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USA Today’s June Book Club pick is T.J. Newman’s Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421. The July Indie Next List is out; the top pick is The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel. Crime Writers’ Association appoints Vaseem Khan as its first non-white chair. The 2023 Premios Kelvin finalists are announced. Jasmine Sealy’s The Island of Forgetting wins the Amazon First Novel Award, honoring the best debut Canadian novel. The Royal Society of Literature has released a shortlist for the 2023 Encore Award, celebrating outstanding achievements in second novels. Plus new title best sellers.

June book club picks are out, including the top hold title of the week, The Celebrants by Steven Rowley (Read with Jenna), Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs (GMA), and Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (B&N). More summer booklists arrive, along with interviews with Megan Abbott, Amelia Possanza, Dr. Ian K. Smith, Emerson Whitney, Camille T. Dungy, James Comey, and Brandon Taylor.

Steven Rowley’s The Celebrants leads holds this week. Other titles in demand include new books by Martha Wells, Jo Nesbo, Megan Abbott, and T.J. Newman. The James Tait Black Prize shortlist is announced. ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation joins publishers and bookstores in a lawsuit over Arkansas SB 81. Three LibraryReads and seven Indie Next picks publish this week. Summer reading previews arrive, including People’s must-read picks for summer. NYT explores the staying power of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Plus, The Guardian has a guide for “where to start with Kazuo Ishiguro.”

All the November 2023 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

With December a thin publishing month, this story covers a mix of the top fiction outside of mystery and thrillers.

All manner of death for December.

The 2023 Ignyte Awards finalists are announced. Starting their runs at the top of best seller lists are Only the Dead by Jack Carr, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, King: A Life by Jonathan Eig, and The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings To Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Stephen Vladeck. There are author interviews with Gene Luen Yang, Luis Alberto Urrea, Laura Tillman, and Suzannah Lessard.

Georgi Gospodinov wins the International Booker Prize for Time Shelter. Haruki Murakami wins Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award. Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb” has been banned from a Florida K–8 school. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Identity by Nora Roberts. Knopf will publish Gabriel García Márquez’s final novel, Until August, in 2024. Plus, summer booklists arrive. 

Reframing key wellness issues. 

Chillers for chilly December. 

Biographers International Organization receives $1 million gift from famed biographer Kitty Kelley. Ryan Manucha wins the 2022 Donner Prize for Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups. Mazin Lateef Ali Wins IPA’s Prix Voltaire. The TikTok Book Awards launch in the U.K. and Ireland. Mahmud El Sayed wins 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy. Andy Serkis narrates a new unabridged audiobook of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. A new Folio Society edition of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy arrives in time for Towel Day on Thursday. The Color Purple gets a trailer, and Japanese Breakfast posts a casting call. Plus, PW has full coverage from this week’s U.S. Book Show.

Identity by Nora Roberts leads holds this week. Also popular are The Senator’s Wife by Liv Constantine and Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum, which is also People’s book of the week. One LibraryReads and three Indie Next picks publish this week. The Water Diviner by Zahran Alqasmi (Rashm) wins $50,000 2023 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The Washington Post previews this season’s best baseball books. Plus, tributes pour in for British author Martin Amis who died at the age of 73.

There are announcements for the 2023 Mythopoeic Awards finalists and Eisner Awards nominees. Walter Isaacson’s forthcoming biography of Elon Musk will arrive September 12. Author interviews feature conversations with the likes of Nicole Cuffy, Emma Cline, Brittany Snow, R.F. Kuang, Jenny Fran Davis, Julia Quinn, and Samantha Irby. Benedict Cumberbatch will star in the adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.

PEN America and Penguin Random House sue a Florida school district over book bans. Debuting at the top of the best-seller lists are The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks, Queen Charlotte by Julia Quinn, written with Shonda Rhimes, The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up by Andy Cohen, and Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain by Andrew McCarthy. There are conversations with authors Alex Pappademas, Polly Stewart, Andrea Bartz, Matthew Dallek, Juliet and Kelly Starrett, Stephen Vladeck, and David Fleming. There is adaptation news for Ernest Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees.

