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Awards News

Abdulrazak Gurnah is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The NYT, among other news sources, reports.

Clare Whitfield wins the 2021 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award for People of Abandoned Character (Head of Zeus; LJ starred review).

The 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist is announced.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers | USA Today Best-Selling Books

Fiction

The Wish by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central) shines at No. 1 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner; LJ starred review) clocks in at No. 2 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (Del Rey) rises to No. 5 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Man Who Died Twice: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman Books) lives at No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

The Santa Suit by Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin’s) celebrates No. 10 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list.

Mile High With a Vampire by Lynsay Sands (Avon: HarperCollins) flies to No. 10 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber (Flatiron: Macmillan) starts at No. 11 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction

No Cure For Being Human by Kate Bowler (Random) debuts at No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski (Avid: S. & S.) hits No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Unrequited Infatuations by Stevie Van Zandt (Hachette) delivers No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom by Tabitha Brown (Morrow) eats No. 6 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever (Ecco) starts at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

The High 5 Habit by Mel Robbins (Random) soars to No. 7 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker (Viking) comes out at No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

My Life In Full by Indra Nooyi (Portfolio) succeeds at No. 13 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Reviews

NPR reviews A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom): “This novella pushes against the hopelessness of inevitability; it dares us to believe in sympathetic magic; it tells us we're connected through story. It might dent your heart a little, but it's good fun.” Also, Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl (S. & S.): “Like Ruhl's initial belief that "disappointing things" don't warrant "the written word," and the padding of the book with tangents, this betrays a reluctance to tell a story that feels small and slow — odd given her work as a playwright to "make the small, quiet moments theatrical." Her mistake is that memoir does not require a single epiphany, but would do well to offer many moments of retrospective meaning-making.”

The Washington Post reviews The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (Dey St.; LJ starred review): ““The Storyteller” becomes more episodic and remote the further Grohl travels from a relatable kid to a typically distant celebrity, rolling down the shutters.”

NYT reviews Reprieve by James Han Mattson (Morrow): “On the surface, “Reprieve” is a story about an attack at a haunted house, but Mattson is also investigating questions of identity and power, namely who in this story controls fears and who is subject to them.”

Book Marks shares "October's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books."

Briefly Noted

The creators of a hit Netflix’s cooking show have a cookbook, Nailed It! Baking Challenges for the Rest of Us (Abrams). People has the story.

Emily Ratajkowski, My Body (Metropolitan), recounts her Blurred Lines video shoot experience to Entertainment Weekly. Dave Grohl, The Storyteller (Dey St.; LJ starred review), reveals in an interview to People that he thinks about Kurt Cobain “all the time.” Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My Monticello (Henry Holt: Macmillan), talks about “pushing her readers into wonderfully unsettling realities that don’t come with easy answers” with The Rumpus. Hooked (Grand Central) author, Sutton Foster, chats with NYT about "how she collaged and cross-stitched her way out of anxiety and loss." Plus, Mary Beard, Twelve Caesars (Princeton Univ.), shares her request for "a moratorium on Churchilll biographies" in an interview with By the Book.

Rick Ross, rapper and author of The Perfect Day to Boss Up: A Hustler's Guide to Building Your Empire (Hanover Square Press) commemorates his best seller status with a neck tattoo. Plus, a brief review of No Cure For Being Human by Kate Bowler (Random).

Miriam Toews, Fight Night (Bloomsbury), answers the Lit Hub questionnaire. Also, Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Little, Brown) fills out the questionnaire. Plus, Margaret Verble, author of When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky (Mariner: HarperCollins) gives book recommendations via the Book Marks questionnaire.

Tor.com has the 3rd chapter of Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw (Tor Nightfire). Entertainment Weekly shares the 2nd chapter of All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris (William Morrow: HarperCollins).

Fox News covers State of Terror by Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton (S. & S.: St. Martin’s) and its critics.

Lit Hub has "The 25 Most Iconic Book Covers in History."

CrimeReads lists “10 New Books Coming Out This Week.”

Book Riot shares “20 Must-Read Adult Books by Trans & Genderqueer Authors From 2021.”

Tor.com has “Five Books With BIPOC Chosen Ones” and “All the New Science Fiction Books Arriving in October!”

The Washington Post lists “Seven books by women in the spy world show us how it’s done.”

LJ provides "Your Basic Witch Reading List | 17 Titles to Read and Share."

NYT gives “Newly Published, From Famous Manuscripts to a Bookstore in Egypt.”

Authors on Air

Fiona Hill, author of There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century (Mariner), speaks to NPR’s Fresh Air about how “the U.S. is on a path to autocracy.”

PBS News Hour covers a story about the biography about Robert Indiana, the artist who created LOVE sculptures.

Director Mike Flanagan will adapt Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (Signet: Penguin Random House) for Netflix. Deadline reports. Variety has more on this story.

Malcolm Gaskill’s Hellish Nell will be adapted by Chris Basler, Studiocanal and The Picture Company. Deadline reports. Also, news comes that Sue Grafton’s alphabet book series to be adapted for tv by A+E Studios.

Sanaë Lemoine, The Margot Affair (Hogarth: Crown: Random House; LJ starred review), speaks to Jordan Kisner on the Thresholds podcast about “the reveal that changed her life...and inspired her novel.”

Evan Osnos, author of Wildland: The Making of America's Fury (FSG), discusses "collective intervention and moments of social transition" with Roxanne Coady on Just the Right Book podcast.

The original cast of the movie of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire will join the newest adaption for AMC. Tor.com has more.

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