Melville House Books

The coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath continue to create problems across American industry—of which book publishing is very much a part. The latest bad news, as reported in the Washington… Read more »

It seems serialisation could be making a come back. Widely popular in the Victoria era, writers including Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Henry James often saw their novels first appear… Read more »

As the coronavirus returns to center stage, like the killer in a teen horror movie, except a lot less fun, an unsurprising rise in e-book sales has followed. According to… Read more »

Strange Beasts of China Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts.… Read more »

With the Olympic Games in Tokyo drawing to a close, Jamie Fahey, author of Futsal: The Story of an Indoor Football Revolution, presents the case for the sport’s inclusion at future Olympiads.… Read more »

We confess that we don’t always play super-close attention to the “Gray Lady’s” weekly “Books in Brief” missive—so many e-mails! triage! triage! Our fancies were tickled, though, by the inclusion… Read more »

In 2011 Scott Sherman wrote the first of a series of powerful Nation articles which disclosed that the trustees of the New York Public Library had hatched a covert plan to flog off… Read more »

Heartening news from north of the border this week, as a new book shop opens in Edinburgh dedicated to women’s writing. As reported in Edinburgh News, Rare Bird Books will sell “books… Read more »

Are you a royal fanatic? Do you defend Meghan and Harry against anyone who speaks ill about them? Are you dying to know more about the Duke of Sussex after… Read more »

In 2020, Hungary passed a law preventing citizens from legally changing their gender. Later that year, they decided to ban same-sex couples from adopting children. Only last month, a law was passed in parliament… Read more »

Four inches. 10.16cm. The minimum width of a standard football goalpost. In global terms: an incredibly small distance. At Wembley Stadium on Sunday night, as the Euro 2020 final between… Read more »

We here at John Street don’t tend to pay super-close attention to courts and laws and the like—can you spell boooooring?—but news of a recent Supreme Court decision did penetrate… Read more »

Charity shops are often where we make our greatest literary discoveries—those rare, old, or otherwise difficult-to-trace volumes; those unknown authors; those old classics that spark young minds. Now, a collector… Read more »

Back in May we wrote about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s long overdue biography making headlines, amidst accusations the PM missed important COVID meetings to put pen to paper. The pending… Read more »

“There’s nothing more gangster than being well-read.” So said UK grime superstar Stormzy, 27, in 2018 as he announced the first wave of books to be published under his newly-launched… Read more »

    Its messaging can seem cryptic, even nonsensical, yet for tens of thousands of people, it explains everything. What is QAnon, where did it come from, and is the… Read more »

  A google search for “dyslexia-friendly books” will yield dozens of results for titles like Harry the Happy Mouse and The Beach Puppy. While the growing number of books suitable… Read more »

We were both startled and delighted to read in the Wall Street Journal, natch, that our nation’s long-suffering right-wing scribes have finally found people brave enough to bear the withering… Read more »

Here, then, is how you do the work. Instead of blithely turning their logo rainbow-coloured and making vague noises about inclusivity, skin, hair and body care company Aesop are putting… Read more »

Last month we wrote about Meghan Markle’s forthcoming children’s book The Bench and how before it had even hit the shelves, it was being panned by the British tabloids. Well now… Read more »

We’re interested in books of all kinds here at Melville House, and this story from the world of golf features one of the most unusual. Green-reading books help golfers to… Read more »

The city of Oxford has a rich literary history. The University of Oxford was established as early as 1095 and the first book printed in the city was in 1478,… Read more »

Want to get the hardcover of Dave Eggers’s new book, The Every? Well, you’ll have to get it at an independent bookstore—that’s the only place it will be available.   The… Read more »

Revealed for the first time in almost a century, 31 poems handwritten by Emily Brontë are going up for auction at Sotheby’s. The poems, featuring pencil revisions by Charlotte Brontë,… Read more »

Author Jeanette Winterson had an impromptu little bonfire on Friday 4th June … burning her own books. Why, you might ask, would an author do such a thing? Winterson herself is… Read more »

  Crowdfunding a project can be hard work. Leading up to its launch, creators have to figure out a whole host of things, such as production, fulfillment, pledge management …… Read more »

Calmness and courage—two qualities most of us have coveted over the last year—are to be celebrated in the form of two new characters in Roger Hargreaves’ hit Mr Men series,… Read more »

When John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel prize in 1962, the committee lauded his “realistic and imaginative writings … and keen social perception.” Known as he is for the rugged… Read more »

Blimey, it seems like gardening is barely out of the news at the moment, right?! One week we’re bringing you news of vegetable king Gerald Stratford’s book deal—and now this!… Read more »

Back in July 2015, it was announced that Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London, would be writing Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius for which he received an advance of close to… Read more »

Bittersweet news this week for fans of spy fiction, as Viking reveals it is publishing Silverview, a posthumous novel by John le Carré, who died in December 2020 aged 89. Le Carré—born… Read more »