“Eric Jerome Dickey, the bestselling novelist who blended crime, romance and eroticism in “Sister, Sister,” “Waking With Enemies” and dozens of other stories about contemporary Black life, has died at age 59.” (The Washington Post).

On June 9th, the latest work from Joyce Carol Oates will hit shelves, NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. THE STARS. To mark this release, make sure your accounts are stocked up on her backlist titles available in Penguin Random House’s collection.

“Ernest J. Gaines, award-winning novelist and author of the acclaimed The Autobiography of Jane Pittman, and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient, died of a heart attack while sleeping at his home in Oscar, Louisiana. He was 86.

A member of a longtime family of Louisiana sharecroppers, Gaines was born in poverty on the River Lake Plantation near False River. He was schooled on the plantation by seasonal visiting teachers and eventually moved to California at the age of 15 (schooling for African American kids ended at the 8th grade). Gaines attended San Francisco State University, and served two years in the Army, before winning a writing fellowship to Stanford University.”

– Publishers Weekly

On December 5, one of our most acclaimed and beloved authors celebrates her 85th birthday. The Cut describes Didion thusly, all reasons for celebration: “Embodies chic Californian minimalism, basically lived the plot of The Bell Jar, gave writers permission to hate New York, made angsty fragility poetic (undoubtedly inspiring future generations of anorexia memoirists), and most important, turned being small, feminine, and shy — all handicaps in a man’s world — into the ultimate professional advantage.”

“It’s August, so I wanted to let you know about a few books I’ve been reading this summer, in case you’re looking for some suggestions. To start, you can’t go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they’re transcendent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them. And while I’m at it, here are a few more titles you might want to explore.” President Barack Obama on Instagram, 8/14/19

Toni Morrison has died at the age of eighty-eight. 

Morrison’s novels were celebrated and embraced by booksellers, critics, educators, readers, and librarians. Her work also ignited controversy, notably in school districts that tried to ban her books. Few American writers won more awards for their books and writing. Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy recognizing her as an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” In 1996, she was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“American Masters–Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin will premiere Friday, August 2, on PBS, pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS Video app. The film had its world premiere at the Sheffield Documentary Festival and has been shown internationally at dozens of festivals. Produced with Le Guin’s participation over the course of a decade, the documentary explores the personal and professional life of the notoriously private author through conversations with Le Guin as well as her family, friends and the generations of writers she influenced, including Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon and David Mitchell.” – Shelf Awareness

THE TESTAMENTS, the highly-anticipated sequel to Margaret Atwood’s blockbuster novel THE HANDMAID’S TALE, goes on sale September 10th, 2019. Find the author’s bestselling backlist titles in this collection.

‘Andrea Camilleri, who took a late-career stab at writing a mystery novel and came up with the Inspector Montalbano detective series, which became wildly successful in Italy and was the basis for a popular television series, died on Wednesday morning in a hospital in Rome. He was 93.” – The New York Times

The author’s new trade paperback original, the 24th title in the Inspector Montalbano Mystery series, is on sale 9/3/19. Also on this list are the author’s top 20 backlist titles.