Book News

A new Zora Neale Hurston essay collection, You Don’t Know Us Negroes, will be coming out in 2022, and there is a sneak peek of John Le Carré’s final novel Silverview. Interviews with: Cody Alan of Hear’s the Thing: Lessons on Listening, Life & Love, Rahul Raina of How to Kidnap the Rich, Phillip Lopate, Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett of The Very Nice Box, and Marcello Di Cintio of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. Adaptations are in the works for Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.

The National Book Awards will be held as an in-person event with some virtual elements. Honors for The Sisters in Crime Australia shortlist authors, 2021 Ned Kelly Awards shortlist, and Ursula K. La Guin with a U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp. Black Ice by Brad Thor, False Witness by Karin Slaughter, and I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker top the best sellers list.  Interviews with Ed Simon of An Alternative History of Pittsburgh, Laia Jufresa of Umami, Melinda Wenner Moyer of ​​How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes: Science-based Strategies for Better Parenting—From Tots to Teens, Pik-Shuen Fung of Ghost Forest, and Matthew Specktor of Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California.

The Ned Kelly Awards 2021 shortlists announced. August book club picks include Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, Wayward by Dana Spiotta, and We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz. Read-alikes arrive for Devil in Disguise. The August Loan Stars list is out with #1 pick The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny. Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires by Jaime Lowe and The Great Peace by Mena Suvari get coverage. Interviews arrive with Dana Spiotta, Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, Sandra Cisneros, David Steinberg, and Andrés Cerpa. Molly Shannon will release a new memoir, Hello, Molly! in April 2022. 

The 2021 Booker Prize longlist is announced. The 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards and The 2021 Mary Gilmore Award shortlists were announced.  Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder continues to get attention. Scott Snyder will co-create eight titles for Amazon’s ComiXology Originals.  Interviews arrive with Mena Suvari, Emilia Clarke, Hermione Hoby, Francine Prose, Richard Lange, Emily Adrian and Jeannette Winterson. Trevor Noah will executive produce new docuseries 'The Tipping Point.'  Plus, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker, and Cherie Dimaline's Empire of Wild join Pokemon and The Exorcist in getting adaptations.

Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas leads holds this week. One LibraryReads selection and two Indie Next picks arrive. People's book of the week is Swan Dive: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina by Georgina Pazcoguin. The 2021 Comedy Women in Print Award Longlists is announced. Interviews arrive with Leila Slimani,  Akash Kapur, and Mena Suvari. Plus, LeVar Burton starts Jeopardy! guest hosting duties today.

Wanda M. Morris talks to LJ about her debut novel, wrapping women’s stories in legal thrillers, and how an Atlanta library was instrumental in the creation of All Her Little Secrets.

Susanna Clarke, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and C.L. Polk are finalists for the World Fantasy Awards. Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are publishing a book. Glory Edim, founder of the book club Well-Read Black Girl, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR book critic, suggest books for the summer. NPR’s Morning Edition address the toll of the pandemic on authors and book discovery. Adaptations of Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, and William Gibson’s The Peripheral make news. The adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Drive My Car” wins best screenplay at Cannes. Dune gets a new trailer.

The Cellist by Daniel Silva tops the fiction bestseller lists while political books dominate the nonfiction lists. The Agatha Awards and the Kitschies are announced. The August Loan Star titles are out with The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny at No. 1. The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee is the Late Summer YA book club pick by Reese Witherspoon.

Forthcoming books by Ocean Vuong, Viola Davis, Kelly Ripa, and Douglas Stuart are announced. The Immersive Media & Books 2020 Consumer Survey highlights cross-industry research from The Panorama Project. Interviews arrive with Katie Kitamura, Kaveh Akbar, Rachel Yoder, Julie K. Brown, and Quentin Tarantino. Marvel's Blade gets a director and The Last Duel gets a trailer.