The Hot List: April 2026

And we're back in the miller's yard, despite the heat, their True Green lawn is thriving. They got a lawn like a golf course here in Maryland without wasting a weekend. And PJ, a tour golf has started showing up. Like this, bro, amazed this grass looks this good and this heat. Has to dodge the bike's anorecycling bins. Ah, perfectly struck. True Green, the easiest way to get a golf course quality lawn. Don't wait. Click the screen now to sign up at TrueGreen.com. Exclusions apply. See TrueGreen.com for details. This episode is brought to you by MGM Plus. From and its whores returns for season four, centered around a town that traps all those who enter. Terrifying creatures that come out at night. Horrors some wish to stay buried, where desperate hope leads to darker truths. Dangerous new arrivals, a sinister figure, a shocking revelation. From season four premieres April 19th on MGM Plus. Some doors should remain closed. This is the Bookcribe Podcast. I'm Jeff Bonilla. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And we come back for the hot list again for Rebecca. We're checking on the books that are making waves. They're making moves. They're throwing off heat. All kinds of meteorological analogies we could use for what these books are doing. We're talking about books that have won awards, books that are pre-order hits, current bestsellers, book club picks, adaptations, anything that might be trending on book talk, backlist books that get a relevance bump. There's no one kind of book that can be the hot list. The hot list is a, you know it when you see it, zeitgeist situation. So we have some carryovers, some new things, and then some are vibes, some are sales, some are actual numbers that are associated with the particular list. We're working out what the hot list format is going to be as it becomes a main feature of the regular feed on an ongoing basis. Do we need to crown the hot book of the month? We have the it book of the month. But should we consider that? We don't have to decide this now, but I'd like to enter that into the record as a possible thing. What is the hot book of the moment? Let's revisit that when we get through this list and see after we've talked about them, if there's anything that feels like it's hotter than the rest of them. Yeah. A contender certainly would be the correspondent by Virginia Evans, which we talked about on the BR pod winning the James Patterson and Bookshop prize. That is not the thing. That is not, that is a symptom rather than the cause of it being on this list. Like that is a second order effect of this book is being adapted. We've talked about that already. It's on the March list, number three, New York Times, Hardcover of Fiction. It is just the book that's being talked about. It's I am presupposing that going into Mother's Day, it's going to sell a ton more. There's going to be around pools on planes, summer travel. This one's going to be with us for a while, Rebecca. I think we're safely in that zone. I think so too, especially because of not just this James Patterson and Bookshop.org prize, but it also won the Indies Choice Book Award for Best Adult Fiction from 2025. That was just awarded last week as you're hearing the show. Lots of love for Virginia Evans from independent booksellers who were responsible for the book becoming a hit in the first place. They're going to continue driving that conversation. I think we're going to see Indies continue to hand sell this and now it broke containment. Now everybody is just talking about the correspondent. I imagine we have a few more months of the correspondent at least getting a nod at the top of the show for being carried over. It's going to stay hot for a while. That also goes for Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, continuing to do really well at the box office. It is still number one in paperback fiction on the New York Times list, number one on the New York Times combined e-book and print fiction, and number two on PW, that's Publishers Weekly, on their overall bestsellers. It's uncommon for a six-year-old novel in paperback to get this popular again, even when an adaptation comes out and Project Hail Mary has been back on bestseller lists really for the last year since the trailers started coming out for Project Hail Mary. So I think we have another month or two of this one as well. And I think we have a shadow current here that we may be sailing on, which is God knows what the audiobook is doing right now because it's an unbelievable audiobook. People are picking it up. You've been talking about it. I've been talking about it for a long time. They've had the narrator, what's his name, Ray? Ray Porter. I keep on saying Ray Parker, but that's who made the Ghostbusters theme song, Ray Parker Jr., so I'm going to get namespace pollution there. And here's another thing. So I think while this is in the theaters, we're probably going to keep it here just de facto. It'll come out on home video and have another surge. And then I think this will probably be nominated for a lot of Oscars, not the least of which will be best adapted screenplay. I think they did a hell of a job with the adaptation of this. I think we'll see it again in Oscar season. So Project Hail Mary may be on this list for the rest of the year and into next January, February. Who knows? We're going to get through one more thing. I'm going to hit you with another question, but Theo of Golden is doubling the sales of the correspondent by Virginia Evans right now. Like it's, I think this is weirdly getting less play than the correspondent because it's been out for a couple of years. And, you know, the author Alan Levy, I haven't seen much from him. Like he's an older gentleman. I think this is his debut novel. He's not out doing a lot of red this not doing a lot of doesn't need it apparently, Rebecca, because this is just going nuts. So I'm assuming that I haven't seen. I'm assuming they're going to get some. It's an 86 year old