Major Children's Book Award Winners Announced

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Bestseller Julie Kagawa Signs Seven-Figure Deal with Harlequin Teen

Harlequin TEEN announced today that young adult novelist Julie Kagawa – a USA Today and New York Times bestseller for her Iron Fey series – will be paid in the seven figures for a multibook deal. The new series, which doesn’t have a name yet, will feature “mythical creatures in a contemporary setting,” the publisher says. The first book in the new series will be published in 2015.

Kagawa’s previous books have mixed paranormal and dystopian themes, crossing from vampire to romance.  She grew up in Sacramento and moved to Hawaii at the age of nine. “There,” as her memorable ...

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The Phildecotts (Before the Caldecotts)

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B&N Releases New Discover List

Barnes & Noble has released its latest Discover Great New Writers list–the Discover list, which the retailer produces four times a year, has an uncanny knack for highlighting some of the best brand-new fiction and nonfiction. Publishers submit early copies of forthcoming books to B&N and a group of volunteer booksellers at the company read the submissions and meet to decide which books make the final cut. The chain’s stores then promote Discover titles, a valuable privilege for writers who otherwise might be overlooked amidst all the other books getting media attention and sales. Past writers selected for ...

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They're Being Ironic, Right? Right?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell, in just 140 characters, whether someone is being ironic. Mashable has a collection of “10 People Annoyed That Inauguration Poem Didn’t Rhyme” with a display of their huffy, cringe-inducing tweets criticizing the poem Richard Blanco wrote for the inauguration. We know at least one of the 10, Omar L. Gallaga, is kidding (“That was a pretty good poem considering it didn't rhyme and contained no men from Nantucket,” he tweeted), but what about Jeffrey Brian (“Your dumb poem doesn't rhyme, mr blanco. I'm turning off the tv and getting a ...

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Lance Armstrong: It’s About a Funny Prank

Has there ever been a more sadly prophetic book title than Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike? It’s now about the doping, the alleged intimidation and the stonewalling. It’s also, in Australian library circles, about a funny little prank. A certain librarian is probably in hot water right about now after he or she posted the following note to library users in Sydney’s Manly Library: "All non-fiction Lance Armstrong Books, including Lance Armstrong - Images of a Champion, The Lance Armstrong Performance Program and Lance Armstrong: World's Greatest Champion, will soon be moved to ...

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Cutest Edgar Allan Poe Ever

The Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for their 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, known as the Edgars. The 2013 Edgar nominees listed below honor books published in 2012. The Edgars are the most prestigious awards in mystery and thriller writing and they’re also the cutest ones. Look at that statuette of Poe the winners receive! I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t store that thing in the bathroom like some Oscar winners do. I’m feeling judged by that little dude. Congrats to all the nominees – the winners will be announced at the ...

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New Khaled Hosseini Novel Out in May

Khaled Hosseini’s first new novel in six years will be released on May 21^st, his publisher Riverhead Books announced today. Calling Hosseini “a born storyteller with a huge heart,” his editor Sarah McGrath said in a news release that Hosseini, whose two books The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns have sold over 10 million copies combined, has “surprised and amazed me once again” with And the Mountains Echoed, his new novel.

Riverhead describes And the Mountains Echoed this way: “In a multigenerational novel revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters ...

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NBCC Finalists Announced

The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its 2012 awards – 30 books (Reyna Grande's memoir is pictured at left) are finalists in the six categories in which the NBCC gives awards–autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. One of the most prestigious American literary awards, the NBCCs are the only sole American awards bestowed by working critics and book review editors. Winners will be announced on Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 6p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium in New York. The list of finalists (and three critics receiving lifetime achievement awards from the ...

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Richard Ben Cramer: 1950-2013

Richard Ben Cramer died on Monday after suffering from lung cancer. Cramer received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 when he was a foreign correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer but if the obituaries about him this week are any indication, Cramer will be remembered for one thing: publishing an account of the 1988 presidential race, What It Takes: The Way to the White House. When the book was published in 1992, our reviewer memorably wrote that What It Takes is “exhaustively researched and written in a hot, jarring, unsentimental prose: the perfect antidote to election-year mythologizing.”