Salman Rushdie warns that free speech is under threat in a new public speech. Journalist Masha Gessen resigns from the PEN America board. Storytel Group acquires rights to Finnish Koskinen crime series. A new survey finds that Tiktok users report reading 50% more because of Booktok. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren. Interviews arrive with Andrew McCarthy, Samantha Irby, Dina Gachman, Laura Hankin, Emmanuel Iduma, R.F. Kuang, Max Porter, Kwame Alexander, Thom Shanker, and Andy Cohen. Elliot Page unboxes his forthcoming memoir, Pageboy. Plus, Roxane Gay, Carrie Brownstein, Roberta Colindrez, and Jane Lynch will star in an adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For.

The British Book Awards are announced; Menopausing by Davina McCall and Dr. Naomi Potter wins Overall Book of the Year, Bonnie Garmus is Author of the Year, and R.F. Kuang’s Babel wins Fiction Book of the Year. Salman Rushdie is also honored. WA Premier’s Book Awards shortlists are announced. The June LibraryReads list is out, featuring top pick The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon. Michael Lewis’s new book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, about about FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, arrives in October. Plus, the U.S. Book Show’s “Libraries Are Essential” virtual program is on May 22. 

Prince Harry, Michelle Obama, and Matthew Perry are just some of the names topping the charts.

Leaders in economics, science, and war. 

Reseeing the world. 

Barbra Streisand and Mary J. Blige, Willa Cather and Anthony Hecht, Elvis and the Colonel, and more. 

Buffalos and alligators, aliens and onions, science and technology. 

From Paul Auster to the latest Akashic Noir. 

The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren leads library holds this week. The Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Award winners are announced. The 2022 Nebula Awards Winners are announced, including R.F. Kuang for her novel Babel. Kuang’s new novel Yellowface arrives this week with reviews and lots of buzz. Charles E. Stanley Jr. wins the 2023 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Award for Lost Airmen. Entertainment Weekly releases its 2023 Summer Preview, including the 27 best books of the summer. People’s book of the week is The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks.

Arinze Ifeakandu wins the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize with God’s Children Are Little Broken Things: Stories. The Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist is announced. Chris Turner wins the 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing with How To Be a Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World. Other awards announcements include the 2023 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize longlist and the 2023 Orwell Prizes shortlists. Urban historian Fred Siegel is remembered upon his death at 78. Interviews feature Rachel Cargle, Tembe Denton-Hurst, Sunny Hostin, Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Lisa Brideau, Christina Sharpe, Judy Blume, Kerri Arsenault, Isabella Hammad, Stephen Marche, and Felix Salmon. Plus, adaptation news for Chelene Knight’s Junie and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo.

The Christian Book Awards winners are announced. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, The 23rd Midnight by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself by Luke Russert, and Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life by Deborah Roberts are new to the bestseller lists. Interviews arrive with Mona Gables, Edan Lepucki, Julia Argy, James C. Jackson, Mariana Alessandri, Emma Nadler, Landon Jones, and Dave Eggers.

Finalists for the 2023 Anthony Awards, 2023 Indigenous Voices Award, and the 2023 Trillium Book Awards are announced. May’s EarlyWord GalleyChat spreadsheet is available. Speculation about 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023 heats up. The Guest by Emma Cline gets reviews and buzz. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks. Penguin Random House Acquires Callisto Media. Plus, Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona is featured on a USPS Forever stamp. 

Tales of happy families and happy couples—or not. 

World War II, five generations of Métis women, and a ball at Versailles. 

Epic stories. 

Lives that teach us something. 

The 2023 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded with Trust by Hernan Diaz and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, sharing the top prize for fiction. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie, and Stay True by Hua Hsu also win prizes. The 2023–2024 Steinbeck Fellows are announced. Coverage continues for the ongoing WGA strike. Plus, the AAP discusses AI and the book business. 

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks, leads holds this week. One Indie Next pick publishes this week. People’s book of the week is Swamp Story by Dave Barry. Also getting buzz is Andrew McCarthy’s Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain. A number of awards shortlists are announced. Plus, the Pulitzer Prizes will be announced today.

Fatimah Asghar wins the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction with When We Were Sisters. News sources covers more on Writers Guild of America strike, an Illinois law on anti–book banning policy for libraries. Authors Wolfgang Schivelbusch and Peter Robinson are remembered. Conversations feature author interviews with the likes of Camille T. Dungy, Hannah Matthews, Sunny Hostin, Gretchen Rubin, Kobe Campbell, Christina Wong, Alexandra Auder, Dave Eggers, Hugh Howey, Paul Kix, Brendan Ballou, Jaime Green, and Priscilla Gilman.

