A New Barbara Kingsolver Novel Is Coming Out This Fall

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

A Nationwide Book Ban Bill Has Been Introduced in the House of Representatives

Book Riot’s Kelly Jensen r eports on a truly terrible proposed bill with sweeping ramifications:

Following this week’s State of the Union Address, House Republicans worked quickly to advance legislation to ban books from public schools nationwide. House Resolution 7661 (H.R. 7661), also known as the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by prohibiting use of funds under the act “to develop, implement, facilitate, host, or promote any program or activity for, or to provide or promote literature or other materials to, children under the age of 18 that includes sexually oriented material, and for other purposes.”

Move Over, Harlan Coben

Then He Was Gone by Isabel Booth (out now) is the first book to be published out of The Black List’s fiction project. It’s an initiative would-be authors should take seriously, and I think whatever comes out of it should be of special interest to readers as well:

When thinking about Fiction at The Black List, our goals have remained the same: provide writers with free resources, give quality feedback on evaluations, and when that evaluation scores high, tell our industry community about it; there are no guarantees.

New Barbara Kingsolver Novel Coming This Fall

Barbara Kingsolver’s next novel is Partita, and it will be published this October. From the publisher’s description:

"..we meet another rural Appalachian, Livia Bohusz, unmoored in childhood by her brother’s tragic death and parents’ stifling silence, finding her only comfort in a consuming love of music. Livia’s exceptional skill as a pianist takes her from the family farm, via a college music scholarship, into a new world of thrilling knowledge, risky passions and confounding class barriers. Both a coming-of-age story and an examination of mid-life hopes and regrets, the novel is structured as a composition as complex as the pieces Livia plays. From one of the greatest storytellers alive today, Partita is also as simple as love and longing, as touching and finely tuned as music."

Kingsolver was herself on a music scholarship as an undergraduate at DePaul University, before switching to biology, feeling the career prospects as a musician were too dim to pursue. Nice to see her success in a notoriously easy industry to make a buck in.

The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists

No surprise to see Heated Rivalry still appearing on all five of the best-seller lists we track. But are you already on the Theo of Golden train, I ask you.