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Awards, News & Buzzy Books

Author and prolific patron-favorite Stuart Woods died at home at the age of 84. Best known for his Stone Barrington novels, Woods wrote over 90 books. USA Today has an obituary. 

Monica Byrne wins the 2022 Wellman Award for The Actual Star (Harper Voyager). 

Yale announces the 2022 Frederick Douglass Book Prize finalists, including Tiya Miles for All That She Carried (Penguin Random House; LJ starred review); Jennifer L. Morgan for Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic (Duke Univ. Pr.); and Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh for The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (Univ. of North Carolina Pr.).

The Goldsboro Books Glass Bell shortlist 2022 is announced.

The James Cropper Wainwright Prize 2022 shortlists are announced.

Margaret Atwood will publish a new collection of “highly personal” stories next year. The Guardian reports. OprahDaily has a preview and cover reveal of Old Babes in the Wood, Atwood’s first fiction since 2019’s The Testaments (Anchor).

New Title Bestsellers

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

Fiction

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva (Harper) forges into No. 1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 2 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Shattered by James Patterson and James O. Born (Little, Brown) breaks into the No. 3 spot on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 6 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Bodyguard by Katherine Center (St. Martin’s Pr.) starts at No. 11 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Grace Under Fire by Julie Garwood (Berkley) debuts at No. 11 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Retreat by Sarah Pearse (Pamela Dorman: Viking; LJ starred review) relaxes into No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; LJ starred review) takes No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Nonfiction

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury) begins at No. 2 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story by Lis Smith falls into No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer) opens at No. 15 on the the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Reviews

NYT reviews The Inheritors : An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning by Eve Fairbanks (S. & S.): “Fairbanks is too good a writer to resort to crude psychologizing, but she repeatedly suggests that there is a terrible price to pay for trying to ignore how people see their own situations; the undeniable material facts of everything that happens to them are often inseparable from an emotional reality.” Plus, there are short reviews of 4 mysteries.

The Washington Post reviews Hokuloa Road by Elizabeth Hand (Mulholland): "Over decades, she has proved that she’s eclectic, genre-bending, and comfortable in fantasy and mystery, crime, myth, magic — and more. In Hokuloa Road, she explores the rich and diverse culture and environment of Hawaii — and seamlessly stitches this fascinating material into a girl-gone-missing story. It’s refreshingly and originally creepy."

Bookmarks has "5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

Library Reads and LJ offer read-alikes for The Last To Vanish, by Megan Miranda (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books), the top holds title of the week. 

USA Today reports on a new Pennsylvania school district materials challenge policy, which some are calling a book ban.

Matthew Hill, author of Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb (BearManor Media), discusses Gibb’s story and struggles with FoxNews.

Vogue has a feature and interview Shaina Loew-Banayan, author of the new poetic memoir, Elegy for an Appetite (Pank), a “ brief and beautiful account of a life spent in kitchens.“

NYT’s "Inside the Best-Seller List" looks at the existential questions in Nikki Erlick’s The Measure (Morrow).

Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man (Riverhead; LJ starred review), answers the NYT’s "By the Book" questionnaire.

NYT takes readers through the process of how a book is made using Marlon James’s Moon Witch Spider King as an example.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, La Movida (Nightboat Books), annotates what’s on their nightstand at LitHub.

AVClub recommends “10 books you should read in August.”

NYT previews 13 books publishing in August.

LitHub shares the 10 best book covers of the month.

PopSugar has “100+ Thriller and Mystery Books to Sink Your Teeth Into.”

Parade puts Sheryl Woods’s Sweet Magnolias books in order, just as season 3 of the hit Netflix adaptation begins filming.

Esquire explains “How to Read The Lord of the Rings In Order.”

9 writers talk about book arranging methods for The Washington Post.

Authors on Air

Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions), reflects on becoming the new U.S. poet laureate with PBS Canvas.

NPR’s Fresh Air talks with Hall of Fame soccer player Briana Scurry about her new memoir, My Greatest Save: The Brave, Barrier-Breaking Journey of a World Champion Goalkeeper written with Wayne Coffey, (Harry N. Abrams).

T&C recaps everything to know about the forthcoming Red, White & Royal Blue film, based on the bestselling book by Casey McQuiston.

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