May 26, 2026
This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, May 27th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THE LAKE HOUSE: A Firefly Summer Novel by Lori Foster, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!
Editorial Content for Enormous Wings
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Laurie Frankel’s new novel, ENORMOUS WINGS, should come with a warning: This book will make you angry on behalf of women who are treated as second-class citizens and denied their rights. But the story of Pepper Mills, a septuagenarian who recently has moved to Vista View Retirement Community in Austin, Texas, also will have you smiling as you admire her spunk and wry sense of humor --- and, of course, the incredibly ridiculous situation in which she finds herself enmeshed. Read More
Teaser
At 77, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas --- that would be her three grown children --- but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant. As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubberneckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make --- and some she’s not allowed to make.
Promo
At 77, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas --- that would be her three grown children --- but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant. As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubberneckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make --- and some she’s not allowed to make.
About the Book
From beloved New York Times bestselling author Laurie Frankel comes an exuberant and timely new novel.
At 77, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas --- that would be her three grown children --- but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant.
As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubberneckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make --- and some she’s not allowed to make.
ENORMOUS WINGS is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks --- even so late in the day --- can still change and then change everything.
Audiobook available, read by Becky Ann Baker
Editorial Content for The Dorians
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Myths of the fountain of youth span the globe, from the ancient world to contemporary literary and pop-culture examples. Nick Cutter draws on these tropes (and directly references Oscar Wilde’s THE PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY) as he takes readers on a wild ride of aging, ethics and monsters in his latest horror novel, THE DORIANS, a book that is as gory as it is thoughtful. Read More
Teaser
On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalizing offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause --- forever, perhaps. The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent…one with no conscience yet possessed with a single-minded purpose that has helped it persist for eons: the will to survive. The dark heart of unbridled human ambition finds its apex in an unholy experiment that now tests the limits of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity.
Promo
On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalizing offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause --- forever, perhaps. The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent…one with no conscience yet possessed with a single-minded purpose that has helped it persist for eons: the will to survive. The dark heart of unbridled human ambition finds its apex in an unholy experiment that now tests the limits of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity.
About the Book
The all-new novel of terror from “one of the hottest horror authors on the planet” (Paste) and writer of the #HorrorBookTok sensation THE TROOP.
On a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, five elderly volunteers from different walks of life are given a tantalizing offer: to stall their biological clocks or even reverse them, restoring their lost youth. The chance to put death on pause --- forever, perhaps. The remarkable secret lies in the high-tech harnessing of an ancient and extraordinary biological agent…one with no conscience yet possessed with a single-minded purpose that has helped it persist for eons: the will to survive.
The dark heart of unbridled human ambition finds its apex in an unholy experiment that now tests the limits of both creator and subject, eclipsing all bounds of morality and sanity.
Audiobook available, read by Corey Brill
Editorial Content for American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
George Washington was born into a world trying to find its identity --- 13 disparate colonies situated in North America, overseen by royal governors who took their marching orders from across the Atlantic Ocean in England. Colonists struggled to build sustainable development amidst disease, famine and war with indigenous tribes. Read More
Teaser
From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States, AMERICAN PATRIARCH brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to lead. It casts George Washington as the icon of American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow.
Promo
From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States, AMERICAN PATRIARCH brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to lead. It casts George Washington as the icon of American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow.
About the Book
From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes an inspiring portrait of George Washington that examines his unrivaled leadership in the birth of America.
From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States, AMERICAN PATRIARCH brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to lead.
With a dazzling cast of characters --- from the French and Indians on the Ohio frontier; to the Marquis de Lafayette, Benedict Arnold and Baron von Steuben on the revolutionary battlefield; to Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton locked in conflict during his presidency --- AMERICAN PATRIARCH casts Washington as the icon of American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow.
Arriving in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence, this is a masterful portrait of Washington as the unrivaled leader of his times.
Audiobook available, read by Robert Fass
















