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Awards, Book Clubs, & New Imprints

The 2022 PEN America Literary Awards winners are announced.

The 2022 Stella Prize longlist is announced. 

Reese Witherspoon picks The Club by Ellery Lloyd (Harper), for her March book club.

Sarah Jessica Parker launches a new book imprint, SJP Lit, with Zando. Parker talks with OprahDaily about her vision and “the kinds of voices she hopes to share with readers.”

AMC Networks launches AMC Networks Publishing, and will release four fan-focused, original titles. 

UK's Waterstones acquires Blackwell’s. The Guardian reports.

Reviews

USA Today reviews Never Simple: A Memoir by Liz Scheier (Henry Holt, & Co.), giving it 3 out of 4 stars: “shows a child and young adult who, while living in chaos, has a maturity and wisdom that most adults don't possess. As a result, our response is more profound awe than merely a sympathetic aww.”

The Washington Post reviews Ocean State by Stewart O’Nan (Grove): “makes a murder mystery as compelling as the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant. It’s a curious but apparently intentional achievement in a book that feels allergic to its own suspense.” And One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General by William P. Barr (Morrow): “His book is not for those prosecutors, nor is it for those eager for shocking details about Trump’s conduct behind closed doors. Barr’s book is really a defense of his tenure to fellow conservatives — and a call to dump Trump in 2024.”

LA Times reviews Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir by Kathryn Davis (Graywolf): “To read it is to move through the darkened interior of the author’s mind with your hands out, feeling for objects, listening for Beethoven’s Bagatelles, inviting haunting, all to make some sense of the invariable fact that lives are bounded but the mind is limitless.” And, I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein, (Knopf; LJ starred review): “The Harvey Fierstein glimpsed here is tantalizingly, defiantly, irreducibly complex. It's a pity Sondheim isn't around to offer the contradictory protagonist of this memoir the musical he deserves.”

NPR reviews Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead): “It is, very loosely, a fictional autobiography via reading — a form that risks triteness or cliché, but Bennett is too committed to the oddity and specificity of her again-nameless narrator's ideas to ever fall into the worn grooves of other people’s."

Briefly Noted 

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Hook, Line, and Sinker, by Tessa Bailey (Avon; LJ starred review), the buzziest book of the week. 

People shares details from Bob Odenkrik’s new memoir, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama (Random), and his reflections on seeing friend Chris Farley before his overdose.

NYT has a Q&A with Harvey Fierstein about his new memoir, I Was Better Last Night (Knopf; LJ starred review), “tracing his path from Brooklyn to Broadway.”

Destiny O. Birdsong discusses her book, Nobody's Magic (Grand Central), “AAVE in literature, Sista Soulja, and resisting tidy endings,” with ElectricLit.

Esquire talks with journalist Meghan O’Rourke, about her new book, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead), "her own experience of chronic illness, and the incipient long Covid crisis now facing the nation."

The Millions talks with Douglas Burgess about his book, When Hope and History Rhyme: Natural Law and Human Rights from Ancient Greece to Modern America (Imagine: Charlesbridge Pub.), “the connection between natural law and democracy, and being hopeful for the future.”

Parade has a Q&A with Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake (Ballantine; LJ starred review), who shares her book recommendations. 

Sarah Krasnostein discusses her new book, The Believer: Encounters with the Beginning, the End, and our Place in the Middle (Tin House), with The Rumpus.

Datebook considers the continuing appeal of Sylvia Plath, and highlights new novel The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. by Lee Kravetz (Harper), out next week. 

PBS NewsHour writes about book bans and their growing opposition.

Esquire explains the $3 million Dune Crypto NFT debacle. 

BBC writes about Philip K Dick, and “how prophetic his work has been.”

Time has 10 new books for March.

CrimeReads previews the best crime fiction coming out this month.

NYT shares new psychological thrillers.

Tor highlights new fantasy books arriving in March.

CBC lists “20 books we can't wait to read in March 2022.”

BookRiot shares 15 comics and graphic novels for Women’s History Month.

HipLatina has "11 Must-Read Books by Latinas in Honor of Women’s History Month."

ElectricLit offers a literary guide to understanding Ukraine. Plus, Jane Pek, The Verifiers (Vintage), recommends seven mysteries.

Authors On Air

The hosts of CBC’s new podcast series Let's Make a Sci-Fi, share their favorite science fiction books of all time.

Brad Meltzer, The Lightning Rod: A Zig & Nola Novel (Morrow), is on with Kelly Clarkson today. Eitan Bernath, Eitan Eats the World: New Comfort Classics to Cook Right Now (Clarkson Potter), will be on Drew Barrymore tomorrow.

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