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Awards & Book News

Shortlists for the Lukas Prizes for American nonfiction have been revealed.

Speculative-fiction writer Eugen Bacon receives an Otherwise Fellowship.

The social media readers’ platform StoryGraph, which uses AI to offer readers tracking tools and recommend their next books, has reached 3.8 million users, The Guardian reports.

Emily Bestler and Scott Glassgold launch 12:01 Books, an imprint of Atria for horror content that can work as both books and films, Publishers Weekly reports.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers | USA Today Bestselling Books

Fiction

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey; LJ starred review) records No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 7 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Paranoia by James Patterson & James O. Born (Little, Brown) grabs No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Scythe & Sparrow by Brynne Weaver (Zando: Slowburn) slashes its way to No. 6 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes (Viking: Pamela Dorman) sits at No. 7 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison (Berkley; LJ starred review) rings up No. 9 on the USA Today Bestselling Books list.

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (Knopf) achieves No. 9 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

The Medici Return by Steve Berry (Grand Central) brings in No. 12 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Nemesis by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur) hits No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Nonfiction

You Didn’t Hear This from Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip by Kelsey McKinney (Grand Central) climbs to No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious by Ross Douthat (Zondervan) gets No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing (One World; LJ starred review) reaches No. 15 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Reviews

The Guardian reviews Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (Algonquin): “Without relinquishing any tension, O’Donnell vindicates some of the reader’s fears—and, ultimately, hopes—for Ciara. In the process, she turns the idea of the domestic novel inside out, relocating it in emergency accommodation, where every tiny act that goes into keeping two children fed, clothed and convinced that it’s all a big adventure is at once more daunting and more meaningful”; Beartooth by Callan Wink (Spiegel & Grau): “There is ample whitewater, white-knuckle action, but if this were a conventional adventure story, the ratcheting of tension might have been released predictably in climactic scenes…. These thriller elements are present, and skillfully realised in the narrative, but Wink proceeds far more interestingly, developing Beartooth into an expansive and convincing novel of family relationships”; and The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler, tr. by Katy Derbyshire (Europa): “The formless nature of this book will appeal to some, while others will long for dramas that are more fully explored. What one reader experiences as quietly powerful is received by another as slightly dull. Where does the line fall between austerity and flatness? Seethaler’s novel is positioned on these perilous borders.”

LA Times reviews Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Appelbaum (Random): “The author, a deputy executive editor of The Atlantic and former history lecturer at Harvard, skillfully blends zoning history with his own reportage, digging into the history of his apartment to find some answers”; and Notes on Surviving the Fire by Christine Murphy (Knopf): “Notes follows Sarah as she attempts to investigate the death, but really, it’s a journey of grief, and the novel isn’t interested in a tidy detective narrative. It’s a far messier book than that, but largely, I believe, by design.”

NYT reviews Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement To Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart (Bloomsbury): “Given that Money, Lies, and God was mostly written before the November 2024 election, the book reads as an eerily prescient guide to the phantasmagoria of our political moment. But it’s a measure of the upheavals of the last few weeks that even the book’s author, the journalist Katherine Stewart, failed to anticipate some of the early surprises of the second Trump term.”

LitHub rounds up “5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

LitHub hosts a conversation between Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (Farrar), and Alex Zamalin, author of Counterculture: The Story of America from Bohemia to Hip-Hop (Beacon).

CrimeReads interviews Emily J. Smith, author of Nothing Serious (Morrow).

Publishers Weekly talks to Malcolm Foley, author of The Anti-Greed Gospel: Exposing Greed as the True Root of Racism (Baker).

NYT has a Q&A with Todd Almond, author of Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country and Broadway’s Rebirth (Methuen Drama: Bloomsbury).

David Levering Lewis, author of The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790–1958 (Penguin Pr.), answers NYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

The Guardian speaks with Susan Barker, author of Old Soul (Putnam).

A posthumous book by historian David McCullough is in the works; History Matters is due out from S. & S. on Sept. 16, Kirkus reports.

Kirkus recommends “20 Books You Won’t Believe Are Debuts.”

USA Today recommends “10 new books by Black authors to read this Black History Month.”

In NYT, Tia Williams, author of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (Grand Central; an LJ Best Book), selects the best second-chance romance novels.

NYT shares its readers’ favorite New York books.

CrimeReads selects “5 Small-Set Novels with Problematic Pairings” and gathers 10 new books coming out this week.

LitHub examines “the women novelists who really inspired Jane Austen.”

Publishers Weekly reports on the Theological Book Network, which ships millions of religious studies texts to scholars whose libraries can’t afford these books.

Authors on Air

The new episode of Kirkus’s Fully Booked podcast focuses on debuts, including an interview with Erin Crosby Eckstine, debut author of Junie (Ballantine).

NPR’s Morning Edition features a new print edition of the first known cookbook by a Black American woman: 1866’s A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen by Malinda Russell (Univ. of Michigan).

The NYT Book Review Podcast talks to Winnie Holzman about adapting Gregory Maguire’s Wicked for the stage.

Today, NPR’s Here & Now will interview Linda Holmes, author of Back After This (Ballantine), while Fresh Air will speak with Rich Benjamin, author of Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (Pantheon).

Shelf Awareness rounds up the schedule for this weekend’s Book TV on C-SPAN 2.

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