Penguin Random House, author portrait placeholder image

Linda Tirado

Linda Tirado was a completely average American with two kids and, until her essay “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts” was picked up by The Huffington Post, The Nation, and countless other publications. Since then, the story has been read by more than six million people. Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America is her first book.
Hand to Mouth

Books

Hand to Mouth

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2025-26

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 284 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2025-26. We will continue to update this

Read more

2026 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2026! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about the environment, current events, history, public health, science, social justice, student success, and technology, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through

Read more