reviews

Fady Joudah, author of the collection […], wins the Jackson Poetry Prize for American poets. Winners of the Tolkien Society Awards are announced. Finalists are also announced for NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the Jhalak Awards. Nominees for the CrimeFest Awards are out. Actor Viola Davis and her husband are launching a publishing company to champion underrepresented voices. Facing criticism for its response to the war in Gaza, PEN announces plans to review the organization’s work going back a decade.

Winners are announced for the Publishing Triangle Awards for LGBTQIA+ books. Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, tr. by Zoë Perry, wins the UK Republic of Consciousness Prize for small press books. The shortlist for the Donner Prize, recognizing the best public policy book by a Canadian, is announced. There’s more reporting on the turmoil surrounding the PEN Awards. Plus new title bestsellers and interviews with Marjane Satrapi and Emily Henry.

Real-life courtroom battles are shared by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey as they detail accounts of wrongful conviction; plus a new Malcolm Gladwell book is on the way. 

Rebecca Yarros will publish a stand-alone novel, Variation, in October. Kemi Ashing-Giwa wins the Compton Crook Award for The Splinter in the Sky. Oren Kessler wins the  Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict. The Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist is announced. The May LibraryReads list arrives, featuring top pick The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci. Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road and Don Winslow’s City on Fire are slated for adaptations.

Two memoirs not to miss: one from cooking maven Ina Garten and another from the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

LJ Best Book author Hailey Piper offers a twist on vampire mythology; plus new books from Kelley Armstrong, Richard Chizmar, and Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Nuzo Onoh.

Stephen A. Marshall’s latest book, Hymenoptera: The Natural History and Diversity of Wasps, Bees and Ants, was one of LJ’s Best Print Reference picks for 2023 and also won the prestigious Dartmouth Medal. LJ invited Marshall to reflect upon the definition of reference, his approach to writing and research, and his fieldwork.

Monika Kim is a second-generation Korean American living in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. She learned about eating fish eyes from her mother, who immigrated to LA from Seoul in 1985. The Eyes Are the Best Part is her first novel.

A new PEN America report out today, Banned In The USA: Narrating the Crisis, documents nearly 4,000 accounts of book banning in the first half of the current school year. Major publishers have joined Penguin Random House in supporting a suit challenging Iowa’s book ban. Finalists are announced for the  Gotham Book Prize, the Nova Scotia Book Awards, and the Atlantic Book Awards. Washington Post reports on the growing popularity of silent book clubs. Author Robin Cook has two new film/TV projects, including an adaptation of his forthcoming book Bellevue and a procedural featuring his iconic characters Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery.