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National Book Awards & Best of 2024 Lists

Percival Everett wins the National Book Award for Fiction with James (Doubleday; LJ starred review). NYT, NPR, Washington Post, and The Guardian have coverage.

Yáng Shuāng-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, tr. by Lin King (Graywolf), wins the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (Univ. of Akron) wins the National Book Award for Poetry.

Jason De León’s Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling (Viking) wins the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Publishers Weekly looks back on 75 years of National Book Awards.

Washington Post publishes its lists of the best fiction and nonfiction of 2024, plus the best thrillers, mysteries, romances, historical fiction, SFF, and graphic novels.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

To Die For by David Baldacci (Grand Central) grabs No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 4 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson (Flatiron; LJ starred review) woos No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver (Slowburn) flies to No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Clive Cussler Desolation Code by Graham Brown (Putnam) gets to No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Nonfiction

Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington To Save America by Kevin Roberts (Broadside) has No. 5 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music by Rob Sheffield (Dey Street) sings at No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Martha: The Cookbook; 100 Favorite Recipes, with Lessons and Stories from My Kitchen by Martha Stewart (Clarkson Potter; LJ starred review) serves up No. 11 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Reviews

NYT reviews Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers by Jean Strouse (Farrar): “The book at times lacks the internal combustion of longer histories. Strouse has previously written a biography of Henry’s sister, Alice James, and a remarkably humanizing doorstop on J. Pierpont Morgan. No surprise, then, that Family Romance shines when portraying the groundswells altering high society”; and November graphic novels: World Within the World: Collected Minicomix & Short Works 2010–2022 by Julia Gfrörer (Fantagraphics), Anzuelo by Emma Ríos (Image Comics), and The Legend of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse).

LA Times reviews Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler (Avid Reader/S. & S.): “Rosenfeld was first published in Israel in 2022, where it became a viral sensation, spending 30 weeks on bestseller lists. Its popularity can be traced primarily to Kessler’s mastery of the sex scene, and for nearly 400 pages, we are subjected to scores of them.”

LitHub has “5 Book Reviews You Need To Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

Sergio de la Pava, author of Every Arc Bends Its Radian (S. & S.; LJ starred review), shares his “Annotated Nightstand” with LitHub.

Glory Edim, author of Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me (Ballantine), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

The Guardian talks to Richard Flanagan about winning the Baillie Gifford Prize for Question 7 (Knopf) and refusing the prize money.

Vulture shares an excerpt from Cher: The Memoir, Part One (Dey Street).

In Public Books, Tasha Sandoval explores the developing “abuelita canon” of books about grandmothers, their sacrifices, and their legacies.

Vulture gathers the best Irish novels of the past 15 years.

LA Times reports that Trump’s promises are raising fears of more book bans in the U.S. in 2025.

Authors on Air

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast talks to Ruben Reyes Jr., author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories (Mariner).

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

Tomorrow, GMA will host Terri Cole, author of Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency (Sounds True); Live with Kelly and Mark will talk to Cher, author of Cher: The Memoir, Part One (Dey Street); and the Drew Barrymore Show will interview Keke Palmer, author of Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative (Flatiron).

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