Melville House Books

Banned Books Week, an awareness campaign hosted by the American Library Association, ended last month. During this week, as we’ve written about, people celebrate literature that has previously been banned… Read more »

It’s November! The last month of the best season (fall)! I’m sure we all have complicated feelings about November this year and many of us are still at home with… Read more »

“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” Well, then. If… Read more »

Casting a wide net, our omnivorous marketing director came across an interesting essay written by a high-school student named Daniel Ma and published in something called the Post Bulletin. Young… Read more »

Last week we wrote about the American Bookseller Association’s #BoxedOut campaign in which select indie storefronts were covered in the familiar drab of Amazon boxes carrying slogans like “Anyone else feel weird… Read more »

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Instagram… although we may not be celebrating many parties in-person this year because of our lovely virus friend, we… Read more »

For the last couple of days, Americans stopped squabbling, put aside their differences, and gathered ’round the table as family for the harvest of Amazon Prime. Prime Day–as the annual event… Read more »

One thing many people have learned during the various stages of coronavirus lockdown is that books make for excellent escapes. For incarcerated people this has long been a truth, but… Read more »

Famed postmodernist artist Jenny Holzer is releasing a mobile app on Monday that will allow quotes from selected Great Books to be projected, Holzer-style, onto nearby surfaces. The project—or whatever… Read more »

Riley Gale, the singer of Dallas, TX, thrash heroes Power Trip, died unexpectedly this August at the simply tragic age of 34. He was one of the best frontmen in the… Read more »

Raymond Chandler, author of hardboiled detective classics The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye among many others, isn’t exactly known for his silly side. But apparently, he once wrote a… Read more »

I’m sure we all remember earlier this summer when J.K. Rowling squashed all of our tween Harry Potter hearts when she publicly offered her criticism on transgender ideology. Soon after… Read more »

If you’re wondering why we haven’t exactly reported on one of the biggest publishing stories of the year–the nuclear blast to the publishing landscape that is Barack Obama’s A Promised… Read more »

This year has been a garbage fire for everyone, but in the publishing industry, indie booksellers have had a particularly rough go of it. For many indies their business model… Read more »

Every year, as the leaves turn goldenrod and the kiddos go back to school, the American Library Association rolls out a list of the books most challenged by libraries and… Read more »

Last week the literary debut City of Sparrows—the raw, emotional story of a young man growing up in Homs, Syria in the ’90s—hit shelves. Because the book’s contents are so… Read more »

  The original cover for The Blue Lotus, a novel in cartoons by the Belgian artist Hergé, has re-surfaced and will be going to auction in November. Hergé, whose real… Read more »

In perhaps the most high-profile bit of book-related court intrigue of the season, last week the Justice Department subpoenaed John Bolton’s literary agent and publisher as part of its investigation into… Read more »

It’s hard to believe that nearly twenty years have passed since The Beatles Anthology was published by UK publisher Cassell & Co. For anyone unfamiliar with The Beatles Anthology 11+ hour television documentary,… Read more »

The famed Booker Prize, like everything else, has moved online this year. The prestigious award, which has a long history of skulduggery, controversy, and fractiousness, has been a relatively sedate… Read more »

Harsh! But Sarah Manavis at The New Statesman is asking the important question for those readers out there who feel that the platform “has become a monster,” “a purgatory” or… Read more »

Late last week Parneshia Jones was named director of Northwestern University Press. She was formerly editorial director for trade and engagement and is succeeding Jane Bunker. Jones is the first… Read more »

If you’re a fan of science fiction, then you’re probably counting down the days until the 2020 film adaptation of author Frank Herbert’s 1965 best-selling novel Dune hits theaters. Denis… Read more »

It’s not exactly an October surprise, but after a busy season in the Trump book game Simon & Schuster will be getting in the Biden business before the election rolls around.… Read more »

Last week Dictionary.com released its “largest ever update,” with alterations to more than 15,000 entries, according to Allison Flood at The Guardian. Jennifer Steeves-Kiss, chief executive of Dictionary.com, explains: “2020 has been a… Read more »

What if there was a day dedicated to just … [Pause for dramatic effect] … reading books? Good news: There is. And it’s this Sunday, September 6. If you want… Read more »

Brooklyn, September 2, 2020 — We are sad to announce the passing of our author David Graeber. He was 59 years old, and died yesterday in a hospital in Venice,… Read more »