Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal wins the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which is given to an emerging Black American fiction writer. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, tr. by Sean Cotter, wins the Dublin Literary Award. Ali Bryan’s Coq, Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist, and Deborah Willis’s Girlfriend on Mars are shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Canadian humor writing. The shortlists for Britain’s Society of Authors Awards are announced. Plus, new title bestsellers and interviews with Amy Tan, Kaliane Bradley, and Monica Youn.

In celebration of National Bike Month (May in the United States, June in Canada), libraries are offering innovative ways to support bicycling all year round.

In a surprise move, Penguin Random House dismisses two of its top editors, roiling the industry. The Aurealis Awards winners and the Highland Book Prize shortlist are announced. Atria Books will relaunch Washington Square Press as a frontlist hardcover imprint dedicated to literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Summer booklists arrive, along with interviews with Kevin Kwan, Daniel Handler, Sebastian Junger, and Michael McDonald. Plus, Washington Post critic Michael Dirda offers 10 rules for reading.

Bill Clinton details his life after the White House; Angela Merkel writes about her life as the first woman chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany; several celebrities pen memoirs; and fascinating historical figures inspire biographies.

This section highlights some of the leading MLIS programs that are training the next generation of library and information science professionals to rise to today’s—and tomorrow’s— challenges, including those whose alumni have been honored by Library Journal as Movers & Shakers.

Lifestyle-related books are hugely popular, and it’s easy to understand why. Not only do these books help readers express their creativity and achieve the kind of lifestyle they aspire to, but they also bring together people with a common interest and create a sense of connectedness around their topics.

Winners of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards are announced, including best novel Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke. The winners of the League of Canadian Poets prizes are Hannah Green’s Xanax Cowboy, Sandra Ridley’s Vixen, and Bradley Peters’s Sonnets from a Cell. The finalists for the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, the shortlist for the Leacock Medal for Canadian humor writing, and the shortlist for the Reading the West Book Awards are revealed. A record number of writers were jailed globally in 2023, according to a report by PEN America.

All the October 2024 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

Mental Health Awareness Month highlights the importance of mental wellness and promotes advocacy, sharing, compassion, and the dismantling of stereotypes. Mental health conditions are wide-ranging and include PTSD, OCD, generalized anxiety, depression, postpartum depression, schizophrenia, suicidal ideation, and more. The following books—literary fiction, romance, memoirs, and essays—were written by authors who have personal experience living with mental health challenges and speak to the importance of continued dialogue surrounding mental health.

Many librarians lauded the development of Open Access (OA) publishing models, which offered, at least initially, to help solve the problem of an unsustainable and inequitable scholarly communications ecosystem while simultaneously addressing a growing interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In the past year, the idea that, with appropriate guardrails, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also play a role in changing scholarly communications has risen to the fore. But can OA, DEI, and AI ever live up to their promise of an affordable, equitable and sustainable publishing ecosystem?