protagonist, which leaves us some interesting casting choices for so a late career. Oscar is on the table for whoever is this a Harrison Ford vibe, maybe. That would be on it would be if he doesn't already, we're going to cut that and send it to his agent as for a finders fee. He'd be on. I've just read a little bit about this, but there's a little bit of generosity, small town. I don't know that he is like Harrison Ford is like the walking embodiment of grumpy sunshine, like all the way back to Han Solo and Indiana Jones. My sense of this character and I'm going to read this eventually is it's not that it's not a man, you know, a man called Otto like that, that particular ones, a compassionate protagonist. So maybe, but like it's hard. I think it would be hard for Harrison Ford to play the Jason Siegel role and shrinking, which I feel like a little bit much with this character. OK, so Jason Siegel is what we're going for. And it's 44,000 copies a week right now. So this one is also carried over from last month's hot list. Yes, we're probably nodding to Theo of Golden along the way for several more months here. An older American actor who could play compassion like that. I have to think about that. I haven't I haven't prepped. I haven't prepped. I'm not ready. My brain is firing and it's it's not going to send us your dream casting of Theo of Golden. If you've read it podcast at book riot dot com. So these are the three big sellers and I ask you this. The next level for one of these books to get to and I guess all of them could get to is a crawdad sing where basically everyone where all the kindling that's available to burn could burn. And that's where anyone who is at all interested in reading a book, maybe they're in a book club, maybe they want to be, they read one book a year, two books a year and they'll pick up something. Does any one of those have the capacity to hit that now for people who don't know? We're talking multiple years, millions and millions of sales. Yeah, the the path of the correspondent right now looks more similar to the path of crawdads. I was actually thinking about this last night because where the crawdads sing came, it came out near the end of the year that it was published in and the following year, like mid year, it got a bump and then got a book club selection and then sort of took off. But it was still in hard cover when it took off and that that helps with having real momentum. And when you're in hard cover, like where the crawdad sing was never going to be an award consideration, but Virginia Evans clearly is and has already now won some stuff with the correspondent. Theo of Golden, it's already in paperback, but that might be really working in its favor because more people are picking up paperbacks that tends to be a great boon for book clubs. Either one, I mean, really could be to my knowledge, there's not like a sharp pop culture, like pithy way to describe either of these. It's more like they both seem to me to be like pleasant vibes that people enjoy hanging out in and what made crawdads work so well at the time was like, you know, we were early in the Me Too movement and where the crawdads sing had like real female revenge energy and a mystery driving it. Well, it's a mystery. I mean, just a plot, right? I think just a plot. And not that a book needs to be similar in its genre or structure to crawdads to do well, but I think either of those could chart a crawdads path. Right now, I think my money would be on the correspondent because with the award wins, it's going to have more hand selling and like a little more bookstore draw. But Theo of Golden doing well on its own without any of that stuff. I almost think that the Theo of Golden doubling the correspondent sells with the profile it doesn't have is actually maybe more indicative because maybe the right comfort these is not a murder mystery with a young protagonist. These are older protagonists, you know, and what that means, the compassion, nostalgia, the end of life. Maybe we need to be thinking more Tuesdays with Mori than we need to be thinking where the crawdads sing. And that's probably sold more. Yeah, that's an endearing like year, years and years long. Tuesdays with Mori was still big like a decade after it came out. Yeah. Interesting stuff there. It'd be interesting to see there. So I'm going to get to Theo of Golden this summer, but. All right, that seems like a good summer read from our carryovers from last month into new brand new books. Yes, not even out yet. Not even out last month. Yeah, this is our preorder corner Hollywood ending by John Green. Going to be John Green's adult fiction debut. It's coming out in September. It's a behind the scenes love story about two young actors who meet filming an Andy Warhol biopic. It's been on Barnes and Noble's most viewed books of the week. We haven't seen any preorder sales data because that's just usually not publicly available unless like with the Aqatar books last month, it somehow slips onto a bestseller list. But I think safe to say with John Green's profile, the affection that readers have for him, he's out doing interviews right now, like where he's just kind of casually talking about this, but John Green is in the media. And this will this will be a big book of the fall. So we may not be talking about it here on the hot list again until September, but it's been a big one since last month's hot list. On a scale of one to 10, how cravenly is this looking for an adaptation right away called Hollywood ending starring actors. They're filming a biopic with one of the iconic, you know, figures of Andy Warhol. John Green doesn't have to. Yeah, he doesn't have to go fishing to get an adaptation. He's probably just going to get adapted anyway. We'll see. See how it goes. This episode is brought to you by Quince. I've been shopping from Quince for a while now and at some point my husband started noticing. I'd show him what arrived, another linen piece incredibly well made. And when I told him what I paid for it, he couldn't believe it. Eventually he just started ordering for himself. The thing that got him hooked was the linen pants. We travel a lot, especially in the summer and he's been looking for something that doesn't wrinkle into a disaster in a suitcase. Looks good enough for dinner out and is actually really comfortable in the heat. These are that the kind of pants you wear on the plane. Go straight to a nice enough restaurant and nobody knows you've been traveling all day. They've become his default for summer date nights to their laid back but pulled together without any effort. