships at a rate of 2:1, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Learn more about the data and Sinykin’s methodology. — RJS

BOOSTED

The heists keep coming

covers of three novels featuring art heists

I read an advance copy of The English Masterpiece by Katherine Reay last spring, a novel set in 1970s London about a museum assistant who triggers an international art scandal when she suggests a rare Picasso is a fake. I remembered how much I love a good art crimes book and asked the universe to bring more of them my way. To my delight, the publishing gods delivered.

I’m not just talking mysteries, either. From black-market deals to hunts for haunted paintings, these art crime plotlines have popped up in everything from literary fiction to fantasy horror. Here are three top-tier examples:

Go Gentle by Maria Semple – A middle-aged Stoic philosopher and divorcée in New York’s Upper East Side meets a mysterious (and very nice-looking) man who doesn’t just flip the script on her life—he sets it on fire. We’re talking black-market art deals, illicit hookups, and secrets from a buried past brought to the surface. Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman – When a former P.I. and middle-aged widow finds a winning lottery ticket on the ground, she books herself a trip on a lux European cruise. But a chance meeting with a(nother) mysterious man on the plane to Paris turns her dream vacation into a murder mystery and international art scandal that only she can solve. The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson – A Baltimore artist is brought to the British Museum under false pretenses: not to show his art, but to test him for a rare magic that will allow him to enter—and help recover—nine sinister paintings scattered across the globe. So begins a time-hopping, globe-trotting horror fantasy adventure into art history, Gothic magic, and cursed objects.

The heists keep coming, too. More art crime 2026 releases include:

A witchy fantasy about a spell gone wrong with ties to an art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, out this week. A novel about stolen artifacts in organized crime A thriller series conclusion about a fledgling art crimes unit taking on a forgery case.

—VD

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REST IN POWER

Dolly Parton dies at 80

Photo by Wes McFee on Unsplash

We’re crying into our sweet tea today as we mourn the passing of Dolly Parton, who died yesterday at the age of 80.

The iconic musician—as bookish as she was busty—was a tireless advocate for and patron of the literary arts.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, launched in 1995, has provided more than three million children with more than 332 million free books. Roughly one in six U.S. children under five are part of the program, which is also available in Canada, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and Australia. A 2020 documentary of the organization, “The Library That Dolly Built,” is free to watch on YouTube.

Parton influenced generations of readers with her inclusive generosity, and while you’d think we could all agree that giving free books to kids is a good (and research-backed) practice, the Imagination Library has been targeted in budget cuts intended to support right-wing censorship efforts.

You can donate to help keep Dolly’s dream alive.

Dolly would want us to make lemonade even in this moment. Tease your hair, turn up your favorite song, and remember: “The magic is inside you, there ain’t no crystal ball.”

FALL RELEASES

Amazon’s most anticipated fall fiction releases

The biggest bookish season is almost here, and Amazon is helping us prepare with a list of the titles their editors are most excited about.

Not for nothing, there are some heavy hitters on this list. Marlon James turns his eye back to Jamaica in the turbulent ‘80s and ‘90s, Deesha Philyaw tells the scandalous story of a pastor’s wife in her debut novel, Min Jin Lee gives us an epic Korean family saga almost 10 years after Pachinko, and more.

Here is Amazon’s most anticipated fiction for fall 2026

The Disappearers by Marlon James The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel

Amazon’s got the rest of the list. —EE

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JUDGE A BOOK

The best book covers of August

We all judge a book by its cover. There’s no shame in that—covers are the biggest marketing tool a book has.

But not all book covers are created equal. Some are better than others for reasons that range from being unique, for giving a fresh twist to a design trend, or just because. Everyone’s taste differs, and what makes a book cover “the best” is a little science and a lot of subjective preferences.

So what July and August book covers deserve a little shoutout for their designs? Here are six of the best from the month. Design teams are credited where that information is available.

Appetite by P. Paramita and cover design by Sophia Chunn, which more than adequately captures the question of what a book about Bangladeshi cooking and pro wrestling would look like. This one’s fun! Cookbooking by Debbie Berne, a work of pop nonfiction about the history and cultural significance of cookbooks is visually appealing and has excellent texture, despite being a 2-D image. Ghost Cities by Siang Lu, which elegantly marries the themes of Chinese antiquity and modernity while creating visual interest with a unique font, the blue-and-yellow coloring, and the off-centered image. (Mostly) Human Resources by Grace Viall and cover art by Andreea Dumuta, featuring a jackalope, some twisty trees, and a whole lot of mysterious ambiance (not to mention that hand!). Never Whistle at Night: Back for Blood edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. and cover art and design by Perry De La Vega. This takes the first Indigenous horror anthology’s excellent cover art to its natural sequel: bright, bold, evocative, and scary. The Project by Annie Lord, a cover which manages to be both kind of weird and kind of audible.

There were so many good covers this month, and it’s always great when some of the best covers are for books that may otherwise go under the radar. – KJ

TIKTOK RECS

BookTok influencers’ fall recommendations

Speaking of fall releases! A few BookTok influencers shared their most anticipated fall releases.

Unsurprisingly, there’s some overlap with the list from Amazon we mentioned earlier—for instance, both roundups have the latest titles by Min Jin Lee, Jodi Picoult, John Green, and Elin Hilderbrand—but it wouldn’t be BookTok without romantasy, which there is plenty of.

In fact, among the romantasy titles is a sequel that will most likely be one of the biggest releases this year.

BookTokers’ most anticipated fall releases:

Hollywood, Ending by John Green (Recommended by Bridget of Bridgetish) Taipei Story by R. F. Kuang (Recommended by Milana of Milana’s Bookworm World) Dead Beat by Leigh Bardugo (Recommended by Eden of Eden’s Archives) The Witch by Freida McFadden (Recommended by Caitlin Bea) A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas (Recommended by Joel Wood)

More BookTok recs.