News in December 2020

News in December 2020

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Historian and contributing editor of the Marginalia Review of Books Audrey Clare Farley’s THE UNFIT HEIRESS has earned a wonderful blurb from SAVAGE APPETITES author Rachel Monroe. She writes: “THE UNFIT HEIRESS is not only a fascinating look at a wildly dysfunctional high society family, it’s also a compulsively readable account of the reproductive myths and bigotry-driven pseudoscience that still shape our world today.” Grand Central Publishing will publish the book on April 20, 2021.

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Editor Daniel Loedel’s debut novel, HADES, ARGENTINA, has been selected as a “January 2021 Indie Next Pick,” and was featured in the latest issue of Vanity Fair as a debut worth diving into in the new year. The book also received a glowing review from BookPage, which praised Loedel’s “clean, tight and engaging” prose. Riverhead Books will publish the novel on January 12, 2021.

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Food writer and editor Sanaë Lemoine spoke to Alexandra Schwartz on the November 20 episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour about the drawn-from-life inspiration for her debut novel, THE MARGOT AFFAIR. Hogarth published the book on June 16, 2020.

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Award-winning sommelier and COTE partner and beverage director Victoria James’s memoir WINE GIRL has been selected as one of Amazon’s best nonfiction titles of 2020. The book was also mentioned in the New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov’s column The Pour as one of “6 Books for Thinking, Drinking and Changing the World.” Ecco published the book on March 24, 2020.

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Kate Weinberg’s THE TRUANTS has been named one of the New York Times Book Review’s “10 Best Crime Books of 2020.” G.P. Putnam’s Sons published the book in hardcover on January 28, 2020, and they will publish the paperback on January 26, 2021.

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THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave has won the Prix Rive Gauche à Paris for best foreign novel translated into French. Little, Brown, and Company published the book on February 11, 2020.

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Becky Cooper’s WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE, a detailed account of the 50-year investigation into Harvard grad student Jane Britton’s murder, continues to gather excellent press in the weeks following its publication. The book was featured in The New Yorker’s “Briefly Noted” section, and Bustle and the Philadelphia Inquirer have both recommended it on their lists of books to give as gifts this holiday season. The audiobook, read by Cooper herself, has won an Earphones Award from AudioFile, and the Daily Beast ran a featured interview with the author this week. Cooper also held a virtual event in conversation with Paige Williams via Books Are Magic on December 2. Grand Central Publishing published the book on November 10, 2020.

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Brian Doyle’s acclaimed ONE LONG RIVER will be included in the New York Times Book Review list of notable paperback releases for the week of December 6. Little, Brown and Company published the hardcover edition on December 3, 2019, and will publish the paperback edition on December 8, 2020.

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The New Yorker named Namwali Serpell’s STRANGER FACES as one of “The Best Books We Read in 2020.” They write: “These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn’t have the same impact if they didn’t appear in a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture. Tenderness, violence, animosity, and compassion are the outer edges of what feels like a total map of the human condition.” Transit Books published the book on October 20, 2020.

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GOLDEN GATES by Conor Dougherty is on Planetizen’s list of “The Top Urban Planning Books of 2020.” They write: “Dougherty is a terrific writer with an eye not only for the economic and political complexities of the housing crisis that has ravaged California and other high-cost areas but for the personalities that make up the YIMBY movement.” GOLDEN GATES also features on New York Magazine’s gift guide "90 Gifts for Every Type of Mom,” noting: “When we asked 23 authors about the books they’re reading to escape the present moment, writer Kevin Nguyen told us he’s found it unexpectedly soothing to read this ‘deeply reported and complete” history of the tech-related housing crisis in Northern California.’” Penguin Press published the book on February 18, 2020.

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Science Magazine praised Eben Kirksey’s THE MUTANT PROJECT, writing that the book “provides readers with an intriguing picture of the events, ambitions, and deceptions that led up to the [first gene-edited] twins’ birth, but these insights are only part of what makes it such a fascinating read. At its core, the book is a complex analysis of the global culture in which the project of heritable human genome editing is now developing.” St. Martin’s Press published the book on November 10, 2020.

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Astra Taylor, author of DEMOCRACY MAY NOT EXIST, BUT WE’LL MISS IT WHEN IT’S GONE, published an essay in the New Yorker titled “How the Biden Administration Can Free Americans from Student Debt,” and published an Op-Ed in the Guardian titled “We’re being told Biden won't be able to achieve much. We must reject that idea.” Taylor also discussed student loan forgiveness with GQ in “How a Group of Student Debtors Took on Their Banks—and Won,” and is featured in MarketWatch’s “President-elect Joe Biden has signaled he’s open to canceling student-loan debt — the question is when and how much,” as well as in two Democracy Now videos: “Astra Taylor: Biden Can Cancel Student Debt on Day One. Movements Must Make Him Do It” and “Astra Taylor: As Trump Tries to Steal Election, We Need to Reform Our ‘Deeply Undemocratic’ System.” Metropolitan Books published the book on May 7, 2019.