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So everything is 50 to 60 percent less than comparable brands. The quality is there. The price just doesn't match it in the very best way. Go to quince.com slash book riot for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash book riot. Thanks to Quince for supporting the show. Today's episode is brought to you by Gungnir forged in myth publishers of Aeon by Matthew Medney, John Connolly and Joe Harris. At the last black hole, the universe nears its end. Protons have decayed. Neutron stars are gone and time slips away. Immensely powerful beings gather, building a planet and Citadel to manifest fragments of themselves. In this space, they communicate to confront fate and decide what remains when existence itself unravels. Aeon is what happens when the last inheritors of a dead civilization discover that legacy isn't about what you leave behind. Rather, it's about who you become when leaving behind is no longer possible. This is a love letter to everyone who ever existed. It was always going to end here. You can visit Gungnir books dot com and sign up to read the first 20 pages of Aeon for free. Again, that's Gungnir books G U N G N I R B O OK S dot com. Sign up, read for free. Make sure to check out Aeon by Matthew Medney, John Connolly and Joe Harris. And thanks again to Gungnir for sponsoring this episode. This episode is brought to you by Del Ray, publisher of Enamorada by Ava Reed. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition. Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth and seven noble houses ruled by Necromancy until a conqueror's blade brought them low. But defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members, beautiful Merozia and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes. Though she has not spoken in seven years, Agnes carries the House's legacy. She must recapture the secrets of death magic and avenge her family's fall in honor. And so a gruesome new duology begins. This is the first book in a new duology from Ava Reed, author of Lady Macbeth and a study in drowning. If you crave the macabre body horror and doomed characters, this book is for you. And it will leave your jaw on the floor. You'll be desperate to know what happens in book two. Then stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Enamorada by Ava Reed. Thanks to our sponsors at Del Ray. This one we talked with Mary from Books a Million about this, but I had heard about this before, Daggermouth by H.M. Wolfe, which the e-book is already out there and catching fire like there's like 60,000 Goodreads reviews. And there's a print edition coming out from S&S in July. Apparently it's a duology. And I think it's like my understanding is it's a dystopian romance. Enemies to lovers dystopian romance. So conform meets V for vendetta. I don't know conform, but I do know V for vendetta. This is from the publisher Synopsis. 544 pages. It's getting the full spread, embossed, whatever. Now going dystopian romance is an interesting move for the TikTok romance genre plus generation because underrated in the heart of the Hunger Games phenomenon, I always love Triangle stuff. So I'm putting that out there. I don't have a print run for this. Simon and Schuster does it. Yeah, I haven't seen that either. But I've seen this in a couple places and I'm very curious. So I put that on our pre-order. Also mid-summer, a good moment to drop a book like that. Like we'll see if July's hot list brings us back to Daggermouth with bestseller numbers. Yeah, that'd be interesting. And then Abby AJ. I call her AJ because I'm so familiar with all of her work. I know it back to front. No, that's me. That's Michelle who pre-ordered this and is ready to go. Yeah, this is a Friends to Lovers romance the night we met by Abby Jimenez. About a woman who chose the wrong guy to drive her home from a concert years ago. Kind of a sliding doors moment for her. And then she has this platonic friend, Chris, they're great friends and he is waiting on the sidelines trying to choose his moment to make a move and also kind of watching what's happening in the relationship that she has with the guy that did drive her home. But Friends to Lovers, like it's a romance. We know how it's going to end. But Abby Jimenez, I think is ascending to a place similar to what Emily Henry holds with contemporary romance readers. This is number one in New York Times Hardcover Fiction right now. Number one in Publishers Weekly overall and Hardcover Fiction lists. It's the fourth most popular book published this year on Goodreads, like just huge. And among the 10 most viewed books on Barnes & Noble this week. A great showing in her release week for Abby Jimenez. Do you know, does Emily Henry have a book coming out this summer? I don't believe so. I haven't seen it. She taken the summer off. I mean, I've not seen an Emily Henry announcement for this year. I feel like the last couple of years it's been like the Swallows to Capistrano. There's the Abby Jimenez and Emily Henry summer books coming out. So that's interesting. Yeah, I don't believe there is an Emily Henry one. I haven't seen anything about that. Yeah. The next one, everyone's talking about segment presented by Random House and everyone is talking about half his age. Jeanette Bacurdy, we talked about this a lot of preview shows. We covered the news when it came out and you went