Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s WE CAST A SHADOW has been selected for the 2019 Crook’s Corner Book Prize Longlist. The Crook’s Corner Book Prize is awarded to the best debut novel set in the American South. The 2019 Shortlist will be announced in September, and the winner will be announced in January 2020. One World published the book on January 29, 2019.

INSURRECTO by Gina Apostol has been named a fiction finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Other finalists on the shortlist include THE OVERSTORY by Richard Powers and THERE THERE by Tommy Orange. The winners of the award, which honors the power of literature to promote peace and reconciliation, will be announced September 17, 2019. Soho Press published the book on November 13, 2018.

Hannah Orenstein discussed her writing process and inspiration for her second novel LOVE AT FIRST LIKE with the Boston Globe and AM New York this month. While speaking with AM New York she says, “I was really interested in writing about social media and wedding culture and increasing pressure that I think a lot of us feel to perform our relationships online." Atria published the book on August 6, 2019.

The New York Times Book Review gave SAVAGE APPETITES a stellar review, writing: “the journalist Rachel Monroe is interested in a paradox: upper-middle-class women who find that proximity to murder makes them feel more alive . . . Monroe has a knack for nosing a new story out of an old one, like a detective casting fresh eyes on a cold case.” The Guardian also interviewed Monroe and published an excerpt from SAVAGE APPETITES on the Columbine shooting and how it inspired a foiled mass murder plot. Scribner published the book on August 20, 2019.

DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier F. Peña, portrayed in the hit Netflix series Narcos, tell the real story of how they brought down the world’s most wanted criminal in their book MANHUNTERS. St. Martin’s Press will publish the hardcover on November 12, 2019.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Cammy Brothers called Ben Lewis’ THE LAST LEONARDO “a page-turning tale about the most expensive painting of all time . . . populated by characters straight out of a thriller.” Ballantine published the book on June 25, 2019.

Anne Boyer’s memoir of cancer and the medical-industrial complex, THE UNDYING, is excerpted in the September issue of Harper’s Magazine. It has also been named a most-anticipated book of Fall 2019 by both Lit Hub and Autostraddle. FSG will publish the book on September 17, 2019.

Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky’s ASTRO POETS is on The Week’s list of books to read in the second half of the year. The site promises that “Astro Poets’ forthcoming guide to the zodiac will certainly not be your hippie mom’s Sun Signs.” Flatiron Books will publish the book on October 29, 2019.

The Los Angeles Review of Books interviewed Chris Dennis about his debut short story collection, HERE IS WHAT YOU DO, calling it “dark, campy, and brilliant, with characters who feel like they’re desperately clawing themselves out of a metaphorical (and at one point, literal) hole in the ground.” Soho Press published the book on June 25, 2019.

Barack Obama has shared his summer reading list. One of the books he recommends is EXHALATION by Ted Chiang. Obama says Chiang’s second collection of speculative short stories “will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human. The best kind of science fiction.” Knopf published the book on May 7, 2019.