With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2021-22 academic year.  We’ve compiled a list of over 460 programs and their title selections, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2021-22. We will continue to update this listing to provide the most

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 41st Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 12-15, 2022 Click Here to RSVP   While a complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to in-person attendees, PRH authors will speak virtually via screens set onstage and via Zoom for online attendees   Interested in hosting one of these authors at

Benjamine Spencer was convicted of murder in 1987—a crime he did not commit. Due to the tireless advocacy of Centurion Ministries over the past twenty years, his conviction has finally been reevaluated, and he is expected to be released after 34 years. His case is one of several that is profiled at length in Jim

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her award-winning novel Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered story about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.   Transcendent Kingdom Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and

 A Burning is a novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of

We’re pleased to share videos from the First-Year Experience® Conference held in Washington, D.C. this past February. Whether you weren’t able to join us at the conference or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Author Dinner Friday, February 21, 2020

Author Sharmila Sen discusses the process of assimilation and the significance of race in America. About Not Quite Not White: Winner of the ALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Nonfiction At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her

We’re pleased to share videos from the First-Year Experience® Conference held in Las Vegas, NV this past February. If you weren’t able to join us for our author events at the conference, or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Author

  Chicago Public Library’s latest selection for its One Book, One Chicago program is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  by Philip K. Dick. First published in 1968, Dick’s novel introduces readers to Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter commissioned to find rogue androids during the 2021 World War. A prescient rendering of a dark future, Do

 Penguin Random House Author Events at the 38th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference Las Vegas, NV, February 16-19, 2019 Click Here to RSVP Interested in hosting one of these authors at your school? Click their name below to learn more! Clemantine Wamariya Casey Gerald Abdi Nor Iftin Scott Harrison Zachary Wood

A story across countries, generations, and time, Dream Country follows one single African-and-American family pursuing an elusive dream of freedom from Liberia to America and back. Told in five different sections, Shannon Gibney spins a riveting tale of the nightmarish spiral of death and exile connecting America and Africa, and of how one determined young

Common Reads presents a list of classic and contemporary dystopian fiction with offerings for all-ages, ideal for use in both first-year and community reads.