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Buzzy Forthcoming Books

Actor Seth Rogen's first book, Yearbook (Crown: Penguin), is due out May 11. USA Today has details, and Vulture notes that his mother provided a statement for the press release ("If I’m being honest, I really wish there wasn’t so much drug talk"). 

The NYT speaks with Moneyball and The Big Short author Michael Lewis about his forthcoming pandemic novel, The Premonition (W. W. Norton). It's due out in May with an initial print run of 500,000.

Another pandemic book, this one nonfiction: The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID by Lawrence Wright (Knopf: Random House), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the recent pandemic novel The End of October, is due out June 8. Kirkus has more. 

Former Texas Representative Will Hurd has a book in the works at Simon & Schuster. It's expected to be out next year. The Associated Press has info.

The View co-host Sunny Hostin announced her first novel, Summer on the Bluffs (William Morrow: Harper Collins), will be released May 4. 

USA Today reports the second book from Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty, Apples Never Fall (Henry Holt: Macmillan), is due out Sept. 14.

Nicola Yoon's next book, Instructions for Dancing (Delacorte: Penguin), is due out June 1. Entertainment Weekly asks her about how the book came to be.

Tor.com excerpts Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden (Tordotcom: Macmillan).

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers | USA Today Best-Selling Books

Fiction

Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner (Dutton: Penguin; LJ starred review) appears at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 3 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Invitation by Vi Keeland (C. Scott) arrives at No. 8 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nantucket Threads by Pamela M. Kelley (Piping Plover) is No. 9 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris and art by Marissa Valdez (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Hachette) steps up at No. 14 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (W. W. Norton; LJ starred review) starts at No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Reviews

NPR reviews Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion (Knopf: Random House): "As these essays demonstrate, Didion, even with her famous detachment, is no slouch at showing us what she means." 

The Washington Post reviews Just as I Am by Cicely Tyson (HarperCollins): "...a 400-page chronicle of a history as American as apple pie, as Black as the dead of night, as rich, surely, as Tyson’s favorite meals, oxtails and okra, cooked up by her late ex-husband Miles Davis."

The NYT reviews Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them by Ethan Zuckerman (W. W. Norton): "...he seems to find most promising those activists with more conventionally progressive politics who embrace new tactics."

Book Marks picks “5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

CrimeReads recommends 10 debuts out this month.

Amazon rounds up "The buzziest fiction of 2021 winter and spring."

Lit Hub suggests "5 Audiobook Essay Collections."

Shelf Awareness previews some books coming out next week.

Colin Quinn shares his favorite recent reads with Amazon.

Jon Yaged is the new president of Macmillan Publishers' U.S. trade group, a promotion from his previous position as head of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. Publishers Weekly reports.

The L.A. Times interviews actor David Duchovny about his new book, Truly Like Lightning (FSG: Macmillan).

Mark Leyner discusses Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (Little, Brown: Hachette) with BOMB. 

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop interviews Jamie Marina Lau, Pink Mountain on Locust Island (Coffee House).

Vogue has a Q&A with Gabrielle Korn, Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes (Atria: S. & S.). 

The NYT  goes "Inside the List with Angie Thomas, Concrete Rose (Balzer + Bray: HarperCollins), covering the shout-out from Dr. Jill Biden in her ALA Midwinter talk.

Avni Doshi speaks with Electric Lit about Burnt Sugar (Overlook: Abrams).

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday, Time has a conversation with Heather Dune Macadam, 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz (Citadel: Kensington).

CrimeReads' "My First Thriller" column features Randy Wayne White, Salt River (G. P. Putnam's Sons: Penguin).

Roberto Lovato speaks with The Rumpus about Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas (Harper).

"I read the weirdest Trump-era erotica so you don't have to." See more at The Guardian.

Inauguration poet Amanda Gorman will read at the Super Bowl. The Associated Press has details.

Christopher Little, the literary agent who brought the world Harry Potter, has died. The NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

Min Jin Lee is adapting her book Free Food for Millionaires as a series for Netflix. Variety reports.

A series adaptation of All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai is coming to Peacock from Seth MacFarlane and Amy Pascal. Netflix is developing a documentary on serial killer Dennis Nilsen, based on his autobiography, The History Of A Drowning Boy. Also at Netflix, the premiere for Shadow And Bone, inspired by the Grishaverse series by Leigh Bardugo, is scheduled for April 23. Variety has the news.

London’s National Theatre adaptation of Romeo and Juliet will air on PBS on April 23. Playbill has details.

NPR's Fresh Air speaks with Jon Fasman, We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance (PublicAffairs: Hatchette), who says, "I have not written an anti-technology book. I have written a pro-democracy, pro-regulation book."

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo discusses her forthcoming memoir Poet Warrior on The Quarantine Tapes podcast.

Dr. Carl L. Hart, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear (Penguin), appears on the Keen On podcast.

Charles M. Blow, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto (Harper), will be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight.

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