V. Ganeshananthan wins the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her book Brotherless Night. The British Book Awards are announced; R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface wins Fiction Book of the Year. The Indigenous Voices Award finalists are announced. South Arts announces Inaugural Literary Arts Fellows. Authors Casey McQuiston and Danny Lore will join the list of presenters for the 2024 Lammy Awards, which will be held on June 11. Ken Follett moves to Hachette for his next release, which will publish in 2025. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel will publish Freedom: Memories 1954–2021 on November 26.

It has been a busy legislative session in the Louisiana House, with several bills poised to impact libraries and library workers halted at various points, while others have been approved and moved on to the Senate. As they proliferate, grassroots library advocacy organizations are stepping up to combat them.

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren leads holds this week. Also getting buzz are titles by Harlan Coben, Miranda July, Jenn McKinlay, and Katee Robert. Four LibraryReads and four Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is Shanghailanders by Juli Min. The Wales Book of the Year shortlist is announced. Madhur Jaffrey’s landmark Invitation to Indian Cooking celebrates 50 years.

Libraries, vendors, and library organizations have been busy with several recent artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives—check out LJ's roundup of the latest news from the field.

Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country wins NYPL’s Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Winners of the American Book Fest’s American Legacy Book Awards and the Vermont Book Awards are announced. Finalists for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and shortlists for the British Booksellers Association’s Indie Book Awards are released. Plus Page to Screen and interviews with Judi Dench, Serj Tankian, Christina Cooke, and Marissa Higgins.

Ben Fountain wins the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for mid-career fiction writers. The winners of the Minnesota Book Awards are announced. Shortlists for the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards are released. The longlist for the Kraszna-Krausz Photography and Moving Image Book Awards is revealed. Plus new title bestsellers and interviews with Abir Mukherjee, Michael McDonald, and Lucas Mann.

John Vaillant wins the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. The Minnesota Book Awards are announced. Marina Endicott wins book of the year at the 2024 Saskatchewan Book Awards. May book club picks arrive. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for top holds title This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune, which also tops May’s Loanstars list. Earlyword’s May GalleyChat spreadsheet is out now. This month’s Costco Connection highlights Long Island by Colm Toíbín, which is also the Oprah book club pick.

The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes are announced, with Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips winning the top prize for fiction. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall, King: A Life by Jonathan Eig, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo, No Right to an Honest Living by Jacqueline Jones, and Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza also win prizes. Eduardo Halfon is awarded the Berman Literature Prize for his novel Canción. Oprah picks Colm Toíbín’s Long Island for her book club, and Reese Witherspoon selects Yulin Kuang’s How To End a Love Story. Plus, Simon & Schuster acquires Dutch publisher VBK.

Chelsea Heinbach is the teaching and learning librarian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She was named a 2023 Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her work (with Nimisha Bhat, Hailley Fargo, and Charissa Powell) in developing the blog and related podcast (created by Amber Sewell): LibParlor, a site dedicated to helping researchers find community resources and have a place to ask questions, discuss issues, and share expertise. She and the team received an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to create LibParlor Online Learning (LPOL), a free, online curriculum devoted to research topics and how-tos. LJ recently followed up with her to learn more about her work.