-
Top 20 Indies: Indie Sleepers Fall 2011
Despite many stores cutting back on hardcover fiction as e-books continue to erode print sales, booksellers have high expectations for the fall. “This season I’m very optimistic that there are a lot of books people will want to own,” says Jason Kennedy, a bookseller/buyer at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee. He’s not alone.
-
Beyond That Lady Detective: African Crime Fiction
For most readers, African crime fiction begins and ends with Alexander McCall Smith. His wonderful, internationally bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which debuted in the U.S. in 1998, presents localized if significant problems of daily living that Precious Ramotswe, the agency’s founder and main detective, sorts out with infinite patience and compassion for human foibles.
-
From the Front Lines: Military Books 2011
In 1961, Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address as president coined a term that reverberates still: the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe warned against granting the "military-industrial complex" too influential a position in the U.S. In the intervening 50 years, in addition to taking center stage in the economy and in politics, that military-industrial complex has also stepped into the cultural spotlight. The act, the planning, the execution, the aftermath of war in general—not any particular conflict—now constitute a key subject in our national dialogue.
-
An Agent's Healthy Talk: PW Talks with Yfat Reiss Gendell
Reiss Gendell now represents some major names in the health arena, including Pierre Dukan, whose The Dukan Diet marks week 16 on PW's list, and Tosca Reno, a bestseller-list veteran with nearly a million copies sold of titles like Your Best Body Now. PW caught up with Reiss Gendell to ask about the market for health books.
-
Rx for Wellness: Focus on Health 2011
Traditional medicine has always been the mainstay of the health category. And its books reflected that by tending toward a "just the facts" approach that advocated conservative treatment options, all wrapped up in a staid package. But as the medical establishment has begun to embrace a more holistic view, titles dealing with everything from overall health to conditions like diabetes, autism, and cancer are reflecting the change in attitude, say publishers.
-
Recipes for Success
Some days, it seems as if the Internet is going to kill off cookbooks. With Web sites from Epicurious (www.epicurious.com) to Chow (www.chow.com) serving up recipes for free, who needs to shell out for a book? "The vast database of recipes online pushes us all to be more creative and more relevant," says Hannah Rahill, v-p and publisher, at Weldon Owen.
-
Crafting The Future: Weaving Print and Digital
Most ads for e-readers still feature a picture of a device showing black-and-white text in neat lines on a small screen. And basic text was what the earlier devices handled best (and, arguably, still do). With lush photo spreads and need to include patterns and illustrations, it's no surprise that publishers of craft titles were not the first out of the gate to embrace digital formats.
-
Fall 2011 Religion Listings: Religion's Remedies: Humor, Silence
Penn Gillette's forthcoming atheist screed, GOD, NO! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, may be a late entry in the does-He-or doesn't-He-exist debate, but it's sure to be freshly funny. Playing counterpoint to the magician-comedian is an author who's entertaining enough to have earned a trip to The Colbert Report.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Sports: Villains, Heroes, Hunter
Competitive sports triggers many complex emotions—joy mixed with tears, suffering stirred to violence. In the same week in June, hockey fans set fire to cars in the Vancouver streets two nights after a nation of basketball fans in the U.S were introduced to the word "schadenfreude" in the NBA finals, when the Mavs beat the Heat.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Social Science: Young Americans
As the 2012 presidential campaign begins, it's clear that, for all the talk about fiscal issues, the so-called "culture wars" will figure prominently in selecting who will run—and how they will run—against Barack Obama next November. This season's social science books examine deeply topics of conversation that will soon be bandied about loosely on talk radio, cutting to the core of who we are as Americans, with an especially strong focus on generational issues.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Science: From Big Questions to the Brain
This season in science brings back familiar voices, those writers who have excited our interest in a wide range of subjects, even those we never knew we cared about, like longitude.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements Fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: Shaking Up the Status Quo
The SF/fantasy/horror category, already a chimera, is budding new subcategories right and left. Many authors and publishers have given up on categorization altogether. Words like "amalgamation" and "blending" and "cross-genre" appear in our reviews with increasing frequency, and readers are eagerly gobbling up these unclassifiable books.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Fiction: Romance: Damsels Who Rescue Themselves
The newest generation of romance writers is shaking things up. Restless, adventurous, determined heroines are perfectly suited to 21st-century readers, and even those constrained by the rules of Regency society or werewolf packs are finding ways to stand on their own two feet, their romances complementing but never overwhelming the lives they've built for themselves.
-
Looking at Fall: Fall 2011 Announcements
Last January, in our spring announcements issue, we debuted the fruits of our new title collection method, a portal hosted by Above the Treeline's Edelweiss system through which publishers entered their own titles according to our specifications, and from which PW editors chose notable and representative titles and wrote essays on their top 10 books to watch in 19 categories.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Politics: The Unraveling
There's an election year—and the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks—around the corner, but fall's big books are too preoccupied to notice. They're looking East. The mood is wistful; the emphasis is on American vulnerability and waning influence in a changing world; and many books are trying to unravel one central riddle.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Poetry: Big Little Books
In the spring we saw the release of a handful of retrospective collections—"Selecteds," as we call them—by heavyweight poets like Robert Pinsky and Charles Wright; those kinds of doorstoppers are fun, but there are no new poems in them. In the fall, however, we’ll have slim yet substantial volumes of new poems by a few big names as well as lesser known, but not lesser, writers.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Performing Arts: Lights! Camera! Stardom!
In the entertainment world, there are myriad performers; there are also stars, and then there are stars—and not all of them are people. Expanding the definition, one could term Facebook a star; likewise, Secretariat; and so, in its high-fat way, McDonald's. Herewith, a cross-section of "stars" in the broadest sense.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Fiction: Mysteries & Thrillers: A Mix of Homegrown and Foreign Crime
James Sallis, a master of literary noir, serves up a hallucinatory, almost visionary novel of suspense set in Phoenix, Ariz., The Killer Is Dying. Three alienated characters must each deal with tough personal situations, including a hired gun dying from an unspecified disease.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Music: Flashback—the 1970s, and Before
Novelist Tom Wolfe coined the 1970s "The Me Decade"—responding to 1960s hippie communalism with asserted individualism. And singers and musicians from that decade are certainly voicing themselves now 40 years out.
-
Fall 2011 Announcements: Memoir: Tell Me a Story
We all have one. And if you're one of the few, or as it seems these many years now, one of the many, who gets that story published, congratulations, you've joined a group that ranges all over the literary map.
Browse archive by date:
