- January 22, 2026
A spare and eerie — and eerily peaceful — Austrian novel from the 1960s about a woman who wakes one day to discover herself seemingly the last human alive on earth, encased within the bounds of a glasslike wall that has come down overnight to separate her from a suddenly deadened world. The Wall cycles ...
Read more… - January 15, 2026
Another year has ended, another year in which I drafted a miles-long list of the new books I hoped to read and then failed spectacularly to read more than a meager handful of them. As meager handfuls go, though, it was thoroughly satisfying. Below are my favorite nonfiction releases of 2025, in no particular order.
Impasse: ...
Read more… - December 22, 2025
It’s been an amazing year of reading! Here are some of the things PFL staff have enjoyed the most during 2025.
In a Distant Valley by Shannon Bowring
The Elements by John Boyne
Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown by Ann E. Burg
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia by Juliet Grames
Matrix by Lauren Groff
The Everlasting by ...
Read more… - December 10, 2025
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx
Critic and historian W. David Marx has taken the pulse of mass culture and declared it moribund—not quite dead, but nearly so, its complexion bluing as torpor thins the rhythm of its wilted heart. In Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First ...
Read more… - December 3, 2025
Over the past few years, Maine authors have been churning out a high volume of popular and critically acclaimed fiction, and 2025 has been another banner year. In case you didn’t catch wind of all of these new releases, check out our recap of the year below. Many of these novels, mysteries, and short stories ...
Read more… - November 25, 2025
I love a good time loop story, and The Everlasting is one of the best I’ve read. Written in an alternating second person and featuring gorgeous illustrations both within the story and on and inside the cover, this book is a thoughtful experience that will linger in your bones as if you are in your ...
Read more… - November 19, 2025
Yeva, a scientist who has devoted her life to rescuing endangered snails, funds her research by joining a romance tour, where wealthy bachelors from other countries come to Ukraine looking for a wife. Nastiya and Solomiya are sisters also involved in the marriage industry for non-marriage reasons; they are trying to find their activist mother ...
Read more… - October 29, 2025
Halloween is, in my estimation, the reigning queen of all holidays. It has the best snacks – gummy bats! pumpkin whoopie pies! Oreo spiders with pretzel legs! popcorn balls! …ok, so let’s forget about popcorn balls – as well as the best movies, the best decorations, the best commingling of folk tradition and modern-day consumerist ...
Read more… - October 23, 2025
Adam Nevill, author of the uniquely disturbing The House of Small Shadows has written many horror stories, of which I have enjoyed almost all (mostly his older ones), A couple have been made into movies, but as I find most of the time, the books were much better, The Ritual being one example. I actually traded ...
Read more… - October 16, 2025
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology is the perfect read for spooky season! This chilling collection is haunting, eerie, and unsettling in all the best ways. More than once, I had to put it down just to catch my breath—and a few times I even caught myself covering my mouth to keep ...
Read more…