so far, Rebecca, as to read the dang thing. I did, man. And it's great. Which is fiction and you liked it. I did. It's about a 17 year old girl named Waldo who has a relationship with her creative writing teacher at high school. All of the triggers and cringes and all of the things that you think are going to be present there are present. But it's really also it's sharp and really insightful. Waldo is really angry. She has a lot of agency. She has like just that sort of bottomless hunger for life and connection and experience that teenagers have. And we get to see Waldo's relationship with her mom, which as a typical teenager, she is trying to reject all of her mother's ways of being in the world. She sees her mom sort of bending over backwards to please the men in her life. Her mom's moods are really dependent on how things are going with her current boyfriend. And Waldo hates all of that, but doesn't realize that she's replicating it. Like the reader as the reader, you see that that's happening and part of the joy of this book is getting to follow Waldo on this journey from she's the one who initiates this relationship with her teacher. And he should absolutely not have gone along with it, but he does. And it doesn't turn out to be the fantasy that she has imagined. No, you don't say. I know. Like the book opens with Waldo having a disappointing sexual experience with a fellow teenage boy and with a fellow teenager. And then she thinks that it's going to be so much better when she's with this adult man that she's idolizes. And maybe there are some parts or some moments that are better, but there's a lot that is still disappointing to Waldo and her really like her arc over the course of the story I found to be this felt fresh to me. I'm in now for Jeanette McCurdy. I really liked I'm glad my mom died, but I wanted to see what she could do with fiction. And this felt like a big arrival. I don't know if she's going to continue writing fiction, but I was really happy to see this. We talked about it last month. So just organically. So this is its second month on the hot list. It was one of the most anticipated books of the year. And it's currently number three on Goodreads for the most popular books published this year, nearly 100,000 Goodreads ratings already. What's the star count on that? Did you look? I have it. It's over four. That's good. Yeah, I don't have the tab open, but it's it's doing well. It's hard to underestimate the number of copies that I'm glad my mom died sold. And one of our great questions was how many we're going to follow McCurdy, not just to the next book, but to a book that is not, you know, maybe the easiest, easiest subject matter in the world. Sounds like so far people are checking it out and they're digging it. Yeah, it's provocative. I think this was a bold move and there were readers who just dismissed this out of hand because of what it's about. I certainly understand that it's not an easy one to read. But I really I think if you have any curiosity about this, I would encourage you to try it. It's wonderful. Yeah, I think you trigger warnings, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, all of them. You're going to need all. But so did I'm glad my mom died in a lot of ways, maybe not the same kind of trigger warning. But this is not easy. This is not Tuesdays with more. And I'll just say it's not the book you think you're going to get when we hear the like teenage girl has a relationship with her English teacher. And in some ways I found that to be really exciting. I think there are readers that want to levy more judgment against Waldo and the teacher than Waldo levies. And so if you're looking for like a really hard moral line to be drawn, that's not what McCurdy is interested in doing. And the fact that she's not interested in doing that makes her more interesting to me. Yeah, I mean, even with the title of I'm glad my mom died, it's less judgmental as your mother than you think it is when you get into it. And even the course of the writing it, it becomes more complicated than that. Anyway, thanks to Random House for sponsoring this everyone's talking about segment. We've covered covered is strong for these James Patterson team ups. Oh, yeah. But I feel like this Viola Davis one is doing something different than the other ones have done like Viola Davis is out there more. It seems like it's selling quite well. Yeah. Am I wrong? No, I think that's right. Behaving differently than the other ones. It's called Judge Stone. It's about a judge named Mary Stone who's presiding over the most controversial case in the South. It deals with race in some ways. I've heard Viola Davis was on Amy Poehler's podcast to promote this. Well, she indeed. And talked about it a little bit. And she seems to have really been involved with it. It is doing more than other James Patterson team ups have done. This is number two in hardcover fiction on the New York Times and publishers weekly this week. Also on that Barnes and Noble most viewed list of the week. And just Viola Davis like Viola Davis doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to do and that she's out doing press for this. Like she very easily could have just like said, let's do a fun book project. I'll sign on and then we'll see what happens. But she seems genuinely excited and invested in it. Reviews are like more interesting and positive than I tend to see for typical James Patterson books. So something to be said there. But I was just I'm just interested in the whole thing around it. So in my in my whenever I get the the genie lamp that only answers wishes about publishing information. So it's a very specific gene very small lamp. So we start there with how many of the books that get bought actually get read. That's our first one. Well, maybe this is a Patreon episode we need to do the business arrangement amongst James Patterson and his celebrity co-writers who is writing what. What do they agree to do publicity. What cut do they get. Do they