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The Atlantic sifts through the dataset behind Books3, used to train generative AI without permission. Infodocket reports on AI book bans, ahead of Banned Books Week. The 2023 Elgin Awards winners are announced. Zadie Smith will headline the Vancouver Writers Fest, which takes place Oct. 16–22. Interviews arrive with C Pam Zhang, Zadie Smith, Kerry Washington, and more. Plus, Martha Stewart announces she is working on her 100th cookbook.

"Audio is the fastest-growing format in the industry,” says HarperAudio Associate Publisher Brad Hill. This rapid growth has encouraged publishers to experiment with audiobook production. For instance, publishers are releasing more audiobook originals, adding more music and sound effects, and creating multicast productions that resemble radio plays.
 

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith leads holds this week. Also getting buzz are titles by Ken Follett, Mary Kay Andrews, James Patterson and Mike Lupica, and V.E. Schwab. Four LibraryReads and three Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is Wellness by Nathan Hill. Memoirs in the news include Kerry Washington’s Thicker than Water and Cassidy Hutchinson’s Enough. Plus, Hollywood studios and WGA reach a tentative deal to end the 146-day strike.

Shortlists for the Booker Prize and the Financial Times/Schroders Business Book of the Year are announced. Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias by John Lorinc has won the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Global Cities Book Award. A new PEN America report finds a 33% jump in school book bans. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Aparna Nancherla, Jo Nesbø, Michael Wolff, and more.

A new Simon & Schuster program highlights the merits of books that have been subject to censorship and will provide resources for fighting book bans. The Academy of American Poets announces the winners of its annual poetry prizes. LeVar Burton will serve as the honorary chair of this year’s Banned Books Week. Amazon will require publishers on Kindle to disclose when any of their content is generated by artificial intelligence.

ALA’s data on 2023 book challenges shows a surge this year. Shortlists for the German Book Prize and BBC Young Writers’ Award are announced. The Mellon Foundation appoints historian and scholar Kelly Lytle Hernández as its 2023 Fellow in Residence. Prominent novelists, including John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and Elin Hilderbrand, sue OpenAI. The September LoanStars list is out, featuring top pick The Armor of Light by Ken Follett. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Richard Osman’s The Last Devil To Die. The Hunger Games, based on the book by Suzanne Collins, returns to select theaters in October.  Plus, a verdict is delivered on the “Bad Art Friend” case.

Mysteries to look forward to, including a list of new series titles.

Navigating the many facets of a heating planet.

Book lovers will delight in a display full of titles that feature books, bookstores, libraries, and writers across both fiction and nonfiction. 

It’s not all sugar plums and stockings in this holiday season’s mysteries.

Readers who like their historical mysteries embellished with plenty of gothic ambience and enhanced with an abundance of dry wit will adore this splendid debut.

The Last Devil To Die by Richard Osman is the top holds title of the week. LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for patrons waiting to read this buzziest book.

Full of political intrigue and impressive worldbuilding, Jacobs’s superb debut launches this space opera trilogy.

From bookstores to small towns, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in these novels of charm, kindness, and corgis too.

Offering a satisfying slow burn that transforms into delightful heat, the dazzling chemistry in this life-altering rom-com shows how love that transcends dimensions is worth the risk. This debut is an essential purchase for romance shelves.

Oprah picks Wellness by Nathan Hill for her book club. Wayne Johnston wins the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his memoir, Jennie’s Boy: A Misfit Childhood on an Island of Eccentrics. The 2023 British Fantasy Awards winners are announced. Nihar Malaviya is officially named CEO of Penguin Random House. Russell Brand’s publisher has paused all new projects, including a self-help book that was slated to publish this December. NYT explores “How TikTok Is Reshaping the American Cookbook.”  Plus, Kate DiCamillo reflects on the 20th anniversary of her award-winning children’s book The Tale of Despereaux, at Washington Post.

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War

The Last Devil To Die by Richard Osman leads holds this week. The National Book Awards announces its longlist for fiction. The 2023 winners of the McIlvanney Prize and the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize are announced. Rolling Stone cofounder Jann S. Wenner was removed from the Rock Hall of Fame board after an inflammatory interview with NYT while promoting his new book. People’s book of the week is Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. Anderson Cooper discusses his new book, Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, with CBS Sunday Morning. And American Fiction, based on the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, wins the Toronto Film Festival’s top prize.

The National Book Awards announces its longlists for nonfiction and poetry. The Flow: Rivers, Waters and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer and The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole win the Wainwright Prize for nature writing. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Leila Aboulela, John Manuel Arias, Kate Atkinson, and more.

October 2023 fiction audiobook titles most in demand.

October 2023 nonfiction audiobook titles most in demand.

Reading goes to the birds in these excellent works about birds, birding, and vanishing wildlife. 

Horror is amplified when fed directly into the ears.

The National Book Awards longlist for translated literature is announced; the longlists for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will be announced later today and tomorrow. Finalists are announced for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQIA+ emerging writers and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Plus new title best sellers and interviews with David Diop, Franklin Foer, Zakiya Dalila Harris, London Hughes, Daphne Kalotay, Angie Kim, Marisa Meltzer, Maggie O’Farrell, and Sarah Ogilvie.

Soundscapes lead listeners into new words and future times.

The tension ratchets up when crime fiction spins out in soundscapes.

Swoony lines and great banter only get better on audio.

Starred audiobooks reviewed in our September 2023 Audio in Depth issue, spanning mystery and suspense, SF/fantasy, romance, arts, sciences, and more.

Books about books get even more meta when narrators read them aloud.

The National Book Foundation rescinds Drew Barrymore’s invitation to host the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony host after her talk show resumes during the WGA strike. Sandra Cisneros wins the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Kirsty Whatley wins the 2023 Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers. Earlyword’s September GalleyChat spreadsheet is out now, featuring early buzz for Alex Michaelides’s forthcoming novel, The Fury. The Pulitzer Prizes officially expand eligibility to noncitizens. Michael Chabon joins other writers to sue Meta AI platform for copyright infringement. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Code Red by Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills.

Code Red by Vince Flynn & Kyle Mills is the top holds title of the week. LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for patrons waiting to read this buzziest book.

From astrophysics to robots.

History, psychology, economics, and politics.

Touring the past. 

Multiple-award-winning author Toni Tipton-Martin is a culinary journalist, a community activist, and the editor in chief of Cook’s Country magazine. She is the author of the forthcoming Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book; Cocktails from Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks, as well as The Jemima Code and Jubilee. She is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Foodways Texas. 

SFF takes on well-known tales, including “Aladdin,” “Hansel and Gretel,” The Nutcracker, and Slavic folklore.

Fall in love with Hollywood while reading these romance novels about the film industry.

Joanna Gaines, Miranda Lambert, and Alison Roman are just some of the names topping the charts.

Two forthcoming natural history titles feature birds and best practices for humans to interact with them.