'Bad Words' by Ríoghnach Robinson is our 'GMA' Book Club pick for October
"Bad Words" by Ríoghnach Robinson is the "Good Morning America" Book Club pick for October.
Robinson previously published six young adult novels under the pen name Riley Redgate. "Bad Words" marks her adult debut.
Her new novel, "Bad Words," follows author Parker Navarro and literary critic Selina Chan.
"Parker Navarro’s debut novel was meant to define his career -- until critic Selina Chan’s blistering review made it the flop of the decade," a synopsis reads. "Four years later, his new book is his shot at redemption; for Selina, reviewing him again is a professional risk she can’t refuse."
The synopsis continues, "When her second takedown ignites a viral feud, both their fortunes shift overnight."
"But as the literary world feeds on their public sparring, a quieter dialogue begins -- one that challenges everything they thought they knew about success, sincerity, and each other," the synopsis adds.
Read an excerpt below and buy a copy of the book here.
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This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of"Bad Words"at a Little Free Library location near you.
Chapter 1 audio excerpt:
Chapter 3 audio excerpt:
***
Excerpt from "Bad Words" by Ríoghnach Robinson
I arrived home on a crisp October morning to find my roommate, Arthur, heralding disaster.
He was sitting in our apartment's front room, typing so furiously at the dining table that the laptop's keystrokes ran together like a snare roll.
This was the first warning sign -- not so much the frenetic typing as the fact that he was out of bed.
The clock had just hit 10 am, and Arthur Leung was the kind of borderline nocturnal computer person who never crawled into the sunlight before eleven except for emergencies.
The second red flag: his full-body twitch when I opened the door. Cat meets spray bottle. His head jerked up, and for a moment, he didn't move.
Then he shook back his hair and declared, in the voice of someone whose kidnapper has told them to act natural, "Oh, hey, Parker! What's up! How was" -- his eyes lit on the bags in my hands -- "the grocery store!"
"Um," I said, toeing off my shoes on the doormat. "The store was normal."
"You were going to get yogurt, right? Did you get yogurt?"
"I did." I paused. "Was the yogurt an urgent thing for you?"
"No! It's fine, it's all good."
I set the bags on the kitchen counter, still watching Arthur. In an interrogation room the guy would have folded like wet cardboard.
He avoided my eyes, his foot bouncing so that reverberations went through all six foot three of him. Within seconds, a pale sheen had developed on his forehead.
"So," I said slowly. "What's going on, man? Is everything okay?"
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Before I could ask if his friends and family still had all their limbs, he slammed his laptop shut and said,
"Don't go online."
My concern shriveled into a hard pit of dread. "Arthur. What happened?"
But I already knew the answer.
I knew that somehow, despite the emails I'd sent to my publisher begging them to prevent this exact scenario, Selina Chan at City Magazine had gotten hold of an advance copy of my second novel.
Four summers ago, you couldn't get within spitting distance of the publishing industry without hearing about my debut novel.
The book was called "These Extraordinary Times," and three days after I'd started pitching it to literary agents, Bill Owens of the legendary Owens Agency had flown out to me in the Bay Area, plied me with hundred-dollar sushi, and told me -- almost flippantly -- "Oh, this book will be huge. I'll see to that."
A week later, he'd sold the manuscript for $1.2 million in a nine-publisher auction.
That month blurred with celebrations. Texts poured in from friends I hadn't spoken to in years: holy shit dude just saw your instagram thats so sick lol!!! Emails arrived from my college professors: Dear Parker: I was pleased to read the good news about your novel. Many happy regards from the department. Best, Elias.
I could barely believe it -- that after years of scraping rare minutes to write, of agonizing over every page, this dream I’d had since childhood was about to be realized.
"These Extraordinary Times" had sold to Lauren Nilsen, a seventy-year-old industry veteran at Coronation Books who spoke in long, elegant sentences over the phone, like she'd lifted her lines out of Daphne du Maurier.
By January, a velvety-covered advance copy was commanding lines out the door at bookseller conventions, and by May, I was sitting for overwhelming interviews in which I tried to talk about the book and interviewers insisted on talking about me.
Three months from publication, "These Extraordinary Times" was set to be the book of the year.
Then, on the morning of June 11, a critic named Selina Chan published her review in the online edition of City Magazine. It was my first major review.
This was its kindest paragraph:
"These Extraordinary Times" is a stupefying misfire, ten thousand fine sentences that heroically join forces to say nothing.
Hardly does a scene begin to take shape when it’s blasted to pieces by some postmodern pyrotechnic -- six pages of footnotes! an interlude told in the form of an Excel spreadsheet! -- as though Mr. Navarro were embarrassed to catch himself engaging in that pedestrian work of the author: writing a paragraph that might interest a reader.
Within hours, the review was gaining traction, cross-posted everywhere online with gleeful commentary:
@wolvescandlesfelt: So glad publishers are spending $1.2 million on Baby's First MFA Workshop Project, starring lines like "Through the delicate skin of her eyelid the organ itself felt grapelike." Vomit :)
@servingkant: only two directives remain in contemporary literature, if indeed our modern letters can still be termed literature, which are to eagerly plumb new depths of the facile and to blithely elevate muck dredged from the collective artistic nadir
@sierrasnax: Lol this is why I hate when Asian authors write books aimed at white people... the self-hatred is strong with this one
@Patriot27Max: Don't you love to see the left eat itself? This is what publishers get for selling out to woke novelists!
@LanaLanaLand: Okay but like, are we shocked? Yale is right there in his bio. What IS publishing if not watching rich, talentless straight men make millions living off their family's money and using Ivy League connections to get their execrable books on shelves?
"But I didn't make any publishing connections at Yale," I sputtered to Bill over the phone. "My family doesn't have -- look, can I just reply to say --"
"Absolutely not."
"But if I just --"
"Parker! No. You don't say anything to these people."
"But they have no idea who I am! They’re making up this idea of who I am!"
"It doesn't matter. This is beneath you. There's always been an element of complete idiocy in the culture. Repeat after me: It doesn't matter."
I splayed my hand against the wall of my apartment, the fresh paint squeaking under my fingertips.
The response of the reading public seemed to matter a lot, actually.
It mattered because I'd bought an apartment in North Brooklyn three weeks ago, when I was confident I'd have a steady income from writing, instead of, potentially, no writing paychecks for the rest of my life.
It mattered because people were making assumptions about my parents, who had felt embarrassed enough when I'd paid off the mortgage on my mother's house, and then on the soup-stained one-bedroom where my father had lived in the two decades since their divorce.
That was the truth about my "family money," and the truth, as far as I was aware, mattered.
"It doesn't matter," I said, keeping my voice low and controlled.
***
From "Bad Words" by Ríoghnach Robinson Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.
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