get future rights to sequels like how does one broker a deal like this. How does it happen occurring to me and I am embarrassed that it is just occurring to me. But I wonder if this is also going to be a Viola Davis film vehicle. Is she going to play the I wonder about all of these. Right. Like the Reese Witherspoon one with what's his name Harlan. That was another one. I mean, I'm guessing like Louise Penny. Didn't she do one with Hillary Clinton. I don't think she'll be starring in that Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure that her acting days are still ahead of her. But she did one with Louise. Yes, I know. I'm kidding at this point. But that would be interesting to see how this is all going to play out at the same time. I've written for some mess. We don't often get a messy but that certainly elevates it into the hot books of the month to have some mess behind it. A moment for the discourse. I was trying to summarize this Rebecca and I stopped because I didn't want to but we have to do it. So what do we how shall we summarize the. All right. Well, we're talking about Adult Braces by Lindy West, which is her new collection of essays. Lindy West, a great sort of one of the leading millennial feminist writers on the Internet for early like early 2000s Internet writing continues to be out there doing cultural commentary. But this has caught the buzz and Vanessa and Erica talked about it here on the show a couple of weeks ago because West reveals in the collection that from the beginning of her marriage, her husband indicated that he did not want to be monogamous. She was not interested in nonmonogamy and it turned out that he was cheating on her like he was doing an ethical nonmonogamy. And now they have worked it out and his husband her husband's other partner now lives with them and they have a Polly relationship and West writes in the book about that whole the whole discovery of it. And so it's like a process of trying to work stuff out in their marriage and then lands in a place where she's like you don't have to believe me now but I am happy. This is the life that I want. And you just from all of the words that I've said in the last minute you can imagine all of the comments the Internet might have about the choices that she has made the choice that her husband made and how she responded to that. And so they're just wagging with adult braces. So there's just lots and lots of talk, but it doesn't seem that the buzz is actually translating to sales. New York Magazine has this wonderful newsletter called Book Gossip and they dug into the book scan data and found that there was only about 1800 copies sold in the first week. Somewhere between 5 and 10,000 in the first week typically to get onto the New York Times bestseller list. And at the time of that writing a week or so ago only about 3000 total had been sold. So there's a lot more conversation about Lindy West than there is actual engagement with what she's written, which tends also to be how discourse functions. Yeah. And on Goodreads only less than 2000 ratings at this point 3.77 stars. It's a real old Internet thing. Sachi Kool, who I have interviewed for a position, did a profile of Lindy West that I think was, I think it was good. I think if you're the subject of that, I think you maybe are not thrilled to see her portrayed that way, but it doesn't seem unfair. And then Lindy West husband wrote a really nasty email that's actually made messier by making public and it's all just spiraling. It's a whole thing. In my theory of the case is one or both of the following. One is people actually don't care that much, which is maybe their base case for all these two is now you feel like you got this story without having had to read the book if you just read the piece about the mess. Yeah. This is just the perfect kind of interpersonal mess or like whatever your perspective, there's something that you can level judgment about it online. It makes for an easy tweet. It makes for an easy hot take. But yeah, I think, I mean, this is a long essay collection that has a lot of stories about Lindy West's life and this is the only one that's getting any real attention. A tough hang for Lindy West right now on the Internet. This is not the kind of mess I personally enjoy. I don't enjoy many messes, but this is down towards the bottom of a mess enjoyment ladder. This is like pretty close to my response to the news about Dan Brown several years ago when he was having an affair. Not my business. It just falls in my people do things, but it's not my business. This like her husband cheated on her and they had a conversation about it. She wrote about it and I people do things. I don't care. Speaking of messiness, this one is selling and is getting all kinds of profile. And I think one of the reasons that this is a memoir of a marriage falling apart told from the really the highest reaches of privilege. Right. Strangers by Belle Bird. Strange why I didn't even say the name. Gwyneth Paltrow, who herself knows a thing or two about privilege, knows her way around a privilege situation. Yeah, this novel could have been titled Conscious Uncoupling. It's not a novel. It's a memoir. A memoir. Yeah. I have felt zero interest in this, Rebecca. Same. Because you and I have talked about you and I know our way around a divorce memoir. We like a relationship book. We're sympathetic to interested in and, you know, otherwise. Amenable to stories of all kinds. But we read enough of these that we needed to be something different or have some hook or exceptional writing or new insights like kind after Leslie Jameson. I'm like, what do you can you do for me? And I'm not feeling like I'm going to get that from Belle Bird, but I might be wrong. What is your sense of this? Yeah, that's my sense to enough people whose opinions I tend to respect and often agree with have liked this that I've found myself looking at it. Yeah. It might be something that I pick up over the summer. Like we are, I think in the