Maxim Loskutoff’s debut novel RUTHIE FEAR was named the 2021 High Plains Book Award winner for Fiction. He was previously honored in 2019 in the Short Stories category for his debut collection, COME WEST AND SEE. The judges praise the novel’s titular protagonist: "Ruthie Fear, who only once leaves Montana, has seen more of the world than you or I or most of the world’s fictional characters. She understands life’s too-short sweetness and its dark monsters; she is both a complete original and utterly believable.” The Billings Gazette, meanwhile, calls RUTHIE FEAR “one of the most powerful and resonant novels of 2020,” and Loskutoff “a brilliant and thoughtful writer.” W. W. Norton & Company published the book on September 1, 2020.

DEAR CYBORGS author Eugene Lim’s next book, SEARCH HISTORY, published this week to much fanfare. The Washington Post offered an excellent review, calling the novel “an authentic expression of a mind striving to comprehend the inexplicable cruelties of the universe and humanity’s most proper response,” adding: “Fans of Haruki Murakami’s melancholy, oneiric tales will also delight in Lim’s assault upon consensus reality.” Granta featured an excerpt from the book on its website, and Lim sat down for a Q&A with Poets & Writers. When asked about the most challenging part of writing the novel, Lim said: “Even if there are many things going on in it, I think at its heart this novel is a book about grief. And writing about that subject while enduring its wound makes you doubt yourself, makes you wonder whether one is being honest or honoring or insensitive or sentimentalizing. I wanted to articulate and be honest to the emotion of grief but also I wanted it to be both original and transformed by and into fiction—not so that the emotion was made into mere artifice but so that the artifice and strong emotions could stand together without either feeling manipulated or made false by the other.” Coffee House Press published SEARCH HISTORY on October 5, 2021.

Christopher Sorrentino's memoir NOW BEACON, NOW SEA has received further critical praise. The Chicago Review of Books deem it an “ambitious balancing act of summary and scene that painstakingly reveals an unsettled mind doing the work of reconfiguring its understanding of the past,” and The Los Angeles Review of Books writes: “With an excoriating candor, with empathy enough to give you gooseflesh, [Sorrentino] gleans exciting new clues in that never-ending mystery, the lives of the artists.” Catapult published the memoir on September 7, 2021.

ON FREEDOM by Maggie Nelson received a rave review in The Boston Globe. Alden Jone writes: “ON FREEDOM proves that Nelson continues to do us a great service as a critic, which is to herself digest, and sometimes wrestle with, copious amounts of literature and theory…to integrate this material into a relatively short book, in an accessible, felicitous voice all Nelson’s own. There are no hot takes in ON FREEDOM. While hot takes are satisfying, they rarely finish the job. If you want to get your hands around something as vast and slippery as freedom, you are going to have to get comfortable moving through an ideological briar patch. ON FREEDOM offers navigation tips, but Nelson’s call to action is a journey that readers must take on their own.” Nelson also sat down for interviews with The Philosopher, The Yale Review, and The Believer. The Believer writes: "[O]ver the last decade, Maggie Nelson’s writing has become one of the guiding intellectual lights for artists of all disciplines…Like much of her writing, [ON FREEDOM] is a document of Nelson’s love of reading, and it brims with fascinating morsels of knowledge gathered from across disciplines, especially philosophy and contemporary art…[Nelson] remain[s] a sovereign thinker.” Graywolf Press published the book on September 7, 2021.

THE SWANK HOTEL by Lucy Corin published this week to a flurry of praise. The book was featured on various must-read lists for October, including Chicago Review of Books (“Long whispered about in writer’s circles as a one of a kind talent, Lucy Corin’s latest novel seems poised to finally break her out big.”), Alta, and NYLON (“[T]antalizingly gloomy [and] surreal. Intrigue!”). Graywolf Press published the novel on October 5, 2021.

THE 22 MURDERS OF MADISON MAY author Max Barry’s IT CAME FROM CRUDEN FARM was curated by award-winning editor and Locus magazine critic Jonathan Strahan for THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME 2, which published this week. Tor calls the collection “[a]n assemblage of future classics” and “a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.” Gallery/Saga Press published the collection on September 28, 2021, and G.P. Putnam’s Sons published THE 22 MURDERS OF MADISON MAY on July 6, 2021.

James Han Mattson’s REPRIEVE continues to gather steam in the lead up to its October publication. The book was featured on The New York Times’s “20 New Works of Fiction to Read This Season,” Thrillist’s “24 Books We Can't Wait to Read This Fall,” and The Chicago Tribune’s “Great Fall Books Preview.” Mattson also published a personal essay in Esquire on September 27, titled “What Did They Love Me For?” William Morrow will publish REPRIEVE on October 5, 2021.

Anderson Cooper’s VANDERBILT published this week with a flurry of media attention. Cooper appeared on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, CBS News’ Sunday Morning, and CBS Mornings to discuss the book. Cooper told CBS News: “I thought, 'I wanna write a book for my son that kind of explains part of his past or his family's past.' And it's an honest view, I think, at this remarkable family – remarkable in good ways, and also bad." Harper published the book on September 21, 2021.

THE PROPHETS by Robert Jones Jr. has been longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award in Fiction. The finalists will be announced on October 5, and the winners will be announced on November 17. G.P. Putnam’s Sons published THE PROPHETS on January 5, 2021.

ON FREEDOM by Maggie Nelson continues to earn thunderous praise following its publication. The book is now a national bestseller after landing on lists from The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times. The book also received a glowing review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "... Nelson is a broad thinker, concerned with ethics, and careful to balance emotion with intellect…By the end of her theorizing, Nelson has breathed fresh air into the title notion, and in her openhanded treatment has given her readers a chance to consider freedom more freely." Graywolf Press published the book on September 7, 2021.