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The 2022 National Book Awards finalists are announced. Saba Sams wins the BBC national short story award. Rebecca Solnit receives the Paul Engle Prize. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Celeste Ng's buzzy book, Our Missing Hearts.  Interviews arrive with William Shatner, Mia P. Manansala, Carell Augustus, Katie Nicholl, and Jess Kidd. Al Pacino inks a deal for a memoir. Plus, country music legend and author Loretta Lynn, has died at the age of 90. 

October book club picks feature The Night Ship by Jess Kidd, River Woman, River Demon by Jennifer Givhan, The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn, and Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Also on the book club list is Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, which gets a 4-star review from USA Today. The inaugural Utopia Awards winners are announced. Interviews arrive with Adam Hochschild, Constance Wu, Elizabeth Strout, Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, GennaRose Nethercott, and Thomas E. Ricks.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng leads holds and coverage this week. It is also People's book of the week and Reese Witherspoon's October book club pick. Audiofile announces the October Earphones Award Winners. Six LibraryReads and eight Indie Next picks publish this week. October’s Costco Connection is out featuring It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover and Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken gets reviewed. Plus, LitHub teases a forthcoming 17th century wilderness novel from Lauren Groff. 

Shortlists are announced for the 2022 Diverse Book Awards and Kindle Storyteller Award. Author interviews are plentiful this week, including conversations with Jarvis Jay Masters, Melissa Villaseñor, Kamila Shamsie, Ling Ma, Sonya Huber, Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemim, Chelsea Martin, Linda Ronstadt, Constance Wu, Calvin Kasulke, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman; also, rare and early interviews with Cormac McCarthy. There will be a new partnership in book adaptations between Titan Books and Alcon Publishing.

There are awards announcements for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Starting at the top of the best-sellers lists are Dreamland by Nicholas Sparks, The Bullet That Missed: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman, Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017–2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, and Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Also, interviews with Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Jasmine Guillory, and Fresh Air revisits a 2012 interview with the late Hilary Mantel.