Emily Bell will join Zando as head of editorial, starting January 4 and reporting to Molly Stern. She was previously executive editor at FSG and director of FSG originals. Bell acquire her own list, as well as hiring and leading Zando’s editorial team.
Jack W. Perry has joined Astra Publishing House as director of sales & analytics. Perry will be responsible for the sales efforts of Boyds Mills & Kane; mineditionUS; and Astra House.
Becky Yeager has been promoted to manager, AdPromo and marketing at Tom Doherty Associates.
Imprints
Welbeck Publishing Group is launching a new children’s fiction imprint, Welbeck Flame. Felicity Alexander will join as associate publisher, alongside Jane Harris, in January 2021. Alexander previously worked at Piccadilly and HotKey Books.
Launching
Sandorf Passage, a new independent publisher based in Zagreb, Croatia, and South Portland, Maine will launch in spring 2021, with financial support from the European Union. The first four titles will include two novels, a poetry collection, and a work of nonfiction. Titles are distributed in North America and the UK by Independent Publishers Group.
Awards
Hervé Le Tellier won France’s Prix Goncourt for his novel L’anomalie.
Best of
NPR’s Book Concierge is back, featuring 383 titles recommended by NPR staff and critics.
Shelf Awareness chose its best books of the year across three categories. The fiction and nonfiction picks:
Fiction
The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin
Crooked Hallelujah, by Kelli Jo Ford
Homeland Elegies, by Ayad Akhtar
Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor, trans. by Sophie Hughes
Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
Luster, by Raven Leilani
The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
Real Life, by Brandon Taylor
Revolutions of All Colors, by Dewaine Farria
Nonfiction
African American Poetry, edited by Kevin Young
The Beauty in Breaking, by Michele Harper
The Book of Eels, by Patrik Svensson
Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson
Homie: Poems, by Danez Smith
Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad
Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey
Notes on a Silencing, by Lacy Crawford
Something that May Shock and Discredit You, by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Veritas, by Ariel Sabar
New Yorker staffers chose their favorite old and new reads of the year.