Intermezzo by Sally Rooney Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent and apparently unassailable. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a [...]
by Else For the last 14 years, my answer to the question "What is your favourite fantasy series?" has been the same: Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson. But how could someone ever know this is my favourite book series of all time? Well, first of all, I tell [...]
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss The riveting first-person narrative of a young man who grows to be the most notorious magician his world has ever seen. From his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, to [...]
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang Alice Law has sacrificed everything to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is [...]
Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans In the nineties, six teenagers disappeared into a fantasy role-playing game. Only five returned. Nearly thirty years later, these broken adults are dragged back to discover the game isn’t finished with them yet. Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + the Divine) and Stephanie Hans [...]
In Memoriam: Derk Sauer On July 31, 2025, we heard that Derk Sauer, founder of The Moscow Times, died. This brought memories of our participation in the 1997 Moscow Book Fair (read our blog post about it here). We ran a small ad in The Moscow Times announcing that the American [...]
Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. From New York Times bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex [...]
by Iris When I came across the term "campus novel" for the first time, I was reading a review to gather Blind Book Date clues for The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach — one of our first BBDs. Something about the phrase just clicked: I loved this subgenre, but hadn't [...]
The Guncle by Steven Rowley Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. [...]
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and [...]
