Bookpulse

English PEN Translates winners are announced. NYT releases its readers’ picks for best books of the 21st century. The winners of the Oklahoma Book Awards are revealed. Emerald ᏃᏈᏏ GoingSnake and Kira Hayen win Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Awards for Indigenous writers. Plus interviews with Lorrie Moore, Jasmine Graham, and Howard Blum and Page to Screen.

New York Magazine’s summer book club pick is Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. The Night Field by Donna Glee Williams wins the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation’s Manly Wade Wellman Award. Wales Book of the Year winners, American Manga Award nominees, and shortlists for the UK’s Forward Prizes for Poetry are announced. London Libraries creates a reading app inspired by the “Couch to 5K” training program. Critic Maris Kreizman spills the details on the making of the NYT Best of the 21st Century list. 

In an NYT Book Review poll, Edward P. Jones’s The Known World is voted the best work of fiction by an American writer in the 21st century so far. The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction shortlist and the Scribe Award nominees are announced. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for buzzy book The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey. In a restructuring at Hachette, Algonquin will be folded into Little, Brown, while Workman announces layoffs. Melissa De La Cruz’s Blue Bloods will get a series adaptation. Plus, a first look at Apartment 7A, a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, based on the novel by Ira Levin.

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, is named Donald Trump’s running mate. The Sturgeon Award finalists are announced. Esquire examines “The Second Coming of the Sports Novel.” Interviews arrive with Deborah Harkness, Kathie Lee Gifford, Halle Butler, Madiba K. Dennie, and Liz Moore. Plus, Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, based on the book by Elin Hilderbrand, gets a trailer.

The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey leads holds this week. Also getting buzz are titles by Deborah Harkness, Lev Grossman, B.K. Borison, Jessica Joyce, and Meg Shaffer. The Shirley Jackson Award winners are announced; Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory wins best novel. Eight LibraryReads and eight Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. Sex therapist and author Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer has died at the age of 96.

James McBride’s body of work wins the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. A new posthumous novel by Zora Neale Hurston, The Life of Herod the Great, is due out from Amistad in 2025, and Goose Island, a previously unpublished novel by the late Margaret Walker, is coming next year from Univ. Pr. of Mississippi. Reagan Arthur, the former publisher of Knopf, is joining Hachette to start and run a new imprint.

Chidi Ebere wins the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize for his debut novel, Now I Am Here. New inductees to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame include Nalo Hopkinson and Jo Walton. EC Dorgan, Paola Ferrante, Daysha Loppie, Aubrianna Snow, and Karianne Trudeau Beaunoyer are named Writers’ Trust 2024 Rising Stars. Macmillan will launch another graphic novels imprint, 23rd Street Books, while Random House will acquire comic books and graphic novels publisher Boom! Studios. Plus, new title bestsellers and interviews with Kevin Barry, Nikki Giovanni, and Amy Tan.

Lit Hub previews the most anticipated books of the second half of 2024. Viola Davis will collaborate with James Patterson on a forthcoming novel. RBmedia will acquire Dreamscape Media, including Dreamscape Publishing and Dreamscape Select. Josh Gad will release a memoir in January and actress Christina Applegate is at work on a new book about her life. Emily Henry will adapt her novel Funny Story for the big screen, while Lev Grossman's Arthurian novel The Bright Sword and Carolyn Huynh’s The Fortunes Of Jaded Women will get series adaptations. Plus, authors Kiese Laymon and Deesha Philyaw launch a new podcast called Reckon True Stories.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn leads holds this week. Also getting buzz are titles by Emily Giffin, Daniel Silva, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Linda Castillo, and Lana Ferguson. July Book Club picks include All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Read with Jenna), The Love of My Afterlife by Kirsty Greenwood (GMA), The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (B&N), and The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan (Reese Witherspoon). People’s book of the week is The God of the Woods. The August Indie Next list is out, featuring #1 pick The Wedding People by Alison Espach. Audiofile announces the July Earphones Award winners, and The Millions publishes its summer 2024 preview. Plus, Alice Munro’s family secrets roil the literary world.