Latest news with #Entangled
Boston Globe
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Local bestsellers for the week ended April 20
3. Simon & Schuster 4. Henry Holt and Co 5. Abby Jimenez Forever 6. Katie Kitamura Riverhead Books 7. Knopf 8. David Baldacci Grand Central Publishing 9. Clare Leslie Hall Simon & Schuster 10. Grove Press HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster 2. Crash Course Books Advertisement 3. Mel Robbins Hay House LL C Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 4. Scribner 5. Riverhead Books 6. Pantheon 7. Elaine Pagels Doubleday 8. Melinda French Gates Flatiron Books 9. Knopf 10. Russell Shorto W. W. Norton & Company Advertisement PAPERBACK FICTION 1. Vintage 2. Harper Perennial 3. Daniel Mason Random House Trade Paperbacks 4. Amor Towles Penguin Books 5. Kaliane Bradley Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster 6. Grove Press 7. Vintage 8. Catapult 9. Emily Henry Berkley 10. Rebecca Yarros Entangled: Red Tower Books PAPERBACK NONFICTION 1. Crown 2. Matt Kracht Chronicle Book 3. Milkweed Editions 4. Michael Finkel Vintage 5. Knopf 6. Vintage 7. Patrick Bringley Simon & Schuster 8. Hanif Abdurraqib Random House Trade Paperbacks 9. Rashid Khalidi Metropolitan Books 10. Bessel van der Kolk M.D. Penguin Advertisement The New England Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by IndieBound and NEIBA, for the week ended Sunday, April 20, 2025. Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit
Washington Post
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Empyrean series writer of BookTok fame prepares for Hollywood
Next in Arts & Entertainment The Empyrean series writer of BookTok fame prepares for Hollywood By Arianna Rebolini February 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST 0 Sorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. Four years before Rebecca Yarros published the book that would launch her into sky-high international success, she was making peace with the possibility that she would never really make it as a writer. Between 2014 and 2018, she'd published 10 contemporary romance novels that had garnered her a loyal following, but as she prepared to release 'The Last Letter' — her 2019 novel about a man who leaves the military to help his late best friend's little sister raise her twins — her publisher warned her that if this book didn't land her on the bestseller list, nothing would. It didn't. 'I remember this moment of collapsing,' Yarros, 43, recalls in a video call. 'My knees gave out. I felt like I'd poured my entire heart and soul into this career and I wasn't going to go anywhere with it.' She couldn't have guessed she'd soon become a household name. A longtime reader of fantasy, Yarros decided to try branching out of romance for a bit into new territory — that of dragons, to be precise. Her publisher, Entangled, was happy with the pivot. The resulting book, 'Fourth Wing' — the first in Yarros's five-book Empyrean series — would launch its new fantasy imprint. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Empyrean's instant success Each book in the series has been an immediate success: 'Onyx Storm,' the third book, published on Jan. 21 and is the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years, according to Bookscan. Following dueling dragon riders at a military training school, the first installment, a 512-page epic, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list when it published in May 2023. With the sequel, 'Iron Flame,' which published in November of the same year, the series has dominated #BookTok, a sales-driving corner of TikTok, bringing in over a billion views across its related hashtags. Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights for a television adaptation with Yarros as the executive producer, six months before the first book even hit the shelves. The second Empyrean installment launch drew massive crowds; fans lined up around city blocks to watch Yarros speak on panels. The experience was a surreal whirlwind, following two and a half years of writing for 12 to 15 hours a day. It was a grueling schedule that she says 'nearly killed' her, one she's long since abandoned. Throughout the buzz, the mother of six has survived by compartmentalizing her literary success from what she describes as her 'real life,' or her family and home. But home has multiple meanings for Yarros. After writing 'Iron Flame,' Yarros returned to a familiar, restorative base. 'Fantasy is probably my favorite genre, but as a writer, going back to romance is like coming home,' Yarros says. 'It's something deeply rooted, where I get to challenge myself and dig into story arcs and character development. It's often where I process what I'm going through in my personal life.' Author Rebecca Yarros in a conversation with moderator Laurie Hernandez about her book 'Onyx Storm' at the Town Hall on Jan. 24 in New York. (CJ Rivera/Invision/AP) Audience members hold copies of 'Onyx Storm' at the event. (CJ Rivera Invision/AP) These breaks are especially vital as Yarros grapples with an overwhelming degree of attention. (Even literary superstars struggle with insecurity.) 'When you have such intense scrutiny on every line and every word and every phrase, and people are shooting at you from every direction about what [the book] should be or shouldn't be, what you are or aren't, … it can shake my confidence in a way that I've never experienced before,' she confesses. 'In romance, I get my feet back underneath me, remind myself, 'Hey, you can write. You're a writer!' And I get to go back to Empyrean with a better center of gravity.' Even though Empyrean is often categorized within the TikTok-ified descriptor 'romantasy,' Yarros finds writing each genre to be distinct experiences. Indeed, she has 'mixed feelings' about the term itself. 'I love that there's a way to bring more people into fantasy using romance as a guidepost,' she says. 'But it also feels like a way of saying this book is written for girls and so it doesn't get to just be fantasy. Love and sex in fantasy isn't new. Look at Anne McCaffrey.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Revisiting romance In the break between the second and third Empyrean novels, Yarros wrote 'Variation,' a sizzling, interwoven story about a world-class ballerina who returns home only to be met by the child her late sister put up for adoption. That would be complicated enough, but the child is also her estranged lover's niece. It was published in November 2024 and was chosen as a New York Times book of the week. Yarros often pulls themes from her personal life: She and her husband adopted their youngest daughter after being foster parents. In 2019 they founded a nonprofit organization that provides clothing and school supplies to children in the foster system. Empyrean's Violet, like Yarros, has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Though it's never named within the books, the chronic pain and joint instability the character has is part of Yarros's experience of the connective tissue disorder. 'I struggled for years to recognize and accept my limitations and accommodations, just like Violet,' Yarros told Health in 2023.
New York Times
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Rebecca Yarros' ‘Onyx Storm' is the Fastest-Selling Adult Novel in 20 Years
A few years ago, Rebecca Yarros almost quit writing. A chronic illness often left her dizzy and exhausted, making it hard to work or even stand at times. She wondered if the stress she was putting on herself was worth it. Then, she had the idea for a sprawling epic: a romance set at a military academy for dragon riders. The first novel, 'Fourth Wing,' became an instant best seller, as did its sequel, 'Iron Flame.' Now, with the release of the third novel in the series, 'Onyx Storm,' this month, Yarros has hit a new sales record. The book sold more than 2.7 million copies in its first week. All together, the three novels, part of Yarros' planned five-book Empyrean series, have sold more than 12 million editions in the United States, according to her publisher, Entangled. 'It doesn't feel real — none of it does,' Yarros told a packed auditorium of around 1,700 fans who had come to see her in St. Paul, Minn. on Wednesday night. Print sales alone well exceeded a million copies in the novel's first week, making 'Onyx Storm' the fastest-selling adult fiction title of the past 20 years, according to Circana BookScan, which tracks print sales. There have been far bigger hits in children's literature: the seventh and final novel of 'Harry Potter' sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale. But in the realm of adult fiction, Yarros' early sales stand out. The last record-setting adult novel, Colleen Hoover's 2022 novel 'It Starts With Us,' sold 810,000 print copies in its first week. Yarros currently holds the first three spots on The New York Times's hardcover best-seller list, a rare feat for an adult fiction series. On Thursday, the series also occupied the first three spots on Amazon's 'most sold' fiction list. The success of 'Onyx Storm' also shows that romantasy, which blends spicy sex scenes and romance tropes with supernatural elements, is not a fleeting trend. Last year, the genre accounted for some 30 million print sales, a rise of 50 percent over the previous year, according to Circana. When Yarros became a fixture on the best-seller list, with the release of 'Fourth Wing,' she had already published around 20 contemporary romance novels. But sales from book to book were largely stagnant, and she struggled with a chronic illness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder. Her illness, though debilitating at times, inspired her to write 'Fourth Wing,' she said. Yarros grew up loving fantasy, but had never read a fantastical novel with a protagonist who had physical limitations like she did. She decided to write about a young woman named Violet, who enrolls in an elite military academy for dragon riders, and is determined to succeed despite a chronic illness that makes her weak and physically frail. When 'Fourth Wing' came out in 2023, it arrived at an ideal moment. BookTok was in the middle of a romantasy craze, and fans quickly coalesced around Yarros. In the months after the novel's release, videos with hashtags for Yarros and the series were viewed more than a billion times. The genre's growth has been driven largely by the authors Yarros and Sarah J. Maas, whose hugely successful series, 'A Court of Thorns and Roses,' helped make her the best-selling author in the United States last year, with sales topping 7.7 million copies. Globally, English-language editions of her books have sold more than 55 million copies. Some booksellers say the fervor around writers like Yarros and Maas, whose fans turn out for midnight release parties and dress up in elaborate costumes, is something they haven't seen since the days of 'Harry Potter' and 'Twilight.' 'Fandom, in the past several years, does have this very passionate parasocial element, where people feel very connected to the creator,' said Annie Metcalf, the events and marketing manager at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis that hosted Wednesday's event for Yarros. Fans' fervor was palpable at the event, which was held in a huge auditorium in St. Paul. Many in the crowd were dressed up in sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats that said 'Basgiath War College,' the military academy of the series. Some were fully decked out in costume, dressed as Violet, in leather body armor, or as dragons. 'People were handing out friendship bracelets like it was a Taylor Swift concert,' Metcalf said. 'It's wild.' Waiting outside the theater before the event, Kaylin Lu, who was dressed as Broccoli, a cat character in the series that has gained its own fan following, said she wasn't a romantasy reader until she picked up a copy of 'Fourth Wing' when she was working at Barnes & Noble. She quickly went from agnostic to evangelist. 'I was like, You know what, that book looks fun, I'm going to try it out,' she said. 'And then I was like, Everybody, listen, everybody must read this book.' She pressed the book on her friend, Diane Nguyen. She was also hooked, and had joined Lu for the event, dressed up as a dragon. 'There's action and romance and it very fluidly moved together,' Nguyen said. 'Thanks to her, I love reading again.' Inside the theater, as the boisterous crowd waited for Yarros to appear, Alejandra Herrera sat in the front row, almost vibrating with anticipation. She had driven some 380 miles from Omaha to attend the event, she said. 'I'm a little nervous,' she said. 'We're going to make eye contact with her.' Herrera's friend Rachel Peterson, who also made the drive from Omaha, said she came not only to see Yarros, but to gather with other fans. 'It's nice being in a space with so many other people that love the series,' she said. At the start of the event, Yarros was introduced by the romance writer Abby Jimenez, who noted that the Empyrean series had taken over the top three slots on the New York Times best-seller list. Yarros uttered an expletive to express her surprise and gratitude. 'Thank you,' she said to the crowd. 'You guys did that.'
