This week’s fiction releases include new novels by Jane Smiley, T C Boyle, and Xochitl Gonzalez, while nonfiction includes work by Jodi Kantor, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, María Corina Machado, and Jordan Ritter Conn. 28 works of fiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-fiction-publishing-april-21 24 works of nonfiction https://bookshop.org/lists/new-nonfiction-publishing-april-21 Also publishing this week are new novels by Kim Michele Richardson and Rebecca Mahoney, both excerpted in our Buzz Books 2026: Spring/Summer anthology. We consult a number of sources in compiling our weekly lists and PM members can see our lists for the coming months on Bookshop. Check out April‘s 120 fiction releases, […]
Archives for April 2026
Carol Shields Prize Shortlist
Forthcoming: New ‘Divergent’ Novels; A Memoir By Dustin Hoffman
Veronica Roth announced at BookCon last weekend that she will publish two new novels in her bestselling “Divergent” series. The first, THE SIXTH FACTION, will come out on October 6 from Harper Collins Children’s. It is “not a prequel, not a sequel, not a spinoff, not a different POV but an alternate universe of Divergent where Tris chooses a different faction,” the author told USA Today. “THE SIXTH FACTION started as an experiment…something that would allow me to explore the series that launched my career,” Roth said in a release. “I feel very fortunate that the team at Harper was […]
Nearly All Works Claimed in Anthropic Suit
In a status report filed on Friday, plaintiffs in the Anthropic suit announced that rightsholders for more than 91 percent of the works have filed claims in the class action settlement for the company’s pirating of books to train their LLM. Attorneys received 119,876 claims by the March 30 deadline, according to the court filing. Those account for 440,490 of the 482,460 works on the works list. The claims rate increased significantly from March 19, when claims covered 54 percent of the works list. Those claim rates are far higher than what is typical: According to a 2019 report by the […]
Denver Book Society in Legal Fight Over Name
The Denver Book Society, the two-month old bookstore that parted ways with its cofounder in March, is now going to court to claim it didn’t infringe on another store’s trademark. The Denver bookstore, owned by Rich Garvin, is suing a Berkley, CA bookstore and wine bar called Book Society, which has been fighting with Garvin over their shared name. Book Society, which was founded in 2023, filed a trademark application for the term “book society” in August 2025 and contacted Garvin with concerns about their similar names the same month, according to the filing. The trademark application is still pending. […]
Obituary: Dean Cooke
Dean Cooke, 71, founder of CookeMcDermid, died on April 14 “after a brief illness.” The agency writes in a memorial post on Instagram, “Dean was a consummate book person who devoted over forty years of his life to publishing. He knew every aspect of the business, starting in a warehouse and working his way up through different depatments at Doubleday and Lester & Orpen Dennys, and later became Publisher of Bantam Seal. He began his agency work at Livingston Cooke in 1992, which merged with the Harding Agency and later The McDermid Agency to become CookeMcDermid in 2017.” The remembrance continues, […]