minority here, it's number three in the New York Times hardcovered on fiction list. It's number seven on the PW list this week. And it's been out for a little while now, but continuing to be read. People are continuing to talk about it. I don't know if it has a word contention potential, but I guess I wouldn't be surprised. We'll see. We'll see where we go with Strangers by Belle Bird. We'll definitely be hearing about it again another couple of years when Gwyneth comes out. I was reading the review in the Times and I remember one thing that I did find interesting is apparently her partner asked for the divorce and it's, I don't know that it's out of the blue, but it's decisive. And he says he wants nothing, not even the custody of the kids. He just wants out of the whole thing. Wow. And I don't know. I that's not what I hear very sometimes people disappear or they otherwise do it, but like a very clean break of the whole. I mean, break of the whole life and they're not fighting. Like that's unusual. I don't, I don't know, but I can imagine if, you know, you yourself have gone through a divorce or you know, someone who has. Maybe this is what you're interested in, but I feel like I've, I've got it at this point with what is on the tin for this. I mean, sadly for us, Leslie Jamison's divorce memoir did not become a giant sensation. So most people are not in the where do you go after Leslie Jamison camp? Splinter is the best COVID book and the best divorce book and the best parenting book, maybe all at the same time. She's so good. The subject of a multiple profiles a read with Jenna pick. I have purchased this though. I have not read it yet. It's Upward Bound by Woody Brown. I put in the chat. That's or in our, in our TI. Our today in books. Yeah, I think I put it in there. I sent it Michelle saying, make sure you're sitting down. You've got tissues with you. The story is quite unbelievable. Woody Brown's autistic and nonverbal. And my understanding is that until he was several years old, maybe six, seven, eight, nine, they didn't think he understood language. But at some point, his mom realized that he did and that he could associate words with other things. And not only that, that if they used a letter board, could point to letters and words and pictures and actually could write. He loves stories. Got an MFA at Columbia. And this is the debut. And I have no idea what it's about. I cannot get that far without choking up. I don't know how much Xanax I have in the house. I'm going to need to take it all in multiple forms, maybe a powder, make a liquid, maybe is an edible Xanax. Edibles for Becca. Is this, are you finally going to get on the edibles train, but it's going to be because of an emotional. This is all metaphor. I'm sure that someone has experimented with Xanax edibles in their basement. It must just taste so medicinal. Don't do that at home. Right. Yeah. Don't do that at home. Anyway, it's been all over the place for Becca. An incredible story. A real story. Yeah. And like truly a high profile, fascinating story. Do not read the comments on the New York Times profile of Woody Brown. Oh, what? Oh, I don't know why. It's like, I mean, it's just a bunch of jerks being like, yeah, but is it real? Is it real? They think it's put on to get a mid-list novel. Did he really do this? If he, if he can do this, could he really use a letter board with his mom? Like it's just, you know, it's the internet doing internet things. You know, I just, you know what? Even if I can understand some of the plausibility of something, I'm going to choose to believe. I'm going to choose to believe Rebecca. Yeah. I, um, and like, I do not go into the comments of New York Times pieces or anywhere on the internet willingly, but somebody, um, a sub stack that I get was like trying, I think to draw parallels between Brown using this letter board to communicate and his mother helping him write and like, trying to connect it to like people using AI to help them write and everything just falls apart from there. So let's give Woody, you know what we're not going to do? We're not going to do that. I would agree with that. Yeah. I continually am surprised by how many people leave comments on New York Times articles. Didn't, didn't we, have we learned nothing, Rebecca? Have we learned? Apparently not. Like I, I don't know. I don't know why we're commenting on anything in 2026. What I do want to comment on is London falling by Patrick Rad and Keith. Now we're talking, now we are talking all of the profiles for our boy PRK. I have not read this yet, but you have tremendous. The launch event was at the 92nd straight. Why with Sarah Jessica Parker herself in attendance. I also noticed now I'm a man that can at occasion navigate a social situation. If I, if I put my back into it, but the family of the young man who dies, that is the center of the story comes, they flew over and they were very much involved. And like, if I remember this correctly, like Patrick Rad and Keith was got on the case by someone like they were looking for people to investigate beyond the police, you know, people to take up the story and heard the story and took it on. So I think they were very much appreciative of his efforts to uncover what may have happened. But I don't know. So you're at, you're at the book sign. You're at the Sarah Jessica Parker is like smiling and welcome Patrick and everyone's thrilled. But it's about a book about how your kid died. What are you feeling in that moment Rebecca? I have, I don't know. And he arrives at like, or I don't know if he arrives at anything since I haven't read it yet. Like it turns out that the story is much bigger than. Yes. Sorry. So the main, the 19 year old, I'm going to use passive voices here intentionally here goes over the ledge of a luxury apartment building in London on the Thames and his body is found a few days later. He's, he's passed away. And then it's a, it's a story of him, his backstory, his secret life that he didn't, his parents didn't