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Awards News

AudioFile’s September 2021 Earphones Award Winners are announced.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers | USA Today Best-Selling Books

Fiction

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (Minotaur: St. Martin’s; LJ starred review) debuts at No. 1 on both the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper: HarperCollins) hums at No. 4 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 11 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger (Atria; LJ starred review) lights up No. 5 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list and No. 6 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Bombshell by Sarah MacLean (Avon; LJ starred review) lands at No. 13 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list.

Nonfiction

Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan (PublicAffairs) wins No. 3 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Dopamine Nation: Finding a Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke (Dutton: Penguin) opens at No. 6 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer by Christopher Clarey (Twelve: Hachette) scores No. 8 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

Audio

The NYT Audio Fiction top bestseller for September is Billy Summers by Stephen King, read by Paul Sparks (S. & S. Audio). The No. 1 Audio Nonfiction for September is Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey, read by the author (Random House Audio).

Reviews

NYT reviews Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (Farrar; LJ starred review): “Impassioned, intellectual 20-somethings discussing their vexed feelings for one another is a road made mostly of potholes. Rooney avoids almost all of them. The fact that her characters speak and feel the way they do while rarely making the reader feel embarrassed for them is an achievement. It’s an uncomfortable line to toe, but Rooney succeeds by standing so close to it.”

Book Marks has "5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week."

Briefly Noted

Helen Hoang, author of The Heart Principle (Berkley), speaks to Oprah Daily about “battling severe caregiver burnout while writing about love.” Jo Lloyd has a conversation with The Rumpus about her debut book Something Wonderful (Tin House: W. W. Norton) and “her approach to research, how writing can unsettle the status quo, and the transformative potential of desire.” Maggie Nelson, On Freedom (Graywolf: Macmillan), discusses her new essay collection, attempting to re-define the word "freedom."

NYT profiles Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You (Farrar; LJ starred review), and speaks with her about the pitfalls of fame. Sandra Cisneros chats about reading "about women waging battle" in the paper's By the Book feature. The Inside the Best-Seller List features The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper: HarperCollins) and Dopamine Nation: Finding a Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke (Dutton: Penguin).

BookPage includes a behind the book for The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat by Matt Siegel (Ecco; LJ starred review) with a list if the “top 12 weirdest moments in food history.” Also, pieces on How to Kill Your Best Friend by Lexie Elliott (Berkley) with “four gripping thrillers set in gorgeous locations” and Malefactor by Robert Repino (Soho Press) on the “survival of the fittest.” Lastly, there is coverage of The Gold in These Hills by Joanne Bischof (Thomas Nelson: HarperCollins) and Under the Bayou Moon by Valerie Fraser Luesse (Revell; LJ starred review) that “offer a bounty of hope, love and redemption.”

NYT has news about Salman Rushdie publishing via Substack.

Publishers Weekly shares an excerpt of Discipline by Dash Shaw (New York Review Comics).

Michael Dirda offers an appreciation for Stanley J. Weyman’s A Gentleman of France, first published in 1893, for The Washington Post. 

Lila Nordstrom recommends “books to inspire activism and advocacy,” starting with The Beltway Bible: A Totally Serious A-Z Guide to Our No-Good, Corrupt, Incompetent, Terrible, Depressing, and Sometimes Hilarious Government by Eliot Nelson (St. Martin’s) for Lit Hub.

Lit Hub provides “Ten campus novels as op-eds about the dangers of wokeness.”

BookMarks shares “Seven SFF Books for a Speculative September.”

Tor.com has “7 Speculative Stories About Stories.”

LitHub’s Astrology Book Club gives “What to Read This Month, Based on Your Sign.” 

NYT has "5 Design Books That Are Easy on the Eyes."

Entertainment Weekly lists “15 must-read September books.”

LibraryReads has the “top ten books published this month that library staff across the country love” for September 2021.

Authors on Air

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Savage Tongues (Mariner Books), speaks with Brad Listi on Otherppl podcast about “the ambiguous and unfolding process of healing.”

Lauren Sandler discusses her book This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home (Random House: Penguin) and “setting up ground rules with her book subjects” on the Thresholds podcast.

The Girls on the Bus television adaptation of an essay from Amy Chozick’s Chasing Hillary (HarperCollins) originally purchased by Netflix moves to The CW. The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive. 

D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover will be adapted by Netflix. Glamour has more.

Cecily Strong, This Will All Be Over Soon (S. & S.), will make a guest appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Friday.

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