Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Awards, News & Events

Biographers International Organization receives $1 million gift from famed biographer Kitty Kelley. 

Ryan Manucha wins the 2022 Donner Prize for  Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups: Canada’s Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade (McGill-Queen’s Univ.). 

Mazin Lateef Ali Wins IPA’s Prix Voltaire. Publishing Perspectives has details. 

The TikTok Book Awards launch in the U.K. and Ireland. Publishers Weekly has details. 

Mahmud El Sayed wins 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy for his novel What the Crew Wants. Locus has details. 

Caffè Nero launches new major book awards, focusing on children’s books, nonfiction and novels. The Guardian reports.

According to the U.S. Departament of Education, “Book Removals May Have Violated Students’ Rights.” NYT reports.

42 French publishers will meet in in NYC June 28th and 29th for the French-American Book Market.

Publishing Perspectives previews the Sheikh Zayed Book Award Events at the Abu Dhabi Book Fair.

Columbia University Press is now distributing Sundial House. Publishers Lunch reports. 

Publishers Weekly has full coverage from this week’s U.S. Book Show.

Reviews

NYT  reviews Wild Things by Laura Kay (Vintage): “Wild Things is an excellent romantic comedy. It is not a sunny sky, but a sunbeam: energy focused into a patch of hopeful light”; Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny (Norton): “Unlike those old-time newspaper reporters, Sevigny does not look at her subjects and see women out of place. She sees women doing their job and doing it well”; Cleopatra’s Daughter: From Roman Prisoner to African Queen by Jane Draycott (Liveright): “Hers is an account of Rome and Alexandria at the turn of the first millennium, packed with fascinating information, sometimes droll, about Roman and Egyptian culture, Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship and their daughter’s possible descendants”; Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman (Knopf): “Ultimately, Ackerman suggests that it is our own constant frustration and confrontation with history that threatens to drive us to a permanent state of rage-ennui, for history is not easily derailed”; and Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street by Victor Luckerson (Random): “By the end of Luckerson’s outstanding book, the idea of building something new from the ashes of what has been destroyed becomes comprehensible, even hopeful.”

NPR reviews Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (Little, Brown): “Urrea has written yet another powerful ‘border story’ after all: this time about the border between those who live in blessed ignorance of the worst humankind can do and those who keep that knowledge to themselves, often locked in silence.”

Datebook reviews The Celebrants by Steven Rowley (Putnam): “Lest you think The Celebrants is one predictable, cheesy montage after another, it’s not. While sentimental moments abound, there are plenty of funny surprises too—the kind that happen among soulmates who know each other’s quirks and can finish each other’s sentences.”

Slate reviews The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead): “The resolution feels a bit pat, but this small arc of actual progress, amid all the glum eddying of the rest of the novel, suggests that Taylor has the makings of that rarest of treasures, a compassionate satirist.”

LA Times reviews Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda (MCD; LJ starred review): “While the first part of the novel, depicting prison violence, may be tough going for some readers, Sing Her Down’s acknowledgment and dissection of women’s rage—how it can overwhelm or be tempered—makes it a watershed achievement in Pochoda’s expanding body of work”; and Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan, by Alex Pappademas with Joan LeMay (Univ. of Texas): “For us, this book is a gonzo helping of music criticism dessert, a hot fudge sundae with extra sauce. It has the same detached passion as the music it dances with.”

Briefly Noted

Vanity Fair chats with Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans (Riverhead), on “Sowing Chaos and Overcoming Doubt.”

Novelist Joyce Maynard, The Bird Hotel (Arcade), writes about becoming an accidental hotelier in Guatemala, for NYT. 

R.F. Kuang discusses “tokenization, and constant comparison”, and her new book, Yellowface (Morrow), with Elle. 

Andy Serkis narrates a new unabridged audiobook of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, due out from HarperCollins in June. Tor reports. 

Gizmodo previews a new Folio Society edition of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, just in time for Towel Day on Thursday. 

The Rumpus catches up with Clint Smith to discuss his latest book, Above Ground (Little, Brown; LJ starred review)

PopSugar shares an excerpt from Andrea Bartz’s forthcoming book The Spare Room (Ballantine). 

NYT highlights a new translation of Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, tr. by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson (Liveright). 

LitHub shares 25 new books for the week. 

NYT recommends what to read next in 2023. 

Autostraddle has a new “Rainbow Reading” feature with suggestions. 

ElectricLit shares “7 Books That Bring the City of Mumbai to Life.”

Vogue shares “10 of the Best Beach Reads to Lose Yourself in This Summer.”

Authors On Air

NPR’s Morning Edition talks with Stacey Abrams about her new book, Rogue Justice (Doubleday). 

Brandon Taylor discusses his latest novel, The Late Americans (Riverhead), with B&N’s Poured Over podcast. 

T&C highlights the new trailer for The Color Purple, which will premiere December 25, 2023. 

T&C rounds up “everything we know” about the forthcoming film Firebrand, based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s book, Queen’s Gambit (S. & S.).

Japanese Breakfast posts a casting call for film adaptation of Crying in H Mart. Vulture has more. 

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.