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Awards & News

Tyriek White wins the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for We Are a Haunting (Astra House). 

Patricia Engel wins the Dos Passos Prize.

Ten recipients of the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant are announced. LitHub has more about the grantees and their works in progress.

Christianity Today announces its 2024 Book Awards.

Reese Witherspoon selects Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman (Berkley) for her December book club.

CBC selects the best Canadian fiction of 2023. 

The Guardian highlights five of the best food books, science fiction/fantasy novels, crime/thrillers, and poetry collections of 2023.

Slate lists “The 10 Best Audiobooks of 2023.”

ElectricLit names its best nonfiction of 2023. 

Vulture releases its best books of 2023. 

NPR’s book critic Maureen Corrigan lists her top 10 titles of the year. 

GoodReads rounds up several “Best of the Year” lists.

Reviews

Datebook reviews Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen (Harper): “Her prose glimmers and glints, more sensation than exposition, whether she’s shining her light on broken family, broken dreams or our broken Earth. In this short but mighty novel, Christensen does a psychologist’s job with a poet’s lyrical pen.”

NPR reviews All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (Algonquin): “The opportunity to inhabit Sunday’s mind makes this book special. We experience the effort Sunday puts in to decipher social interactions, even the simplest. Her interpretations veer from the expected. Reading this firsthand depiction of autism in fiction is a rare literary delicacy.”

Bookmarks shares “The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2023.”

LJ highlights the December issue’s starred reviews.

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney (Little, Brown), the top holds title of the week. The book shot to #1 on Amazon yesterday, even selling out for a short time, The Hill noted. Cheney was also featured on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Alexis Soloski discusses her new novel, Here in the Dark (Flatiron), and channeling her inner Agatha with Shondaland. Plus, Gabrielle Korn talks about “writing about being trapped inside during the pandemic lockdown” for her new novel, Yours for the Taking (St. Martin’s), and Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene, Rebecca, Not Becky (Amistad), explore the question: Can Black women and white women be friends? Also, Margo Steines discusses her new memoir in essays, Brutalities (Norton). 

The Rumpus talks with poet Cynthia Manick about her collection No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad), which was selected as one of NYPL’s best 2023 books for adults. 

Washington Post suggests and offers samples of December’s best audiobooks.

Debbie Urbanski talks with Esquire about how she used ChatGPT to write her debut novel, After World (S. & S.), and “how it changed her views on AI.”

The Millions continues its “Year in Reading” series with recommendations from LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child: Stories (Tiny Reparations), Isle McElroy, People Collide (HarperVia), and translator Damion Searles. 

Elena Medel leads a literary tour through Madrid for NYT.

LitHub highlights 21 new books for the week.

Shondaland picks the best books of December.

AARP notes 21 top books for Winter. 

CrimeReads writes about “the enduring appeal of murder and mystery.”

Authors on Air

PBS Canvas talks with Grammy winner Tariq Trotter about his book, The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are (One World). 

NPR’s All Things Considered speaks with Samantha Harvey about her new book, Orbital (Atlantic Monthly; LJ starred review).

Time talks with the creators of The Rest Is History: From Ancient Rome to Ronald Reagan—History’s Most Curious Questions, Answered by Goalhanger Podcasts (PublicAffairs). 

NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday highlighted Rose Previte’s debut cookbook Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond (Abrams; LJ starred review). 

ElectricLit highlights “The Best Podcasts Engaged in Literary Activism.”

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