A new alternative to the Big A is loading, as Libro.fm announced yesterday morning that it will soon offer ebooks alongside its audiobook selection, as well as a few new exciting features.

Once the ebooks become available through the Libro.fm app, users will have access to:

Launched in 2014, Libro.fm is an employee-owned, Social Purpose Corporation focused on the dual goals of helping people read more and helping independent bookstores sell more audiobooks.

Readers want to support indie booksellers over massive corporations, noted Libro.fm’s Senior Manager of Bookseller Partnerships, Lee Hooyboer:

Especially over the past few years, we’ve seen how readers want to divest from Amazon. They want to support their indie because they recognize how important these third places are for their community. And now they can support them all the more with ebooks on Libro. These dollars will make a huge difference.

📌 The ebook launch date is TBA. — EE

Few writers working today have the kind of range on display in Chang-rae Lee’s career. His catalog includes satire, historical fiction, speculative fiction, and now a contemporary coming-of-age novel about masculinity, identity, and the American Dream.

Also hitting shelves:

See more of this week’s most notable new releases.

The dark fantasy apocalyptic adventure smash, now a graphic novel!

Based on one of the bestselling LitRPG series of all time, The Primal Hunter is about Jake, a seemingly average office worker, who unexpectedly finds himself thrust into a fantasy world teeming with dangers and opportunities. 

Rather than succumbing to fear, Jake thrives in this unfamiliar realm. As he navigates the expansive multiverse, his power grows and he transforms, evolving from a mundane office worker into a true apex hunter.

The first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship, Octavia Butler broke a lot of ground.

Butler imagined a world in which climate change has made food and water scarce and expensive. Paying work is rare; company towns, sex work, and modern slavery are on the rise; and the basic institutions of American life have eroded or collapsed.

It’s a rare magic trick to publish a novel about a prophet that itself turns out to be prophetic, and it wasn’t until Butler’s predictions started coming true—nearly 30 years after the book’s original publication—that Parable first hit the bestseller lists.

🎧 Learn more about this groundbreaking work of science fiction on Zero to Well-Read.

Congress is on its annual break, but that doesn’t mean your advocacy for libraries and access to books should be resting.

Four federal book ban bills are in the mix right now. Each one would directly harm public school funding and would lead to widespread censorship–particularly of LGBTQ+ books. 

H.R. 7661:  

S. 4925:

H.R. 2616: 

H.R. 8705: 

Funding for public school and library internet is also on the chopping block.

There are plenty more opportunities for advocacy now and to come, as the federal government still has no budget for fiscal year 2027–meaning there’s also still no budget for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Take half an hour this week for advocacy, and you’ll make tremendous strides in saving some of America’s amazing public goods. Then, tell your own networks to do the same and help them through the process. – KJ

The world’s largest and longest-running LGBTQ+ pop culture, comic books, and cosplay convention!

Located in the heart of Times Square, Flame Con 2026 will feature special guests like Casey McQuiston (Red, White, and Royal Blue), Kosoko Jackson (The Forest Demands Its Due), and Al Ewing (Venom, The Queen in Black, Mortal Thor), an exhibit hall filled with art & artists, comic books, books, apparel, and a gaymer lounge with TTRPGs, card games, and video games. 

Flame Con is one of the most affordable weekend conventions with top-name guests. Get your full weekend pass today at flamecon.org.

He is no longer in the White House, but President Obama remains the country’s reader-in-chief. Not content with list drops and corresponding with Pulitzer Prize winners, he will now host a books podcast:

In A Great Book with Barack Obama, a new Audible Original podcast from Audible and Higher Ground, President Obama is joined by some of the most compelling thinkers, writers, and artists of our time to revisit six timeless books that shaped his life and perspective on the world.

Guests remain TBA, but the featured books include The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (the aforementioned Pulitzer winner).

Here are my quick guesses for the luminaries that will join him, in rough order of my confidence:

— JO

Téa Mutonji is the author of My Person, out today from Putnam. Below, she discusses unexpectedly living through a friendship break-up after writing a novel about a friendship break-up.

About two weeks after submitting the copyedits for my friendship break-up novel, I found myself suddenly experiencing one in real life.

I was walking around my apartment cooling off from an argument with {best friend of thirteen years} when I sent a text I didn’t even realize was a break-up: I would like to move on from this version of our friendship.

She called immediately, but considering our inability to effectively communicate, I thought texting from my apartment, from her townhouse with exactly 79.7 kilometers between us, would give us permission to reflect and self-regulate. Of course, I didn’t say that to her. Not in an “I want you to read my mind,” sort of way, but because we’d been down this road before.

I stared at the missed call notification on my screen, feeling hot. I’d written a novel about something like this and, in the aftermath, I knew nothing about it at all. 

I didn’t rationally know I was initiating a break-up, until I found myself waiting a day, two, five days for her to meet me the way I had presented myself. I had, feverishly, become my own protagonist.

Two months went by in this silence. The longest we’d ever gone without speaking. That’s what ended the friendship.

When I think about the choice not to reach out again, not to repair, I realize now that a break-up is a collaboration. A meeting point. A Viennese Waltz.

This may sound obvious, but I didn’t know that while working on the novel, at least not consciously. In the five years I spent writing, researching, and talking to {BF13} about these foreign characters, it never occurred to me that it takes two people to let go.

When it’s real, there are no true villains. It is not Tania vs. Margot, or me vs. her. It is us vs. the break-up.

And if you’re going to do it, as a final act of love, do it together. 

You already instantly save up to 20% on more than 200,000 titles with ThriftBooks Deals, and now for a limited time you’ll also earn double points on every ThriftBooks Deals item, just for being a valued ReadingRewards® member!

Did you know? Mavis Gallant published 116 short stories in The New Yorker in her lifetime, third-most behind John O’Hara (225) and John Cheever (116) and ahead of John Updike (104).

🌈 Don’t miss the best new queer books out this month.

🤖 Resist AI with the writers creating a literary counterculture.

🍴 Dig into a major profile of Yesteryear author Caro Claire Burke.

🐉 Get the scoop on the big book-to-screen change in the House of the Dragon season finale.

🔎 See the Amazon editors’ picks for the best mysteries and thrillers of August.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Erica Ezeifedi, Kelly Jensen, Jeff O’Neal, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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