Edgar Award Nominees Are Announced | Book Pulse (2025)

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Awards & Book News

The Edgar Award nominees are revealed.

Finalists for the Audie Awards are announced,Publishing Perspectivesreports.

USA Todaylaunches itsWinter Book Challenge, a bingo card full of book categories, to help readers stretch and track their reading goals.

New Title Bestsellers

Links for the week: NYT Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers | NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers | USA Today Bestselling Books

Fiction

Witchcraft for Wayward Girlsby Grady Hendrix (Berkley;LJstarred review) enchants at No. 2 on theNYTHardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 5 on theUSA TodayBestselling Books list.

Beautiful Uglyby Alice Feeney (Flatiron) gets No. 6 on theNYTHardcover Fiction Bestsellers list and No. 14 on theUSA TodayBestselling Books list.

The Big Emptyby Robert Crais (Putnam) fills spot No. 8 on theNYTHardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Presumed Guiltyby Scott Turow (Grand Central) holds No. 13 on theNYTHardcover Fiction Bestsellers list.

Nonfiction

The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot To Kill Kennedy—and Why It Failedby Brad Meltzer & Josh Mensch (Flatiron) reaches No. 3 on theNYTHardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed To Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Womanby Brooke Shields with Rachel Bertsche (Flatiron) climbs to No. 4 on theNYTHardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

Hope: The Autobiographyby Pope Francis with Carlo Musso (Random) ascends to No. 6 on theNYTHardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list.

All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes That Made the Biden Family Richby James Comer (Broadside) has No. 7 on theNYTHardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list, though some booksellers report receiving bulk orders.

Reviews

LA TimesreviewsBlack in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My Peopleby Imani Perry (Ecco): “Her work walks a line between ethnography and history, although that’s too simple to describe what she is doing; let’s just call it inquiry instead. In that spirit, she ranges widely, beginning with indigo—the plant and the color—before sharing the story of Eliza Lucas, a white woman who in the 1730s began to cultivate the crop ‘at her father’s low-country Wappoo plantation just three miles outside of Charleston,’ and in the process created an industry.”

The GuardianreviewsThe Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoirby Edmund White (Bloomsbury): “The memoir’s unashamed opening sets the tone, and serves as an inoculation of sorts, preparing any potentially scandalised reader for what’s to come…. ButThe Loves of My Life is far more textured and variegated than its enticing subtitle (‘A Sex Memoir’) has us believe. It is also a writer’s memoir and a rumination on craft—something that complements rather than contradicts the amatory theme.”

VulturereviewsWe Do Not Partby Han Kang, tr. by e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth;LJstarred review): “By locating the military’s crimes on both physical and spiritual levels, Han refuses to consign them to the safe distance of history, lending her novel, and the very real story she is telling, the visceral immediacy of a blow and the lingering agony of a wound.”

NYTreviewsBright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalismby Randall Fuller (Oxford Univ.): “The conversations—which one participant called ‘a vindication of woman’s right to think’—became the basis of Fuller’s groundbreaking book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century; they were, Bright Circle suggests, the foundations of the American women’s rights movement.”

LitHubselects “5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week.”

Briefly Noted

Publishers Weeklytalks totheologist Pamela Ayo Yetunde, author ofDearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, and This Thing Called Life(Broadleaf).

InLitHub, Betty Shamieh, author ofToo Soon(Avid Reader),considers the work of other Palestinian American novelists.

Robert Harris, author ofConclave,answersNYT’s “By the Book” questionnaire.

Publishers Weeklyreports thatChristian rom-com titles are flourishingand releases itspreview of spring 2025 adult religion and spirituality books.

CrimeReadsrediscoversthe Golden Age detective novels of Dostoevsky translator David Magarshack, whoseBig Ben Strikes Eleven: A London Mysterywas recently reissued by Poisoned Pen.

Washington Postdives intoThe War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free(Broadside),the 2024 book bysecretary of defensenominee Pete Hegseth.

Publishers Weeklyreports onhow booksellers are reaching readers without using TikTok.

Reactorgathers “five post-apocalyptic novels set on a nearly empty Earth.”

Authors on Air

Kirkus’sFully Bookedpodcastspeaks with Catherine Coleman Flowers, author ofHoly Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope(Spiegel & Grau).

NPR’sCode Switchtalks to Hajar Yazdiha, author ofThe Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement(Princeton Univ.).

CBC’sBookends with Mattea Roachinterviews Amy Lin, author of the memoirHere After(Zibby;LJstarred review).

Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conferencepodcastreleases a 2024 talk by John Vaillant, author ofFire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World(Knopf).

Tomorrow,Good Morning Americawill host Rebecca Yarros, author ofOnyx Storm(Entangled: Red Tower), and Anthony O’Neal, author ofTake Your Seat at the Table: Live an Authentic Life of Abundance, Wellness, and Freedom(Thomas Nelson).

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novelThe Daughter of Doctor Moreau(Del Rey;LJstarred review)is being developed for TV at Universal;Deadlinehas the news.

A screen adaptation of Julie C. Dao’s “Rise of the Empress” seriesis in the works at Amazon,Reactorreports.

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