Indie booksellers are going for double the book awards fun this week.

The Indies Choice Book Awards are back after a seven year hiatus to celebrate the best titles that appeared on the ABA’s Indie Next List, Kids’ Indie Next List, and/or Indies Introduce lists in 2025. Among the winners announced yesterday:

Virginia Evans also took home the inaugural James Patterson + Bookshop.org Prize, announced on Monday. The prize, established to celebrate debut authors, comes with a $15,000 check. Milo Todd’s The Lilac People took the runner-up spot for $10,000.

🏆 See all of the Indies Choice winners and the full longlist for the James Patterson + Bookshop.org prize. — RJS

This year, we’ve been counting down the best books of the century so far in different categories. On the docket today is the best recent historical fiction—which feels like a contradiction in terms.

🕰️ Historical fiction has changed significantly over the decades, especially since the turn of this century.

🤔 The huge scope of the genre made it difficult to put this list together. Our writers had a lot of debates about what historical fiction even is.

After a lot of deliberation in front of a corkboard with book covers and red string, we have our picks for the 50 Best Historical Fiction Books of the Century So Far, taking us from ancient Greece to the Joseon dynasty in Korea to the Six-Day War in Palestine to 1980s NASA astronaut training. — DE

A thriller so terrifying, you must “see” it to believe.

FBI Special Agent Lukas Stark has been hunting the Tableau Killer for eighteen months. He’s always two steps behind, and he’s about to find out why.

Remote the Six, the first book in the Remote series from New York Times bestselling author Eric Rickstad, plunges Stark and his reluctant new partner into a cross-country chase with a killer who seems to know their every move. When the truth finally surfaces, it’s worse than either man imagined.

We’ve been waiting for this one: Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian novel Parable of the Sower is finally set for a film adaptation.

The eerily prescient story opens in 2024 and images a United States in which times are bad and getting worse. Climate change has made food and water scarce and expensive. Paying work is rare; company towns, sex work, and modern slavery are on the rise. The basic institutions of American life have eroded, and some have already broken.

After catastrophe strikes her neighborhood in 2026, main character Lauren and two of her friends set out for the north in search of a better situation and something to believe in.

Melina Matsoukas is set to direct the adaptation. Matsoukas, who directed the 2019 film Queen & Slim and several episodes of Issa Rae’s Insecure, is also known for her frequent collaborations with Beyoncé, including the video for “Formation.”

🎧 Learn more about the history and impact of Parable of the Sower with our Zero to Well-Read episode available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

“Maybe there is a beast…maybe it’s only us.”

Lord of the Flies, the story that inspired both Lost and Yellowjackets, returns to the screen in a four-part miniseries.

The first trailer dropped this week, and it looks way better than you’d expect from a Netflix adaptation, especially if you’re still feeling burned from People We Meet on Vacation. We can thank our pals across the pond for the excellent production value.

🐷 Catch up with Piggy and the gang when all four episodes come out May 4.

Get your next three audiobooks completely free from Audiobooks.com.

Choose from over 500,000 titles, including the haunting new edition of Stephen King’s classic novella The Body, and the highly anticipated new release from historical fiction maven Marie Benedict, Daughter of Egypt. Claim your three free audiobooks and start your free 30-day Audiobooks.com trial today! 

Natasha Bishop is the author of the upcoming romance The Art of Loving You, releasing April 14th from Zando/Slow Burn. Here, she shares three books that reflect the themes of grief and healing that run through the story.

Fast by Millie Belizaire: Grief shows up as motion. It is constant, controlled, and deeply intentional. The heroine, Caprice, leans into her independence, using it as both protection and identity. That tension felt familiar to me when writing Dani. In The Art Of Loving You, her drive is real, but so is the way it shields her from what she hasn’t fully faced. This storytelling reminded me that strength and softness aren’t opposites, and that sometimes love asks us to slow down enough to feel what we have been outrunning. 

A Timeless Love by Shanel: There is this idea that grief can connect as much as it separates. There’s something powerful about shared loss acting as a thread. It’s something that quietly pulls two people back into each other’s orbit. That feeling deeply informed The Art of Loving You. I was drawn to the idea that love isn’t confined by time. That the past doesn’t just haunt—it can guide. The writing captures that sense of emotional familiarity, where love feels both new and already known.

Colliding with Fate by A.E. Valdez: Love is a risk that neither character feels fully ready to take. Grief has shaped them in ways that make vulnerability feel dangerous, but also necessary. That emotional push and pull is at the heart of The Art of Loving You. I wanted to explore how healing often comes through connection, not before it. And even in the heavier moments, there’s still space for banter, tension, and softness: the things that make picking up a romance book feel just as exciting as it is transformative.

Get the most out of your Kindle Unlimited subscription with three exciting new releases.

– Emily Martin

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Did you know? Anne Lamott drives a sage green 1959 Volkswagen Beetle.

📚 Travel back in time with the best new historical fiction out in April.

🤔 Consult the data: do we still need literary agents?

🌈 Your TBR could be gayer. The Our Queerest Shelves newsletter can help.

❓ Can you recognize these novels from their characters?

🐙 See the trailer for Remarkably Bright Creatures, coming May 8.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Danika Ellis, Emily Martin, and Jeff O’Neal. Thanks to Kelly Jensen for copy editing.

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