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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the stories Today in Books readers were most interested in this week.
A Day in the Life of an Audiobook Narrator
I’m always curious about the nitty-gritty workday details of cool and interesting jobs—they almost always involve more spreadsheets and less glamor than you’d think—so I ate up this day-in-the-life interview with an audiobook narrator with a spoon. How long does it take to get a finished hour of recording? What if you have to pee in the middle of a chapter? How do publishers determine what to pay a narrator? What about the AI of it all? Freelance narrator Emily Ellet goes into all this and more.]
Reagan Arthur Reveals New Imprint’s First Slate of Books
Reagan Arthur, who returned to Hachette to launch a new imprint after being let go from PRH last year in a layoff that shocked the industry, has unveiled the first ten books that will come out under the Cardinal colophon. Arthur, who enjoys one of the highest Q ratings in the industry, is known for her ability to identify books that hit the sweet spot of literary quality and commercial viability. Cardinal will release six books per year, with the mission to “publish books that entertain and enlighten, across genres and across borders.” First up is Catherine Chidgley’s The Book of Guilt, due out September 16, with the rest of the announced titles hitting shelves between winter 2026 and winter 2027. May her efforts succeed.
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Never-Before-Published Harper Lee Stories Coming This Fall
Big book season just got bigger. A new collection of Harper Lee’s writing is coming on October 21. The Land of Sweet Forever will present eight previously unpublished short stories from Lee’s pre-Mockingbird career, along with eight pieces of nonfiction that were originally published between 1961 and 2006. The stories, which Lee tried and failed to have published before she hit the big time, were among the papers her executor discovered after her death in 2016.
Set in both the American South, where Lee grew up, and New York City, where she worked as a young adult, the stories explore the themes that would later define To Kill a Mockingbird: “small town gossip and politics, tender and tense relationships between fathers and daughters, race relations.” Two of the stories reportedly offer insight into how Lee created the character of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Among the nonfiction selections are a profile of Truman Capote, with whom Lee was close friends, a letter to Oprah (yes, really), and a cornbread recipe. The collection will also include scans of some of the original papers with Lee’s working notes.
Having significantly underestimated readers’ excitement and interest in Go Set a Watchman, which sold more than a million copies in its first week when it was published in 2015 (that was a really big number in the days before Onyx Storm), I’ll be very curious about how this collection will be received and by whom: are rank-and-file readers still invested in Lee’s increasingly complicated legacy, or is this one for the historians?
The It Books of March 2025
On the Book Riot Podcast, Jeff O’Neal and I kick off every month with a knockout round analyzing 10 of the hottest new releases. March is packed with big new books—Laila Lalami! Karen Russell! Suzanne Collins!—and this one was a lot of fun. Listen wherever you get your pods.