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Awards & Book News

The shortlist for the Goldsmiths Prize is announced; The Guardian has coverage.

The finalists for the Writers’ Trust of Canada Balsillie Prize for Public Policy are announced.

Reese Witherspoon announces her first novel, a thriller cowritten with Harlan Coben and to be published by PRH in fall 2025, The Guardian reports.

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks (Random) adds up to No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Farrar) chimes in at No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 3 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Playground by Richard Powers (Norton) romps to No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton (Zando) tracks down no. 6 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Nonfiction

The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon (Thesis) grabs No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list and No. 5 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Truths: The Future of America First by Vivek Ramaswamy (Threshold Editions) gets No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list and No. 12 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list, though some retailers report receiving bulk orders.

Targeted: Beirut; The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror by Jack Carr and James M. Scott (Atria/Emily Bestler) reaches No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson (Penguin Pr.) builds to No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

The Child Catcher: A Fight for Justice and Truth by Andrew Bridge (Regalo) catches No. 9 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

All the Presidents’ Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money by Megan Gorman (Regalo) rakes in No. 11 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Reviews

LA Times reviews A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown (Timber): “If you don’t agree with him about the ravages of capitalism, I can see how his anticapitalist ideas might seem as prickly as the hedge apple. But I find them engaging, and the book is full of brainy fruit.”

Washington Post reviews The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon): “Frequently, sequels try to speak to two audiences at once: readers in the know and readers who don’t have a clue about what transpired in the prior book. Korelitz isn’t interested in being accommodating to the uninitiated…. Readers who enter Korelitz’s fictional worlds should not expect to be coddled”; The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. by Martin Aitken (Penguin Pr.): “Certainly, it is a book that rewards prior knowledge—one of the dangers of writing a series or a cycle. But it is also one of the most genuinely suspenseful, alluring books I’ve ever read”; Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown (Farrar): “Brown can be faulted for devoting too many pages to the queen’s corgis—their rowdy behavior, their diet and their ancestry. I also found myself skimming the lengthy sections in which people describe dreams they’ve had involving the queen. But otherwise [Q] remains absorbing, edifying and frequently laugh-out-loud funny”; and four SFF books that “revel in the power of transformation”: The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart (Orbit), New Mistakes by Clement Goldberg (Semiotext(e)), Spells To Forget Us by Aislinn Brophy (Putnam), and The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy (The Feminist Pr.).

LitHub gathers “5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

NY Mag has a profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates on the occasion of his new book, The Message (One World).

Kate McKinnon, author of The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

EW has an excerpt from Ruby Dixon’s next romantasy, Bull Moon Rising, due out from Ace on October 15.

Washington Post selects 10 noteworthy books for October.

LitHub shares “Nine Books That Imagine What a Black Utopia Could Be” and seven new poetry collections to read this October.

NYT suggests seven books for those who enjoyed the Netflix teen romantic dramedy Heartstopper.

CrimeReads has seven great haunted-house novels by women.

Kirkus recommends “four novels where food is the main course.”

Reactor gathers all the new SF books publishing in October and five SFF books that involve navigating around pesky parents.

Hollywood Reporter covers the unrest at a Los Angeles bookstore that was sparked by a book it carries: Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters by Helena Cobban & Rami G. Khouri (OR Bks.).

Publishers Weekly reports on the state of BIPOC representation in Christian publishing.

The central library of Vienna, Austria, has mounted an exhibition of all the unusual bookmarks librarians have found in books, from sausage slices to love notes; Washington Post has coverage.

Authors on Air

LitHub’s Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast interviews Lola Milholland, author of Group Living and Other Recipes (Spiegel & Grau).

PBS News Hour talks to Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, author of Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (Penguin Pr.).

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

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