Historian Audrey Clare Farley’s book on the life and involuntary sterilization of 1930s socialite Ann Cooper Hewitt, THE UNFIT HEIRESS, published this week to a flurry of coverage. Excerpts were featured in CrimeReads, Town & Country, and Ms. Magazine on publication day, and all three publications—along with Book Riot—named THE UNFIT HEIRESS a best book of April. Glowing reviews came in from the New York Post, The Progressive, and the New York Journal of Books, and Farley sat down for Q&As with Rewire News and The Progressive to discuss her research for the book. Farley also published an original essay in Salon about the legacy of eugenics in America, and held a virtual launch with Belletrist on Instagram Live to celebrate publication. Grand Central Publishing published the book on April 20, 2021.

Carole Johnstone’s debut novel MIRRORLAND launched in the US and UK this week to great fanfare. The book was named one of CrimeReads’ “Seven Debut Novels You Should Read This Month,” and Johnstone sat down for a Q&A with the Nerd Daily, where she self-describes her novel as a “gothic psychological thriller about love and betrayal, redemption and revenge, the power of imagination and the price of freedom.” The New York Times also featured MIRRORLAND on their list of recommended thrillers, writing: “In this unsettling, labyrinthine tale, it is hard at first to tell who the villain is — or even how many villains there are in a family with a great deal to hide. The book unlocks its mysteries slowly, twisting the knife a little deeper with each revelation.” Scribner published the novel on April 20, 2021.

The New York Times published a business cover story by GOLDEN GATES author Conor Dougherty titled “One Way to Get People Off the Streets: Buy Hotels.” Dougherty writes: “[T]he pandemic, which according to a dire early projection could have killed 25,000 homeless people in the state, added two sorely needed ingredients — federal money and an excuse to move fast. With the travel industry hobbled and stimulus money continuing to flow, [California] Gov. Gavin Newsom has since doubled down by creating a program to buy hotels in hopes of creating permanent homeless housing en masse…In a blizzard of transactions that sidestepped many of the local rules that make California one of the nation’s hardest places to build, the state spent $800 million on 94 projects that will become permanent supportive housing, or housing that is paired with on-site social services.” Penguin Press published the book on February 18, 2020.

2034 by Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis received a glowing review from The Wall Street Journal. They write: “It is hard to write in great detail about what ensues in this novel without giving away the drama of its denouement. Suffice it to say that there is conflict and catastrophe on a large scale, and it unfolds, as major conflicts tend to, with surprising twists and turns…This is not a pessimistic book about America’s potential, but the picture of the world it paints before the central conflict will be a difficult one for many to accept, albeit one well supported by facts: The wealth and power of the U.S. are in relative decline, especially compared with a rising Asia’s.” Penguin Press published the novel on March 9, 2021.

Xiaolu Guo’s A LOVER’S DISCOURSE received a glorious review from Commonweal Magazine. The reviewer writes: “In Guo’s telling, we belong either to a world someone else speaks into being, or we are locked out of it… Where can we belong if we feel separated from ourselves, if language divides us from a shared reality with others? How real can we be without common ground? In the end, what holds Guo’s narrator together is not definition but negotiation—the linguistic clashes, corrections, and concessions that build her hybrid voice.” Grove Press published the novel on October 13, 2020.

Dawnie Walton’s THE FINAL REVIVAL OF OPAL & NEV appeared on The New Yorker’s Briefly Noted. They praise the way “the novel offers a lively take on the music industry’s commercialism, racism, and sexism, and also a commentary on how history and memory are refracted through changing cultural currents.” 37 Ink published the novel on March 30, 2021.

THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones Jr. was featured on BLACK BUCK author Mateo Askaripour’s list of “10 Books that ‘Disrupted’ the Literary Status Quo” on Goodreads. He writes: "Playing with time, history, and shifting ideas of power, Jones’ novel focuses on the love between two enslaved Black men, producing a story that despite never being told before, was one the world needed. I know I did. And that is nothing to say of what he does at the line level, turning his sentences into vehicles for multiple meanings, ways of thinking, and forms of feeling in a way that only someone who has truly dedicated themselves to their craft, and the people they want to serve through their work, ever can." G.P. Putnam’s Sons published the novel on January 5, 2021.

Sharon Stone’s THE BEAUTY OF LIVING TWICE is featured in Time Magazine’s “How Celebrity Memoirs Got So Good.” They write: “The most compelling passages…are the clear-eyed, and at times brutally honest, recollections of how [Stone’s] persevered in the wake of trauma inflicted not by nature or accident but by other people…In spite of Stone’s four decades in the industry, THE BEAUTY OF LIVING TWICE is far from the glitzy account of Hollywood that readers might expect. Instead, it shows a woman who’s spent the majority of her years in the public eye seizing the opportunity to tell her story entirely on her own terms.” Knopf published the memoir on March 30, 2021.

Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel, OF WOMEN AND SALT, was chosen as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and hit the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction bestseller list at #19. Vanity Fair also included the novel in its April Books & Totes feature. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution praises Garcia’s “varied lyricism,” noting that “[t]he book dismantles a variety of myths, including the idea that Latino people are a monolith and function as one unified body,” and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls the novel “[a] breathtaking narrative from an author whose voice is already as confident as that of more seasoned writers.” Flatiron Books published the novel on March 30, 2021.

Demi Moore’s INSIDE OUT is featured in Time Magazine’s “How Celebrity Memoirs Got So Good.” They write: “One of the most apt examples of [the] approach to taking back control of the narrative, and an early example of this rising trend, may be Demi Moore’s 2019 memoir, INSIDE OUT. The prototype of an A-lister during the tabloid era, the actor was committed to laying bare even the most painful moments of her life in service of telling her full story, making for a read that was not only compelling but also nuanced in its bracing honesty.” Harper published the memoir on September 24, 2019.

Henry Porter’s THE OLD ENEMY was named a Book of the Month by The Sunday Times. They write: “This novel is at once an up-to-the-minute political novel about an emergent second Cold War, a timeless ripping espionage yarn and a continuation of the lives of characters who become richer with each appearance. It’s an impressive achievement and, as ever with Porter, told in an addictive blend of tangy dialogue and polished prose.” Atlantic Monthly Press will publish the book on June 8, 2021.

Lucy Ives’s story collection COSMOGONY was chosen as a Paris Review Staff Pick. Reviewer Jane Breakell writes: “[The] stories acknowledge that yes, things that seem awful are only human, but also, knowing this intellectually doesn’t really make it any easier emotionally. What does make it bearable—for this reader—is a beautifully honed sense of the absurd, which kept me smiling throughout much of this collection.” Soft Skull published the book on March 9, 2021.