Highland Book Prize Longlist Is Announced | Book Pulse

The longlist for Scotland’s Highland Book Prize and the shortlist for the Inside Literary Prize are announced. United States Artists announces its 2025 USA Writing Fellows. Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm is the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years, having sold 2.7 million copies in its first week. A new “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” book is on the way. Independent bookstores across six continents will participate in the first synchronized Global Bookstore Crawl on April 26. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Imani Perry, Bill Gates, and Neko Case.

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Awards & Book News

The longlist for Scotland’s Highland Book Prize is announced. Publishing Perspectives has coverage.

The shortlist for the Inside Literary Prize, which is selected by incarcerated people, is announced.

United States Artists announces its 2025 USA Writing Fellows: Angie Cruz, Raquel Gutiérrez, Bojan Louis, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Deesha Philyaw, and Matthew Salesses.

Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm (Entangled: Red Tower) is the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years, NYT reports, having sold 2.7 million copies in its first week. Publishers Weekly also has coverage.

A new “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” book is on the way; The Girl with Ice in Her Veins by Karin Smirnoff is due out from Knopf on Sept. 2, People reports.

Independent bookstores in 30+ cities across six continents will participate in the first synchronized Global Bookstore Crawl on April 26; Publishers Weekly has the news.

Marysue Rucci is named publisher of Scribner, Publishers Weekly reports.

Page to Screen

January 31

Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, based on the 16th-century novel Investiture of the Gods by Xu Zhonglin. Well Go USA. Reviews | Trailer

Dog Man, based on the children’s books by Dave Pilkey. Universal. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

NYT reviews Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates (Knopf): “A memoir would offer [Gates] the chance to reflect and expand on what has been an undeniably eventful life. What might he have to say? Not much, it turns out—at least not yet. Source Code the first of three projected volumes, begins in earnest with his birth in Seattle, in 1955, and ends before 1980”; and also talks to Gates about the memoir.

Vulture reviews Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) by Lola Kirke (S. & S.): “Enjoyment of Wild West Village may be dependent on your tolerance for the Kirkes and their, well, quirks: the free-wheeling careening of a family unbound to money or wealth. Reputation? Don’t overthink it; they certainly aren’t. At one point in the book, nearly every member of the family goes to rehab, a communal experience regarded with more wry detachment than concern.”

The Guardian reviews The Lamb by Lucy Rose (Harper): “Despite the viscera, the jellied blood, peeled skins, torsos on hooks and slow-cooked muscle, all lip-lickingly described, The Lamb is in essence a dark fairytale about family secrets, the rites of passage of adolescence, and the regrettable tendency to neglect a child in the face of an overwhelming new passion”; and The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride (Faber & Faber): “But what is most startling about McBride’s work is not its dark material, but the way she breaks every rule in the grammar book and gleefully gets away with it.”

LitHub rounds up January’s best-reviewed fiction and nonfiction.

Briefly Noted

NYT interviews Imani Perry, author of Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (Ecco).

Kirkus talks to Callan Wink, author of Beartooth (Spiegel & Grau), whom it calls “Yellowstone Country’s Latest Bard.”

CrimeReads speaks with Susan Barker, author of Old Soul (Putnam).

Pádraig Ó Tuama, author of Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon), shares his “Annotated Nightstand” with LitHub.

Niall Williams, author of Time of the Child (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review), tells The Guardian about “The Books of My Life.”

Publishers Weekly talks to Han Zhang, Riverhead’s editor at large, about her goal of bringing contemporary Chinese literature to U.S. readers, including Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran, tr. by Jeremy Tiang.

Monty Python star Michael Palin, whose multivolume diaries are due out from Weidenfeld & Nicolson on Feb. 4, talks to NYT.

NYT reads its way through New York City with 10 writers.

NYT offers “7 New Books We Recommend This Week.”

LitHub brings together the most-anticipated audiobooks of February.

Kirkus rounds up “20 Books You Can Read in a Weekend.”

NYT asks Ali Hazelwood to recommend the best spicy romance novels.

Reactor gathers “Five SFF Works Featuring Treacherous or Ineffectual Advisers.”

CrimeReads suggests “20 New and Upcoming Works of Historical Fiction to Check Out in 2025,” “5 Novels with Tantalizing Anti-Heroes,” and “5 Gripping Thrillers with Parents Searching for Missing Children.”

The Authors Guild has launched a “Human-Authored” certification to distinguish literature written by people from works generated by AI. The Guardian has coverage.

Authors on Air

Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao (Norton), talks to LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast.

Singer Neko Case, author of The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir (Grand Central), discusses her memoir on PBS Canvas.

NPR’s Fresh Air interviews Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let’s Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong (Oxford Univ.).

There’s a new episode of The LitHub Podcast, featuring a discussion of historical fiction.

The TV rights to That Friend (S. & S. Audio), the debut audiobook by comedian Sabrina Brier, have been acquired, Deadline reports.

A reboot of the 1970s TV series Little House on the Prairie, based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, is in the works at Netflix, Deadline reports.

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