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Awards, News & Book Clubs

The Costa Award Category Winners are announced. The Guardian also has coverage, as does The Bookseller. The Book of the Year Award will be selected February 1st.

Kathryn Heffner is awarded The Peter Nicholls Essay Prize by The Science Fiction Foundation.

Reese Witherspoon picks Honor by Thrity Umrigar (Algonquin; LJ starred review) for her January Book Club.

Skyhorse will publish a new Norman Mailer collection after Random House reportedly passes. USA Today reports. NYT also covers the story, as does The Guardian. 

Chicago Review Press Acquires Interlude Press, “a boutique publisher of bestselling and award-winning LGBTQ+ fiction.”

Reviews

NYT reviews Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (Random): “Schulz’s book torques the grief memoir into a Möbius strip, placing the totalizing experience of loss — to be almost geographically, directionally 'at a loss,’ as she palpates that particular stone — on a continuum with the summons of romantic and even religious love: with being ‘found’.” And, The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague (Atlantic Monthly Pr.): “what The Steal offers is a view of the election through the eyes of state- and county-level officials.”  Also, Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking by Leonard Mlodinow (Pantheon): “Perhaps some readers will find his advice useful, but for me the value of this book is as a lively exposé of the growing consensus about the limited power of rationality and decision-making.”  Plus, Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan (Pegasus): “Despite its darkness, the novel is carried by jagged delight and optimism, a bright hope coming through the walls and a fundamental belief in people.”

The Washington Post reviews Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho (Viking): “Through Fiona and Jane, Ho honors the hours put into a relationship, while also acknowledging the ways in which our lives are irreversibly changed by short-term engagements.”  And, The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition by T. S. Eliot (Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr.): "Given its cost, The Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot is clearly beyond the means of many readers. Still, it’s well worth looking for at the library."

NPR reviews The Maid by Nita Prose (Ballantine; LJ starred review): "The delight of reading The Maid lies partly in watching a hectic cast of characters unravel (take special pleasure in watching Rodney Stiles, the hotel head bartender on whom Molly has a crush) as the crime is properly solved."

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Invisible by Danielle Steel (Delacorte), the buzziest book of the week.

LA Times talks with Xochitl Gonzalez about her journey from wedding planner to debut author of Olga Dies Dreaming (Flatiron).

NPR has a feature and Q&A with Pauline Boss about her new book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change (Norton).

Michelle Zauner reflects on her ‘epic year’ including the success of her memoir, Crying in H Mart (Knopf), for People.

Jami Attenberg, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (Ecco; LJ starred review), writes about rejection’s role in her writing career for The Guardian.

Joanne Harris, A Narrow Door (Pegasus), writes about how her “career as a teacher shaped her career as a writer” at CrimeReads. Plus, Darby Kane, The Replacement Wife (Morrow), writes about her evolution from romantic suspense to rage. 

Bustle shares an excerpt from Nikki May’s forthcoming debut, Wahala (Custom House; LJ starred review).

PopSugar recommends forthcoming romance, Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover (Montlake), due out January 18th.

Slate considers the book, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future by Bartow J. Elmore (Norton) as part of its "Climate Desk" series. 

Salon looks at research suggesting relatives share writing styles.

The Atlantic explores eight ghost stories “in which the dead won’t go quietly."

PopSugar has “36 New Romance Novels That Will Make You Fall in Love With 2022.”

Bustle has 10 must-reads for the week. 

Authors On Air

NPR’s Fresh Air has an interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy (Harper), about his son’s suicide and the January 6th Capitol attack. 

NPR’s Book Of The Day talks with Jonathan Karl about Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show (Dutton).

January Read with Jenna pick, The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (S. & S.; LJ starred review) will be adapted for series treatment. Deadline reports.

Erik Larson’s audiobook ghost story, No One Goes Alone (Books on Tape; LJ starred review) will be adapted for a feature film. Deadline reports. Other Larson adaptations in the works are The Devil in the White City, with Keanu Reeves in talks to star, and In the Garden of Beasts with Tom Hanks attached.

NPR's Morning Edition reports on the record breaking sale of a 1962, near-mint copy of 'The Incredible Hulk.'

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