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Awards & Book News

Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie (Univ. of Queensland) wins both the ARA Historical Novel Society Australasia Prize and the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, The Guardian reports. The Australia-set historical novel has also won five other literary awards and is due out in the U.S. in January 2025.

A Texas county library system has reversed its decision to classify a children’s Indigenous history book in the fiction section, The Guardian reports.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

The Waiting by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown; LJ starred review) arrives at No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 2 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon (Ace) rises to No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

A Christmas Duet by Debbie Macomber (Ballantine) sings at No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Nonfiction

War by Bob Woodward (S. & S.) battles its way to No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list and on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by John Grisham & Jim McCloskey (Doubleday) gets No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list and No. 3 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts) by Stanley Tucci (Gallery; LJ starred review) gobbles up No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (Penguin Pr.) stars at No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future by Brian Solis (Wiley) speeds to No. 11 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Cats of the World by Hannah Shaw & Andrew Marttila (Plume) claws its way to No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion by Allie Beth Stuckey (Sentinel) hits No. 14 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Life on Svalbard: Finding Home on a Remote Island Near the North Pole by Cecilia Blomdahl (DK) finds No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Reviews

NYT reviews four spooky romance novels: Haunted Ever After by Jean DeLuca (Berkley), Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore (Dell), The City in Glass by Nghi Vo (Tor.com), and Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit).

Washington Post reviews The Great Hippopotamus Hotel by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon): “McCall Smith’s latest book, his 25th, is something of a milestone achievement. It could have been an opportunity to tear up the template, deviate from the norm and take the narrative in a radical new direction. But why do so when you are on to a good thing giving loyal readers what they want?”

Briefly Noted

NYT talks to Yael van der Wouden about her debut novel, The Safekeep (Avid Reader/S. & S.), an erotic thriller about “the Netherlands’ failure to face up to the horrors of the Holocaust.”

Poets & Writers interviews poet Mosab Abu Toha, author of Forest of Noise (Knopf; LJ starred review), about his new project, crowdsourcing a renga about the Gaza war called “The Longest Poem,” for which anyone can email him a couplet.

The Guardian talks to Ben Okri, author of Wild: Poems (Other Pr.), on the occasion of the UK’s Black History Month.

Richard McGuire, creator of the 2014 graphic novel Here (Pantheon), which is being turned into a Tom Hanks movie, answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Time has an interview with self-help expert Mel Robbins, author of The Let Them Theory (Hay House) and host of The Mel Robbins Podcast.

CrimeReads discusses the three classic settings of crime fiction, Scandinavia, Britain, and the desert of the American Southwest.

NYT gathers “5 Books to Read About Policing Before You Vote.”

Reactor identifies “Five Formidable Female Characters from Classic SF.”

People shares quick-reading BookTok favorites.

Gustavo Gutiérrez, father of liberation theology and author of A Theology of Liberation, has died at 96; NYT has an obituary.

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air interviews Nick Harkaway, author of Karla’s Choice (Viking), about reviving the character of George Smiley created by his father, John le Carré.

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast interviews Stephen Markley, author of The Deluge (S. & S.; LJ starred review).

LitHub’s Talk Easy podcast speaks with newly minted MacArthur fellow Jason Reynolds about his latest YA novel, Twenty-Four Seconds from Now… (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy).

Tor and LitHub’s Voyage into Genre podcast talks to Kemi Ashing-Giwa, author of This World Is Not Yours (Tor Nightfire), and CJ Leede, author of American Rapture (Tor Nightfire).

Today, NPR’s Here & Now will feature Rose Levy Beranbaum, coauthor of The Cake Bible, 35th Anniversary Edition (Morrow Cookbooks; LJ starred review).

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

An adaptation of Rebecca Yarros’s In the Likely Event (Montlake) is in the works at Netflix, People reports.

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