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Award News

The 2021 Nielsen Bestseller Awards are announced.

Santanu Bhattacharya wins the 2021 Hachette's Mo Siewcharran Prize for He Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Page to Screen

October 1:

The Addams Family 2, based on associated titles. United Artists Pictures. No reviews | Trailer

Coming Home in the Dark, based on a short-story by Owen Marshall. Dark Sky Films. Reviews | Trailer

Maid, based on the book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light, based on the manga series by Nakaba Suzuki. Netflix. No reviews | Trailer

October 3:

Call the Midwife, based on the books by Jennifer Worth. PBS. Reviews | Trailer

Grantchester, based on The Grantchester Mysteries collections of short stories by James Runcie. PBS. Reviews | Trailer

The Walking Dead: World Beyond, based on the comic book by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. AMC. Reviews | Trailer

October 6:

There’s Someone Inside Your House, based on a book by Stephanie Perkins. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

October 7:

One of Us is Lying, based on the book by Karen M. McManus. Peacock. No reviews | Trailer

The Way of the Househusband, based on the manga series by Kousuke Oono. Netflix. Reviews | Trailer

Reviews

The Washington Post reviews Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation by John Lewis (Grand Central: Hachette): "Lewis’s political example remains as relevant now as it did in his own time, perhaps more so since — with intersecting crises that touch on the environment, immigration, voting rights and the future of American democracy — we have reached an existential crossroads in the wake of last year’s political and racial reckoning. As he did for his entire life, Lewis, through his words in this volume after his death, offers us sustenance, faith and hope for the battles that lie ahead." Also, Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl (S. & S.): "Ruhl may have lost the face she once knew but she reminds us that “in truth, we don’t have to win to be grateful. We can always thank the people we love, the people who help us, even when we don’t win an award. We often just forget to.” That’s the kind of simple poignancy that elevates this book." Plus, Voices From the Pandemic by Eli Saslow (Doubleday: Random House): "Saslow interviewed several dozen Americans, transcribed and fact-checked their stories, and lightly edited the narratives. The oral histories he curated paint a vivid picture of how individuals endured the pandemic, and they often wrench at our heartstrings. The stories convey raw desperation, isolation, and physical and emotional suffering. They hurt to read." And a couple more reviews posted today.

NYT reviews  A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris (Little, Brown): "This novel is a passionate, well-constructed, often hilarious and, at times, profound plunge into grief, both civic and intimate, as well as a culmination (so far) of the literary explorations Ferris has been undertaking since he arrived." Also, a joint review for Wildland: The Making of America's Fury by Evan Osnos (FSG) and The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, Poeple - and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross (Macmillan).

Slate reviews Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker (Viking): “Beyond offering tools to think with, Rationality periodically hints at more pointed interventions, even a kind of what the author calls at one point “social contract,” as a further step. In a world that distorts, withholds, or floods us with data, he writes, making rational choices hard and bad choices rational, we reasoners must sometimes be cajoled, pressured, and constrained by friends, employers, and governments to make the right choices.”

AV Club reviews Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar; LJ starred review): “This is why Franzen is always worth reading. He articulates the terror of exposure. The fear that people will see you for what you actually are. The flimsiness of the facade, the trembling doubt in every heart.”

Locus Magazine reviews The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon: Baker & Taylor): “Among the most visual and even cinematic of Tidhar’s novels (Chaplin and Fellini come to mind, as well as Leone and maybe even Jodorowski), it’s also, in the end, a surprisingly touching reminder of how such quests can begin in heartbreak.”

Tor.com reviews Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit: Hachette): “A message of Shards of Earth and other stories that deal with unwilling diasporas is this: it is a permanently traumatic experience, one that marks those who go through it and those who follow thereafter in their wake. Compassion, understanding, and offering humanity and solace to those who have undergone such an experience is among the highest of human ideals.”

Book Marks shared "The Best Reviewed Books of September."