The June 2023 Indie Next List Preview is out, featuring #1 pick Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. The Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2023 winners are announced. Multiple sources cover the targeting of journalists worldwide and the repercussions of Writers Guild of America’s strike. Starting their run as best sellers are Happy Place by Emily Henry, In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune, Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane, Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams, and Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd. 

From Salar Abdoh to Gabriel Bump to Alice McDermott. 

Fox News, Facebook, Twitter, and Pulitzer Prize–winninng poet Tracy K. Smith with a new language for us all. 

From Cornwell to Deaver to Patterson. 

May Book Club picks arrive: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (Oprah), Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith (Reese Witherspoon), Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Read with Jenna), The Nigerwife by Vanessa Walters (GMA), and The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry (B&N). The Reading the West Book Awards announces its shortlist. The Tony Award nominees are announced. Variety reports on the WGA strike. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for The 23rd Midnight by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown). Plus, Taika Waititi is in talks to direct an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.

The 2023 RSL Ondaatje shortlist is announced. Madeleine Dale wins the 2023 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Booklists arrive for AANHPI Heritage Month. Eleanor Wachtel, longtime host of Canada’s Writers & Company, is moving on after 33 years, and Laurie Hertzel is retiring as books editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Plus, a new novel from Gabriel García Márquez will be published in 2024. 

All the October 2023 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

The 23rd Midnight by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro leads holds this week. Audiofile announces the May Earphones Award winners. Jenna Bush Hager picks Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for her May book club. B&N selects The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry. Seven LibraryReads and twelve Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg. The May Costco Connection features new books by Danielle Steel, Emily Henry, and Tom Hanks. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian will be adapted for film. USA Today looks at new Vietnamese voices in literature. 

The Edgar Award winners are announced; Best Novel goes to Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka, while Eli Cranor wins Best First Novel for Don’t Know Tough. Ebony highlights “5 Black Male Poets Whose Words Enthrall Us.” The NYT romance column is out. There are new efforts to pass the Right To Read Act. Nora Robert faces censorship in Florida. Killers of the Flower Moon makes news. Plus, Page to Screen.

The James Beard 2023 Media Award nominees are announced. Sarah Holland-Batt wins the 2023 Stella Prize for The Jaguar. The 77th Edgar Awards ceremony will be held tonight. The 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards shortlist is announced. The 2023 Seiun Awards nominees are announced. The Russell Prize for Humour Writing 2023 shortlists are announced. The 2023 Roswell finalists are announced. Simply Lies by David Baldacci and The Wager by David Grann land atop the NYT bestsellers lists. Interviews arrive with Lucinda Williams, Sarah Cypher, Sara Petersen, Claire Dederer, Terese Svoboda, Judy Blume, Gretchen Morgenson, Matika Wilbur, Neil Gaiman, and David Grann. Plus, Grady Hendrix’s How To Sell a Haunted House will be adapted for film. 

Mystery, often with history, leading up to the holidays.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction announces its shortlist. Kaliane Bradley wins the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. Shortlists for the League of Canadian Poets, the BC and Yukon Book Prizes, the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, and the Atlantic Book Awards are announced. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Happy Place by Emily Henry. Interviews arrive with Dennis Lehane, Abraham Verghese, and more. Stephen L. Carter’s The Emperor of Ocean Park will get a series adaptation. 

U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón has been appointed to a historic second two-year term. The 2023 Gotham Book Prize is shared by two winners: Sidik Fofana for Stories from the Tenants Downstairs and John Wood Sweet for The Sewing Girl’s Tale. The 2023 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction winners are announced. The winners of the 2023–2024 Rome Prize in literature are announced, including Elif Batuman, Erica Hunt, Katie Kitamura, and Shruti Swamy. Coverage continues for ALA’s report on the rise in book bans. Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma garners buzz. Apple TV+ releases a first-look trailer for Lessons in Chemistry, based on the novel by Bonnie Garmus. And Mo Willems’s “The Pigeon” makes his operatic debut at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

Happy Place by Emily Henry leads holds this week. It is also People’s book of the week and Indie Next’s #1 pick. Other titles getting buzz include Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane and The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths. The LA Times Book Prize winners are announced, as is the IPA Prix Voltaire shortlist. Five LibraryReads and six Indie Next picks publish this week. The Guardian has an excerpt from an unpublished Hillary Mantell work. A new report from PEN American details the rise of censorship. Plus, the Library of Congress celebrates a birthday.

