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Awards & Booklists

Time names the 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time. Time explains its methodology in “How We Chose the 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time.” Tana French shares why mysteries are so satisfying. Plus, project panelist Rachel Howzell Hall pens an essay: “The Rich, Underappreciated History of Mystery Writers of Color.”

The 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist is announced. The Guardian has coverage. 

LitHub announced Catharina Coenen as the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Word Without Borders shares interviews with 2023’s National Book Award–longlisted authors.

The Millions highlights “Must-Read Poetry: Fall 2024.”

Washington Post recommends the best books of the month.

Shondaland suggests the best books for October.

Reviews

NYT reviews A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove): “If the book’s fragmentary origins are conspicuous, so is the author’s prodigious gift for distilling memory, and its absence, into words that cannot be lost”; Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout (HarperVia): “The novel expends considerable effort to show that Mary’s great act of creativity, like that of Victor Frankenstein, came when she began to piece together all manner of strange and horrifying material”; and In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life by Amy Schneider (Avid Reader: S. & S.): “Trans stories are often commodified for either misery or nobility in the face of misery, but In the Form of a Question is a much fuller, livelier, more textured and sardonic picture”; and Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart (Gallery): “A ruddy blush of modesty colors Making It So, Patrick Stewart’s engaging self-portrait of life on the British stage and the starship U.S.S. Enterprise.” Washington Post also reviews: “Making It So is at its best when Stewart candidly comments on the ways fame and fortune reshaped his perspective—completing, for better or worse, a dramatic rags-to-riches story.” There is also a paired review of If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution by Vincent Bevins (PublicAffairs) and The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China by Robert D. Kaplan (Random), which both consider protest movements of the Middle East.

Washington Post reviews Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem (Ecco): “Lethem cultivates a stoic posture about criminality, the better to elude clichés about it”; A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (Mulholland): “Indeed, A Haunting on the Hill is strange and wonderful, a frightening foray into the supernatural that will inspire you to go back and reread the original”; Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler (Knopf; LJ starred review): “In Time’s Echo, Jeremy Eichler knits together the history of the Holocaust and classical music before, during and after the cataclysm”; and Lou Reed: The King of New York by Will Hermes (Farrar): “Plenty has been written about Reed, but only Hermes, to my mind, has gotten Reed’s peculiar balance, of person and poseur, exactly right.”

Briefly Noted

Minda Honey discusses her debut memoir, The Heartbreak Years (Little A), with Shondaland. Plus, Kerry Washington talks about her memoir, Thicker than Water (Little, Brown, Spark), her life, and her writing process.

Jonathan Lethem chats with ElectricLit about his new book, Brooklyn Crime Novel (Ecco).

Rick Riordan teases potential future Percy Jackson books at Entertainment Weekly. 

Khaled Hosseini reflects on the 20th anniversary of The Kite Runner, at LitHub. 

FoxNews offers author Jack Carr’s take on the “Black Hawk Down” event on October 3, 1993.

Vulture offers an excerpt from Lou Reed: The King of New York by Will Hermes (Farrar). 

LitHub shares 27 new books for the week. 

CrimeReads checks into the best hotels and bars in espionage fiction.

BookRiot rounds up the best books from July to September 2023.

YA author and performer Echo Brown dies at 39. NYT has an obituary. 

Syrian author, poet, and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa dies at the age of 59. The Guardian has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker chat with NPR’s Morning Edition about the classic film and new book, Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! (St. Martin’s).

Jordan Peele talks about editing the new book, Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (Random), with NPR’s Morning Edition. 

Mahogany Browne offers her “Brief But Spectacular take” on poetry as ritual at PBS Canvas.

Netflix’s Leave the World Behind, based on the novel by Rumaan Alam, gets a trailer. People has coverage. 

Geri Halliwell-Horner, Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen (Philomel), visits The Tonight Show.

Anderson Cooper, Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, written with Katherine Howe (Harper), will visit with Stephen Colbert tomorrow.

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