know he was living of privilege of Russian and Eastern European money flowing into London. How it's affected the school of systems, the police, the social dynamics of London and private school and aspirational, but also online. Rebecca, you may or may not know this. Not everyone says exactly what they mean and are at all times online. So that's a, that's a warning for all of us. And it becomes a really interesting portrait of a young man and so far as we know it, but also a structure, a system, a culture that collides in a way that is elliptical and elusive, but with indelible characters and a mystery and investigation and cameras and MI5 and the whole thing. If you're looking for somebody to get more information about what happened to your kid Patrick Rad and Keith shows up at your door. I think you're happy that that's who you have investigating. On the other hand, if you're just doing your life and Patrick Rad and Keith shows up at your door with a few questions for you, No. You're marking that down as a bad day. You don't want, that's not something you're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. You don't, whatever he's going to find, you don't want found. Yeah. One of our shared curiosities is where the hell are we with political books right now? And are they good for anything other than I'm going to run for president in a year? Yeah. This one stood out to me because it gets at all of those questions. It's Stand by Corey Booker. It just came out last week. It's described as an urgent call to rekindle our shared American ideals. Of course, coming on the heels of the senator's historic 25 hour five minutes. Is it the heels? This feels like it happened 10,000 years ago. Well, okay. But that's because of the news cycle that we live in. Well, I'm just saying. But after his 25 hour five minute filibuster speech, I mean, anytime a politician writes a memoir, we should assume it's a campaign document. So certainly this is whether Booker writes for president someday or he just wants to continue serving as a senator or I don't know, a cabinet position someday, whatever. But it is selling and they don't always sell. It's number two on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list and number five on PW's hardcover nonfiction list. I mean, I think there's a little extra heat around Corey Booker right now because of that filibuster. He's, you know, out there doing got married. He did get married. I'm going to be not cynical, but he got married. He did get married, which reads as a I might want to run for president someday kind of move. But maybe he just loves his lady and wanted to get married to her. Who knows. I hope so. Stand is out there and it's selling at least in the first week it has sold. I think one thing that does happen with these political memoirs sometimes is that they get some pre-orders or they get enough pre-orders to hit the best seller list in the first week. And then sales tend to trickle off unless you're really unless you're like Michelle Obama. Or there's something. I mean, yeah, we saw this with 127 days. I think we saw that they have a Newsome book like the choir will buy the preacher's book, but right now the congregation is not interested in these particular kinds of stories right now. But to follow that, I was just looking at the March it books just to see if we should bring anything forward or consider because what do we do with the New Yorker profile of Ben Lerner, all the reviews, apparently it's good. Does this, does this have any, is it warm? Is it room temperature even? I'm not even suggesting hot list. Well, room temperature on transcription by Ben Lerner. I think we are as we're recording this, the book has only been out for three days. Too early. Too early. Too soon for the hot list, but it could appear on the May hot list. We'll see. He's definitely, I mean, he's an interesting figure and the publisher is invested in that book and in the baby and in the Ben Lerner of it all. So publicity has done a good job getting him interviews, profiles, high, you know, high level features on things, but we'll see what reader appetite is like for it. The other one similar and some of these aren't out yet. We'll see if we can visit them when we come a little bit later. But the witch, which you read, Mary and John speaking of being on the publicity tour, I don't know that she's ever done this much American publicity. I may have missed it the first go around and maybe it's the finally point where my eyes, my internet eyes are able to see it or picking it out, but she did a New York magazine thing. There were some more fluff pieces at the right word, but more general cultural interest kind of coverage of her in this book than I have ever seen before in my life, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. I think she's on my warm list. I would love for Marie and Jai to be selling well enough to be on the hot list. A great situation to be in. I mean, I would actually, you know, if I get to choose, I'd prefer that to Ben Lerner because Ben Lerner is warm in my heart. It's toasty in there. It doesn't, doesn't, I don't need any more heat. We're going to keep each other warm. Homothermic when it comes to Ben Lerner. Just a couple of guys from Kansas because Ben Lerner and I have achieved about the same things as what I hear you saying. This is the, the literary bromance that you dream of. And I want that for you. It's like that old bit between Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe between the two of us. We have two Oscars and that's even comparing me to Ryan Gosling, which is still unfair. I think we're having a good day for your ego, I guess. Are we? Yeah. All right. What else happened? Oh, I woke up. Self comparing to Ryan Gosling, you're having a good self esteem day. All the dynamic dynamic dynamic. All right, Rebecca, this is fun. That's the hot list. I want you to see an email book right at pod podcast at book right. We've been doing this for 5,000 episodes and I still can't