Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Awards & News

November’s LibraryReads list is out, featuring top pick Lost and Lassoed by Lyla Sage (Dial). 

The Kirkus Prize winners will be announced tonight.

Ken Follett’s next historical epic will examine the mysteries of Stonehenge. Circle of Days (Grand Central) will publish in September 2025 and kicks off Follett’s global publishing deal with Hachette, PW reports. The Bookseller also has coverage.

James Patterson launches Hungry Dogs, a new Substack. Hollywood Reporter has the story. WSJ also has coverage. 

TikTok owner ByteDance’s publishing company 8th Note Press, will partner with Zando to release physical books in popular genres including romance, romantasy and young adult fiction, NYT reports.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice by Simon Parkin (Scribner): “Still, the overarching question of what is right remains ever-present — a bright, painful line throughout, even when the story occasionally falters.”

Washington Post reviews War by Bob Woodward (S. & S.): “If War is somewhat didactic, even pedantic, about the value of good policymaking, it is because it thrums with the urgency Woodward must feel of persuading the electorate not to make the same mistake—or a worse one—again”; and Polostan: Volume One of Bomb Light by Neal Stephenson (Morrow): “Assuming the subsequent books are as good as this one, Stephenson might end up with a series that rivals Michael Moorcock’s Pyat Quartet and Edward Whittemore’s Jerusalem Quartet as a vivid and canny dissection of a century unlike any other.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for The Waiting by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown; LJ starred review), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has new prepub alerts. 

Parade highlights new books for the week. 

T&C highlights 25 ghost books.

Ten authors recommend the scariest books at USA Today. 

ElectricLit shares “8 Books About Finding Magic in the Domestic.”

BookRiot previews books by Black authors that publish in 2025. 

Entertainment Weekly shares details from the forthcoming Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Book. People also has coverage, as does GMA. 

Esquire talks with Talia Lavin about her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (Legacy Lit). 

The Rumpus chats with Lyndsay Rush, A Bit Much: Poems (St. Martin’s Griffin), about “Doritos, what she’s most nervous about revealing in her collection, and why she dedicated the book to Michelle Pfeifer.”

Autostraddle talks with Nico Lang about their new book, American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era (Abrams). 

People offers a preview and excerpt from Clémence Michallon’s forthcoming novel, Our Last Resort (Knopf), due out in July 2025.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle adapts from her new book, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb (Univ. of California), in an essay for Salon.

The Atlantic asks: “Why Does Anyone Care About the Nobel Prize?”

Kimiko Hahn, The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems (Norton), answers 10 questions at Poets & Writers.

The Atlantic’s “Books Briefing” looks at “The Lessons of Aging” through new books by Alan Hollinghurst, and Lore Segal. 

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Sequel (Celadon), takes Elle’s Shelf Life literary questionnaire, while Stanley Tucci, What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts) (Gallery; LJ starred review), answers the Proust Questionnaire at Vanity Fair.

NYT talks with Alex van Halen about his brother Eddie and his new book, Brothers (Harper), due out next week. 

The Guardian looks at sales of Boris Johnson’s new book, Unleashed (Harper), which “covers Johnson’s time as mayor of London, foreign secretary and prime minister.”

Authors On Air

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour considers “the scary movies and books that still haunt us.”

Japanese crime novel The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda, tr. by Alison Watts (Bitter Lemon), will get a limited series adaptation, Variety reports. 

Phaedra Patrick’s 2023 novel The Little Italian Hotel (Park Row) will be adapted for TV, Variety reports.

The Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, based on Mick Herron's “Slough House” novels, gets an early 6th season renewal. Hollywood Reporter has the story. 

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.