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Awards & News

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting (Farrar; LJ starred review) and Fern Brady’s Strong Female Character (Harmony) win inaugural Nero Book Awards. The Guardian has coverage. 

James McBride wins the Association of Jewish Libraries Jewish Fiction Award for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Riverhead; LJ starred review).

The International Dylan Thomas Prize longlist is announced. 

NYT explores Spotify’s foray into the audiobook market and profiles Penguin Random House CEO Nihar Malaviya. 

RBMedia acquires Berrett-Koehler’s audiobook publishing business. Publisher’s Marketplace reports. 

Workers at San Francisco’s famed City Lights book store have unionized. Publishers Weekly reports. 

Reviews

NYT reviews Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili (Riverhead; LJ starred review): “Cunning and unstinting, humanist and self-aware, Vardiashvili nears noir excellence.” There is also a paired review of One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy by Dominic Erdozain (Crown) and What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms by Jonathan M. Metzl (Norton): “It’s difficult to experience Metzl’s gentle compassion after Erdozain’s galvanizing anger, but that is no criticism of his book or its author.”

Washington Post reviews Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How To See by Bianca Bosker (Viking): “Get the Picture is one of the funniest books I’ve read about New York’s contemporary art scene, even if I disagreed with some of its conclusions about how best to approach and appreciate art.”

USA Today reviews Come and Get It by Kiley Reid (Putnam), giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars: “Reid’s raw delivery may have you reliving your own youthful experiences as you read, remembering early triumphs of adulting, failed relationships or cringing at mistakes that snowballed and how all of these shaped who you are today.”

NPR reviews Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf): “Engaging and wildly entertaining, Martyr! will undoubtedly be considered one of the best debut novels of the year because it focuses on very specific stories while discussing universal feelings.”

Briefly Noted

Simon Shuster discusses his new book, The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky (Morrow; LJ starred review), with LA Times.

Nadirah Simmons talks with People about “hip-hop’s most impactful women,” from her new book, First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed the Game (Twelve). 

Reactor reflects on “The Golden Age of SF (But Not the One You’re Thinking Of).”

LitHub highlights 22 new books out this week. 

BookRiot shares new releases for the week and suggests 9 dark romantasy titles. 

ElectricLit lists “8 Novels About Women’s Invisible Labor.”

Shondaland ranks “The 13 Best College-Set Novels of All Time.”

Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (Mariner), writes about “Murder Mysteries in Transport,” at CrimeReads. 

Reactor shares an excerpt from Tales of the Celestial Kingdom by Sue Lynn Tan (Harper Voyager), due out next week. 

The Rumpus talks about Black poetics with Dr. Taylor Byas, Poemhood: Our Black Revival; History, Folklore & the Black Experience; A Young Adult Poetry Anthology, written with Amber McBride & Erica Martin (Harper Teen).

Pulitzer-winning Indigenous novelist N. Scott Momaday has died at the age of 89. NYT has an obituary. Associated Press also reports. 

Authors on Air

Antonia Hylton talks with NPR’s Fresh Air about her new book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum (Legacy Lit). 

Ruha Benjamin discusses her new book, Imagination: A Manifesto (Norton), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast.

Slate’s Money Talks podcast asks: “Is Pop Finance Rubbish?”

Sarah J. Maas, House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury), visits the Today Show. 

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Far Beyond Gold: Running from Fear to Faith (Thomas Nelson), also appears on the Today Show. 

B Michael, Muse: Cicely Tyson and Me; A Relationship Forged in Fashion (Amistad), will be on CBS Mornings. 

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