The Bletchley Riddle (2024) is a middle grade historical mystery novel co-written by Steve Sheinkin and Ruta Sepetys. The novel describes the summer of 1940 in London, with the British defending themselves against Nazi air raids. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his 14-year-old sister Lizzie, who love riddles and puzzles, find themselves at Britain’s codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park, an operation that is striving to break German communication codes. Jakob works alongside the team to break... Read The Bletchley Riddle Summary

The Bloody Chamber is a collection of 10 gothic short stories by English author Angela Carter, first published in 1979. Carter’s work is strongly influenced by the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. In these stories, she subverts many of the gender and social dynamics that underlie these traditional tales and brings their sexual undertones to the forefront. The stories from The Bloody Chamber have been widely anthologized and studied around the... Read The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories Summary

“The Blue Bowl” initially appeared in the June 1987 issue of Poetry magazine and was later published in 1990 as part of Jane Kenyon’s third poetry collection, Let Evening Come. The poem explores several subjects common in Kenyon’s poetry— the natural world, death, depression, and grief—and utilizes spare, natural imagery to highlight her themes. Writing in free verse, Kenyon’s quiet, detailed rendition of the natural world draws comparisons with the English Romantic-era poet John Keats... Read The Blue Bowl Summary

The Bluest Eye is the first novel of Nobel-Prize winning writer Toni Morrison. It was published in 1970. Set in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, the novel traces how Pecola Breedlove, the dark-skinned daughter of a poor African American family, came to be pregnant with her father's child and lost her sanity after the baby died.Morrison prefaces the novel with a Foreword in which she explains several of her choices in writing the novel. The novel... Read The Bluest Eye Summary

The Body in the Library, a 1942 whodunnit by Agatha Christie, is the second novel to feature Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple. Christie’s novel leavens its suspenseful story with verbal wit, romance, humor, and social commentary as it explores themes including The Two Sides of Gossip, Social Inequality as a Motive for Deception, and The Contrast Between Appearance and Reality. Widely counted among the finest of Christie’s Marple novels, The Body in the Library has... Read The Body in the Library Summary

Briar Boleyn’s 2024 novel, The Bond That Burns, is the second installment in The Bloodwing Academy dark fantasy-romance series. Set at a deadly magical university, the novel continues the journey of Medra Pendragon, a student with a secret lineage who awakens a powerful dragon named Nyxaris. Now a prisoner at Bloodwing Academy, Medra must grapple vicious power politics, her destiny as a dragon rider, and her troubling attraction to her consort, the arrogant and dominating... Read The Bond That Burns Summary

The Bones Beneath My Skin is a novel by American author T. J. Klune about a man named Nate, who returns to his family cabin in Oregon after the violent deaths of his parents. When he encounters two mysterious strangers, Alex and Art, his discovery that Art is actually an alien consciousness in the body of a young girl will force him to reconsider his outlook on his own life and on the universe itself. Known... Read The Bones Beneath My Skin Summary

Australian author Zana Fraillon’s young adult fiction novel The Bone Sparrow (2016) exposes the plight of the Rohingya people from Burma, specifically those being held in immigration detention centers in Australia. Nine-year-old Subhi was born in the detention camp and has little knowledge of the outside world. He spends his days roaming the dusty confines of the camp and, at night, escapes to his imagination for comfort. Everything changes for Subhi when a girl named... Read The Bone Sparrow Summary

A. D. Bell’s The Bookbinder’s Secret is a dual-timeline historical mystery set in England in 1901. The novel follows Lilian Delaney, an apprentice bookbinder whose curiosity about a damaged book pulls her into a 50-year-old scandal involving forced marriage, a hidden child, and a contested inheritance. Across both timelines, Bell develops themes such as The Cost of Obsession, Women Confined by Gendered Exploitation, and Truth-Seeking Through Attention to Detail. Published by St. Martin’s Press in... Read The Bookbinder's Secret Summary

The Book Club for Troublesome Women (2025) by Marie Bostwick follows four women in 1960s America who form a kinship through a book club. The first book they read is Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and it has long-lasting repercussions on the women’s marriages and lives. The narrative, which takes place largely in the year 1963, is peppered with references to historical US events as well, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the... Read The Book Club for Troublesome Women Summary

