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Big Books of the Week

The 18th Abduction by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown: Hachette) leads holds this week.

Other tiles in demand include:

The View from Alameda Island by Robyn Carr (MIRA: Harper; LJ starred review)

Spy School British Invasion by Stuart Gibbs (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

The Mueller Report: The Final Report of the Special Counsel into Donald Trump, Russia, and Collusion by Robert S. Mueller, Special Counsel's Office U.S. Department of Justice (Skyhorse).

Murder on Trinity Place by Victoria Thompson (Berkley: Penguin)

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Two LibraryReads picks hit shelves this week:

The Invited by Jennifer McMahon (Doubleday)

“Nate and Helen leave their teaching jobs to build their dream home in rural Vermont. Helen begins seeing ghosts, and Nate becomes obsessed with a white doe. An unputdownable thriller about a house with a tragic past. Perfect for fans of Erin Kelly and Attica Locke.”— Terri Smith, Cornelia Library, Mt. Airy, GA

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding (Crooked Lane Books)

“A creepy, beautifully written story about a new mother of twin boys who claims to have seen a strange creature who wants to steal her babies. Doctors and the police are dismissive. Then the unthinkable happens. For fans of modern myths, psychological suspense, and Fiona Barton.” — Amy Verkruissen, Calcasieu Parish Public Library, Lake Charles, LA

One Indie Next selection publishes this week:

Cape May by Chip Cheek (Celadon Books: Macmillan)

“This book is extraordinary. In a small, empty beachside town after the season ends, a couple on their ill-planned honeymoon, slowly awakening to all the ways they can disappoint each other, stumble across a Gatsby-ish household of worldly beautiful people who embrace them wholeheartedly. The days pass in a glorious gin-soaked daze; erotic tension charges every encounter. Chip writes like James Salter, with a sense of humor and a fuller appreciation and understanding of female desire. Moving, so gorgeous, and absolutely brilliant.”— Mary Cotton, Newtonville Books, Newton Centre, MA

These books and others publishing the week of April 29, 2019, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

In the Media

Entertainment Weekly opens its books section with Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese: Random House), giving it a B. The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer (Knopf) gets an A-. Helen Hoang gets a quick interview and is called a "Writer to Watch." Her sophmore novel, The Bride Test (Berkley: Penguin; LJ starred review) test gets a B+. Molly Ringwald gets a featured page with Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald (Scribner: S. & S.).  Avengers: Endgame makes Entertainment Weekly’s "Must List." So does The Guest Book by Sarah Blake (Flatiron: Macmillan). Most of the issue is devoted to summer movies. Book-based choices include The Sun is Also A Star, Aladdin, A Dog's Journey, Dark Phoenix, Shaft, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Dora And The Lost City of Gold, Where's You Go, Bernadette, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Kitchen, The Informer, and Official Secrets. In additional movie and TV coverage, EW gives Avengers: Endgame a B+ review, features Ask Dr. Ruth, spotlights Laura Carmichael of The Spanish Princess, catches up with Lucifer, and goes deep with Catch-22. The New & Notable books are here.

People's "Book of the Week" is Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard (Algonquin: Workman). In "Best New Books" are The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth (St. Martin's: Macmillan) and Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales by Oliver Sacks (Knopf). In "New in Nonfiction" are Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting by Anna Quindlen (Random House), Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America's Dad by Nicole Weisensee Egan (Seal Press: Hachette), and Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas by Dustin Lance Black (Knopf). People puts Special, The Son, and The White Crow on its "Picks List." Dr. Ruth gets a feature and two stars of Avengers: Endgame share their friendship.

Reviews

NPR reviews Fumbled by Alexa Martin (Berkley: Penguin): "Blending an emotional journey with an intoxicating romance, Alexa Martin's Fumbled — the second novel in her Playbook series — scores touchdown after touchdown in a sports romance set against a backfield of tropes (and only a few clichés)." Also, Inspection by Josh Malerman (Del Rey: Random House): "The conceit behind Inspection is a big one, an original one. Malerman has a lot of big ideas and a lot of original ideas, and if Inspection isn't as electrifying as Bird Box or surprising as Unbury Carol, I'm pretty sure his next one, or the one after that, will be superb." American Gods Volume 2: My Ainsel by Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell, Scott Hampton (Dark Horse Books: Random House): "the world Hampton draws is truly the world of Gaiman's novel: One where the air is choked by modernity, where mystery and wonder almost fade away in a miasma of progress. This series doesn't feel beautiful or even particularly satisfying, but it does feel necessary, inevitable — real." Any Other Place: Stories by Michael Croley (Blair): "It's a beautiful collection and a remarkable debut effort from an author with a rare and compassionate understanding of the human condition."

