Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Big Books of the Week

Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (Grand Central) leads holds this week. 

Other titles in demand include:

Joy by Danielle Steel (Delacorte)

Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman (Little, Brown)

The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Burn by Peter Heller (Knopf)

These books and others publishing the week of August 12, 2024, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Hugos, Lodestar & More

The Hugo Awards were announced last night. Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tor.com; LJ starred review) won best novel, while Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor; LJ starred review) won best novella. See the full list of winners here.

The Lodestar and Astounding Awards winners are also announced. Locus has details. 

The World Fantasy Awards finalists are announced. Locus has details. Ginjer Buchanan and Jo Fletcher will receive lifetime achievement awards. 

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Three LibraryReads and two Indie Next picks publish this week:

Hall of Fame pick Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca (Berkley)

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid (Del Rey: Ballantine)

“In this speculative reimagining of the tragic play, Lady Macbeth is a witch who can cast a spell on any man with merely a glance. Reid stays true to the central themes of power and gender politics while creating complex characters. Lady Macbeth is not just manipulative but a survivor in a brutal patriarchal world. Reid’s writing is lush and captivating.” —Rummanah Aasi, Skokie Public Library, IL

It is also an Indie Next pick:

“Lady Macbeth is the gothic fantasy retelling of my dreams! Ava Reid stuns once again with their attention to historic detail as they maintain the magic of Macbeth. This book is dreamy, lush, and had me spiraling for days after reading it!”—Haley Calvin, The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, MO

The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord (St. Martin’s Griffin)

“June and Levi have a long history of friendship, but have long since gone their separate ways. This wholesome and spicy story of long lost friendship, loss and healing is unraveled with witty banter, viral internet videos, and everyone taking steps out of their comfort zones. This is a perfect summer read!”—Kacey Wurster, Martin County Library-Fairmont, MN

One additional Indie Next pick publishes this week:

Burn by Peter Heller (Knopf)

“In the spirit of Station Eleven, there is only one thing humankind understands when it must survive: it cannot be done alone. You read this novel and wonder how such a painful book can be so damn beautiful. Gorgeous writing meets heart-pounding thriller.”—Jessilynn Norcross, McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, MI

In the Media

People’s book of the week is The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss (Viking). Also getting attention are Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, tr. by Stephen B. Snyder (Pantheon; LJ starred review) and A Great Marriage by Frances Mayes (Ballantine). A roundup of apocalyptic novels includes Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman (Little, Brown), Burn by Peter Heller (Knopf), and Napalm in the Heart by Pol Guasch, tr. by Mara Faye Lethem (FSG Originals).

The “Picks” section spotlights It Ends with Us, based on the novel by Colleen Hoover. There is a profile of chef and author Sandra Lee, who returns to TV with Netflix’s Blue Ribbon Baking Championship. Plus, Ruby Bhogal, One Bake, Two Ways: Fifty Bakes with an All-Plant Option Every Time (Interlink), shares a recipe. 

Reviews

NYT reviews On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver (Penguin Pr.): “Alongside its axioms and aphorisms, On the Edge also serves as a rebranding party for Silver.” The Guardian also reviews: “On the Edge is a book devoted to the art of taking a calculated risk, so it is perhaps understandable that there is never any sense that gambling might be, for some people or for the culture as a whole, a wellspring of toxicity.”

NYT also reviews The Divorce by Moa Herngren, tr. by Alice Menzies (HarperVia): “Without meaningful juxtapositions or even hints of alternate points of view, the reader is left only with the flat, endless and implausible suffering of others—a paean to self-discovery and -empowerment that feels bloated, outdated and wrong”; Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple (Random): “Keeping the Faith is history at its most delicious, presented free from the musty smell of the archives where it was clearly assembled with great care. And if you have been awake for the past 16 years or so, you won’t miss the point”; and Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, tr. by Stephen B. Snyder (Pantheon; LJ starred review): “The function of memory—the memories we share with those we love, as well as those we agree upon, or willfully forget, in our telling of history—is a fascination of Ogawa’s.”

Washington Post reviews Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold (Farrar): “The imbalance between the proverbial forest and trees is also a function of the book’s aggressive pursuit of neutrality. Griswold’s subjects speak for themselves, as journalistic ethics justly dictate, but I was always aware that I was seeing the action through the eyes of an interpretive and selective observer laboring to present these complexities as though she were not there”; and The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf (Modern Library): “It’s a frustrating end to her story, not only because of the books that might have resulted, but because The Princess of 72nd Street feels like a novel written by someone on the threshold of a big change. If Kraf’s book is a perfect example of a literary subgenre, it also scrapes up against the limits of what that template can offer.”

Briefly Noted

CrimeReads suggests 10 new books for the week. 

People has a feature on BookTube and interviews several prominent content creators.

NYT distills “The Essential Shel Silverstein.”

People highlights Young Sheldon actress Raegan Revord’s book club aimed toward young readers. Revord will publish a novel, Rules for Fake Girlfriends (Wednesday), next fall.

Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, based on the book by Jenny Han, will return for its third season in 2025. USA Today offers read-alikes for the book.

Authors on Air

CBS Sunday Morning reflects on James Baldwin’s legacy at 100 and provides an excerpt from the new Everyman’s Library edition of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; Nobody Knows My Name; No Name in the Street; and The Devil Finds Work. 

PBS News Weekend reports how “book restrictions in Indiana pressure public schools and libraries to remove books.”

Demi-Leigh Tebow discusses her new memoir, A Crown That Lasts: You Are Not Your Label (Thomas Nelson), with FoxNews Digital.

Allison Williams is set to star in an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You (Montlake), Deadline reports. The news comes as another Hoover adaptation, It Ends with Us, marks an $80M global opening.

Caroline Chambers, What To Cook When You Don’t Feel like Cooking (Union Square & Co.; LJ starred review), visits GMA today.

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.