Written by Abbi Waxman in 2019, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill is an adult romantic comedy that follows the slow blooming of Nina Hill, a single bookseller with anxiety who undergoes a personal transformation as she discovers family she never knew she had, acquires a boyfriend, and learns that some aspects of real life can be just as rewarding as fiction. The novel became a USA Today bestseller and received praise from review outlets... Read The Bookish Life of Nina Hill Summary

The Book of Daniel is a 1971 semi-historical novel by American author E. L. Doctorow. The novel is loosely based on the true story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 by the United States government after being accused of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. In the novel, the Rosenbergs are replaced by the fictional Isaacsons. Doctorow received many prestigious awards for his historical fiction, including the National Book Award... Read The Book of Daniel Summary

In 2020, veteran novelist Lisa Wingate released The Book of Lost Friends, an historical novel set in contemporary Louisiana with flashbacks to post-Reconstruction Texas. The first of the novel’s two storylines traces the adventures of three women who, a decade after the Civil War, undertake a dangerous journey from war-ravaged Louisiana to the open frontier of Texas in an effort to reclaim their families. The second follows the efforts of a first-year high school English... Read The Book of Lost Friends Summary

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman is the 2021 installment in Hoffman’s Practical Magic fantasy series. The first book in the series, Practical Magic (1995), focuses on the love stories of witches named Sally and Gillian Owens. The prequel, The Rules of Magic (2017), tells the story of Jet and Franny (the aunts who raised Sally and Gillian) and their brother, Vincent. Magic Lessons (2020) details the life of Maria Owens, who cursed her... Read The Book of Magic Summary

Midwestern-born novelist Jane Hamilton wrote her debut novel, The Book of Ruth, in 1988. It won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel the following year. Set in small-town Illinois in the 1970s, this beautiful and sensitive book grapples with common familial issues including coming of age, detachment, intimacy, and violence within the family. Although suggestive of real events, the work and characters therein are purely fictional. First published in 1988 by Ticknor &... Read The Book of Ruth Summary

The Book of Sheen is a 2025 autobiography by actor Charlie Sheen. The book reframes Sheen’s tabloid-saturated downfall through his account of childhood on film sets, meteoric fame, addiction, and long-fought-for sobriety. Told from the first-person perspective, the book gives insight into Sheen’s mindset during many of his most infamous scandals and incidents.This guide refers to the 2025 e-book edition.Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of ableism, animal cruelty, animal death, mental... Read The Book of Sheen Summary

The Book of Two Ways is Jodi Picoult’s 27th book (Ballantine Books, 2020). Although often dismissed as an author of “chick lit,” Picoult has made a career of writing fiction that probes moral issues, and many of her books have debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. This novel, a #1 New York Times bestseller, was named Best Book of September 2020 by Amazon and one of the best books of... Read The Book of Two Ways Summary

The Book Woman’s Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson was first published in 2022. It is a sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, but can be read as a stand-alone work. Richardson was born and raised in Kentucky. The Book Woman’s Daughter draws on her personal experience as well as research she conducted about the Pack Horse Library Project, the Frontier Nursing Service, female coal miners, Moonlight Schools, and more. The Book Woman’s Daughter... Read The Book Woman's Daughter Summary

Anna Johnston’s The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife (2024) is a work of contemporary fiction and a story of mistaken identity that explores the importance of connection between people of all ages. Elderly widower Fred Fife has just been evicted from his home when he encounters the deceased body of Bernard Greer—a man who looks just like him—at a local park. In a comedy of errors, Fred is presumed to be Bernard and is taken... Read The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife Summary

Introduction Written by British author Mary Norton in 1952, The Borrowers is the first in a five-part series along with The Borrowers Afield (1955), The Borrowers Afloat (1959), The Borrowers Aloft (1961), and The Borrowers Avenged (1982). The book follows the story of the Clock family, a trio of tiny people who live beneath the kitchen floorboards in a large house in the British countryside. Norton was born in London in 1903 and grew up... Read The Borrowers Summary