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Big Books of the Week

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (Berkley)

Spy School at Sea by Stuart Gibbs (S. & S. Books for Young Readers)

Breaking Badger by Shelly Laurenston (Kensington)

Murder Most Fair by Anna Lee Huber (Kensington)

These books and others publishing the week of August 30th, 2021 are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

There are five LibraryReads and two Indie Next picks publishing this week:

The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson (Berkley; LJ starred review)

“June is stuck. After her mom dies, she continues to live quietly in her mother’s house and work in the library where her mother worked. When the library is threatened, she finds a new purpose, saving it and finding so much more. This one is full of heart, humor, and love of literature. For fans of The Authenticity Project and How To Find Love in a Bookshop.”—Shari Suarez, Genesee District Library-Johnson Branch, Genesee, MI

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga: S. & S.; LJ starred review)

"Jade's convinced her passion for slasher films is not obsession, but preparation. When strange things start occurring in town, she’s sure a massacre is imminent--and she’s ready to play her role to perfection. A highly stylized delight for horror movie buffs and fans of The Final Girl Support Group."—Sharon Layburn, South Huntington Public Library, Huntington Station, NY

It is also an Indie Next pick:

“Jade isn’t the final girl; she doesn’t fit the requirements for a typical slasher flick. When her town becomes the setting for a real-life slasher case, she fills the role of wise woman to the appropriate final girl.”—April Gosling, Boulder Book Store, Boulder, CO

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)

“A brutal crime is committed on a London houseboat, and numerous friends, family, neighbors, and lovers seem to have a motive for the fatal stabbing. As the number of suspects grows, the lies begin to unravel in what promises to be a hit summer read. For fans of Shari Lapena and Mary Kubica.”—KC Davis, Fairfield Woods Library, Fairfield, CT

It is also an Indie Next pick:

“I remember the addictiveness of Girl on The Train and Into the Water, and Paula Hawkins did not let readers down with this new book. A Slow Fire Burning was an amazing read that I couldn’t put down.”—Deanna Bailey, Story on the Square, McDonough, GA

The Royals Next Door by Karina Halle (Berkley)

"After a prince and princess move to her British Columbia town, a local teacher falls for their grumpy bodyguard. This charming romantic comedy is unexpectedly moving and features deep and layered characters. Perfect for fans of The Royal We and Royal Holiday."—Janet Schneider, Peninsula Public Library, Lawrence, NY

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang (Berkley)

“Anna is a violinist plagued by anxiety after one of her performances goes viral. When her boyfriend decides he wants to try an open relationship, she meets Quan, a handsome bad-boy type who seems perfect for a one- night stand. But Anna soon realizes that there's a lot more to Quan than tattoos and a leather jacket. Hoang's signature elements are here: thoughtful portrayals of neurodiversity and disability, lots of sexual tension (and scorching love scenes), and realistic characters. For fans of Talia Hibbert.”—Nanette Donohue, Champaign Public Library, Champaign, IL

In the Media

The People "Picks" book of the week is Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer (Bloomsbury). Also getting attention are You Can Run by Karen Cleveland (Ballantine), and The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson (Berkley; LJ starred review).

A “New in Paperback" section highlights The Less Dead by Denise Mina (Mulholland), Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South by Rick Bragg (Knopf), and The Guest List by Lucy Foley (Morrow; LJ starred review). The “Kid Pick” is Negative Cat by Sophie Blackall (Nancy Paulsen Books). The “Picks” section suggests Sparking Joy With Marie Kondo on Netflix. Plus, Leah Cohen, Lemongrass and Lime: Southeast Asian Cooking at Home (Avery), shares a recipe. 

Reviews

NPR reviews The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper: HarperCollins): “Love Songs is immersed in Black feminism, but also explores the turn-of-the-20th-century philosophies that helped shape the Civil Rights movement.” Also, The Women of Troy by Pat Barker (Doubleday): “The novel is immersive and textured: full of smoke from the fires, and sand whipped up by the wind that's keeping the Greek army pinned to the shore.” And, Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist by Patrick Nathan (Counterpoint): “He transforms the idea that images need linguistic context … into an ethical system that defends human complexity against the ever-flattening pressures of both consumer capitalism and creeping fascism. As proof of concept, Image Control more than succeeds.”

The Washington Post reviews A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead): “Not only is every character in Hawkins’s novel vile, self-serving, and narcissistic, even worse, they’re dull. Dull, dull, dull. Even the serial killer is dull.” And, Exodus, Revisited: My Unorthodox Journey to Berlin by Deborah Feldman (Plume; LJ starred review): “While Exodus, Revisited is nowhere near as crowd-friendly a cultural product as the Netflix series, it raises hard questions that are important to many people.”

The NYT reviews Three Rooms by Jo Hamya (Houghton Harcourt): “compresses the noise of contemporary life into a record of recent events: Grenfell Tower, Boris Johnson, Brexit. But personal and everyday occurrences take up equal space in the narrator’s consciousness, and are precisely and beautifully rendered.”

Slate reviews My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga: S. & S.; LJ starred review): “Jones makes the case for the slasher as the sestina of adolescent fury; the very inflexibility of the form at once both weirdly comforting and a daunting challenge to anyone seeking to do anything original with it.”

Briefly Noted

The Davitt Awards winners are announced, for the best crime books by Australian women. Sally Hepworth's The Good Sister (St. Martin’s; LJ starred review), wins best adult crime novel.  Also, the Nib Literary Award 2021 longlist is announced.  Books+Publishing has details on both awards. 

The NYT has an interview with Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You (Farrar; LJ starred review), about how she wrote again after success.

LA Times talks with Hilma Wolitzer, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket, (Bloomsbury), and her daughter, author Meg Wolitzer, about her new collection written at the age of 91.

The Millions interviews Kendra Allen, The Collection Plate: Poems (Ecco), about “music and religion, our grandmothers, and what it meant to call oneself a poet.”

Joanna Carl shares her crib sheet for chocolates, and the detectives who love them for CrimeReads.

The Atlantic’s Books Briefing explores how “educators and parents alike play important roles in developing kids’ appreciation for literature.”

USA Today picks five books for the week.

CrimeReads suggests 10 books out this week.

Salon considers Orwell’s relevance 75 years after Animal Farm. 

Time reports that the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote some of the Harry Potter books has been damaged in a fire. 

“Stephen B. Oates, historian and biographer of Lincoln and King, dies at 85.” The Washington Post has an obituary.

Authors on Air

Megan Abbott, The Turnout (Putnam; LJ starred review) stops by the Unlikeable Female Characters Podcast, to talk about “how to write authentic conflict between female characters while avoiding catfight stereotypes.”

AudioFile's Behind the Mic podcast discusses narrator Robert Bathurst's return to Three Pines in Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds (Minotaur: St. Martin’s; LJ starred review). 

Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch (Random; LJ starred review) will be adapted into a series for television. Deadline reports.

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