Briefly Noted

Miriam Toews, Fight Night (Bloomsbury), talks to NYT’s By the Book and explains that she “gets nervous when people assume she’s read the classics” among other things. Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch (Doubleday; LJ starred review), discusses “writing about a burned-out pissed-off mom who turns into a dog” with Electric Lit. Katie Kitamura speaks with Greg Mania about her book Intimacies (Riverhead) for Bomb Magazine.

The Millions interviews Brian Evenson about the “embodied experience” and his book The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (Coffee House: Consortium). Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads (Farrar; LJ starred review), talks to Vulture about how he thinks people can change even if “it’s nearly impossible to make it stick.” BBC considers “how Jonathan Franzen became America’s most divisive novelist.”

Tabitha Brown chats about her book Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love, and Freedom (Morrow) and “how to deal with online haters” with Shondaland. Also, Phoebe Robinson discusses her HBO Max special and the release of her third book Please Don't Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes (Tiny Reparations: Random House; LJ starred review). Robinson also talks to The Root Presents: It’s Lit! about feeling safe with books.

Entertainment Weekly has a cover reveal for the next Crescent City novel by Sarah J. Maas House of Sky and Breath (Bloomsbury: Macmillan) and a feature on James Han Mattson and the “real-life horrors” behind his newest book Reprieve (Morrow).

Angélique Lalonde “explores the complexities of love in [her] short story collection” Glorious Frazzled Beings (Astoria) with CBC Books. 

People gives a first look of Audrey Hepburn photos in Warrior by Robert Matzen (GoodKnight Books: Independent Publishers Books).

The Seattle Times features Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe (HarperCollins) as “Cooper explores the Vanderbilt legacy.” Also, Brit Bennett discusses why she was surprised that her second novel The Vanishing Half (Riverhead: Penguin) “became an immediate bestseller.”

Jezebel shares an excerpt from Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend by Jackie Kay (Vintage: Random House).

Former President Jimmy Carter will get a biographical treatment in the Political Power comic book series for TidalWive, according to The Seattle Times.

NPR features a piece for Banned Books Week, “readers explore what it means to challenge texts.”

NYT Style Magazine features literary memoirs that “are focusing on the question of who gets to share their version of things and interrogating the form, along with themselves.”

OprahDaily shares “All 58 of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club Picks.”

Vanity Fair has “8 Books We Want to Give To All Our Friends.”

Today shares 5 books to read after Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang (Doubleday).

Tor.com lists “Five Essential Works of Climate-Forward Fiction.”

CrimeReads shares “The Lure of the Old Manor: Books in Which a House is Both Setting and Character" and "12 Novels You Should Read This October."

PopSugar gives “Spooky, Scary, and Totally Thrilling - 17 #BookTok Reads for Halloween.”

Lit Hub provides "A Spooky, Witchy Reading List to Kick Off Scary Season."

Gizmodo shares “63 New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Ease You Into Spooky Season.”

Publishers Weekly has the “10 Strangest Sci-Fi Dystopias.”

Electric Lit lists “Books That Read Like a Club Scene From the Sopranos.”

AV Club provides “Books to read in October.”

NYT has “8 New Books We Recommend This Week," "New Southern Fiction by Percival Everett, Wiley Cash and Andrew Siegrist," and "New in Paperback" including Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami (Pantheon: Random House) and The Silence by Don DeLillo (S. & S.).

LoanStars has “the top books chosen by Canadian library staff.”

Library Reads has “The top ten books published this month that library staff across the country love.”

Book Marks lists "AudioFile's Best Audiobooks of September."

Authors on Air

Giulio Boccaletti, author of Water: A Biography (Pantheon), talks to Ari Shapiro for All Things Considered about understanding humanity through understanding water.

Gill Paul, The Collector's Daughter (William Morrow: HarperCollins) discusses "the first modern person to enter King Tutankhamun's Tomb" on the New Books Network podcast.

Tor.com shares casting news on the FX adaptation of Kindred by Octavia Butler (Beacon). 

David Tennant and Michael Sheen will lend their voices to the audiobook version of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (William Morrow: HarperCollins). Gizmodo has more.

Michael B. Jordan and Elizabeth Raposo join the cast of the TriStar adaptation of N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth series (Orbit: Hachette). Deadline reports.

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