When you collaborate on a science textbook, everyone is responsible for a discrete part, goes away and writes it, and then it all comes together with minimal additional conversation. Working with Tim, there was give and take throughout the process, and he opened my eyes to how a photography book is made.—Jonathan Losos

I am so grateful to these authors for their work, and for their willingness to talk about it with me. I can’t wait to meet more St. Louis authors and read their books in 2026.

While I was silently thinking these things to myself and writing down my tearful lament with the help of my pen, there seemed to stand above my head a woman, awe-inspiring in her appearance. Her eyes burned with fire and penetrated far beyond what is common for mortals. She had a vivid color and inexhaustable strength, yet she seemed so ancient I could scarcely believe she belonged to our age. —Boethius

“I was always scribbling,” Gibson said. “Always imagining, always full of memories. I am reflective, I listen to people. As a child I was always shooed away from adult conversations. I loved history because in my mind it was stories. While fellow students agonized over memorizing dates, I memorized and loved the stories. I speak in stories—that is how I communicate.”

The green and yellow foliage of the mountain shimmered brightly under the afternoon sun, giving the place the appearance of a marvelous jewel that was also a colossal living being--Minsoo Kang, The Melancholy of Untold History (William Morrow, 2024)

“I felt warmly welcomed as a new author in St. Louis,” Ciera said. “It has a thriving subculture with a vibrant, deep bookstore community. I launched my book at Left Bank Books, and am also a huge fan of Main Street Books in St. Charles. In this community you have sellers promoting authors and providing them with the opportunity to meet readers and that helps you to promote your book.”

A neighborhood bar is so much more than a just a place to grab a drink. It’s a refuge from the day-to-day, where a wearyworker bee can duck in and check out for a while. It provides a space where folks can sit back and silently people-watch or lean in and engage in conversations that run the gamut from the latest celebrity saga to the numerousfailings of our political representatives. It’s a spot to watch the game, listen to music (live or otherwise), and engage with a unique cross section of the community on one’s own terms.

If you look at Sierra on a map, you'll see it's shaped like an obtuse scaling triangle. You won't see all the backyard bee keepers, grow operations and do it yourself houses. Flatten our town out like that, and it will look ordered, contained. But Siera is part of a wild, that rolls down off the mountains, that reaches between the houses, cabins, trailers, a wild that creeps out in the shape of foxes, deer and mountain lions. Wild is still there prowling.  (Shana Youngdahl, A Catalog of Burnt Objects, Dial Books, 2025)

But the story behind Adam’s stunning business success in St. Louis, after countless failures in Germany, has remained largely a mystery. Was it just simply that the Gateway City was so fertile in the decades before the Civil War that even the most hapless brewer could succeed? My research has revealed that Adam Lemp was not merely a passive recipient of a booming city on the frontier. Rather, a portrait emerges of a shrewd and resourceful immigrant who built a brewery from almost nothing into one of St. Louis’ leading businesse—Adam Lemp and the Western Brewery