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Awards & Book News

Winners of the Whiting Awards for emerging talents are announced, People reports. NPR also has coverage.

The Horror Writers Association has announced David Cronenberg, Dame Susan Elizabeth Hill, and Del and Sue Howison as recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Thomas Pynchon will publish his first novel since 2013; Shadow Ticket is due out from Penguin Pr. on Oct. 7. NYT and The Guardian have coverage.

Patti Smith, author of Just Kids, has written a new memoir, Bread of Angels, to be published by Random House on Nov. 4, The Guardian reports. People also has coverage.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers | USA Today Bestselling Books

Fiction

Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez (Forever; LJ starred review) holds No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 3 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Dandadan, Vol. 12 by Yukinobu Tatsu (VIZ Media) gets No. 4 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart (St. Martin’s) pulls in No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Sweet Obsession by Katee Robert (Sourcebooks Casablanca) grabs No. 6 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Nonfiction

I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home by Maria Shriver (The Open Field) finds No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes (Morrow) wins No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Autism Out Loud: Life with a Child on the Spectrum, from Diagnosis to Young Adulthood by Kate Swenson, Carrie Cariello and Adrian Wood (Park Row) reaches No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Boat Baby: A Memoir by Vicky Nguyen (S. & S.) goes to No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller list.

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels (Doubleday) achieves No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller list.

Reviews

Washington Post reviews Sky Daddy by Kate Folk (Random): “Like George Saunders and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Folk seeds the petri dish of each story with one aberrant premise and then lets it mutate into something monstrously hilarious and revealing. This month, for the first time, she extends her diabolical method to an entire novel: Sky Daddy. The results are just as bizarre, witty and poignant as her fans could hope.”

NYT reviews Mỹ Documents by Kevin Nguyen (One World): “If Nguyen’s novel had aspired to be funny and nothing more, it would have risked trivializing its thorniest themes: the limits of citizenship, how families exploit one another’s trauma. The grim realities of life in detention are never far from mind, even when delivered in short, pacey chapters. Moments of violence are more impactful because they occur against scenes of humor and occasional mundanity”; Big Chief by Jon Hickey (S. & S.): “For the most part, Big Chief cultivates an uneasy atmosphere. Full of cagey, terse, veiled exchanges between people bound together by self-interest who do not seem to like or trust each other much, it creates suspense not from the question of whether open conflict will take place, but when”; The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic’s Chinese Survivors by Steven Schwankert (Pegasus): “Schwankert goes to great lengths to disprove the allegation, even building a replica to show that concealment wouldn’t have been possible. He also immersed himself, fully clothed, in a tank of 54-degree seawater to imagine how long Fang Lang could have survived in the Atlantic”; City of Fiction, by Yu Hua, tr. by Todd Foley (Europa): “City of Fiction is a picaresque novel, and a long one at that. The way it values event above psychology sometimes makes its litany of one thing after another exhausting to read”; and self-help books about being a better friend: Happy Relationships: 25 Buddhist Practices To Transform Your Connections with Your Partner, Family, and Friends by Kimberly Brown (Prometheus), Finding Your People: The Ultimate Guide to Friendship by Alexandra Hourigan & Sally McMullen (Allen & Unwin), and Astrologic: How To Make Friends & Influence People Based on Their Sun Sign by Amelia Wood (Castle Point).

The Guardian reviews Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood by Adam Nicolson (Farrar): “Typically, when men move into the garden shed, it suggests that all is not well at home. But Nicolson—who is married to the gardener and writer Sarah Raven—keeps his personal life out of the classroom. After the publication of so many nature books that shoehorn in ill-fitting narratives of personal crisis and growth, this makes a refreshing change”; and The Sleep Room: A Sadistic Psychiatrist and the Women Who Survived Him by Jon Stock (Abrams): “The sleep room regime is more than enough to convict Sargant of dubious practice, but halfway through the book Stock veers off to examine his possible involvement with MI5, MI6 and the CIA’s MKUltra programme in mind control.”

LitHub has “Five Book Reviews You Need To Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

Publishers Weekly interviews Dan Nadel, author of Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life (Scribner).

NYT talks to Peter Godwin, author of Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss, and Occasional Wars (S. & S./Summit).

Katie Kitamura, author of Audition (Riverhead), answers “The LitHub Questionnaire.”

Graydon Carter, author of When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines (Penguin Pr.), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Jon Hickey, author of Big Chief (S. & S.), shares his “Annotated Nightstand” with LitHub.

CrimeReads has a Q&A with Belinda Bauer, author of The Impossible Thing (Atlantic Monthly).

Publishers Weekly shares panels from Remember Us to Life: A Graphic Memoir by Joanna Rubin Dranger (Ten Speed).

In NYT, Leigh Bardugo offers a list of “Fantasy Novels for People Who Think They Don’t Like Fantasy.”

LitHub recommends “Five Books That Explore Motherhood, Intention, and Desire.”

People celebrates National Library Week with a reading list of librarians turned authors.

CrimeReads lists decaying settings in fiction.

Kirkus has a list of “20 books you might have missed (but shouldn’t).”

Reactor gathers all the new science fiction books arriving in April.

Authors on Air

Kirkus’s Fully Booked podcast interviews Edna Bonhomme, author of A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19 (Atria/One Signal).

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast talks to Sheila Sundar, author of Habitations (S. & S.).

Today, NPR’s All Things Considered will speak with Mark Hoppus, Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir (Dey Street), while Fresh Air will talk to Gardiner Harris, author of No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson (Random; LJ starred review).

Shelf Awareness rounds up the schedule for this weekend’s Book TV on C-SPAN 2.

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