Cramer also published Joe DiMaggio ...

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Liebetrau Elected to NBCC Board

Eric Liebetrau, Kirkus’ managing editor and nonfiction editor (pictured at left), has been elected to the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors. Liebetrau is one of eight critics from across the country who were recently elected to the board: Mark Athitakis, Gregg Barrios, Tom Beer, David Biespiel, Jane Ciabattari, Carolyn Kellogg, and Anne Trubek are the other new (or re-elected) board members. As a board member of the NBCC, Liebetrau will be reading even more books than he does in his work for Kirkus. “I think the NBCC category awards are some of the most prestigious awards in the ...

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First Do My Hair, Then 'Northanger Abbey'

Readers are constantly asking those of at us Kirkus which book they should read next in their book club (follow-up statement: please get me a free copy of the book you just suggested). Then ensues what feels like a therapy session we did not elect to attend: How do I get my friends to speak up more during book group? How do I get my friends to talk less during book group? Why were those two people making out in the corner while I was saying smart things about Gravity’s Rainbow?

No one at Kirkus has the answers to ...

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Critics of Library Renovations Should Calm Down, Davidson Says

Justin Davidson, who writes about architecture for New York magazine, says the writers who are concerned about the renovations planned for the New York Public Library headquarters at Bryant Park should just chill out. “For months, bookish loyalists have been howling about a $300 million plan to divide the NYPL’s research collection between below-ground vaults and offsite storage to make room for a circulating library,” Davidson writes. Acknowledging the writers’ worries (the renovations mean it will take longer to access books, the new library will be a “hollowed-out hybrid of new and old,” according to the renovation’s critics ...

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Lights, Camera…Book Cover

Huffpost Celebrity has a nice slideshow of actors who’ve modeled for book covers. Amanda Seyfried, Brooke Shields, and Matt Bomer have all appeared on book jackets but our favorite in the lineup here is Blondie rocker Debbie Harry, whose head – and only her head - appears perched over a box of chocolates on the cover of Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair (1971). 

Image from Huffpost Celebrity.

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Quentin Tarantino as Book Critic?

Inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s revelation on Fresh Air last week that he’s going to stop making movies at the age of 60 and might write book reviews instead, the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy created a celebrity “fantasy book critic league” that we like. They imagine Lady Gaga writing for the London Review of Books and reveal that Clint Eastwood, after his knockout performance talking to an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention, is a fan of Samuel Beckett and writes for the New York Review of Books.

Image from djangounchained.org.

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Crown to Publish Expanded Content

Starting soon, Crown Publishers will publish select paperbacks with expanded end-of-the-book insight into the writers of those books and the ideas behind those books. The program, called Extra Libris, features 16 pages of extra content, like Q&As with the book’s writer, author essays, and readers’ guides. Extra Libris isn’t too noteworthy in and of itself – various publishers have been experimenting with end-of-the-book content recently – but the three inaugural books Crown has selected for Extra Libris are proof the publisher knows exactly what it’s doing with Extra Libris. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that ...

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Former CIA Agent, Writer to Face Prison Time

On January 25^th, John Kiriakou will be sentenced for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. A former CIA agent, Kiriakou has been in the federal government’s crosshairs since 2007, when he disclosed to ABC News’ Brian Ross in a televised interview that water-boarding was an element of the United States’ interrogation of alleged war criminals. He will be the first CIA officer in the organization’s history to be sent to prison for leaking confidential information to a reporter. The transcript of the interview with ABC reads a bit like some of the scenes from Zero Dark Thirty ...

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William Alexander to Publish Science Fiction Novel

William Alexander was a dark horse in the run-up to the National Book Awards last fall. A first-time novelist, his chances of nabbing the award against some of the other finalists in the Young People’s Literature category seemed (to those of us who stay up late at night betting big money in smoky rooms on the winners of national literary prizes) scant, paltry, fair-to-middling, even dubious.

Then he won. Goblin Secrets is, as our reviewer notes, funny, thrilling, and atmospheric. Fans of Goblin Secrets can look forward to what his publisher calls a “companion novel,” out on March 5 ...

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