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Big Books of the Week

Sparring Partners by John Grisham (Doubleday) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery (MIRA)

Meant to Be by Emily Giffin (Ballantine)

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (Little, Brown; LJ starred review)

These books and others publishing the week of May 30th, 2022 are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Awards & Summer Previews

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree trans. by Daisy Rockwell (Penguin), wins the 2022 International Booker Prize for translated fiction.

Stephan Malinowski wins the €25,000 German Nonfiction Prize. 

IPA Prix Voltaire announces its shortlist.

NYT recommends 88 books for summer.

Vulture has a summer book preview.

GMA shares a summer movie preview.

Vogue suggests "7 of the Best New Beach Reads to Unwind With This Summer.”

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Two LibraryReads and five Indie Next picks publish this week:

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle by Jennifer Ryan (Ballantine)

“When fashion designer Cressida Westcott loses everything during the London Blitz, she returns to the family manor house and joins the village sewing circle. Soon the vicar's daughter needs a wedding dress despite clothing rations. The pleasurable plot focuses on overcoming adversity through friendship, with plenty of romance.”—Sarah Siegel, Rockville Centre Public Library, Rockville Centre, NY

The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle: An Uplifting and Unforgettable Story of Love and Second Chances by Matt Cain (A John Scognamiglio Book: Kensington)

“This quietly touching novel follows Albert, a closeted gay mail carrier who’s lived life as a perpetual outsider. His job provides comfort, but impending retirement leaves him at a crossroads: can he find a way to go on and be accepted for who he really is? Cain takes readers on a moving and hopeful journey. For fans of The Guncle and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. ”—Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, New Rochelle, NY

It is also an Indie Next pick:

“A heartfelt tale of a shy 64-year-old English postman on the verge of retirement and on the verge of coming out. Albert’s obstacles are significant, which make his efforts to surmount them, and to find new friends, all the more joyous.”—Mike Hare, Northshire Saratoga, Saratoga Springs, NY

Four additional Indie Next picks publish this week:

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin (Catapult)

“Rainbow Rainbow is queer, bold, and beautiful. Conklin’s characters and memorable stories offer unique perspective on modern relationships with pitch-perfect tone. This will be one of the best collections by the end of the year.”—Adam Vitcavage, Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO

The Foundling by Ann Leary (Scribner: Marysue Rucci Books)

“Two friends raised in an orphanage together find themselves on either side of an asylum’s institution. Mary, an employee, and Lillian, a patient, secretly navigate a crushing system of abuse of people and power. Do not miss this book!”—Alice Hutchinson, Byrd’s Books, Bethel, CT

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)

“I’ve been a big fan of Korelitz since her early works, but The Latecomer blew me away. A clever book about a family and all its messiness. Smart, funny and poignant, I was pulled in by the novel’s perfection. Bravo, more please!”—Sue Boucher, The Cottage Book Shop, Glen Arbor, MI

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour (Flatiron)

“This book stole my breath away. Raw and intimate, it follows the lives of two women through heartbreak, loss, and adolescent uncertainty as they weave in and out of each other’s lives. I wanted to hug this book to my chest when I finished.”—Margaret Hansen, Brick & Mortar Books, Redmond, WA

In the Media

This week’s People shares the best books for summer including fiction: Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard (Algonquin; LJ starred review), The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon), The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand (Little, Brown), You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi (Atria), and Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen (Morrow).

Featured nonfiction includes: The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Dey St.), Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings by Chrysta Bilton (Little, Brown; LJ starred review), George Michael: A Life by James Gavin (Abrams Pr.), His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (Viking), and Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (Little, Brown; LJ starred review).

Mystery & Thrillers in the spotlight are: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager (Dutton), Harlem Sunset by Nekesa Afia (Berkley), Aurora by David Koepp (Harper), The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt), and The Island by Adrian McKinty (Little, Brown). Teens & Tween reads include: The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson (Delacorte), Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle (S. & S. for Young Readers), I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston (Wednesday: Macmillan), A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin (Feiwel & Friends), and The Golden Swift  by Lev Grossman (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

The “Picks” section showcases Heartstopper on Netflix, based on the novel by Alice Oseman. Plus, Rick Martínez, Mi Cocina: Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico (Clarkson Potter; LJ starred review), shares a recipe.

