Congratulations to our 8 National Book Critics Circle finalists for their 2018 Awards. Founded in 1974, the NBCC now comprises more than 1,000 working critics and book-review editors throughout the country, who annually vote and bestow its awards in six categories, honoring the best books published in the past year in the United States.  

Mary Oliver published her first book, No Voyage, in London in 1963, at the age of twenty-eight. The author of more than 20 collections, she was cherished by readers, and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, and the 1992 National Book Award for New and Selected Poems,

Penguin Random House is proud to present these new titles and perennial favorites selected for college-level History and Literature courses!      

As announced last week, Margaret Atwood will write a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, due to publish in hardcover and as an ebook on September 10, 2019.   Her new book The Testaments* is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene in The Handmaid’s Tale and is narrated by three female characters. Atwood made a

The editors of The Times Book Review have chosen the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year and Penguin Random House is thrilled to publish 7 of those selected   “Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a page turner . . . among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the

We celebrate THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez, published by Riverhead, chosen by the panel of five judges from 368 submissions, as the recipient of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, announced Wednesday evening, November 14, at the annual National Book Foundation dinner in downtown Manhattan. Sigrid Nunez’s previous literary honors include a Whiting Writer’s Award, and

The Chronicle of Higher Education asked scholars that very question. Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness. We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as

Contributed by Jessica Brody, author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel (Ten Speed Press, 2018).   In 2005, I was a walking cliché: a struggling writer attempting to sell my first novel, living in a studio apartment wallpapered with rejection letters. I had recently been laid off from my corporate job as a financial

From Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison, this DK book features more than 100 biographies of the world’s greatest writers   Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured novelist, playwright, or poet, biographical entries trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and influenced their work, revealing

Presenting the five finalists for the 2018 National Book Awards published by Penguin Random House     Fiction: FLORIDA by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, Penguin Audio) THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai (Viking Books, Penguin Audio) THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books, Penguin Audio) Poetry: AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Books) Translated Literature: FLIGHTS by Olga Tokarczuk,

Former President Barack Obama posted a message on his Facebook page on Friday, October 12, that began, “I wanted to share a handful of books and articles that speak to the current political moment and something I’ve been talking about around the country this fall.” Among the books that Obama has read and recommends that everyone consider reading before

Contributed by Heather Won Tesoriero, author of  The Class: A Life-Changing Teacher, His World-Changing Kids, and the Most Inventive Classroom in America (Ballantine Books, 2018). In the fall of 2015, I was a producer for the CBS Evening News. We were planning to do an endpiece for the show about Olivia Hallisey, a Greenwich, CT, teenager who