Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Awards & Buzzy Book News

The 43rd Los Angeles Times Books Prizes finalists are announced. Notable nominees include Rachel Howzell Hall, James Hannaham, George Saunders, and more. Javior Zamora will be awarded with the Christopher Isherwood Prize of Autobiographical Prose for Solito (Hogarth). Winners will be announced during a ceremony on April 21, the night before the Los Angeles Festival of Books takes place.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction longlist is announced.

The Jan Grigson Trust Award shortlist is announced.

As part of Black History Month, Literacy Partners will feature famous authors reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Lit Hub has more. Morrison will also be celebrated “in new exhibit at Princeton University” according to USA Today. Plus, an examination of “what happens to our culture when books are banned.”

The Writers Guild of America will start contract negotiations on March 20 ahead of a possible strike, as reported by Variety.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Sellers

Fiction

The Last Orphan by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur) starts at No. 14 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best-Sellers list.

Nonfiction

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Penguin Pr.) rises to No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Sellers list.

The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg (Penguin Pr.) debuts at No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Sellers list.

Walk the Blue Line by James Patterson, written with Matt Eversmann and Chris Mooney (Little, Brown), strolls to No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Sellers list.

Reviews

NYT reviews An Autobiography of Skin, by Lakiesha Carr (Pantheon): “An admission of the fact that, for all the changes that have occurred in our society over the past 100 years, many Black people, both men and women, are still processing the trauma and violence caused by their body’s simultaneous hypervisibility and erasure. This truth becomes a potent aspect not just of the subjective experience of Carr’s characters, but of the reality they inhabit, whether it is acknowledged or not.” 

The Washington Post reviews The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History by Joel Warner (Crown): “Equal parts biography, history and true crime. It tracks not just the story of the novel and its notorious writer but the role it played in a massive French Ponzi scheme”; The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane (Farrar): “McFarlane interlards accounts of the search and snapshots of lives with a selection of other writings—stories, dreams, confessions, prayers, testimonies—all of which add diverse tones and hues to the proceedings”; We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight over Israel by Eric Alterman (Basic): “The latest example of a more skeptical reexamination of the complex relationship between Jews in the diaspora and their spiritual homeland. The work punctures the notion that American support of Israel was simply picking the good guys over the bad guys”; and Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age by Reid Mitenbuler (Mariner): “We see everything passing at high speed, but I kept wanting more stocktaking and introspection, both from Freuchen himself and from Mitenbuler.”

Locus Magazine reviews Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (Tor.com; LJ starred review): “A helluva a story that hits dozens of literary high points. Powerful, emotional, stylish and smart, Polk proves themself yet again to be a talent not to be ignored.” 

The Millions reviews Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius, by Nick Hornby (Riverhead): “Dickens and Prince remind us that perfectionism isn’t an absolute requirement of creative genius—or of creativity in general. Hornby presents both artists as restless and relentless creators, object lessons in the kind of creative life that focuses on invention over perfection.”

Book Marks reveals “5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide (Avid Reader; LJ starred review), answers NYT’s “By the Book” survey.

The Washington Post considers the impact of Nora Ephron’s 1983 book Heartburn (Vintage) on its 40th-anniversary reissue.

The Atlantic revisits Ron DeSantis’s 2011 book, Dreams from Our Founding Fathers. 

A new Marvel comic, Ultimate Invasion, by Jonathan Hickman and Bryan Hitch, is in the works. Entertainment Weekly has the exclusive.

Tor.com shares an excerpt from A Day of Fallen Night, by Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury: Macmillan).

Actor Jeremy Strong, of Succession fame, makes book recommendations in an interview with GQ. 

CrimeReads has a list of books from female writers featuring female psychopaths.

The Guardian shares books with the “top 10 cads in fiction.”

Tor.com lists “Five of the Coolest (and Occasionally Terrifying) SFF Jobs” and “10 Classic Tales for Fans of Swashbuckling and Historical Intrigue.”

Authors on Air

The Keen On podcast features several author interviews: Nick Tabor, discussing the subject of his new book, Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (St. Martin’s); Kelly Weill, author of Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything (Algonquin), talking about “anti-science fundamentalists;” Malcolm Harris on “the larger than life characters of Silicon Valley” as expressed in his book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Little, Brown); and Thomas Halliday of Otherlands: Journeys in Earth’s Extinct Ecosystems (Random; LJ starred review) on “paleobiology, croquet, and the inevitable end of our species.”

Angie Cruz, How Not To Drown in a Glass of Water (Flatiron), chats about “finding the fun in writing again” on the Thresholds podcast.

Sportswriters and author Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd explore the subject of their new book, Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback (Dutton), in an interview with the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast.

James B. Stewart discusses “family drama and boardroom backstabbing” from his book Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy, written with Rachel Abrams (Penguin Pr.), on Just the Right Book podcast.

Delia Cai, Central Places (Ballantine), expounds upon “the gift that immigrant parents give their children” with Brad Listi of the Otherppl podcast.

Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You (Viking; LJ starred review), expounds on “slowing down to build momentum” in a conversation about her craft on the Otherppl podcast. Also, Makkai talks to The Maris Review podcast about “exploring the gray areas” in her work. 

Author Michael Schulman talks to Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air about “bias, blind spots and backstage battles in the Academy” as detailed in his book, Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears (HarperCollins; LJ starred review).

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.