Reviews

NYT reviews Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (Little, Brown; LJ starred review): “the lasting impression of Happy-Go-Lucky is similar to that of Sedaris’s other books: It’s a neat trick that one writer’s preoccupation with the odd and the inappropriate can have such widespread appeal.” And, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened by Bill McKibben (Henry Holt): “His latest book is a slim cri de coeur about the rot at the base of his biographical foundations. McKibben finds his country, his religion and the suburban lifestyle of his youth to be so flawed that he’s ready to divorce much of his past.” And, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer (S. & S.; LJ starred review): “is fundamentally an appreciation of the place of Black people in America past and present, as well as an appreciation of the nation of which they became a part.” Also, Planes by Peter C Baker (Knopf): “Peter C. Baker delicately crafts the internal lives of these very different people, whose longings for connections beyond themselves are forever missing the mark.”And, Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour (Flatiron): “LaCour is always assembling things that are more than the sums of their parts: a well-balanced cocktail; a perfectly spiced gumbo; a family, part biological and part chosen. Disparate elements come together to reveal themselves as a whole, bitter and salty and sweet all at once.” Plus, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez (Random): “The essays in Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World are not ordered chronologically, so the growing alarm of Lopez’s later years registers only as a sort of punctuating urgency.” Lastly, The Foundling by Ann Leary (Scribner: Marysue Rucci Books): “No revolutionary believes herself to be on the wrong side of history, after all. Book clubs, uncork your bottles.”

NPR reviews City of Orange by David Yoon (Putnam): “The book's twist on the familiar post-apocalyptic setup is that the main character can't remember anything. Adam Cheung wakes to find himself in the middle of nowhere.”

The Washington Post reviews River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “Millard recounts all of these travails with a fluid grace that wears its learning lightly. She leaves some important parts of the story untold but shows a keen sensitivity to aspects that have at times been underplayed, such as the role of slavery and the slave trade in the effort of discovery.”

The Guardian reviews The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers (Melville House): “It’s this myopia that Benjamin Myers explores in his roiling, rollicking novel The Perfect Golden Circle, set during the long hot summer of 1989.”

Briefly Noted

Akwaeke Emezi talks with Vogue about her “must-read love story”, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (Atria). Bustle excerpts the novel, calling it “the book of hot girl summer.”

Colton Haynes talks with USA Today about his memoir, Miss Memory Lane (Atria; LJ starred review), and childhood trauma.

People interviews Jennifer Weiner about navigating family deaths alongside the publication of her new book, The Summer Place (Atria).

Norman Eisen, Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy (Brookings Institution Pr.), discusses the“current state of the Trump movement” with Salon.

NYT has a feature and interview with the artist Christopher Wool.

Jean Hanff Korelitz, whose latest novel The Latecomer (Celadon), publishes today, writes about her “BOOKTHEWRITER” pop-up literary salons for OprahDaily.

Nina Shope, Asylum (Dzanc Books), writes “Why My Second Book Took 20 Years to Complete,” at The Millions.

USA Today picks five books for the week.

Bustle has 10 must-read books this week.

The Millions shares notable new releases this week.

CrimeReads highlights 10 books out this week, feminist thrillers, and strongly atmospheric crime novels.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air chats with David Sedaris about his latest book, Happy-Go-Lucky (Little, Brown; LJ starred review), and his contentious relationship with his dad.

NPR talks with Eliot Schrefer about his new book, Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality illus. by Jules Zuckerberg (Katherine Tegen Books).

NPR’s All Things Considered looks at how Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl holds up ten years after it was published.

CBS Sunday Morning has an interview with Angela Y. Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography (Haymarket), about her fight for social change.

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