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Awards & Book News

The longlists have been selected for the 35th annual Reading the West Awards.

Finalists are revealed for the Compton Crook Award, for best debut science-fiction, fantasy, or horror novel, Locus reports.

Novelist Isabel Allende receives the Bodley Medal from Oxford’s Bodleian Library for outstanding contributions to literature, Kirkus reports.

Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child wins the Novel Prize and will be published by New Directions early next year; LitHub has coverage.

Publishing Perspectives analyzes the longlists for the UK Carnegie Medals for children’s books and finds “a promising trend in books themed on issues in youthful masculinity.”

Page to Screen

February 14

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, based on the novel by Helen Fielding. Peacock. Reviews | Trailer

Captain America: Brave New World, based on associated titles. Marvel Studios. Reviews | Trailer

Paddington in Peru, based on the children’s books by Michael Bond. Sony Pictures. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

NYT reviews Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper (Basic; LJ starred review): “One of the many merits of Summer of Fire and Blood is how Roper—despite being the author of a luminous biography of Luther—shifts the focus away from the face-off between Luther and Müntzer and back onto the peasants themselves, dealing resourcefully with the fact that few of them left any written record of their time in the sun”; and A Fearless Eye: The Photography of Barbara Ramos; San Francisco and California, 1969–1973 (Chronicle): “Published for the first time in A Fearless Eye, Ramos’s work captures minute and mesmerizing everyday scenes in a city that was about to change drastically.”

Washington Post reviews Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe the World—and the Future by Cass R. Sunstein (MIT): “The book dives into important lines of inquiry—such as the ‘social cost of carbon,’ the ‘value of a statistical life’ and discount rates—that even well-informed environmentalists have probably never thought much about. And though the book’s path can be a bit of a slog, the destination is a clearer understanding of exactly why deeply considered climate solutions, by thoughtful and functioning national governments, are so crucial.”

LA Times reviews Golden State: The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik (Mariner): “Hiltzik proceeds methodically but vigorously, and with a healthy dose of skepticism. A Los Angeles Times business columnist whose previous book subjects include the New Deal and the Hoover Dam, he is neither a booster nor a naysayer, although any honest and thorough history of California is by definition also a history of graft, corruption and even genocide.”

The Guardian reviews The South by Tash Aw (Farrar): “Like Chekhov’s Russia, Aw’s Malaysia is both a universally resonant vision of a timeless and placeless lost world, and a historically precise portrait of a country undergoing rapid modernization.”

Briefly Noted

LitHub interviews Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional (Rivherhead).

Helen Fielding, author of the Bridget Jones novels, answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Andrew McMillan shares “The Books of My Life” with The Guardian.

HarperCollins announces an upcoming edition of “Hansel and Gretel” that will combine Stephen King’s words and Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, AP reports.

Publishers Weekly talks to radio host Charlamagne Tha God on the fifth anniversary of his Black Privilege Publishing imprint at Atria.

Grand Central relaunches the music imprint Da Capo; Publishers Weekly has the news.

Stable Book Group is launched; it brings together four indie publishers (She Writes Press, Trafalgar Square Books, Ulysses Press, and VeloPress) with the newly established Galpón Press and Mountain Gazette Books, Publishers Weekly reports.

“Don’t Write Off Historical Romance Fiction,” argues Kirkus.

NYT lists “10 Great Gothic Thrillers That Will Keep You Up at Night”, “7 New Books We Recommend This Week,” and novel recommendations for those who enjoyed the latest Bridget Jones movie.

CrimeReads selects the best debut novels of February 2025, plus “5 Novels with Flawed Child Prodigies.”

Michael Longley, Northern Irish poet of nature and “the Troubles,” has died at 85; NYT has an obituary.

Authors on Air

Apple TV+ will develop Dilettante, a series inspired by Dana Brown’s memoir Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph, and Disaster (Ballantine), about working for former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Deadline reports.

The NYT Book Review Podcast talks to screenwriter Peter Straughan about adapting Robert Harris’s novel Conclave for the screen.

NPR’s Fresh Air interviews RaMell Ross, director of Nickel Boys, based on the novel by Colson Whitehead.

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