By Sophie

If these Bookbits appear a little disjointed, please forgive me: I’ve been counting books for the past 3 days on account of inventory and may still have little flashbacks (2-15-3 times).

– Perhaps a little unsurprisingly, Publishers Weekly reports a spike in US sales of dystopian novels in January 2025, what with the fires in L.A. and the presidential inauguration. The Parable of the Sower and The Handmaid’s Tale, among others, saw spikes in popularity. If you want to dive in, check out our Dystopian Novels highlights list here.

– The past month also saw the breaking story of Neil Gaiman’s SA transgressions. The whole article can be found here (behind a paywall). As of Monday, both Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer have been accused of human trafficking, too. Glen Weldon wrote a very clear-eyed, personal piece on NPR on how to deal with literary heroes, like Gaiman and J. K. Rowling, whose actions, alleged or not, have put their whole body of work into shadow.

Awards! Congratulations to Peter Gizzi for winning the T. S. Eliot Prize for poetry for Fierce Elegy. The most prestigious children’s book prizes in the US were awarded last month as well, the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott medal (among others). Award winners are also always collected in our Prizewinners highlights list, by the way!

The Guardian has a long interview with Nobel Laureate Han Kang to coincide with the publication of her new book We Do Not Part.

– If you’re on the look-out for fresh voices, check out this list of the best new novelists of 2025.

– Getting in a sneaky Ursula K. Le Guin link here: a beautiful contemplation of The Dispossessed, one of my all-time favorite books, on its 50th anniversary. Don’t click on the link if you haven’t read the book, though, because of spoilers. And read the book!

– It’s February, and that means Black History Month! ReactorSFF has 5 Underrated Black Speculative Books for you. NPR has an interview with Imani Perry on her new book Black in Blues, about the significance of the color blue in Black history. We’ll have displays throughout the stores to honor this month, and of course a highlights list, too (this Bookbits just seems to be full of them doesn’t it? But then there’s nothing we booksellers love more than recommending books ^^).

– So, what should a Jane Austen cover look like?

Lists! (Beyond our own highlights lists hahaha) 7 Thrillers About the Role of the Witness, 12 reading recommendations for your book club, 18 Novels Celebrating Older Main Characters, and 9 Literary Works That Radically Reimagine Shakespeare.

And finally, a literary word cross puzzle! I recommend downloading the pdf, or else not scrolling down too far, because the answer key starts right after the box with the puzzle.