Today’s edition of SFF Daily Deals is sponsored by Preston & Child’s Diablo Mesa. 

With these delightfully bookworm-y planners, you can keep your life organized and your recent reads fresh in your memory. Or you can gift these to the book lovers close to your heart. Some of these bookish planners come with extra features — book chapters, literary quotes, TBR lists, reading logs, even colouring pages. Writing in these beautiful bookish planners by hand will fire up your brain and keep your on task....

I wrote a postcard every day for three weeks or so. I made a list of upcoming books, books that would be released during the pandemic, hence no author tours, bookstore events, etc. I encouraged friends to preorder them if they could, told them why I was excited about that particular book, what previous books by the same author I’d loved. This, also, mirrored the casual-but-crucial human interactions I missed: telling the bookseller at the indie on my little island what book I’d recently loved, scribbling down a recommendation from someone sitting next to me at the cafe who’d also loved whatever book was sitting on my table....

Time travel is a pretty common genre preoccupation; I think we’re all simultaneously fascinated by both the future and the past – what was it like? What will it be like? How did/will it look, sound, and smell? But if you focus solely on films and television, it can start to feel like men get all the horological fun, and what I’ve always been especially interested in is stories of female time travellers....

“Although only breath, words which I command are immortal,” wrote Sappho around 510 BCE. And how glad we are that we have Sappho’s words all these centuries later. Sappho’s lyric poetry, poetry meant to be accompanied by a lyre and sung, entices us to discover Eros and Aphrodite (the god and goddess of romantic love) and all the earthly delights that accompanies such natural pursuits. Sappho’s poetry was a detour from the impersonal, heroic epic singing of wars and battle that played very well in Athens....

They recommend bringing a friend to have multiple library cards at the ready. After the titles are checked out, they then advise to “place the Pride books on a shelf out of reach of children” and email or mail the signatures to the library. They also note: “Most of all, it is not a debate. You don’t have to make your case or get into arguments. If questioned, you might simply say you are local residents with library cards checking out books....

When a girl with a troubled history of finding dead bodies investigates the murder of her ex, she uncovers a plot to put herself—and everyone she loves—on the list of who’s next. Flora Calhoun has a reputation for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. After stumbling upon a classmate’s body years ago, the trauma of that discovery and the police’s failure to find the killer has haunted her ever since....

And like mystery novels, there is a wide range of crime novels which include different moods, categories, and types. They can be fun novels about heists (think Ocean’s 11 if it were a novel) or it can be literary, character-focused and explore the long reaching damage a crime can have over a span of time on those who knew the victim and/or perpetrator. This is not an exhaustive list, but it will give you a good idea of different plots you can find in the crime genre to help you find your next great criminal–er, read....

Frindle by Andrew Clements A rose by any other name would smell as sweet—or would it? Nick Allen has recently discovered the world of linguistics, which brings him to creating a new word for what we call a pen. That word? Frindle. Such a simple thing couldn’t throw a whole town—a whole country—out of whack, could it? Bluish by Virginia Hamilton With blue-tinted skin, Natalie is the only girl in her class who uses a wheelchair, the only girl in class getting chemotherapy treatments, and the only girl in class with cancer....

Board Books About Food For Babies and Toddlers (0–3) Cook in a Book: Tacos! Illustrated by Lotta Nieminen This is an interactive recipe board book and I love and adore it. The book lets toddlers and young children ‘cook’ by themselves, without a stove or any mess. The book begins with the ingredients, the equipment needed, and then continues with step by step instructions. At each step, there are tabs to pull or wheels to spin so the young reader can really pretend cook....

Educational gag orders are defined as efforts to legally restrict education on topics like race, American history, gender, and LGBTQ+ identities in K-12 and higher education. PEN America’s report outlines how the U.S. has experienced a 250% increase in educational gag orders compared to 2021, in which only 22 states introduced 54 gag order bills, compared to the 36 states that introduced 137 bills in 2022. In addition to increasing in number, the bills have also become more punitive....

These are memoirs or other nonfiction I’ve enjoyed or books I’ve planned to read that look interesting, set partially or entirely in the Middle East. They are on or from the Middle East, but are otherwise not meant to be representative. They are from and about human beings and their lives, something that can get lost in some more conflict-focused books. Perhaps you have read or reread Marjane Satrapi‘s Persepolis and now want to read something else from the wider region, or maybe you have a long standing interest, but have found the usual “Middle East book lists” to be repetitive and obvious (everyone Googles that phrase on occasion, right?...

“Um,” said my manfriend, who has not read Pride and Prejudice. I was determined, though: “Kathleen preemptively decides that Joe Fox, by virtue of his cash and his disregard for independent booksellers, cannot possibly really care about books. Or readers.” “Well,” said my manfriend, who hadn’t wanted to watch You’ve Got Mail in the first place. I pressed on nonetheless, insisting that Joe Fox did Mr. Darcy one better on “proud” by not just telling Kathleen who he was at the coffee shop, and I wound up calling You’ve Got Mail an anti-capitalist, modern feminist take on the Jane Austen classic, without the annoying family and the monetary necessity of a convenient marriage....

Horror fans like to think of ourselves as weirdos. We want to be scared. We want to question the dark shadows in every corner. Surely that can’t be normal, right? Well, if loving horror is strange, there are a lot of strange people out there. Based on this recent report on book sales, horror fiction is the fifth most popular fiction genre, raking in about $79.6 million in the last year....

In the mountains of Tibet, a new weapon is being tested — a weapon that kills based on genetic traits. Two countries race to master this new technology. But what they unleash will change warfare forever. Publishers Weekly hails Brian Nelson’s novel as “a gripping, frighteningly plausible techno-thriller.” New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry offers up this praise: “The danger is unique, and the treachery vast, in this rapid-paced adventure that delivers in equal doses of amazing, yet possible....