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News & Buzzy Books

Virginia judge rejects lawsuit against Barnes & Noble in book-banning attempt case. Publishing Perspectives has the story. Slate has coverage, as does The Washington Post.  Infodocket also covers .

Rachel DeLoache Williams, My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress (Gallery), sues Netflix for defamation in Inventing Anna. T&C has the story. Vanity Fair also has coverage. 

The Agatha Christie Estate threatens legal action against Val McDermid's publisher for touting her the "queen of crime". BBC reports.

The Washington Post has “10 noteworthy books for September.”

LA Times shares “30 books we can't wait for this fall.”

PopSugar suggests “250+ New Books of 2022.”

Vanity Fair has "7 Books We Can’t Stop Talking About This Month."

Reviews

USA Today reviews Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine; LJ starred review), giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars: “following the mental trajectory of a certified champion like Soto is endlessly fascinating and makes the book impossible to put down.”

NPR reviews I'm Not Broken: A Memoir by Jesse Leon (Vintage): “Leon's memoir is a powerful, raw chronicle of survival that morphs into a moving story about mentorship, strength, familial love, self-transformation, the power of education, and the importance of self-acceptance.” And, Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery by Casey Parks (Knopf): “Not knowing — not being able to understand or access the full extent of something like Roy's story, her mother's drug use, the truth of her grandmother's stories — can be maddening. But the beauty of Diary of a Misfit is that it sits in that space, allowing Parks to unfold her family's history, her understanding of herself, and her obsession with Roy slowly and methodically.”

NYT reviews A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955 by Ronald H. Spector (Norton): “Spector’s gripping book reveals the underlying motivations of these civil wars. In doing so, he helps us to understand why the legacy of these conflicts is still with us today.” And, The Unfolding by A.M. Homes (Viking): “Homes is a gifted satirist, a keen observer of bourgeois manners and mores. Here, she nails the psychic particularities of the politically conservative American male: the glorification of American military conquests, the quasi-religious reverence for the Founding Fathers.” Also, Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Nicole Hemmer (Basic Books): “Partisans is less a prehistory of the Trump presidency than an autopsy of the short-lived Reagan era.” And, Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin (Norton): “Faloyin plunges into the material that intrigues him most: how the rest of the world persists in portraying Africa as a single country where elephants jostle up against warlords, bereft of such modern banalities as urban centers, accountants or schoolchildren.”

The Washington Post reviews The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (Knopf): “You may know the history, and you may think you know what’s coming, but don’t be so sure. O’Farrell and Lucrezia, with her “crystalline, righteous anger,” will always be one step ahead of you.”

Slate reviews Fairy Tale by Stephen King (Scribner): “You’ll inhale Fairy Tale in big 100-page swathes without the slightest effort or strain, and you’ll be grateful that there are 600-plus pages of it to remind you several times over how much fun that kind of reading experience is.”

LA Times reviews California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--and What It Means for America's Power Grid by Katherine Blunt (Portfolio): “Blunt’s book is not a technical tome but a drama, a human tragedy, loaded with fascinating characters and tales of death and destruction, incompetence and chicanery, malfeasance and greed.”

Briefly Noted

LJ’s Barbara Hoffert has new Prepub Alerts for Short Stories, Literary Debuts, and Literary Fiction. 

USA Today highlights Jenifer Lewis's new memoir, Walking in My Joy: In These Streets (Amistad).

Entertainment Weekly has a Q&A with by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto Is Back (Ballantine; LJ starred review).

Bustle talks with Jamie Fiore Higgins about her new memoir, Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs (S. & S.), and how her Wall Street job changed her.

LA Times has an interview with Laura Warrell about her forthcoming novel, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon), due out September 27. 

The Millions chats with Courtney Denelle about her book, It's Not Nothing (Santa Fe Writer's Project), "writing women’s pain, and misogyny in the field of mental health."

Juan Villoro leads a literary tour through Mexico City for NYT.

Salon writes about the “queer horror” of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Vulture recommends 23 books under 200 pages.

Entertainment Weekly recommends 8 romance books.

BookRiot recommends 10 romance books for former President Barack Obama. 

Authors On Air

NPR’s All Things Considered talks with Mia Mercado, She’s Nice Though: Essays on Being Bad at Being Good (HarperOne), about when nice is too nice.

Lee Sansum, Protecting Diana: A Bodyguard’s Story written with Howard Linskey (Diversion), discusses his new book with FoxNews.

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