Riverhead Reader program FAQ

HELLO FROM RIVERHEAD! đź‘‹

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:

Stations by Louise Kennedy

Stations

Louise Kennedy

“A propulsive, powerful novel about first love and regret.” –Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko

A woman is haunted by the unsettled boy who befriended her as an outcast teenager, long after he drifts out of reach.

In 1980s Ireland, Róisín and Red bond as only two precocious and disaffected teenagers can. Soon he is privy to the secret source of her shame and anger: the father who’s abandoned her and her mother to their damp house and never-ending strife. But what does Róisín know about why Red avoids going home to his own posh parents and house—the house he soon flees forever?

When a Christmas visit to her father reveals the devastating truth of his new life in London, Róisín tracks down Red and moves into his Pimlico squat. But the path he is now on is a disturbing one, and gradually they drift apart. And yet the great, never-consummated passion of her youth remains a visitation upon the years that follow. Will Róisín ever stop longing for Red? Will she ever learn to let someone else love her—or learn to love herself?

Stations is a gorgeous, wrenching novel about the terrible—and sometimes redemptive—power with which the past hovers over the present.

All the Way to the River: Oprah's Book Club by Elizabeth Gilbert

All the Way to the River

Elizabeth Gilbert

"A delicious mashup of narrative that's by turns harrowing and healing." –People

In her first nonfiction book in a decade, the #1 bestselling writer who taught millions of readers to live authentically (Eat Pray Love) and creatively (Big Magic) shows how to break free.

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love—or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for liberation.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood

Will There Ever Be Another You

Patricia Lockwood

“Lockwood has written a roving chronicle of the madness of illness and the frightening porousness of what it means to be yourself in the hilariously profound way that only she could.” – Vulture

From the Booker Prize finalist and “formidably gifted writer” (The New York Times), a vertiginous novel about a woman’s descent into illness and insanity.

Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are.

Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened: time and memories pass straight through her body. “I’m sorry not to respond to your email,” she writes, “but I live completely in the present now."

Will There Ever Be Another You is the brain-shredding, phosphorescent story of one woman’s dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as a profound investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss, from one of our most original writers.

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

Minor Black Figures

Brandon Taylor

From “literary superstar” (The Boston Globe) and Booker Prize finalist Brandon Taylor, his “most accomplished novel” (The New York Times): the story of a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity.

New York simmers with heat and unrest as Wyeth, a painter, finds himself at an impasse in his own work.

After attending a dubious show put on by a collective of careerist artists, he retreats to a bar in the West Village where he meets Keating, a former seminarian. Over the long summer, as the two get to know each another, they talk and argue about God, sex, and art.

Meanwhile, at his job working for an art restorer, Wyeth begins to investigate the life and career of a forgotten, minor black artist. His search yields potential answers to questions that Wyeth is only now beginning to ask about what it means to be a black artist making black art amid the mess and beauty of life itself.

As he did so brilliantly in the Booker Prize finalist Real Life and the bestselling The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor brings alive a captivating set of characters, this time at work and at play in the competitive art world. Minor Black Figures is a vividly etched portrait, both sweeping and tender, of friendship, creativity, belief, and the deep connections among them.

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