Jamil Jan Kochai wins the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize for The Haunting of Hajji Hotak And Other Stories. More award news arrives from the Writers’ Trust Rising Stars and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize shortlist. Several interviews feature the voices of authors such as Melissa Coss Aquino, Genevieve Wheeler, Tove Danovich and Neil King. There is adaptation news for Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Announcements include 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award finalists, Nancy Drew action figures, and a new digital publishing imprint, Orbit Works. Beginning their debuts on the best-seller lists are Dark Angel by John Sandford, The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda, Lassiter by J.R. Ward, You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith, I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan by Katie Porter, and It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly. Author conversations include the thoughts of Alison L. Strayer, Elizabeth Graver, J.C. Hallman, Jonathan Rosen, Lauren Oyler, Minka Kelly, Julia Lee, Tanis Rideout, and Daniel F. Runde.

Fiction ranging from seventh-century Britain to 1960s Maine. 

All the Light We Cannot See, based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Anthony Doerr, will premiere November 2 on Netflix. Will Richter wins the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize. Margaret Busby is named the new president of PEN. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Simply Lies by David Baldacci. Interviews arrive with Orlando Ortega-Medina, Molly Ringwald, Ling Ling Huang, Katy Simpson Smith, and David Grann. Jeff VanderMeer considers wheather climate fiction can promote useful change at Esquire. There is memoir news for Serena Williams and Liz Cheney. Plus, Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards will be adapted as an HBO series. 

Sf, fantasy, fantasy/romance, dystopian tales, and magic realism.

Social science, business and economics, technology, fashion, and cartoonist Chast on her dreams. 

Featuring meditation, manifestation, astrology, breathwork, and more, these are the 20 body, mind, and spirit titles that library patrons are seeking.

Time released its 2023 TIME100 list, including Judy Blume, Suzan Lori-Parks, Neil Gaiman, Colleen Hoover, Salman Rushdie, and librarian Tracy D. Hall. The 2022 Sarton and Gilda Women's Book Award winners are announced. The International Booker Shortlist is announced along with finalists for the 2023 Plutarch Award, and the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. The May LibraryReads list is out, featuring #1 pick The Ferryman by Justin Cronin. Malala Yousafzai and Hanif Kureishi will publish new memoirs. Don Winslow discusses retiring as a novelist. Olivia Wilde will direct TV adaptations of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House. Plus, GMA speaks with Rob Schwartz, who edited his father’s writing into a new book, The Wisdom of Morrie: Living and Aging Creatively and Joyfully.

Simply Lies by David Baldacci leads holds this week. The Wager by David Grann gathers buzz, along with Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal and City of Dreams by Don Winslow. Four LibraryReads and four Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel. The Age Book of the Year 2023 announces its shortlists. April’s EarlyWord GalleyChat spreadsheet is available now. Plus, Questlove and S.A. Cosby have a new children’s book out tomorrow. 

Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists are announced. Scotland’s Highland Book Prize shortlist and Canada’s Donner Prize shortlist are out. Author interviews include Rachel Heng, Maggie Smith, and Ella Berman. New books are on the way from Salman Rushdie and Beth O’Leary.

The 2023 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize longlist is announced. Starting at the top of the best sellers list are Homecoming by Kate Morton, Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, Choosing to Run: A Memoir by Des Linden with Bonnie D. Ford, and Got Your Number: The Greatest Sports Legends and the Numbers They Own by Mike Greenberg with Paul Hembekides. There are conversations with authors such as David Grann, Gina Chung, Anjan Sundaram, William Brewer, and Dr. Sandeep Jauhar. Regarding adaptations, there is an announcement that Billy Porter will portray James Baldwin in a biopic, plus news about The Warlock Effect by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman and a Game of Thrones prequel series.

For decades, Rekha Mistry has been feeding her family, and her curiosity and creativity, from her gardens. Best known to U.S. gardeners from her appearances on Gardeners’ World, she is out with her debut book. She talks with LJ about growing your own and the abundant pleasures of gardening. 

All in the family.

The world, often at war. 

The visions, dreams, and realities of U.S. history.

From George Washington to Medgar and Myrlie Evers. 

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Raquel Willis, and the Kurzweil family. 

In her latest book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, Camille T. Dungy interweaves the themes of history, memory, motherhood, environment, and culture with the experience of planting a garden. She talked with LJ about those intersections and their impact.

Australian author Kaaron Warren talks to LJ about her youthful bibliomania, how the horror genre chose her, and an ancient fish sauce that inspired her new novel, Bitters. 

The Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards 2023 shortlist is out. WNBA star Brittney Griner is working on a memoir about her Russian captivity, due out from Knopf in spring 2024. Hachette Book Group releases fourth annual DEI report.  LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Dark Angel by John Sandford. Booklists abound. The Last Thing He Told Me, based on the book by Laura Dave, premieres this Friday on Apple TV+. 

Kimberly Unger wins the Philip K. Dick Award for The Extractionist. The British Science Fiction Association Awards have also been announced. The Rumpus celebrates National Poetry Month with new featured poems daily. Interviews arrive with Jeannette Walls, Anissa Gray, Anthony Chin-Quee, Maggie Smith, Alejandro Varela, and Charles Frazier. Gillian Flynn discusses her new imprint and new book on Today. Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto will be adapted for TV. Plus, Esquire investigates how Barack Obama picks his reading lists.

Dark Angel by John Sandford leads library holds this week. Other titles getting buzz include Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez and The Only Survivors by Megan Miranda. Two LibraryReads and four Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is The Society of Shame by Jane Roper. The May 2023 Indie Next List Preview is out now, featuring #1 pick Happy Place by Emily Henry. Earlyword’s May GalleyChat will be held on Tuesday, May 2, to avoid conflict with LJ’s Day of Dialog. Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the book by Cheryl Strayed, is streaming now. Three new Star Wars films are in the works, and Hulu’s Saint X, based on the book by Alexis Schaitkin, gets a trailer. 

There are awards announcements for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize shortlist and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees. Featured author conversations include interviews with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Susanna Hoffs, Nicole Chung, Fred Van Lente, Ilyon Woo, and Dina Nayeri. There are adaptation announcements for Lore by Alexandra Bracken and Hugh Howey’s book series.

There are announcements for awards such as the 35th Annual Triangle Awards, Prometheus Award, and the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. Abrams will be separating its division ComicArts. Debuting at the top of the best-seller lists are Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls, Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, written with Bill Gifford, and Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell. There are interviews with authors such as Szilvia Molnar, Jacqueline Winspear, Disha Bose, Rory Carroll, J Wortham, Clancy Martin, Aaron Sachs, and Admiral William H. McRaven. There is adaptation news for Beach Read by Emily Henry and Maggie O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place.

Story collections from writers you've been watching. 

Short stories all over the map.

Yiyun Li wins the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for The Book of Goose. The 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are announced. Honorees include Geraldine Brooks, Lan Samantha Chang, Matthew F. Delmont, Saeed Jones, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault. The 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize winners are announced, including Percival Everett, Ling Ma, Susan Williams, Darran Anderson, Dominique Morisseau, Jasmine Lee-Jones, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and dg nanouk okpik. The National Book Foundation names its 2023 5 Under 35 Honorees: Mateo Askaripour, Chelsea T. Hicks, Morgan Talty, Jenny Xie, and Ada Zhang. April’s book club picks include Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (Reese Witherspoon), Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose (GMA), Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls (B&N), and Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling (Read with Jenna). Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao will direct an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. 

Cuisine art. 

Books you've been waiting for by award-winning authors.  

Food: where it comes from, how it intersects with social and cultural factors. 

Books in times of political and cultural upheaval. 

Reports signal a new Game of Thrones prequel and a new live-action Harry Potter series on HBO Max. Adaptations for Heat 2, B as in Beauty, and Tom Jones are also on the way. James Patterson questions the NYT best-sellers list. The Tolkien Society Awards are announced. Shortlists for the Walter Scott Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are also announced. Spring booklists arrive, along with interviews with Joan Biskupic, Peggy Nolan, Bart D. Ehrman. Plus, Time suggests “The Best Judy Blume Books to Read at Every Age.” 

Award winners for the only national juried prized for literary works confronting racism and celebrating diversity.

Homecoming by Kate Morton leads library holds this week. Six LibraryReads and nine Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Holt). Audiofile announces the April Earphones Award Winners. April’s Costco Connection is out, featuring Jeannette Walls’s Hang the Moon and Kate Morton’s Homecoming; the book club pick is The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. Plus, Judy Blume speaks out about censorship. 

