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Awards News & Winter Reads

The NAACP Image Awards nominees are out for Outstanding Literary Works.

The Mystery Writers of America announce the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations.

Popsugar shares “2023’s Best New Historical Fiction Books.”

Book Riot lists “The Most Anticipated Cookbooks of 2023.” 

CrimeReads has “The Best International Crime Novels Coming Out This January.”

NYT recommends 9 new books and 6 new paperbacks.

Page to Screen

January 20:

Women Talking, based on the book by Miriam Toews. United Artists. Reviews | Trailer

Truth Be Told, based on the book Are You Sleeping by Kathleen Barber. Apple TV+. Reviews | Trailer

January 22:

The Wandering Earth 2, based on the short story by Liu Cixin. Well Go USA. No reviews | Trailer

January 24:

Bezos: The Beginning, based on the book Zero to Hero by Tashena Ebanks. Spanglish Media. No reviews | Trailer

January 26: 

Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, based on the book series “Nicolae: The Rise of the Antichrist” by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Fathom Events. No reviews | Trailer

Wolf Pack, based on the book by Edo van Belkom. Paramount+. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise by Pico Iyer (Riverhead): “A narrative cartography of personal growth and expansion. It is a work of spiritual evolution built around vivid, discernible images of real places by a master of description”; Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater by Peggy Orenstein (Harper: HarperCollins): “That the book is filled with hard realities and sharp observations shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Orenstein is an accomplished author known for diving into the weighty and uncomfortable territory of teen sexuality”; Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter by John Hendrickson (Knopf): “Full-hearted memoir grapples with shame, resentment and fear as Hendrickson answers with courage and compassion one of the most meaningful questions in life: ‘How do you accept an aspect of yourself that you’re taught at such an early age to hate?’””; and Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll (Melville House): “It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you—and then, just when you think it’s over, add several extra twists before bringing this Rubik’s Cube of a story to just the right, emotionally muted conclusion.”

Locus Magazine also reviews Mr. Breakfast by Jonathan Carroll (Melville House): “Packed with familiar characteristics: sudden time shifts, the nostalgic landscapes of middle America, mysterious tutelary figures, encounters with earlier selves, photographs and tattoos, and, inevitably, very ingratiating dogs.” Also, Tor.com reviews this book: “Art always changes the world, but there’s no guarantee that those changes will be for the best.”

NYT reviews The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America by Saket Soni (Algonquin; LJ starred review): “A must-read for anyone organizing a union drive across cultural or racial lines, but even readers who have never thought about labor issues before will find themselves sucked into the drama.”

Book Marks has “The Best Reviewed Books of the Week.”

Briefly Noted

Jessica Johns discusses how she “uses dreams to tell a story of loss, resilience, and a family reuniting” in her book, Bad Cree (Doubleday). Plus, a conversation with Kristin Chenoweth, I’m No Philosopher, But I Got Thoughts: Mini-Meditations for Saints, Sinners, and the Rest of Us (Harper Celebrate) discusses “her path to solace and healing” with Shondaland. Also, Lauren Fleshman, author of Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World (Penguin Pr.), “tells her own story and talks about the abuse that’s rife in professional running.”

Author Adriana Herrera talks to Entertainment Weekly about how the “19th-century Paris art world and her own past inspired” her upcoming book, An Island Princess Starts a Scandal (Canary Street: HarperCollins).

The Rumpus chats with Liz Harmer, author of Strange Loops (Knopf Canada), about “tragedy, taboo, unmediated experience, and how we perceive the sexuality of teenage girls.”

Jinger Dugger Vuolo talks about her new memoir, Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear (Thomas Nelson), and how dressing moderately was part of her faith with People.

NPR interviews Matthew Connelly about the U.S. government and the process of classifying documents as detailed in his book, The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets (Pantheon).

Author Ann-Marie MacDonald, Adult Onset (Tin House), discusses her multi-decade career with CBC Books. 

Musician “Weird Al” Yankovic gets his songs illustrated in the graphic novel, The Illustrated Al (Z2 Comics: S. & S.). Entertainment Weekly has more.

Penguin Classics will create more Marvel compilations, according to AV Club. 

Ken Follett to release The Armor of Light, a new novel this fall. Book Riot reports.

CBC Books gives a first look at Uzma Jalaluddin’s Much Ado About Nada (Berkley). 

BBC explores an assertion that “Don DeLillo is America's greatest living writer.”

Book Riot shares an excerpt of How To Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (Berkley; LJ starred review).

Tor.com provides an excerpt of In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (Tor; LJ starred review).

Book Riot suggests “20 Must-Read Cozy Fantasy Books” and “8 Horror Novels with Unreliable Narrators."

Electric Lit has “7 City Novels in Which Real Estate and Urban Planning Are the Heroes and Villains.”

Tor.com lists “Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: 12 Works You May Have Missed in 2022.”

CrimeReads shares “The Best Killer Dolls and Puppets in Books.”

Lit Hub gives “a Reading List of Very Short Fictions.”

Authors on Air

Matthew Salesses chats with the Otherppl podcast about the K-drama that inspired his work in his book The Sense of Wonder (Little, Brown). 

Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually (Morrow), discusses how “real life isn’t a Nancy Meyers movie” on The Maris Review podcast.

Kate and Charlie Gibson make book recommendations on The Book Case podcast.

The Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast remembers recently deceased author Russell Banks of The Magic Kingdom (Knopf). 

Yomi Adegoke’s Slay In Your Lane (Fourth Estate: HarperCollins) will be adapted for television by HBO Max, the BBC and A24, according to Deadline.

There will be a film adaptation of Henry James’s The Beast In The Jungle. Lit Hub has more.

Actress Retta is “set to play a crime-solving Bookstagrammer,” according to Lit Hub.

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