Riverhead Reader program FAQ

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This is the dedicated Riverhead Reader Program FAQ for titles published by the Riverhead Books imprint under Penguin Random House US.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

What is the Riverhead Reader Program? 

Great question! Every month we give away galleys (and occasionally finished copies) of forthcoming hot titles from Riverhead to readers who request them through our Survey Form. 

 How can I participate in your monthly offerings? 

Complete our monthly request form here.

  • This form is updated with new title offerings every month.

  • You can request as many titles as you would like. Please note, by completing the form, you are not guaranteed a copy, as we have limited quantities for each title and recipients are picked randomly. 

  • We recommend checking this page each month as new books become available. 

I got an email about receiving a copy! What now?

Yay! If you read and love the book feel free to join the conversation online but there is no requirement to do so.  

I am interested in a particular title/author but I do not see it listed as available.

If a title is not listed it means we are not offering copies at this time. We invite you to follow us to learn more about additional opportunities to win copies of our books: 

Questions? Comments? 

Write to us via email at helloriverhead@penguinrandomhouse.com

BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR REQUEST:

The below books are available for request. If a book is not listed below, it is unavailable for request at this time. Please submit your inquiry via the Request Form

Please complete this form by 6/1/2025.

The next offering of new titles will launch on 6/2/2025.

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

On sale July 8

“A beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book.” – Patrick Radden Keefe

“Stark, elemental, and sure to be a classic.” —Hampton Sides

“An enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Bill Bryson

The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits.

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away?

Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves.

What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves.

Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

The Other Wife by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy

The Other Wife by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy

On sale July 15

“Extraordinary. A story about belonging in liminal spaces, and longing for things seemingly just out of reach. A searing, beautiful book.” —Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get It

A big-hearted novel of nostalgia and longing, and a poignant exploration of how we choose to love.

Zuzu met her best friend Cash on the first day of college, and nothing was ever the same. Tall, witty, and popular, his friendship represented a kind of belonging for Zuzu, who had always felt like an outsider growing up biracial in her rural hometown. Though their friendship was charged with longing, it never progressed to romance. Now approaching her forties, Zuzu has built a stable life with her wife Agnes, a steadfast and career-driven lawyer. Yet Zuzu is haunted by the choices that have shaped her: living with her mother instead of her father in childhood, pursuing law over art, and marrying Agnes while harboring complex feelings for Cash.

When a sudden loss pulls Zuzu back to her hometown, the “what ifs” in her mind become louder than ever, and she begins to unwind the turns that have led her here. Will she embrace the choices she’s made, or risk everything for a chance to chase the past? A novel that speaks to unfulfilled desires and the euphoric nostalgia that’s particular to the beginning of middle age, The Other Wife is as heartfelt as it is daring in its deep reckoning with the past and quest for true joy.

Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde

Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde

On sale July 22

From the acclaimed author of Vagabonds!: an audacious and eye-opening exploration of cross-generational queer life in Nigeria.

What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone?

In Necessary Fiction, Eloghosa Osunde poses these provocative questions and many more while exploring the paths and dreams, hopes and fears of more than two dozen characters who are staking out lives for themselves in contemporary Nigeria. 

Across Lagos, one of Africa's largest urban areas and one of the world's most dynamic cities, Osunde’s characters seek out love for self and their chosen partners, even as they risk ruining relationships with parents, spouses, family, and friends. As the novel unfolds, a rolling cast emerges: vibrantly active, stubbornly alive, brazenly flawed. These characters grapple with desire, fear, time, death, and God, forming and breaking unexpected connections; in the process unveiling how they know each other, have loved each other, and had their hearts broken in that pursuit. 

As they work to establish themselves in the city's lively worlds of art, music, entertainment, and creative commerce, we meet their collective and individual attempts to reckon with the necessary fiction they carry for survival.

Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi

Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi

Paperback on sale June 17

“A masterwork…mesmerizing…We come away troubled, unsettled — and in some subtle way changed.”–The New York Times

"The perfect steamy read for those hot summer nights." –People

A thrilling new novel from the bestselling, award-winning, visionary Akwaeke Emezi
 
One weekend.
The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city.
A party that goes awry.
A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed.

Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.

Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez

Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez

Paperback on sale June 24

FINALIST FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY YOUNG LIONS FICTION AWARD

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

A novel by a brilliant new voice, Hombrecito is a queer coming-of-age story about a young immigrant’s complex relationships with his mother and his motherland

In this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy’s life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to America, leaving their absent father behind but essentially disappearing herself once they get to Miami.

In America, his mother works as a waitress when she was once a doctor. The boy embraces his queer identity as wholeheartedly as he embraces his new home, but not without a sense of loss. As he grows, his relationship with his mother becomes fraught, tangled, a love so intense that it borders on vivid pain but is also the axis around which his every decision revolves. She may have once forgotten him, disappeared, but she is always on his mind.

He moves to New York, ducking in and out of bed with different men as he seeks out something, someone, to make him whole again. When his mother invites him to visit family in Colombia with her, he returns to the country as a young man, trying to find peace with his father, with his homeland, with who he’s become since he left, and with who his mother is: finally we come to know her and her secrets, her complex ambivalence and fierce love.

Hombrecito—“little man”—is a moving portrait of a young person between cultures, between different ideas of himself. From an extraordinary new talent, this is a story told with startling beauty and intensity, a story for anyone searching for home, searching for a way to love.

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Paperback

One of the most iconic, beloved, and bestselling books of our time from the bestselling author of City of Girls and Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s
Eat Pray Love touched the world and changed countless lives, inspiring and empowering millions of readers to search for their own best selves. Now, this beloved and iconic book returns in a beautiful 10th anniversary edition, complete with an updated introduction from the author, to launch a whole new generation of fans.
 
In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

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