There is awards news for the Booker, Dinesh Allirajah, and Bridport Prizes. Conversations with authors feature the words and thoughts of Rachel Heng, Gina Chung, Allegra Hyde, Judy Blume, and Clancy Martin. Film adaptations are forthcoming for Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer and Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

The 2023 Audie Awards Winners, Republic of Consciousness Prize, and Whiting Award winners are announced. The best-sellers lists this week feature Countdown by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois, The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear, Smolder by Laurell K. Hamilton, Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening by Ari Shapiro, and Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. Conversations feature interviews with authors such as Meleana Estes, Abraham Riesman, Gabrielle Zevin, Rhys Bowen, and Idra Novey. There is adaptation news for Lone Women by Victor LaValle and Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain.

Smart opinions, shared. 

The 2023 Dublin Literary Award shortlist is announced, featuring Anthony Doerr, Percival Everett, Kim Thúy, and more. Salman Rushdie, Alice Oseman, Mererid Hopwood, and Serhiy Zhadan will receive Hay Festival Medals in May. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline. Interviews arrive with Clint Smith, Branson Sanderson, Dr. Arline T. Geronimus, and Colleen Oakley. Chris Chalk will play James Baldwin in Feud: Capote's Women on FX. Plus, Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women will be adapted as a series.

Vanished teenagers, Russian espionage, and other thrills. 

Tough investigators and woolly mammoths: all in a thriller writer's day. 

Listen! And Look! Major music biographies/memoirs, plus a choreographer with a conscience. 

Performing with the best. 

Margo Jefferson wins 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize “Book of the Year” for her memoir Constructing a Nervous System. Scary Monsters by Michelle De Kretser wins for fiction, and Quiet: Poems by Victoria Adukwei Bulley wins for poetry. Kitty Kelley wins the 2023 BIO Award. The Imadjinn Awards finalists and British Book Awards shortlists are announced. Jhumpa Lahiri will publish a new story collection in October. Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the book by David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI), gets an October release date. Plus, ALA condemns ongoing threats against libraries. 

All the September 2023 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

A U.S. Court rules against the Internet Archive in a closely watched copyright case. Dav Pilkey’s 11th Dog Man book, Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea, leads holds this week. Five LibraryReads and six Indie Next picks publish this week. Canada Reads returns for its 22nd season, featuring Ducks by Kate Beaton, Greenwood by Michael Christie, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Stranger Things actor Millie Bobby Brown’s forthcoming debut novel, Nineteen Steps, will arrive in September. Plus, Publishers Weekly releases its 2023 Summer Reads preview. 

Beverly Gage wins the New-York Historical Society award for G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Other awards announcements include the International Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist, National Book Critics Circle winners, and Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Multiple news outlets cover the book ban report recently released by ALA. There are many conversations with authors including Geetanjali Shree, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Robert Lopez, Jinwoo Chong, Victor LaValle, and Julia Samuel.

There is an annoucement for the Writers’ Trust of Canada new nonfiction prize: the Weston International Award. Books debuting on the best-seller lists this week are I Will Find You by Harlan Coben, Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, Saved: A War Reporter’s Mission To Make It Home by Benjamin Hall, Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton, and The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher, written with Mary Pilon. Audio interviews feature conversations with authors such as Ari Shapiro, Darren Walker, Madelaine Lucas, Kerry Howley, Natalie Koch, and John Parker.

Colson Whitehead, Amy Tan, Ann Patchett, Bryan Stevenson, and others receive National Humanities Medals. Linda Villarosa, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, and Deborah Cohen, Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War, win 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards. Questlove launches a new publishing imprint. There is adaptation news for Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo, Cesca Major’s Maybe Next Time, two titles by J. Newman, and Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These. Plus, James Patterson signs an exclusive deal with Skydance Television.

Will Sharpe will direct the movie adaptation of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart. Today is World Poetry Day. Award winners and shortlists arrive from the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards, the Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Award, and the Yoto Carnegie Medals. Hachette v. Internet Archive has a key hearing. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey gets buzz. At LA Times Matthew Desmond discusses his new book Poverty, by America and “the ways we can move the needle on poverty.” 

Journalist and biographer Jonathan Eig works to get personal with his subjects to convey their humanity in a fresh perspective. He talks with LJ about being drawn into writing a biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his approach to the project, the relevance of King, his warnings, and his true legacy.

Mystery so fresh that not all have plot details available; two Christmas mysteries should bring good cheer. 

Hannah Durkin's study of five individiuals from the Clotilda, the last ship to arrive on U.S. shores bearing humans for the purpose of enslavement, plus our postgenerational society, integration in Shaker Heights, and deciding whether to parent.