The Washington Post reviews Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben (Henry Holt: Macmillan): "a direct, attention-grabbing sprint through what we’ve done to the planet and ourselves, why we haven’t stopped it and what we can do about it." Also, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great by Ben Shapiro (Broadside Books: Harper): "His message, which is a reductive gloss of intellectual history synthesized for easy digestion, seems primarily aimed at equipping his readers to lecture their friends and talk over their teachers." Tyrannical Minds: Psychological Profiling, Narcissism, and Dictatorship by Dean A. Haycock (Pegasus: W.W. Norton): "timely, ambitious." The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet by Jeff Kosseff (Cornell): "the book’s value goes beyond timing. The author’s background as a journalist and his current roles as a professor and a lawyer enable him to produce an engaging narrative that explains the law clearly and compels us to think about speech in the modern age and who is responsible when it is harmful." K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner (Doubleday: Random House; LJ starred review): "this volume will appeal more to hardcore fans than to casual readers, but for us baseball believers, there are plenty of nourishing nuggets here, starting with the essential nature of the pitching profession." Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America by Weijian Shan (Wiley): "a beautifully written story charting his naive embrace of Maoist politics, his inevitable disaffection with Maoist ideology, the subsequent desperation with which he pursued any avenue out China to the United States."

Awards

The James Beard Awards were announced over the weekend. Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, Evolutions by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, David Kaplan (Ten Speed: Random House) won Book of the Year. Jessica B. Harris was inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame. Other big winners include Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cooking for Big Nights, Weeknights, and Every Day by Alexander Smalls, JJ Johnson, Veronica Chambers (Flatiron: Macmillan), SUQAR: Desserts & Sweets from the Modern Middle East by Greg Malouf, Lucy Malouf, Alan Benson (Hardie Grant: Chronicle), and Milk Street: Tuesday Nights: More than 200 Simple Weeknight Suppers that Deliver Bold Flavor, Fast by Christopher Kimball (Little, Brown: Hachette). Here is the full list of nominees.

The Triangle Awards were also granted. Drapetomania: or, the narrative of Cyrus Tyler and Abednego Tyler, lovers by John R Gordon (Team Angelica Publishing) and The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara (Ecco: Harper: LJ starred review) tops the list of winners.

Briefly Noted

USA Today picks its books for the week.

Vulture looks at the "Notable New Releases Over the Next Two Weeks," including books.

Town and Country selects the "Best Books to Read in 2019 (so far)." So does Elle.

LJ posts November Prepub Alert titles.

The NYT collects audiobooks about "female empowerment."

Time excerpts Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself by Jill Biden (Flatiron Books: Macmillan) as well as How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results by Esther Wojcicki (HMH).

Shondaland features Tayari Jones.

The NYT interviews Trevor Noah.

Entertainment Weekly talks with Amy Tam.

Vanity Fair features Sally Rooney.

The Guardian interviews Bernardine Evaristo (book selection here).

LitHub interviews Leila Slimani, Adèle (Penguin).

Time interviews Ma Jian, China Dream (Counterpoint).

Vulture highlights Ruin and Redemption in Architecture by Dan Barasch, Dylan Thuras (Phaldon).

Audible is adapting William Gibson's Alien script. It will come out in May as Alien III. The Verge has details.

The LA Times features Michele Filgate, What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (S. & S.; LJ starred review) and and No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder (Bloomsbury: Macmillan).

Mats Malm, a professor of literary theory at the University of Gothenburg, has been appointed as the new permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy (which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature). France24 has the news.

The NYT spotlights several literary stories, including a feature on Chop Suey Books in Richmond, VA, a report on LC's rare Children's books offerings, available online, a bible, stolen from a Pittsburg library, which has been found in the Netherlands, and an essay on "Why Are There So Many Books About Dogs? "

Poet Les Murray has died. The Guardian has an obituary.

Authors on Air

PBS NewsHour considers the "modern relevance" of Les Miserables.

The NYT reports on the record sales of Avengers: Endgame, and the role of movie theaters. Deadline Hollywood has a list of the records the film has broken.

Meanwhile, To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway is also smashing records. Deadline Hollywood reports.

NPR interviews Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World (Flatiron Books: Macmillan). Also, Dustin Lance Black, Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas (Knopf).

NPR showcases poetry.

Author Ron Chernow was the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Pete Buttigieg, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future (Liveright: W.W. Norton), will be on The Daily Show. Newt Gingrich, Collusion (Broadside: Harper), will be on The View. Jessica Yellin, Savage News (MIRA: Harper), will be on The Late Show.

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