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Awards & News

Del Rey announced it will no longer publish Cait Corrain’s debut, Crown of Starlight, as the author admits to “review-bombing” other 2024 debut authors on Goodreads. Corrain issued an apology. Washington Post, NYT, USA Today, Publishers Lunch, and LA Times all have coverage. Salon also explains the scandal.

Meanwhile, Amazon has launched the “Your Books” feature, a new organizational and personalized book discovery service. TechCrunch explores how this service may compete with Goodreads, which Amazon owns.

The Canada Reads 2024 longlist is announced. 

The UK’s Nero Book Awards shortlists are announced. Publishing Perspectives has details. 

Author Lauren Groff is opening a new book store in Gainesville, FL, in 2024. Shelf Awareness has the story.

Penguin Random House acquires Hay House, Publishers Weekly reports. 

September’s AAP Stat Shot report shows “US Book Market Up 0.8 Percent YTD.” Publishing Perspectives has details.

Reviews

NPR reviews Erasure by Percival Everett (Graywolf): “Erasure is bold, experimental, rude and transgressive. At times discursive. American Fiction is excellent but necessarily streamlined, more narrow and comparatively tame. Filmgoers introduced to Everett through the film might wonder what the fuss is about. In this case, the expected advice is well earned: Read the book.”

NYT reviews Things That Go Bump in the Universe: How Astronomers Decode Cosmic Chaos by C. Renée James (Johns Hopkins Univ.): “Like a pulsar, the book is at times dense, but it also dazzles. It recasts modern astronomy as the search for transient, explosive events, and the messages they contain if only we can decode them.”

Star Tribune reviews Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (S. & S.) as a read-alike for Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry: “After a gentle start, this book goes gangbusters, then has a completely unexpected and ingenious ending. It’s almost as if Blakley-Cartwright invites us to participate in a thought experiment—how the hell is this going to turn out? She gets the prize for the winning solution.”

The Guardian reviews Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend (Scribner; LJ starred review): “If Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones—which is the most moving and best achieved of all her novels—were chamber pieces, full of delicate interlocking voices and emotional eddies, this is Wagnerian opera, a soaring howl of pain and grief that aims to balance intimacy with mythic scale.”

BookMarks recounts “The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2023.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver (Zando), the top holds title of the week.

LJ has new prepub alerts.

Athena Dixon discusses her new book, The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays (Tin House; LJ starred review), with Shondaland.

The Rumpus has a conversation with poet Leslie Sainz about her debut collection, Have You Been Long Enough At Table (Tin House). 

Esquire’s “The Napkin Project (Holiday Edition)” shares 5 short pieces on cocktail napkins about office parties from Zakiya Dalila Harris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Chis Pine, Jeff VanderMeer, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Dr. Phil McGraw previews his forthcoming book, We’ve Got Issues: How You Can Stand Strong for America’s Soul and Sanity, due out from Threshold Editions on February 27, in a People exclusive.

FoxNews talks with Deepak Chopra about his new book, Quantum Body: The New Science of Living a Longer, Healthier, More Vital Life, written with Jack Tuszynski & Brian Fertig (Harmony), “healing, community—and AI.”

HGTV star Tarek El Moussa shares details from his forthcoming book, Flip Your Life: How To Find Opportunity in Distress—in Real Estate, Business, and Life, due out from Hachette Go on February 6, with People.

Tor previews and shares an excerpt from H.M. Long’s forthcoming Pillar of Ash (Titan), due out January 6.

The Millions continues its “Year in Reading” series with recommendations from Alexandra Tanner, Kukuwa Ashun, Anna Biller, Andrew Leland, Dan Sinykin, Melissa Lozada-Olivia, and Erin Somers. 

Patricia Cornwell reflects on her first thriller at CrimeReads. 

NYT highlights the best cookbooks of 2023. 

Autostraddle shares “65 of the Best Queer Books of 2023.”

BookRiot shares 8 winter romances.

ElectricLit has “10 Novels by BIPOC Norwegian Writers.”

“Michael Bishop, Genre-Busting Writer Known for Science Fiction, Dies at 78.” NYT has an obituary. 

Lionel Dahmer, who wrote a memoir about being the father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, dies at 87. NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

Entertainment Weekly previews Andrew Scott starring as Tom Ripley in a new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels on Netflix.

People previews a new series on Peacock, based on Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall, which debuts in March.

Palm Royale, based on Juliet McDaniel's novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie, will premiere March 20 on Apple TV+. Deadline reports.

Dune: Part 2 gets a new trailer.

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