Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.

Awards 

Queen of None by Natania Barron (Vernacular) is the 2021 Wellman Award Winner. Locus has details.

Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame announces it 2021 inductees, including Kevin J. Anderson, W. Michael Gear, Sandra Dallas, and more.

The 2020 Aurealis Awards are announced. 

Reviews

USA Today reviews The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix (Berkley; LJ starred review), giving it 3 out of 4 stars: “While itself a wickedly entertaining page-turner that indulges readers’ appetites for slashers, Final Girl also smartly psychoanalyzes it.” Also, China Room by Sunjeev Sahota (Viking), giving it 3.5 our of 4 stars: “In Mehar, Sahota has powerfully imagined a life under extreme constraint.”

The NYT reviews Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff (Henry Holt and Co.): “Wolff raises a more fundamental and frightening possibility: that the lesson of Trump is that in a democratic society, a malign and dangerous “crazy person,” especially one with a deep instinctive understanding of public opinion and the media, can become genuinely popular.” Also, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb (Algonquin): “Despite his repugnant subject, Jobb’s excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read.” The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean (Little, Brown; LJ starred review): “If you can forgive Kean’s overly broad organizing principle (and hey, books don’t sell themselves), you’ll find a series of gripping stories about evil scientific deeds, corrupt rivalries and skulduggery — with real skulls.” Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith (Liveright: Norton; LJ starred review): “Zenith, an American resident of Lisbon, brought to the task a depth of scholarship gained through more than 30 years of publishing, translating and promoting his subject’s work; Pessoa, who had few intimates in life, is lucky to have found this posthumous friend.”  Embassy Wife by Katie Crouch (Farrar): “Mark has secrets, as do most of the unworthy, incompetent husbands and cavalierly racist women who populate Embassy Wife, Katie Crouch’s sharply observed satire of the white-savior complex and the poisonous legacy of colonialism.”  A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (Little, Brown & Company): “the shape of the novel distorts and expands, until what started as an acerbic millennial sex comedy grows the gnashing mandibles of supernatural horror with a spiritual self-help twist.” To Walk Alone in the Crowd by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Farrar): “Muñoz Molina’s narrator seems content to catalog, as if writing things down is enough to make them interesting.” Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang (Melville House): "Through the narrator’s futile quest to catalog beasts, Yan captures the fluidness of city life, the way urban space defies definition even for people hellbent on making sense of it.”  The paper also has four short reviews of “Fiction Based on Real People and Places.” 

The Washington Post reviews Rachel to the Rescue by Elinor Lipman (Mariner: Houghton Harcourt): “Some aspects of the book are pretty lame, most having to do with writer Kirby Champion, who is just too much of a goofball, but this probably won’t wreck the book for you if indeed you are ready for it.”

Briefly Noted

Vulture talks with Katie Kitamura about her novel Intimacies (Riverhead), using the first person, and how her narrators deconstruct their experiences.

Entertainment Weekly interviews Marie Benedict about her forthcoming novel, Her Hidden Genius (Sourcebooks Landmark), which shines a light on the woman who discovered the double helix of DNA.The novel will publish in January 2022.

AARP has a Q&A with Michael Pollan, This Is Your Mind on Plants (Penguin Pr.; LJ starred review).

ElectricLit talks with Pik-Shuen Fung about her debut, Ghost Forest (One World; LJ starred review), and “living between countries, and her writing process.”

Shondaland speaks with Elizabeth Greenwood about her new book, Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex, and Marriage in America’s Prisons (Gallery), which makes “eye-opening revelations about romance and the U.S. prison system.”

The July GalleyChat spreadsheet is posted at Earlyword. 

BookRiot shares “The Best Books of 2021 (So Far).”

Parade has page turning books for July.

The Seattle Times recommends crime fiction for the month.

The Washington Post goes “Beyond Dune”, suggesting sci-fi/fantasy books about ecology and climate change.

The NYT’s New & Noteworthy section suggests new offbeat sports titles of interest.

ElectricLit offers “7 Books About the Search for Intimacy."

Laura Scott, Dogged by Death (Crooked Lane), recommends cozies featuring crime-fighting pets at CrimeReads.

“Athan Theoharis, historian who exposed FBI misconduct, dies at 84.”The Washington Post has an obituary.

Authors on Air

NPR’s Fresh Air interviews Tahmima Anam about her satirical novel The Startup Wife (Scribner).

Paula Hawkins's new audiobook, A Slow Fire Burning (Riverhead), will be narrated by Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike. Entertainment Weekly has a sneak preview. 

"Obamas Readying Film and TV Event ‘Blackout’ for Netflix." The Hollywood Reporter has details.

Ben H. Winters’s The Last Policeman is getting a TV adaptation. Tordotcom has more details.

C. Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead; LJ starred review) is being adapted for TV, according to Variety.

The graphic novel Chariot by Bryan Hill, Illustrated by Priscilla Petraites (Artists, Writers & Artisans) will be adapted by Warner Bros. and directed by Joseph Kosinski. Deadline has the scoop.

"Jupiter’s Legacy Creator Mark Millar Teams With Netflix For In-House Graphic Novel," reports Deadline.

Want to get the latest book news delivered to your inbox each day? Sign up for our daily Book Pulse newsletter.