reviews

Thrillers from David Baldacci, Alyssa Cole, and Mary Kubica, plus debuts and series titles. 

Vampires prowl the pages, and new titles arrive from S. A. Barnes, Eric LaRocca, and Thomas Olde Heuvelt. 

Edward Ashton, Leigh Bardugo, and Hannah Whitten have new titles, plus new romantasy reads and a series list.

The FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power. Jorie Graham wins the Laurel Prize. Naomi Wood wins the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award. Finalists are named for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Hollywood Reporter goes behind the scenes during the final negotiations that ended the WGA strike. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith. Plus, CrimeReads celebrates 50 years of Spenser, Robert B. Parker’s iconic character

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.

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.