Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Friday rapid-fire wrap up time. Here are the links we didn’t quite get to, but are still worth browsing:

• First look at Sally Field in Remarkably Bright Creatures [People]
• The Most Popular Books on Goodreads This Week [Book Riot]
• Pope Implores Priests to Stop Writing Sermons Using ChatGPT [Futurism]
• Vogue is getting into the stunt pop-up library game [Vogue]
• Reese Witherspoon, PRH, and Coach embark on Gen-Z thirsty marketing campaign [Coach]
• You Can Now Book the Heated Rivalry Cottage [Conde Nast Traveler]
• Firefighters in Sicily rescue 400 rare library books from precipice after landslide [The Guardian]
• Tayari Jones Still Needs To Read Anna Karenina [Lit Hub]
• 27 New Books to Read in March [The New York Times]
• The Rigor and Love of a Great Editor [The Atlantic]
• How Book Bans Led to the Postponement of the Diversity Baseline Survey [Publishers Weekly]
• Libraries pay 5 times more for e-books than consumers. N.J. lawmakers want to change that. [PhillyVoice]
• Sigrid Nunez to Publish First Short Story Collection [Columbia University]
• New book collects the weirdest forgotten stories of printing history [boing boing]
• Kyle MacLachlan to Publish Memoir [The Bookseller]
• Old Books Find New Audience in Age of Viral Reading [Financial Times]

The post So Many Book Links. appeared first on Our Story Insight.

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Publishing is waking up after a sleepy start to January, and I have some fantasic new releases by Latine authors to share with you today. We have a cookbook by a creator whose recipes I can personally vouch for, a work in translation on migration and loss, a few romantic reads, including a librarian/archaeologist romance and historical romantasy set in Renaissance Italy, and more.

I also have some links and listens to recommend, from an episode on a magical realism classic from Book Riot’s newest podcast to a list of recs to contextualize recent geopolitical developments. It’s early on in 2026 and already (or still, more accurately) such a heavy time in our communities; books won’t save us, but they can help us make sense of the madness.

New Releases

Cooking Con Claudia: Celebración! by Claudia Regalado

I had no idea one of my favorite food content creators had a cookbook coming out this year until last week! Claudia has been my been my constant companion and comadre in expanding my Mexican recipe repetoire, and in getting better at the things I knew how to make, but not super well. Her food is so tasty, y’all. Get into her channel and this book if you’re tryna throw down, family style.

Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro, Megan McDowell (trans.)

An unnamed narrator in Barcelona is grieving the tragic loss of Diego, the brother she helped raise in Mexico when their mother was trying to make a living in Spain. Ashes in hand, she returns to Mexico, reliving painful memories from the life she shared with Diego. This is a novel about loss, migration, and separation that both feels painfully timely and evergreen in its themes. It’s translated by Megan McDowell, whose translated for folks like Mariana Enriquez and Samantha Schweblin.

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Graceless Heart by Isabel Ibañez

You may know Isabel Ibañez from her YA duologies, What the River Knows and Woven in Moonlight. This historical romantic fantasy is her adult debut! Ravenna is a scultpress with a terrible secret in Renaissance Florence, where the Pope has waged a war against magic and the immortal dei Luni family runs the city through fear. Ravenna enters a high-stakes competition hosted by the dei Lunis to save her brother’s life, but try as she might, she can’t seem to resist the charms of the family’s merciless and seductive heir. This is the first in a planned quartet, so strap in!

The Magic of Untamed Hearts by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

This is the third book in the Wild Magic series, a magical romance series about the Flores sisters, who each have a magical gift (mild spoilers for this series ahead). The first book was centered Sage and her plant magic, the second on Teal who can manipulate weather. Now we get a book focused on Sky, the sister who was the ghost in the other two books. It turns out she was in a sort of magical sleep this whole time, and reintegrating into the world of the living is several kinds of hard. I love the magic in these books, the sister bonds, the neurodivergent rep, and the fact that the town they live in is called Cranberry.

P Fkn R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Díaz & Petra R Rivera-Rideau

As I’ve had to explain to several people in my life over the last few months, no: I am not the Vanessa Diaz who wrote this book. You best believe you would know if I had written any book. But one about Benito? Please, you’d be sick of me.

I love me some Conejo Malo and while I wouldn’t call him an activist, per se, I am eager to read this examination, from the creators of the “Bad Bunny Syllabus,” of his undeniable cultural impact and the voice he has given to the folks doing the work of resistance.

Also: what are we all wearing to Benito Bowl?

The Lust Crusade by Jo Segura

This is Jo Segura’s third romance novel, and while I have not seen the books officially linked as a series anywhere, they very much follow a (delightful) theme: all three books, each with a name that’s a riff on an Indiana Jones movie, feature one or more archaeologist MCs. In this latest release, Daniela is a plucky librarian who’s been in love with her brother’s best friend forever, an archaeologist who went missing—or so everyone thinks. On a solo trip to Greece, Daniela finds out that he’s very much alive but abducted by smugglers, and now she’s tied up alongside him. Their only hope to escape their captors is to work together to solve an ancient Minoan mystery.

Run Home by Alyssa Bermudez

Alyssa Bermudez is a talented illustrator of lots of adorable children’s books. This graphic memoir is a moving and personal account of the author’s freshman year of high school, a year full of new beginnings, scary changes, and unexpected challenges.

News, Links, and Listens

On Marquez and Magical Realism

We recently launched a new podcast called Zero to Well Read, a sort of English class/book club hybrid unpacking the books everyone talks about: books you read (or said you read) in high school or college, books in the zeitgeist, books that are buzzy or that have stood the test of time. It’s hosted by Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky, and I am at the helm of the show’s newly launched—and free!—companion newsletter on Patreon.

Earlier this month we released an episode on Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, which you can listen to here, with adaptation facts, some literary tourism, and deep cuts on GGM and his seminal work in the corresponding newsletter. Did you know, for example, that Gabriel Garcia Márquez was buds with a controversial (understatement) Communist leader who proofread his manuscripts, or that he got popped in the face by another famous author over a lady friend? Give the show a listen and the newsletter a read to learn more. For more on magical realism, here’s my recent Book Riot podcast segment on the movement.

Making Sense of What’s Happening in Venezuela

On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife during a military operation in Caracas. This is a complex issue and the latest example in a very long history of U.S. intervention—and destabilization—in Latin America. If the news of Maduro’s capture left you, like me, staring into the void as you processed a swirl of conflicting feelings, here’s a reading list at Remezcla that might come in handy right about now. I’ve had Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano on my TBR for a while: time to bump that up.

Latine Immigration Stories Are Out There, and Have Been

Carmen of @TomesandTextiles recently put together this fantastic post on Latine immigration stories that asks readers to do a little bit of homework. The gist of the post is that Latine content creators have been talking about our immigration stories for a very long time, and anyone who cares can find that content easily.

Side note: The post uses a banger background track from Snow Tha Product that surely made a lot of family gatherings real uncomfortable this holiday season. Snow stays keeping it real! If you don’t know about her, may I suggest starting with her absolute fire verse on the Hamilton mixtape? Immigrants: we get the job done!

Side note, the remix: I’m still salty.

If you came across this list online or got an email forwarded from a friend, subscribe to Latine Lit here to get it straight in your inbox.

The post January’s Latine Book Releases, Plus News, Listens, and Links appeared first on Our Story Insight.

About 300 London-based staff of Google DeepMind have been seeking to join the Communication Workers Union in recent weeks, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Media reports suggesting Google is selling its cloud services and AI technology to the Israeli Ministry of Defense have caused disquiet among employees, according to the Financial Times. Getty Images

Israeli army soldier work on repairing an IDF tank in a staging area inside southern Israel near the southern Gaza Strip border on April 3, 2025. Jim Hollander/UPI/Shutterstock

Google, Google DeepMind, and the CWU did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment.

Media reports that suggest Google is selling its cloud services and AI technology to the Israeli Ministry of Defense have caused disquiet among employees, according to the report.

Google has run into trouble previously regarding its connections to Israel when it dismissed 28 employees last year who protested against the tech giant’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.

The post DeepMind UK staff to unionize and challenge deals with Israel links, FT reports appeared first on Our Story Insight.