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Awards & News

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson (Pamela Dorman) is the new GMA Book Club pick.

The Aspen Words Literary Prize shortlist is announced. Publishing Perspectives has coverage. 

S. & S. halts publication of The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life by David B. Agus, due to accusations of plagiarism. LA Times, LitHub, and CBS News have coverage. 

People features two longtime friends who are taking on book bans. 

The Bookseller previews a new book by E L James, The Missus, due out from Bloom Books (Century, in the UK), in June.  

“Mattel Will Form Its Own Publishing Imprint.” Publishers Weekly reports. 

Reviews

NYT reviews The Curator by Owen King (Scribner): “This novel is richly imagined, its surface pleasures deliberately subverted by the bleak suggestion at its core: that a successful organized attempt to reduce inequity will have to overcome not just the inertia of a nation’s politics, but human nature”; River Spirit by Leila Aboulela (Grove; LJ starred review): “Aboulela has written a novel of war, love, faith, womanhood and—crucially—the tussle over truthful public narratives”; The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland (Flatiron): “Make no mistake, Jacqueline Holland’s era-spanning debut, The God of Endings, is a vampire novel”; Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World by Eliane Brum, tr. by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Graywolf): “At once a work of reportage, a manifesto for social and agrarian transformation, and no less than a blueprint for a new cosmography”; In Memoriam by Alice Winn (Knopf): “Winn’s prose is percussive, driving the story forward with a mix of Edwardian masculine sentimentality and the improbable plotting of a period romance”; Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began by Leah Hazard (Ecco; LJ starred review): “With its colorful stories about the doctors and researchers whose work makes up what we know—or think we know—about the uterus, the book drives home an often-overlooked truth about science: that it is the product of human labor”; The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare by John Lisle (St. Martin’s): “This enjoyable, picaresque and sometimes alarming book offers another good reason for maintaining careful oversight over the intelligence services: Spy-scientists tend to go rogue when left to invent their own devices”; Confidence by Rafael Frumkin (S. & S.; LJ starred review): “Ezra is a clever narrator, brought to life by Frumkin in a knowing and well-paced first-person that gives Confidence the propulsive thrum of a tell-all”; and The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, by David Waldstreicher (FSG): “At once historical biography at its best, literary analysis at its sharpest and a subversive indictment of current political discourse questioning the relevance of Black life in our country’s history.”

The Washington Post reviews Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Farrar): “With terrifying intensity, Catton propels these characters to a finale that prefigures the very apocalypse they’re all trying to forestall”; Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson (Pamela Dorman): “Fans of well-observed foibles will have a ball; class warriors might look elsewhere”; and On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required To Endure the Life of a Writer by Stephen Marche (Biblioasis): “Marche’s book isn’t a pep talk, but it’s not intended to cut you off at the knees. His sole prescription is stubbornness.” Plus there are short reviews of 5 new short-story collections. 

NPR reviews Dr. No by Percival Everett (Graywolf; LJ starred review): “Taking a sharp turn with his first novel since the triumphant success of The Trees, Everett’s Dr. No is a delightfully escapist romp as well as an incisive sendup of espionage fiction.”

LA Times reviews Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA by Theresa Runstedtler (Bold Type; LJ starred review): “The stroke of honesty that guides Black Ball is its insistence that our perceptions of race affect how we view the game, and that you simply can’t divorce sports from the times in which they are played—and the audiences for whom they’re played.”

Briefly Noted

Margaret Atwood discusses loss, storytelling, and her new book, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories (Doubleday), in an interview with Vanity Fair. 

Rafael Frumkin talks about his new book, Confidence (S. & S.; LJ starred review), and “writing the queer scammer book he always wanted to read,” at Shondaland. 

ElectricLit talks with Dan Kois, Vintage Contemporaries (Harper), about “being a bad literary agent, writing about race as a white person, and how the working conditions in publishing have only gotten worse.”

Vox reflects on Nora Ephron’s 1983 novel, Heartburn (Vintage), as it turns 40. 

LitHub suggests 11 new books for the week. 

Time has 14 new books for the month. 

Tor highlights new fantasy books for March. 

Autostraddle lists “114 Queer and Feminist Books” for spring. 

Forbes shares 10 books about women in the workplace. 

BuzzFeed lists “19 Great Books That Capture What It’s Like To Live With A Disability.”

BookRiot shares new releases for the week, 10 queer books for March, 11 new horror books, and 14 mystery, thriller, and true-crime books. 

Thriller writer Christopher Fowler has died at the age of 69. The Guardian has an obituary.

Authors On Air

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with Margaret Atwood about her new story collection, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories (Doubleday).

NPR’s All Things Considered chats with Donal Ryan about “growing up in a kitchen full of women” as the inspiration behind his new book, The Queen of Dirt Island (Viking; LJ starred review).

UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz discusses her new book, Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Eleanor Catton talks about her new book, Birnam Wood (Farrar), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast. Catton also joined CBC’s Writers & Company, which calls her new novel “a moral thriller for our times.”

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, talks about her new novel, A Most Intriguing Lady (Avon), on GMA. Also, Debra Lee weighs in on breaking barriers in the workplace and her new memoir, I Am Debra Lee (Legacy Lit).

Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry book tour is now available as an Audible podcast. USA Today shares a clip. 

Hulu will not move forward with its previously announced adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil In The White City; ABC Signature hopes to find another home for it. Deadline reports. 

PBS Canvas summarizes “what you need to know about the 2023 Academy Awards.”

Vulture shares “30 New Screen Adaptations of Books to Add to Your 2023 Reading List.”

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