News of note for readers: January 22, 2026

Catch up quick with the bookish news of the past few days ... or take a deeper dive into each story. Your choice!  

Awards

• The National Book Critics Circle shortlists have been announced; we'll learn the winners March 20 (Literary Hub). 

• Frankenstein (adapted from Mary Shelley’s pioneering novel); Hamnet (adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel); One Battle After Another (loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland); and Train Dreams (adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella) are among this year's Oscar nominees for best adapted screenplay (Entertainment Weekly).

rights violations

• Indie bookstores in the Twin Cities, including one owned by author Louise Erdrich, are joining the efforts to protect residents from the ongoing federal assault on the city (Literary Hub).

• Bad Blood author and New York Times reporter John Carreyrou, along with five other writers, has filed a lawsuit against several AI companies for pirating their books to train chatbots (Reuters). 

• We Need Diverse Books is launching the Unbanned Book Network, which will donate books by authors who have been banned and also pick author ambassadors for school districts facing bans (Associated Press).

Upcoming releases

• Jeffrey Archer has announced that his next novel, Adam and Eve, will be his last; the book comes out October 6 (The Guardian).

• Crime writer Val McDermid said she was assigned a sensitivity reader to identify languages changes to be made in her older Lindsey Gordon novels, before they were re-released (The Guardian).

• Check out the cover of and design process for A Bad Deal in Mormon Land by T.I.M. Wirkus, which will be published on October 1 (Electric Literature).

Obituaries

• Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess, who wrote more than twenty books on public policy, the press, and democracy, as well as a memoir, died Sunday at age ninety-two (The New York Times). 

• Georges Borchardt, a literary agent whose clients included five Nobel laureates — including Elie Wiesel — and eight Pulitzer winners, died Sunday at age ninety-seven (The New York Times).