get the email right every single time. Go to show notes book right.com last slash listen to Patreon is patreon.com slash book right podcast. Those are all in the show notes are right there in the palm of your hand, which is certainly the place you're listening to podcasts because everyone do the show notes right there. Rebecca. Oh, wait, what's in the zero to well read feed right now? You would know I don't because it's coming out. As this is airing. Oh, Gilead is in the zero to well read feed. Our beloved shared book. A very special week for us on zero to well read. Wow. Wow. Wow. You know, we could the same casting. I think we did that for office hours. We casted Gilead. You're looking at the same list for the Theo of Golden. I think that's right. My leader in my mental clubhouse right now. I think, I think, I think is, I don't know if it's enough star power, but I think I would use Richard Jenkins. Hmm. That's kind of where I would go there. I'm having a Richard Jenkins moment. He's on a DTF St. Louis. Hmm. Interesting. All right, Rebecca, we'll talk to you there. Anyway. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audio book excerpt of innamorada by Ava Reed, provided by our sponsors at Delray. You, Lady Agnes, last of all, he said, I would be happy to receive your judgment. Am I a true king? Her heart beat in that strangled rabbit way with as much vigor as she could manage. She nodded. What was that, lady? Speak. This silence was the most callous ruler yet, more bitter even than the king, as cruel as the stones of the castle itself. I speak for all the house of teeth in this matter. Merozia said hurriedly before this horrible regime could grow more entrenched. You are a true king, Your Majesty. My cousin would not ever think to question your virtue, either. Enough from you. Niquefra said. He waved his knife vaguely in her direction, and Merozia closed her mouth at once. I am asking the Lady Agnes. I would like to hear her speak it in her own voice. His gaze rested upon her. It was not a hateful gaze. It was not even angry, particularly. Whether blazing emotion had been, there was now only icy assurance. He was certain that he could make her speak. He did not even need to shout or snarl. He already felt half victorious. Agnes stared back at him, her tongue line limp in her mouth. Seconds passed, as droplets from a tincture. The king blinked, and a bit of impatience leaked into his voice. Well, speak, Lady Agnes. Speak. She did not. What is wrong with you, girl? He spat at last. I am your king. His spittle sprayed onto her face. She did not even try to wipe it away. Father, Leopron said tersely, Leave her be. She has proven her obeisance, as have we all. The king's gaze cut the air like a bullet. The king's gaze cut the air like a whip, as he shifted to look at his son. She has proven nothing until I say so. Nothing will satisfy me but her voice, so speak, Lady Agnes. Or if you cannot, I will have to rest the words from you myself. And then he drove his knife down, right through the centre of her hand. There were screams enough to butcher the silence for good. Though none came from Agnes' mouth, she did not even whimper as she looked down. The blade had driven straight through the meat and muscle of her, pinning her hand to the table. There was no blood at all, and the shark head, in fact, smothered most of the pain. She regarded the bloodless wound with a removed sort of curiosity. She felt almost buoyant. Though her hands was held fast to the wood, her mind floated freely, watching herself from above. The king regarded her with his mouth ajar, stupid like a gutted fish. He had meant to surprise her voice out of her, as if her silence was an animal that could be spooked. Yet the act was so brusque and quotidian that Agnes felt almost embarrassed on his behalf. He had no wiles, not even imagination. And true torture required a bit of both. And then at last came the anger, gathering on his brow like black storm clouds. He released the knife, leaving it to stand perfectly upright, held in place by her constricting flash. Over her head, he gestured to the leeches at the end of the table. Truss, he said, Mordant, come! They shuffled across the dais toward him. The remove Agnes felt made her sluggish. Her reflexes slow. By the time Truss and Mordant reached her, she could not manage to rest her hand free. And then, at the king's gruff instruction, they each took her by one shoulder and thrust her down onto the table. Father! Leopron's voice rang out in horror. Stop this! Let her go! With her cheek pressed roughly against the wood, Agnes could not see what scene played out above. She heard scraping as Leopron pushed back his chair and stood. The king stood too. Rosia was letting out little, wordless squeals of panic, muffled, as though she had one hand clapped over her mouth. Metal clattered against metal. She could glimpse only the legs and feet of the Dolores guard as they cracked the doors and poured into the room, storming the dais. They crowded the table like weevils upon a crop. Agnes struggled to turn her face up until at the blurry edge of her vision. She managed to see four of them holding Leopron back. Their steel clad arms gripped him about the waist and the chest, and then two others came and grasped each of his wrists. She had not given Nikephorus enough credit, she realized hazyly. He had some wiles after all. This was no impulsive turn. It had been planned and calculated, arranged like an act of a grand mask. And this mask had a theme to impart upon its audience. Do not ever mistake sluggardry for idleness. The slumbering bear is not complacent in its den. It is merely working up its appetite again. Adele Blanche had made this error, and now Agnes would pay a martyr's price for it. The knife was removed, and blood spurted from the wound like a spray of seawater. Agnes Barely had the chance to draw breath before the blade was driven down again, this time into the tender webbing of skin between her finger and her thumb.