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Big Books of the Week

End of Story by A.J. Finn (Morrow) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

The Chaos Agent by Mark Greaney (Berkley)

The Guest by B.A. Paris (St. Martin’s)

The Atlas Maneuver by Steve Berry (Grand Central)

Supercommunicators: How To Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg (Random)

These books and others publishing the week of February 19, 2024, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Two LibraryReads and five Indie Next picks publish this week:

The Hall of Fame pick is The Guest by B.A. Paris (St. Martin’s)

The Bonus pick is A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian (Park Row)

“Twenty years after they witness a terrible crime, a group of classmates returns to their home town to look into the murder of one of their group. They've come a long way since that summer after their sophomore year, when the mismatched bunch were brought together for a school project. The local abandoned mine and megachurch remain fixtures of the town and settings for unspeakable things. Attending to the intuitive visions of their de facto leader, they revisit the scene and events that originally drove them away. Fans of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and Stephen King’s It will find a lot to love (and fear) here.”—Alene Moroni, LibraryReads Board Member

Five Indie Next picks publish this week:

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker (Mariner)

“Rich, vibrant and full of atmosphere, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson drew me in from the first page. An intricately layered portrait of family, identity, and survival. Cecily will steal your heart!”—Maxwell Gregory, Madison Street Books, Chicago, IL

Sun of Blood and Ruin by Mariely Lares (Harper Voyager)

“A fast-paced fantasy filled with shapeshifting, sorcery, and epic battles. Lares weaves together a rich world from Mesoamerican history and mythology, alongside a thoughtful exploration of mestiza identity and finding a place in the world.”—Elena Jove, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO

The Still Point by Tammy Greenwood (Kensington)

“Based on Greenwood’s experience as a ballet mom, this sometimes-painful journey into adulthood (for both the moms and their daughters!) is also a story of friendship, life aspirations, and moving on from tragedy and heartbreak.”—Terry Gilman, Creating Conversations, Redondo Beach, CA

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown)

“In Splinters, Leslie Jamison tells the story of her navigating her divorce with a young child. It’s a book about motherhood, but at its core it’s about love: falling in love, falling out of love, a mother’s love. I was in awe the entire time.”—Hunter Gillum, Beaverdale Books, Des Moines, IA

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum, tr. by Shanna Tan (Bloomsbury)

“Burnt out and drained, Yeongju fulfills her dreams of surrounding herself in stories and opening a bookshop. What starts off as a tidy, uplifting story of joy and redemption transforms into a choose-your-own-adventure of levity for readers.”—Thu Doan, East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, CA

In the Media

People’s book of the week is Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown). Also getting attention are Ours by Phillip B. Williams (Viking) and The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker (Mariner). A “More Stunning New Memoirs” section features How To Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson (Tiny Reparations), Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon, written with Kim Green (Algonquin), and I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante (Penguin Pr.). 

The “Picks” section spotlights ABC’s Not Dead Yet, based on the novel, Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up by Alexandra Potter (Harper). Plus, recipes from Giuseppe Dell’Anno, Giuseppe’s Easy Bakes: Sweet Italian Treats (Quadrille), and Tiffy Chen, Tiffy Cooks: 88 Easy Asian Recipes from My Family to Yours (Ten Speed).

Reviews

NPR reviews The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai (Putnam; LJ starred review): “In traditional mystery stories, food and drink are often agents of destruction: Think, for instance, of Agatha Christie and her voluminous menu of exotic poisons. But, at the Kamogawa Diner, carefully researched and reconstructed meals are the solutions, the keys to unlocking mysteries of memory and regret.”

NYT reviews Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn (Knopf): “It is competent and professional, as if built from solid pine and good plaster. It is dispassionate and well researched. Reading it is brutal because McCullers’s life was brutal to endure”; Language City: The Fight To Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin (Atlantic Monthly): “It’s hard to be hopeful. Intergenerational transfer of endangered languages is particularly difficult. Still, Perlin builds a compelling case for why preserving them matters not just for the speakers, but for humanity itself”; Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022 by Frank Trentmann (Knopf): “In the remarkably rich Out of the Darkness, the historian Frank Trentmann tracks the ‘moral transformation of Germany,’ from the Battle of Stalingrad in the early 1940s right through debates about Germany’s historical responsibilities in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine eight decades later”; Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World by Patrick Joyce (Scribner): “Joyce shows how the supreme value of the peasant is generational survival: The great task is to hand on to the child the land the peasant has inherited, making one’s own existence a kind of interlude between past and future.”

Washington Post reviews End of Story by A.J. Finn (Morrow): “Even readers looking past Finn’s personal woes—or those looking at them and wishing him well anyway—will quickly be hoping for end of story”; The Ukraine: Stories by Artem Chapeye, tr. by Zenia Tompkins (Seven Stories): “The beauty of The Ukraine rests foremost in its ability to transcend the narrative that history has forcibly imposed on it.”

Briefly Noted

The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction announces its longlist. The Guardian and Good Housekeeping have coverage. 

The Atlantic will announce a major literary initiative at the 2024 New Orleans Book Festival, which “attempts to establish a new American literary canon.”

The Jane Grigson Trust Award 2024 for new food and drink writers announces a shortlist.

The 2024 Dell Award winners are announced. Locus reports. 

The 2024 Splatterpunk Awards nominees are announced. 

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) referred itself to the Charity Commission after criticism from authors including Ian McEwan and Alan Hollinghurst. The Guardian has the story. 

USA Today has a feature and interview with Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie about her new book, Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere (Thomas Nelson). 

Oni Press will revive EC Comics when it publishes new stories this summer. NYT has the story. 

The Millions talks with Leslie Jamison about her new book, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story (Little, Brown).

People highlights Gisele Bündchen’s forthcoming cookbook, Nourish: Simple Recipes To Empower Your Body and Feed Your Soul, due out from Clarkson Potter on March 26. 

NYT writes about pop-up AI biographies after celebrity deaths.

LitHub shares 23 new releases for the week. 

CrimeReads suggests 10 new books for the week. 

The Guardian rounds up the best crime and thrillers of the month.

Rabbi Jules Harlow dies at the age of 92. NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

Phillip B. Williams discusses his book, Ours (Viking), with B&N’s Poured Over podcast. 

Jamie Kern Lima, Worthy: How To Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life (Hay House), visits GMA today. She will also visit with Tamron Hall.

Savannah Guthrie, Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere (Thomas Nelson), discusses her book on the Today Show. She will also appear today on Drew Barrymore.

Kwane Stewart, What It Takes To Save a Life: A Veterinarian’s Quest for Healing and Hope (HarperOne), also appears on Today. 

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