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

Awards & Book News

The shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize is revealed.

The shortlists are released for the Jhalak Prize, awarding prose and poetry by writers of color in the UK and Ireland. The Bookseller has coverage.

The Donner Prize announces its shortlist for the year’s best Canadian public policy book. CBC has coverage.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems likely to rule that parents can opt out of LGBTQIA+ stories in their children’s classrooms, NYT reports.

The state of Iowa has appealed a U.S. District Court judge’s injunction against the 2023 law that has removed hundreds of books from school libraries; Publishers Weekly has coverage.

Attorneys for IMLS acting director Keith Sonderling have responded to the lawsuit filed earlier this month by the ALA, Publishers Weekly reports.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

The Perfect Divorce by Jeneva Rose (Blackstone) breaks through to No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 7 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci (Grand Central) finds No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 5 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Wild and Wrangled by Lyla Sage (Dial Pr. Paperbacks) hauls in No. 14 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Nonfiction

The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates (Flatiron) emerges at No. 3 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

How To Work with Complicated People: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with (Nearly) Anyone by Ryan Leak (Maxwell Leadership) surges to No. 6 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

How To Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously by Hannah Berner & Paige Desorbo (S. & S./Simon Element) takes No. 8 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Digital Impact: The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation by Steve Lucas (Wiley) achieves No. 11 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Reviews

NYT reviews More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker (Basic): “Amid his sharp criticisms of the tech figures he writes about is a resolute call for compassion. He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us”; The Rebel Romanov: Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had by Helen Rappaport (St. Martin’s): “Rappaport spends mercifully little time explaining the ever-shifting alliances and reconfigurations of various German principalities. The same cannot be said for the ink she devotes to tracking Julie’s geographic progressions from spa to spa over decades”; and three books that “tell the stories of entrepreneurs and executives who have inched closer and closer to their governments”: Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah & Christopher Kirchhoff (Scribner), Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left by Eoin Higgins (Bold Type), and Profits & Persecution: German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust by Peter Hayes (Cambridge Univ.).

Washington Post reviews No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris (Random; LJ starred review): “Harris, who has dug deeply into these narratives, is particularly good at showing how they intertwine, how corporate money can support but also corrupt science, and how corporate alliances with government can mean progress but also collusion.”

The Guardian reviews Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts To Make English Easier To Spell by Gabe Henry (Dey Street): “Some complain about this as further evidence of the ‘deterioration’ of language; I have at times been one of them. But Henry’s book gave me a new perspective, cheering for the simplification crowd”; and Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference by Rutger Bregman (Little, Brown): “‘This is not a self-help book,’ the author tells us, firmly. Appearances might suggest otherwise: it is written and presented almost entirely in the familiar style of that genre, with largish print, short sentences, snappy maxims in italics and lots of lists and charts…. Its proposals are delivered with all the annoyingly hectic bounciness of the genre. But it is worth taking Bregman…at his word.”

NPR reviews When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy (Tor Nightfire; LJ starred review): “Each character is much more than the archetype they would play if this were a prosaic werewolf novel: monster, gifted kid, final girl. Cassidy understands that horror only works when there is empathy, and he spends a lot of time making sure we know these characters, that we care about them and understand why they hurt”; while Fresh Air reviews Atavists: Stories by Lydia Millet (Norton): “So, is it a novel in short stories? Something like that. But it's also a book that seems to have one foot planted very firmly on some ideas, on some questions and observations and hot topics, which—mixed with Millet's keen eye and sharp prose—leads to passages that seem to have been plucked from larger essays. In short, there's a lot going on here—and most of it is great”; and The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon): “The narrative is propulsive, but what makes the novel so absorbing are the ways the author makes this near-future world come to life.”

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

Briefly Noted

LitHub interviews sisters Anne and Claire Berest about coauthoring the novel Gabriële, tr. by Tina Kover (Europa Editions).

Rick Atkinson, author of The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 (Crown; LJ starred review), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

People talks to reality TV star and podcaster Paige DeSorbo about her new book, How To Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously, coauthored by Hannah Berner (S. & S./Simon Element).

LitHub hosts “an illustrated conversation” between Lena Moses-Schmitt, author of True Mistakes (Univ. of Arkansas), and Martha Park, author of World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After (Hub City).

U.S. publishers are printing more copies of the Constitution to satisfy readers’ surging demand for the text, the AP reports, including a new edition with introduction by Jon Meacham, due out from Modern Library on Jun. 24.

Actor Gillian Anderson is soliciting submissions for an “even more daring” follow-up to her 2024 anthology Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous (Abrams), The Guardian reports.

The “King Kong” movie universe will expand in print as well, as World Builder Entertainment launches a publishing arm, Deadline reports.

A new study from the UK documents the obstacles that prevent adults from reading books; Publishers Weekly has coverage.

The UK announces a pioneering collective licensing model that will ensure authors are paid for works used to train AI, The Guardian reports.

Novelist Nancy Kilpatrick, best known for her vampire fiction, has died at age 78; Locus has an obituary.

Authors on Air

Netflix has ordered a series based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2008 short story collection Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage), Deadline reports.

NPR’s Life Kit discusses the art of letter writing with Rachel Syme, author of Syme’s Letter Writer: A Guide to Modern Correspondence (Clarkson Potter).

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast interviews Jodie Hare, author of Autism Is Not a Disease: The Politics of Neurodiversity (Verso).

The View tomorrow will host José Andrés, coauthor of Change the Recipe: Because You Can’t Build a Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs (Ecco), and Ezra Klein, coauthor of Abundance: What Progress Takes (Avid Reader/S. & S.).

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

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