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Big Books of the Week

The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam) leads holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin (Dutton)

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Pr.)

Everyone Is Watching by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row)

What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan (Morrow)

These books and others publishing the week of March 25, 2024, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

Six LibraryReads and four Indie Next picks publish this week:

Hall of Fame picks include The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam) and The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; LJ starred review)

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random)

“A truly original, beautiful, and poignant sports book. A fascinating blend of creative writing and poetry, this is a book grounded in basketball. This is also a book that ultimately is not about basketball, instead looking at the people and places that make us—‘joys and pains, misses and baskets, role models and fallen heroes’—through an intimate look into the Cleveland neighborhoods Abdurraqib (and LeBron James) grew up in.”—Jessica Trotter, LibraryReads Board

It is also an Indie Next pick:

“Using basketball as a vehicle for reflection of East Columbus history and personal memoir, There’s Always This Year is a triumph of contemplative, emotionally-rich writing that will have you wiping tears and on the edge of your seat.”—Gary Lovely, Prologue Bookshop, Columbus, OH

Everyone Is Watching by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row)

“Five people are brought together to be game show contestants with a prize of $10 million. They are to live in tense isolation as the show is broadcast to the world and secrets begin to be revealed amongst them. The show won't end until their secrets are all uncovered. This is a delicious book to be devoured in one binge reading session.”—Beth Emmerling, Pratt Free Library, MD

The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn (Kensington)

“Four lives collide: two sisters whose mother deserted them 10 years ago to run off with a con man, a podcaster working on the case, and a journalist with a mission. The mystery—where did their mom Charlotte go and how could she have stayed away so long?—meshes neatly with the group's emotional and clashing goals as they follow Charlotte's trail across the country. This beautifully written novel is a thoughtful look at the many faces of love.”—Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, NY

How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin (Dutton)

“It's 1965, and Frances is at a country fair with her friends when she ducks into a fortune teller's tent and is given a fortune that predicts her murder. She then becomes obsessed with figuring out who will murder her. Many years later, when she sends for her great-niece, she starts a race against time for her murder to be solved. This novel is original, witty, and a real page-turner.”—Linda Quinn, LibraryReads Ambassador

Three additional Indie Next picks publish this week:

Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura (Celadon)

“With fantastic prose and a compelling story and protagonist, Like Happiness grabbed my attention from page one and never let go. I cannot wait to follow Ursula Villarreal-Moura’s career; I know I will eagerly read anything she writes!”—Christine Bollow, Loyalty Bookstores, Washington, DC

The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang (Mira: Harlequin)

“The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a hard novel to sum up, but let me try: an erotic love story, three eras, loyalty, betrayal, intrigue, mythology. The story is gloriously addictive and will keep you turning page after page!”—Kathy Baum, Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO

Worry by Alexandra Tanner (Scribner)

“Insidious millennial malaise and the exhaustion of performative activism are contrasted through the story of two sisters who overstay their welcome in one another’s orbit. The dialogue will split you, gut you, and stitch you back up again.”—Kyle Rea, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY

Reviews

NYT  reviews All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld (Metropolitan): “The costive and the envious might wonder if she’s spreading herself too thin, but Rothfeld’s rigor and eloquence suggest that in her case, as the title of one essay has it, ‘More Is More’”; Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution by Amin Ghaziani (Princeton Univ.; LJ starred review): “Identity, for better or for worse, is sacred, and of the utmost importance to Ghaziani. Much like the club nights he covers, Long Live Queer Nightlife makes it abundantly clear whom it’s for”; God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible by Candida Moss (Little, Brown): “Direct evidence for how such workers shaped the Gospel and its reception is accordingly scanty, so Moss’s account is necessarily, and admittedly, speculative. But she grounds her imaginative interpretations in close reading of secular and religious texts and the appalling facts of ancient slavery in general”; Worry by Alexandra Tanner (Scribner): “Some stories give you the unvarnished truth, some the varnished one. Worry is generous and wise enough to give both”; and Rabbit Heart: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Story by Kristine S. Ervin (Counterpoint): “Rabbit Heart is a powerful treatise on love and loss, on mothers and daughters, but it is also a warning to all of us who consume true crime.”

Washington Post reviews The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Pr.): “Haidt builds on his previous work and beefs it up, arguing that young people today—specifically those belonging to Gen Z—are damaged products of a massive shift in the culture of childhood”; All the World Beside by Garrard Conley (Riverhead): “Conley joins a cadre of literary writers—Daniel Mason and Lauren Groff among them—who look backward to make sense of present-day conflicts. All the World Beside suggests that our Puritan legacy still molds us, as marriage equality remains fragile and authoritarian forces rattle their sabers”; and The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic by Daniel de Visé (Atlantic Monthly): “The story here isn’t just about a film, a friendship and a comedy generation. It’s about a man who became a commodity until it killed him. But that’s another book.” Plus, there is a paired review of two books about witches: Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson (Scribner) and The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice by Alex Hortis (Pegasus).

Briefly Noted

Svetlana Sterlin wins the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award. Books + Publishing has details. 

At NYT, James McBride reflects on the commercial success of his latest prize-winning novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Riverhead; LJ starred review).

The Atlantic explains the appeal of The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Penguin Pr.), and the “Books Briefing” considers “Reading as a Sensory Experience.”

Vogue talks with Christina Cooke about homegoing in the new novel, Broughtupsy (Catapult).

Margaret Atwood explains the enduring appeal of Stephen King’s Carrie at 50, for NYT.

People talks with Roger Lewis about his new book, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (Mobius).

NYT has an interview with Judith Butler, author of Who’s Afraid of Gender? (Farrar).

CrimeReads suggests 10 new books for the week. 

Babar heir and author Laurent de Brunhoff dies at the age of 98. Time has an obituary. PBS Canvas has more on his life and legacy.  NYT and The Guardian also have coverage.

Authors on Air

Percival Everett talks with CBS Sunday Morning about his new book, James (Doubleday; LJ starred review).

Fareed Zakaria discusses his new book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present (Norton), with CBS Sunday Morning.

Also on CBS Sunday Morning, Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about her forthcoming memoir, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, due out on April 16 from S. & S.

Georgia Hunter talks with People from the set of Hulu’s We Were the Lucky Ones, which is based on her novel. 

FoxNews highlights several favorite Roald Dahl film adaptations.

Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, author of Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism (S. & S.), will appear on CBS Mornings and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Melanie Brown, Brutally Honest (Quadrille), visits The View.

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