Oprah’s new book club pick is The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb. Finalists for the Ignyte Awards for SFF are announced. David Means wins the PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Jurors for the Kirkus Prize are named. The Nation and OR Books partner to launch a new progressive imprint, Nation Books. Scribd’s Everand has acquired social reading app Fable. Award-winning thriller writer Frederick Forsyth has died at the age of 86.

V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil leads holds this week and is also People’s book of the week. Also in demand are titles by Riley Sager, S.A. Cosby, Wally Lamb, and Jess Walter. Winners of the Nebula Awards and the Biographers International Organization’s Plutarch Award are announced. The July Indie Next preview is out, featuring #1 pick The Irresistible Urge To Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley. Earlyword shares the June GalleyChat spreadsheet. Plus, former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden speaks out on her firing on CBS Sunday Morning.

AI, natural language search, and integrated platforms are driving the latest advances in discovery at libraries.

Older adults are looking for ways to reduce isolation, forge connections with others, and learn new skills—and libraries have a key growth opportunity to help them achieve these goals. Gale Presents: GetSetUp helps libraries fill these critical needs with a turnkey online solution that doesn’t place any additional burden on staff.

Karen Leeder’s translation of Durs Grünbein’s Psyche Running wins the Griffin Poetry Prize. Valérie Bah’s Subterrane wins the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. The shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year is announced. New Circana BookScan research shows the growth over the last year of “dark romance.” The New Press has layoffs due to decreased sales and funding, partly attributed to book bans targeting progressive titles. After selecting James Frey’s novel Next to Heaven, Book of the Month responds to criticism about Frey’s use of generative AI. Tomorrow is Teach Truth Day of Action, a planned nationwide day to fight bans on books and on teaching certain subjects in schools. Plus, Page to Screen and interviews with Ocean Vuong, Susan Choi, and Jacinda Ardern.

The fifth annual U.S. Book Show, sponsored by Publishers Weekly, was held on June 3 at the New York Academy of Medicine. The daylong publishing industry conference drew nearly 800 in-person registrants and sponsors and covered a range of bases.

N.S. Nuseibeh’s essay collection Namesake wins the UK’s Jhalak Prose Prize for writers of color, while Mimi Khalvati’s Collected Poems wins the Jhalak Poetry Prize. Amazon editors pick the 10 best books of 2025 so far. The Guardian writes about how the U.S. far right is trying to spread its ideology through the publishing world and reports on Russia’s “Z literature,” a nationalistic subgenre of fantasy fiction that may be encouraging teens to enlist in the war on Ukraine. AI was the hot topic at this year’s U.S. Book Fair. Plus, new title bestsellers and interviews with Susan Choi, Lynne Olson, and Melissa Febos.

Bernardine Evaristo is honored with the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award for her body of work. Dora Prieto, Jess Goldman, and Phillip Dwight Morgan win RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards. Allison King’s The Phoenix Pencil Company is the new Reese Witherspoon book club pick. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for top holds title Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Baker & Taylor adds three distribution clients. Director James Cameron will cowrite a screen adaptation of Joe Abercrombie’s The Devils. Plus, best books of the year (so far) and titles for Pride Month.

Audiofile announces the winners of the Golden Voices Audiobook Narrator awards. Dmitri Strotsev and Nadia Kandrusevich are named the 2025 Prix Voltaire laureates. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere: A Love Story is the GMA June book club pick. Maggie Stiefvater’s The Listeners is the B&N pick. The annual Audio Publishers Association Sales Survey showed double-digit gains over 2023. Scholastic will integrate its trade publishing, book fairs, and book clubs. Interviews arrive with Melissa Febos, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Molly Jong-Fast, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Todd S. Purdum, and Jacinda Ardern.