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Awards & Buzzy Book News

The 2023 PEN America Literary Award finalists are announced.

HarperCollins Union has ratified a new contract. Locus Magazine has more. Book Riot also covers this news.

Kristina Pérez, formerly of Zeno Agency, has started her own company, Pérez Literary & Entertainment.

APA partners with literary and production house Europa. The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive.

Bill Watterson, author of the Calvin & Hobbes comic series, will be coming out with a “dystopian Neo-noir graphic novel,” Calvin x Hobbes: The Condition of Man, according to Lit Hub. 

NYT covers the estate auction of the late fashion editor André Leon Talley. 

The Cut sifts through Olivia Wilde’s “cryptic literary” references over the last year. 

USA Today reports on the experiences of Christian Demeritt, an actress whose headshots were—unknown to her—sold as stock images, including for the cover of a novel.

NPR continues coverage on the report of Pablo Neruda’s alleged poisoning, as does The Atlantic.

Page to Screen

February 17:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, based on associated titles. Disney. Reviews | Trailer

Devil’s Peak, based on the book Where All Light Tends To Go by David Joy. Screen Media Films. Reviews | Trailer

Unlocked, based on the book by Akira Shiga. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

February 18:

A Rose for Her Grave: The Randy Roth Story, based on the book by Ann Rule. Lifetime. No reviews | No trailer

February 23:

Call Me Chihiro, based on the manga by Hiroyuki Yasuda. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

Reviews

NYT reviews Every Man a King by Walter Mosley (Mulholland; LJ starred review): “Fans of his Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill series will not be disappointed, for we remain in the realm of deliciously gritty noir. There will be cold-cocks and gunfights and stakeouts. There will be tough-talking heavies named Rembert Cormody and D’Artagnan Aramois, formidable femmes called Amethyst Banks and Minta Kraft.”

The Washington Post reviews The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America’s Top Secrets by Matthew Connelly (Pantheon): “Dramatizes a hidden crisis of national understanding: While government bureaucracies inundate themselves with classified information, the citizens they serve are left powerless to understand what goes on in their name”; plus two short reviews about police brutality and reform: The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland by Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham (Atria) and Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz (Viking).

Autostraddle reviews Sorry, Bro, by Taleen Voskuni (Berkley): “A perfect pick-me-up. It understands what it feels like to be stuck, in so many ways—career, life, relationships with family, and how we can learn to fan that little flame within ourselves without losing everyone around us in the process.”

Datebook reviews Users, by Colin Winnette (Soft Skull): “A perceptive, subtly moving novel about a frazzled tech worker facing a barely manageable set of problems.”

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

Briefly Noted

Kevin Jared Hosein talks to The Rumpus about “how the people, flora, and fauna of Trinidad” are represented in his recently published book, Hungry Ghosts (Ecco).

Sheila Liming, Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time (Melville House), makes a “philosophical argument for the chillest of human interactions” in conversation with NYT. Also, Liming makes her case to Slate.

Electric Lit has two conversations featuring authors: with Reuven Blau and Graham Rayman of Rikers: An Oral History (Random), examining the “perspective of the people inside”; and with Mai Nardone on “scheming for the good life in Bangkok” in her short story collection Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random). 

Jojo Moyes converses with the Washington Post about writing about life experiences “a little closer to home” with her new novel, Someone Else’s Shoes (Pamela Dorman).

Former newspaper editor Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil (Crown) chats with Bustle about writing about the British royal family.

Deadline’s Peter Bart, a former film critic, delves into an examination of Sumner Redstone’s “lust for power,” as detailed in Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Penguin Pr.).

Courtney Maum, The Year of the Horses (Tin House), shares what she is reading and planning to read with Lit Hub’s “Annotated Nightstand.”

Author Ibram X. Kendi revisits Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 The Mis-education of the Negro as “the book that exposed anti-Black racism in the classroom.”

Nnedi Okorafor, author of sci-fi book, Noor (DAW), will come out with three new novellas, according to Gizmodo. Also, a peek into an upcoming Afrofuturist comic, The Last Count of Monte Cristo, by Ayize Everett (Abrams).

Tor.com has an excerpt of Hospital, by Han Song (Amazon Crossing). Also, a cover reveal for City of Bones, by Martha Wells (Tor).

The Hollywood Reporter shares an excerpt from Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears, by Michael Schulman (HarperCollins; LJ starred review). 

Entertainment Weekly gives a first look at Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars, by Sam Maggs (Random House Worlds).

CBC Books has a first look at Zoe Whittall’s newest book, The Fake (Ballantine), set to come out in March. 

Autostraddle lists “Eight Books Across Genres on Queer Autistic Experiences.”

Oprah Daily shares “17 Books That Will Change How You Think About Happiness—and Loss.”

CrimeReads lists “Favorite Mysteries and Thrillers Featuring Antiheroes” and “5 Crime Novels That Deepen Our Understanding of Collective Trauma.”

Tor.com provides “Must-Read Short Speculative Fiction” from January.

Book Riot shares a few reading lists such as “30 Must-Read SFF Books by Black Authors,” horror books from Horrortok, and 15 “bookish romance novels.”

Bustle has an updated list of “The 48 Best Queer Romances To Read Right Now.”

Popsugar provides “22 Post-Breakup Books That Are a Balm For Your Heartbreak.”

NYPL blog recommends “gripping zombie-ish reads for fans of The Last of Us.”

CBC Books has “40 books by Black Canadian authors to read.”

HipLatina showcases “16 Empowering Books by Afro-Latina Authors for Black History Month.”

The Root’s “It’s Lit” suggests “Favorite Black Autobiographies To Add to Your Reading List.”

Lit Hub has lists for “essential books about World War II and women” and “new ways to workshop” literary classes.

NYT recommends 9 new books.

Authors on Air

Anthony Walton, editor of On Becoming an American Writer (Nonpareil), speaks to the work of James Alan McPherson through his “essays and legacy” on the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast.

The Keen On podcast features four interviews with authors: Ben Ramalingam on the subject of his book, Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity (Flatiron); Lynn Cullen on The Woman With the Cure (Berkley) who “pioneered the polio vaccine and changed the world”; and Laline Paull, POD (Pegasus: S. & S.), about “our collective of guilt in the destruction of nature”; and Louise Hare of Miss Aldridge Regrets (Berkley) on “writing Black life in England (and how to write a successful second novel).”

Chetna Maroo discusses the process of writing her debut novel, Western Lane (FSG), with the Otherppl podcast.

Malcolm Harris talks about the subject of his book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Little, Brown), as “the town that efficiency built” on The Maris Review podcast.

Climate activist and author Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book (Penguin Pr.), will visit The View as a guest.

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