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Big Books of the Week

Still See You Everywhere by Lisa Gardner (Grand Central) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

Happily Never After by Lynn Painter (Berkley)

A Touch of Chaos by Scarlett St. Clair (Bloom)

A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley; LJ starred review)

In Sunshine or in Shadow by Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles (Minotaur: St. Martin’s)

These books and others publishing the week of March 11, 2024, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Three LibraryReads and two Indie Next picks publish this week:

Hall of Fame titles include The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan (Ballantine) and A Grave Robbery by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley; LJ starred review)

Happily Never After by Lynn Painter (Berkley)

“Sophie Steinbeck finds out that her fiancé has cheated on her and wants to end the wedding. She hires a professional Objector, Max, whose whole purpose is to show up and yell ‘I object!’ When Sophie joins his team, they realize they are attracted to one another. What a funny, sweet, and hot rom-com! Definite stars for Sophie's elderly roommates!”—Joy K, Free Library of Philadelphia, PA

Two Indie Next picks publish this week:

Fury by Clyo Mendoza, tr. by Christina Macsweeney (Seven Stories)

“I was consumed by this novel. This book is consistently shifting and moving. It is stunning what Mendoza has achieved here. I will be haunted by these characters and story for days.”—Oscar Almonte-Espinal, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books, Philadelphia, PA

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking)

“Headshot is completely brilliant. A fierce and intimate account of eight fascinating young women with powerful, refined prose. Rita Bullwinkel puts you inside the minds of her characters while enthralling you as the story plays out.”—Shane Grebel, Watermark Books & Café, Wichita, KS

In the Media

People’s book of the week is Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman (Norton). Also getting attention are The Sky Was Falling: A Young Surgeon’s Story of Bravery, Survival, and Hope by Cornelia Griggs (Gallery) and James by Percival Everett (Doubleday; LJ starred review). A “Dark and Spooky Stories” section highlights American Spirits by Russell Banks (Knopf; LJ starred review), The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger (Park Row), and Murder Road by Simone St. James (Berkley; LJ starred review). 

There is a feature on RuPaul and his new memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings (Dey Street; LJ starred review), and a People Health feature on The Menopause Brain: New Science Empowers Women To Navigate the Pivotal Transition with Knowledge and Confidence by Lisa Mosconi (Avery). Plus, a recipe from José Andrés, Zaytinya: Delicious Mediterranean Dishes from Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon (Ecco), which publishes next week. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Until August by Gabriel García Márquez, tr. by Anne McLean (Knopf): “Until August, nimbly translated by Anne McLean, is a microscopic story, its contents hardly sufficient for it to be called a novella, much less a finished novel. Reading it may provoke unhealthy levels of frustration in those familiar with García Márquez’s most indelible creations”; Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing by Elspeth Barker (Scribner): “Never mind the people who dot this jagged landscape: Henhouse is, at its heart, a menagerie, about people’s uneasy coexistence with various species”; Victim by Andrew Boryga (Doubleday): “A thrilling work that requires a sense of openness and surrender, not only does this novel place the onus on us to decide whether Javi is a victim, a victimizer or both, it also forces us to interrogate our own complicity in the commodification of being a casualty”; The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson (Crown Currency): “And the promise of The Trading Game is, implicitly, that while speeding along on Stevenson’s nonfiction romp through London one will eventually unlock the secret of how the rich get ever-richer while sending the global economy down the drain. On this, it does not deliver”; Connemara by Nicolas Mathieu, tr. by Sam Taylor (Other Pr.): “Mathieu knows how to take us from a small-town hockey match to a corporate boardroom, but Connemara—despite Sam Taylor’s smooth translation—lacks the passion or the rigor to give the story more than a surface gloss”; The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft (Bloomsbury; LJ starred review): “The Extinction of Irena Rey is mad with plot and language and gorgeous prose, and the result is a bacchanal, really, which is the opposite of extinction. Such is the irony of art”; and How To Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev (PublicAffairs): “Pomerantsev’s indulgence of midcentury psychobabble may help explain why Delmer arrived at the methods that he did, but it doesn’t go a long way in advancing 21st-century warfare.”

Washington Post reviews James by Percival Everett (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “What’s most striking, ultimately, is the way James both honors and interrogates Huck Finn, along with the nation that reveres it”; NYT also reviews: “Motives, morals and plot are here in abundance, of course. And Everett shoots what is certain to be this book’s legion of readers straight through the heart.”

Washington Post also reviews The Variations by Patrick Langley (New York Review Books): “The novel also works because its woolier, more mystical elements are balanced by some well-imagined alternative history”; Housewife: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead by Lisa Selin Davis (Legacy Lit): “Like a supermom, Housewife tries to do too much and accomplishes less than it could.”

The Guardian reviews The Hunter by Tana French (Viking): “By the end, these characters have taken on such solidity that, long after finishing it, I often catch myself wondering how they’re doing—a testament to the author’s mastery of her craft.”

Briefly Noted

Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer  with Martin Sherwin (Vintage), wins the 2024 BIO Award.

The April Indie Next List is out, featuring #1 pick James by Percival Everett (Doubleday; LJ starred review). 

Publishing Perspectives reports on a session on European subscription business models from the London Book Fair.

CrimeReads suggests 10 new books for the week. 

Rita Moreno talks with People about her 2013 memoir Rita Moreno (Celebra).

NPR’s Goats & Soda has a Q&A with Yashica Dutt about her new book, Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India’s Caste System (Updated Edition) (Beacon).

Drew Carey recommends The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz (Amber-Allen), at People.

“William Whitworth, Revered Writer and Editor, Is Dead at 87.” NYT has an obituary.

Children’s author Petra Mathers dies at 78. NYT has an obituary. 

There’s still time to catch March Meowness month at the Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts; the library will accept cat pictures instead of fines in the month of March. People has the story. 

Authors on Air

Oppenheimer, based on American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird, won seven Oscars last night. Poor Things based on the novel by Alasdair Gray (Mariner), won five. Today’s Shelf Awareness has more on the bookish winners and nominees. Hollywood Reporter has a full list of winners.

Russell Banks’s widow and editor talk about the author’s posthumous American Spirits (Knopf; LJ starred review), with NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

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