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Awards, News & Best of the Year (So Far)

Bernardine Evaristo is honored with the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award for her body of work, in celebration of the 30th anniversary year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Guardian has coverage. 

Dora Prieto, Jess Goldman, and Phillip Dwight Morgan win RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards, CBC reports. 

The Phoenix Pencil Company by LitUp fellow Allison King (Morrow) is the new Reese Witherspoon book club pick. People has an exclusive on Witherspoon’s LitUp program and an interview with King. 

B&N highlights “The Best Books of 2025 (So Far).”

NYT names “The Best Thrillers of the Year (So Far).”

Baker & Taylor Publisher Services adds three distribution clients: CamCat Books, Taffy Tales Press, and Chicken Scratch Books, Publishers Lunch reports. 

The Center for Fiction employees have won union recognition. PW has the news. 

Reviews

NYT reviews The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward (Liveright: Norton): “The promises of Daley-Ward’s debut fiction are the same as some of the book’s darker motifs: It’s addictive and might take a lifetime to release you”; Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (Norton; LJ starred review): “When he observes what he sees, his descriptions are original, sinuous and often startling; when he’s in thrall to a reverie, his descriptions get windy and sentimental”; Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus (Random): “Engaging if unsurprising as political history, as biography the book raises more questions than it answers. Tanenhaus strives to distinguish between Buckley the ideologue and Buckley the friend, but neither persona is fully rendered”; Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin (Little, Brown): “In this new offering, the American writer shares the story of his relationship with his British partner, who remains unnamed, and uses it as a catalyst for a kaleidoscopic survey of legal flash points regarding gay rights and immigration”; and When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead): “When It All Burns is a report on the state of firefighting, crossed with a tale of what might be called exploratory adventure.”

Washington Post reviews The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb (S. & S.: MarySue Rucci): “In so many ways, the problem is Corby himself. Just as he’s trapped in prison, we’re trapped in his mind. And he’s no King Lear. He simply doesn’t have—and never attains—the agonizing self-knowledge that would enable him to respond sufficiently to the existential quandary of this catastrophe”; The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex by Melissa Febos (Knopf): “Febos’s great power as a writer is pairing structural rigor with emotional disclosure”; and Endling by Maria Reva (Doubleday; LJ starred review): “Endling, original as it is, did evoke other reading experiences: the survivalist adventure of Octavia Butler’s classic The Parable of the Sower, the sly satire of Percival Everett’s Erasure, the poetic inventions of Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia and Wayward.”

LJ shares June’s starred reviews. 

Briefly Noted

LibraryReads and Library Journal offer read-alikes for Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine; LJ starred review), the top holds title of the week. 

LJ has the complete list of prepub October 2025 titles.

Autostraddle suggests queer books for June 2025. 

BookRiot previews 12 LGBTQIA+ books publishing in June. 

LJ recommends titles for LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. 

Amazon editors select the best books of June. 

A.V. Club shares its most anticipated books of summer.

Ebony highights June’s best books by Black authors.

CBC suggests 18 Canadian books to read this month. 

ElectricLit recommends “7 Thrillers About Murder in Paradise.”

Legacy Lit will publish former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s book Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines in October, Seattle Times reports. 

Novelist Edmund White has died at the age of 85. The Guardian has an obituary. 

French scholar Pierre Nor has died at the age of 93. NYT has an obituary. 

Authors on Air

James Cameron will cowrite a screen adaptation of Joe Abercrombie’s novel The Devils (Tor); Indie Wire has the story. 

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross (Wednesday Bks.) will get an adaptation from Paramount, Deadline reports.

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