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Awards & Books News

Finalists are out for the $25K Leacock Medal for humour writing. The CBC has details. 

Finalists have also been named for the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, given to a book with “a thoroughbred horse racing premise/backdrop.” They are Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Viking; LJ starred review), Landaluce: The Story of Seattle Slew’s First Champion by Mary Perdue (Univ. Pr. of Kentucky), and Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan (New Directions). Shelf Awareness reports. 

NYT reports on A.I and publishing, writing that it is touching off "fear and creativity."

Bidding for Simon & Schuster draws to a close according to the NYT.

Kirkus reports that a new novel by Emily Henry is coming in April. It will be titled Funny Story and will be published by Berkley.

Fox News reports that faith-based groups and individuals are heading to libraries this Saturday to take part in a nationwide book reading event, “in part to stand up for faith, family and country.”

“Lois Libien, Who Found a Readership with Household Tips, Dies at 87.” NYT runs an obituary.

NYT has an obituary of “Alan Roland, 93, Psychoanalyst Who Cautioned Against Western Bias” and author of In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross-Cultural Psychology (Princeton Univ.).

Martin Walser, eminent German novelist (most recently of A Man in Love), dies at 96. Washington Post has an obituary.

New Title Best Sellers

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

Fiction

Light Bringer by Pierce Brown (Del Rey) brings in No. 2 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Dead Fall by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler) rises to No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller list and No. 15 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Everyone Here Is Lying by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman) grabs No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller list.

Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo (Knopf) comes out at No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller list.

Nonfiction

Baking Yesteryear: The Best Recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s by B. Dylan Hollis (Alpha) hits No. 3 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The King of Late Night by Greg Gutfeld (Threshold Editions) emerges at No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the ’70s by Alan Paul (St. Martin's) pops at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller list.

Reviews

NYT reviews Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo (Bloomsbury): “[Yeebo] delves into archives across the Atlantic, digs up criminal proceedings and conducts interviews with victims and associates alike, in the process telling us not just about Blay-Miezah, but about the world that enabled him to thrive.”

Washington Post reviews The Second Murderer by Denise Mina (Little, Brown; LJ starred review): “The plot of The Second Murderer doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then neither did the plots of Chandler’s novels”; Prom Mom (Morrow; LJ starred review) by Laura Lippman: “In a few more years, perhaps, the granular details of pandemic-era life on display in Prom Mom may take on the glamour of historical fiction, especially in the subtle ways couples used quarantine to coerce and manipulate each other”; and Waiting To Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China's Genocide by Tahir Hamut Izgil, tr. by Joshua L. Freeman (Penguin Pr.): “The result, translated by Joshua Freeman, is a lived-in page-turner with the slow, grim boil of a Le Carré novel (no shooting, but no hope of justice either, with plenty of code words and offstage violence), threaded with a few of Izgil’s short, striking poems.” There’s also a paired review of two older self-help/psychology books: The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Mary Frances O’Connor (HarperOne) and The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk (Viking; LJ starred review).

The Atlantic reviews Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special (Bloomsbury): “Flattery takes an inspired approach to showing how the stuff of our daily existence can, when mediated through technology, be made into a fiction.”

LitHub’s BookMarks selects five book reviews you need to read this week.

Briefly Noted

NYT’s “Inside the Best-Seller List” covers Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died (S. & S.).

NYT Magazine reports on “The Art of Telling Forbidden Stories in China.”

LitHub chooses August’s best sci-fi and fantasy books and “a reading list of books where animal companions steal the show.”

Tor.com selects “Five Gripping SFF Narratives Composed of Interlinked Short Stories” and “SFF Reading Recommendations for the Characters of Good Omens.”

CrimeReads has a list of “unlikely investigative teams in crime fiction.”

CBC rounds up “25 books about being Black in Canada,” and “CBC Kids host Lisette Xavier shares 6 books that made her laugh, cry and reflect on her life.”

BookRiot recommends “books about going viral on social media” and August horoscope and book pairings. They also round up books coming out in August: “10 new don’t-miss horror novels,” “15 new mystery, thrillers, & true crime novels,” “8 new nonfiction books,” “9 hot new romance novels,” “8 new manga releases,” and “9 new graphic novels and comics.”

Bustle identifies “the 35 Best New Books of Fall 2023.”

Popsugar shares “the 8 Books Every Hip-Hop Feminist Should Read.”

Electric Lit finds “8 Books About Friendships With Wealth Disparities.”

“From Barbra Streisand to Sly Stone, 12 superstars are coming out with books,” the Minneapolis StarTribune reports.

Robert Downey Jr. and coauthor Thomas Kostigen reveal the cover of Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time (1.: Blackstone) in People.

In an essay on CrimeReads, Lynn Hightower talks about writing a heroine with hearing loss in The Beautiful Risk (Severn House).

Edan Lepucki, Time’s Mouth (Counterpoint), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Jamel Brinkley, Witness: Stories (Farrar), answers the LitHub questionnaire. Shane McCrae, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping (Scribner), answers LitHub’s “Annotated Nightstand” questions.

USA Today talks to Elizabeth Acevedo, Family Lore (Ecco).

The new season of American Horror Story is based on Danielle Valentine’s novel Delicate Condition (Sourcebooks Landmark), Vanity Fair writes, in a profile of Valentine.

“Robert Plunket Is Fine with Being Rediscovered,” Vulture reports in a new profile. His 1983 novel My Search for Warren Harding was reissued by New Directions in June.

The Atlantic profiles Richard E. Grant, “the actor who documented his grief—and shared it with the world” in his new memoir, A Pocketful of Happiness (S. & S.).

Shondaland talks with both Edan Lepucki, author of Time’s Mouth (Counterpoint), and Rebekah Bergman, author of The Museum of Human History (Tin House).

Lauren J.A. Bear, author of Medusa’s Sisters (Ace: Berkley; LJ starred review), discusses history, mythology and uncovering women’s stories within them, in the Seattle Times.

Electric Lit interviews Kyle Dillon Hertz, author of the novel The Lookback Window (S. & S.), about the New York Child Victims Act and “the only answer for how to survive.”

The Rumpus has a conversation with Christine Sneed, author of Direct Sunlight: Stories (TriQuarterly Bks./Northwestern Univ.).

NYT explains “How to Self-Publish Your E-Book.”

Authors on Air

Nathaniel Rich, Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade (Picador), appears on LitHub’s Talk Easy podcast; Laura Warrell, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon), David Kamp, Nature, Design, and Health: Explorations of a Landscape Architect (Library of American Landscape History), and Miles Johnson, Chasing Shadows: A True Story of Drugs, War and the Secret World of International Crime (Bridge Street Pr.), appear on the Keen On podcast; and Ben Okri reads from Tiger Work (Head of Zeus) on Damian Barr’s Literary Salon podcast.

Today, Stacie Stephenson, author of Glow: 90 Days To Create Your Vibrant Life from Within (Harper Celebrate), will appear on Good Morning America.

Town & Country divulges “Everything We Know About the Red, White & Royal Blue Movie,” based on the novel by Casey McQuiston.

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