Excerpted on The Pool this week is Julie Buntin’s Marlena, in which “Cat is a swotty 15-year-old thrown off the rails by her parents’ unexpected divorce and a move to an almost-trailer park in Michigan resort town Silver Lake with her older brother and their functioning-alcoholic mother”.
One Book Riot contributor has written about fictional bookshops they’d like to visit, and three of them are in the UK.
Podcasts
On the New Statesman podcast, hosts Helen and Stephen are joined by the author and editor Andrew O’Hagan, to “explore selfhood in the internet era”.
On A Good Read, Harriett Gilbert talks favourite books with music presenter Verity Sharp and table tennis champion turned author Matthew Syed.
Guardian Books interviews Juno Dawson and Reni Eddo-Lodge.
Prizes
Daniel Shand has been named the winner of this year’s Betty Trask Prize for his darkly comic novel Fallow. The first ever self-published novel on the Betty Trask shortlist, Speak its Name by Kathleen Jowitt, was awarded £5,000.
The longlist for the McIlvanney Prize Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award is out and sees début authors competing with Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.
