The Texas State Capitol is currently playing host to an impeachment trial that will surely inspire investigative books (and maybe a bodice ripper?), but by November, its grounds will be used for a more exalted purpose: the Texas Book Festival’s annual free celebration of all things books and bookish.

You want to read books that enrich your life? That make you think, make you laugh, maybe make you cry or rage on behalf of the characters and situations therein? Here are five recent and compelling works of wordcraft to fulfill that desire, to make you glad that everything storywise is not about what’s hot on Netflix or HBO or whatever right now.

The Texas Book Festival, one of the largest literary festivals in the country, announced its lineup of more than 200 authors. The fest returns to Austin with a mix of virtual and in-person events over nine days starting on October 23 and is, as always, free and open to the public.

The Texas Book Festival had already planned for a hybrid festival this year, offering both in-person and virtual programming. But amid concerns over the Delta variant’s continued prevalence in Austin, TBF has announced in-person events will be scaled back dramatically.

As you mop July's sweat off your brow, October may feel like a lifetime away. But the Texas Book Festival has just helped shorten that time span by revealing the first authors for 2021, a stellar group that includes Colson Whitehead, Elizabeth McCracken, Amor Towles, Sandra Cisneros, and Gabriela Garcia.

The Texas Book Festival survived the pandemic in 2020 with a completely virtual version that was spread across three weeks. In 2021, the festival will be back online, but only in part. Live events will make their return during a week-long celebration scheduled for Oct. 25-31.

Moderator Safiya Sinclair opened Saturday evening’s discussion with a James Baldwin quote – “Artists are here to disturb the peace” – followed by a Baldwin-esque question: What is the role of the poet in this political moment? The panel, which was made up of three Whiting Award recipients, each offered their take.

On a balmy November afternoon, I and hundreds of others opened our laptops or turned on our tablets or phones to attend the first day of adult programming for the 2020 Texas Book Festival. I didn’t have to walk further than my desk, pay for parking, or fight crowds to hear from this year's guest authors. And the authors didn't have to come to Austin either.

To use the vernacular of boxing – the sport Jan Reid so loved – he was a writer with a one-two punch. From the left came nonfiction – much of it for magazines with many of the most memorable stories for Texas Monthly – then he'd follow from the right with killer fiction. Sadly, Reid has left the ring. He died Saturday of heart failure at the age of 75.