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Awards & News

The Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot is announced. 

As reported by Locus, the nominating and final ballot statistics for the 2023 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award, and Astounding Award were released over the weekend. Several entries, including R.F. Kuang’s Babel (Harper Voyager), were ruled ineligible without explanation. Publisher's Lunch and Gizmodo both report on the controversy.

The 2024 United States Artists Writing Fellows are announced. LitHub has the story.

Dan Hogan wins the Australian Book Review Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Books+Publishing has details. 

Publishers Weekly reports, “Big Five Domination of Adult Bestseller Lists Slipped in 2023.”

Reviews

NYT reviews three new thrillers: The Fury by Alex Michaelides (Celadon; LJ starred review), Where You End by Abbott Kahler (Holt), and First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston (Pamela Dorman: Viking); Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino (Scribner): “While many novelists are struggling to figure out how best to address the state of the nation—centerless, ridiculous and terrifying, doomed yet trivial, dire yet unheroic—Sammartino seems to have cracked the code”; The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan (Viking; LJ starred review): “A decade ago, Khan’s photograph made her a sensation. I suspect her writing will do the same again. This is the start of a major career”; and Twilight Territory by Andrew X. Pham (Norton): “Pham’s straightforward, unpretentious prose is used to devastating effect in the latter half of the novel.”

The Guardian reviews Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf): “With this excellent novel, Phillips has brought a little more of this foundational American episode into the light.”

LA Times reviews The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James (S. & S.; LJ starred review): “The Bullet Swallower, in that regard, is slyly ambitious, striving to pull off a trick nearly as tough as surviving a bullet to the head: to deliver old-fashioned, satisfying storytelling that critiques itself, insisting we move past those old fashions”; and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (Holt; LJ starred review): “Frankel’s funny, heart-wrenching and thought-provoking account of how one woman’s choices can enrich the lives of others will remind you that every family circle is potentially infinite.”

Autostraddle reviews Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn (MCD): “It’s a masterful feat of storytelling for Blackburn to constantly make the reader feel as if Coral is coming full circle, only to remind us she can’t.”

NPR reviews Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk, tr. by Zenia Tompkins (Liveright): “The narrator’s rendering of Lypynskyi seems the perfect foil to her own musings. Despite her meticulous attention to the details of his life, the narrator asks: ‘Why did he, Lypynskyi, even exist?’ Perhaps she is asking about all existence, including and especially hers.”

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Random in Death by J.D. Robb (St. Martin’s), the top holds title of the week.

LJ has new prepub alerts.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James talks with Esquire about the Western genre and her new book, The Bullet Swallower (S. & S.; LJ starred review). Gonzalez James also discusses her book with Shondaland and The Rumpus. 

Venita Blackburn discusses her debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California (MCD), with ElectricLit and Shondaland. 

NYT reports from Gathering of the Ghosts, a conference for ghostwriters to “compare notes and celebrate their work.”

Tor.com is now Reactor.

BookRiot lists “The Worst Dead-End Questions To Ask in Book Club.”

Essence suggests 16 books for the new year.

NYT explores the French comics boom. 

Robert Downey Jr., Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time (Blackstone), shares five books “that made a difference,” at OprahDaily.

NYT highlights 11 books featuring vintage interiors. 

Authors on Air

Crystal Hefner discusses her memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself (Grand Central), with NPR’s Morning Edition.

A trailer for Netflix’s live action Avatar: The Last Airbender, with assoc. titles, is out now. EW has a preview of the series, which debuts February 22.

Shelf-Awareness features “Oscar Nominations by the Book,” and NYPL shares “Reading the Oscars 2024 Nominations.”

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