Happy June, readers! It’s not a huge news day, as most of publishing turned its attention to BookExpo last week, but I still have some great book-related news and recommendations for you! Because I love you and I like you. I hope everything in your world is marvelous and you’re reading something wonderful. Enjoy your upcoming week, and be excellent to each other. – xoxo, Liberty
Sponsored by Hangman by Jack Heath, new from Hanover Square Press.
An addictive debut thriller starring an FBI consultant with a peculiar taste for crime and punishment…
A boy vanishes on his way home from school. His frantic mother receives a ransom call: pay or else. Enter Timothy Blake, an FBI consultant with a knack for solving impossible cases but whose expertise comes at a price: every time he saves a life, he also takes one. But this kidnapper is more cunning and ruthless than any he’s faced before. And he’s been assigned a new partner within the Bureau: a woman linked to the past he’s so desperate to forget.
PS – Don’t forget we’re giving away $500 to the bookstore of your choice! Enter here by June 21st!
Here’s this week’s trivia question: What was Maurice Sendak’s original title for Where The Wild Things Are?
Deals, Reals, and Squeals!
Ooooo! Space Opera by Catherynne Valente is going to be a music-themed film!
Charles Melton joins Yara Shahidi in The Sun Is Also a Star.
Zack Snyder says The Fountainhead is his next project. (Y tho?)
Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series will find a home at Netflix.
Comic relief is the thing with feathers: Hailee Steinfeld to star in Emily Dickinson comedy series.
Timothée Chalamet, Robert Pattinson, Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, and Lily-Rose Depp will star in The King, based on Shakespeare’s Henry the IV and V.
Cover Reveals
Teen Vogue scooped the exclusive first look at Dealing in Dreams from Lilliam Rivera. (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, March 5, 2019)
Here’s the first look at Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty’s upcoming novel Nine Perfect Strangers. (Flatiron Books, November 6)
Megan Mullally revealed the cover of The Greatest Love Story Ever Told, the book she cowrote with her husband, Nick Offerman. (Dutton, October 2)
And here’s the first peek at the US cover of Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore. (Knopf, October 9)
And Penguin Teen just revealed the cover of Four Dead Queens by Astrid Scholte. (Penguin Teen, February 26, 2019)
And lucky attendees at BookExpo got the first look at Samantha Shannon’s upcoming epic novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree. (Bloomsbury Publishing, February 26, 2019)
Sneak Peeks
Here’s the first trailer for the Ursula K. Le Guin documentary.
Book Riot Recommends
At Book Riot, I work on the New Books! email, the All the Books! podcast about new releases, and the Book Riot Insiders New Release Index. I am very fortunate to get to read a lot of upcoming titles, and learn about a lot of upcoming titles, and I’m delighted to share a couple with you each week!
Loved, loved, loved:
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday, November 20)
Oooooo, this book packs a lot in less than 200 pages. Korede is a nurse in Nigeria. She is also the person she calls when her gorgeous younger sister Ayoola needs help cleaning up her mess. And by “mess,” I mean “bodies”. So far, three of them. Korede’s loyalty lies with her sister, so she always helps hide the evidence, but her loyalties are tested when the doctor Korede has loved from afar starts dating Ayoola. On the surface a thriller, this is actually a smart novel about beauty standards, sexism, and violence against women.
Excited to read:
Lost Soul, Be at Peace by Maggie Thrash (Candlewick, October 9)
YESSSSSSSSS! A follow-up to Honor Girl! This one is about a period of depression Thrash experienced in eleventh grade. She did a tremendous job being so honest and smart about awkward situations, scary feelings, and real life in Honor Girl, I’m sure this one will be fantastic as well! I can’t wait to read it.
What I’m reading this week.
The Witch Elm by Tana French
If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
Treeborne by Caleb Johnson
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
Non-book-related recommendation.
I just started watching The Terror on AMC and WHOO is it great. I haven’t actually read the book by Dan Simmons (WHO AM I?!?) but I am hella-enjoying this show about British explorers in the Arctic in the mid-19th century who are trapped in the ice and being pursued by…something. Possibly. It’s so creepy! Plus it has my boyfriend Ciarán Hinds. I’m pretty sure he and Tobias Menzies are contractually obligated to appear in the same shows every few years.
And this is funny.
And now it’s stuck in your head too.
Trivia answer: Where the Wild Horses Are.