reviews

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.

James Patterson donates $5.3M to Howard University, PEN America, and Scholastic Book Clubs. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for Fredrik Backman’s buzzy novel The Winners. Tom Hanks previews his debut novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, due out from Knopf in May 2023. Constance Wu’s memoir Making a Scene gets buzz, and Namwali Serpell’s novel The Furrows: An Elegy gets reviewed. Plus, BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & the Light will continue in tribute to the late author. 

Unexpected worlds from Ausubel, Kang, Slocumb, Yehoshua, and others. 

Three don't-miss collections from rising stars. 

Blockbuster authors providing much-anticipated thrills. 

Big-print titles to keep thriller readers busy. 

From the Windors and Simon Winchester to South Africa, Eastern and Central Europe, Israel, and more. 

The 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist is revealed today. The 2022 Strand Critics and the 2022 Elgin Awards winners are announced. USA Today launches a monthly book club. The first selection is Fairy Tale by Stephen King. Storytel launches in France. A forthcoming unauthorized biography of Anthony Bourdain gathers buzz as does the late Alan Rickman’s Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, both due out in October. Plus, LitHub shares bookies’ odds for the Nobel Prize.