THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood U.S.: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday Canada: McClelland & Stewart UK: Chatto & Windus   QUICHOTTE by Salman Rushdie U.S.: Random House Canada: Knopf Canada UK: Jonathan Cape   GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernardine Evaristo UK:  Hamish Hamilton 10 MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD by Elif Shafak UK:  Viking UK Click here for the complete 2019 Booker Prize short list. Hearty congratulations to   Mr. Rushdie and Ms. Atwood as well as Ms. Evaristo and Ms. Shafak, and their publishing teams across our companies. On to the awards dinner in London on Monday, October 14.

THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin (Putnam) THE GOOD SON by You-Jeong Jeong (Penguin Books) PROVIDENCE by Caroline Kepnes (Lenny) Vote for your favorite book here by noon on Thursday, June 28. Then, tune into The Tonight Show on Friday night, June 29, when Jimmy Fallon will announce the official “Tonight Show Summer Read!” To share your enthusiasm on social media, follow Jimmy Fallon on Instagram and The Tonight Show on Facebook and interact using #TonightShowSummerReads #prhpartner. Watch Jimmy Fallon announce his book club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRkZNEcLHuw

Here Chris Jackson, Vice President, Publisher, Editor in Chief, One World, reveals how he first came in contact with Dr. Mona, the process of working with her to develop her story and experiences into book form, and ultimately publishing WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE: “I met Mona Hanna-Attisha at the Ridenhour Prize ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, back in 2016. I was there to present an award to one of my authors, Jill Leovy, author of GHETTOSIDE: A True Story of Murder in America; Dr. Mona was there to receive the Ridenhour Truthteller Prize for her work in Flint, Michigan, where she was a key whistleblower in that city’s devastating water crisis. Dr. Mona delivered a few remarks that day that moved me then and have stuck with me ever since. Mona spoke about whistleblowing being a 'choiceless choice' – that having seen what she saw, she had no choice but to risk her professional reputation and the wrath of her own state government to tell the truth she’d uncovered: that the state was poisoning its own children. She also generously dedicated most of her short talk to shining the spotlight on other heroes in Flint – activists, mothers, reporters, scientists – creating a portrait not of a singular, heroic savior, but of a community that came together to save itself. I approached her after her talk – wading through a crowd of other admirers – and asked her if she’d ever thought about writing a book. She took my card and six months later her proposal landed in my in-box. “Working with Dr. Mona has been its own process of discovery. At our first meeting back in Washington, all I knew about her was she was a pediatrician and a whistleblower. But in some ways, Dr. Mona had been preparing for her role in the crisis for her entire life. She was the child of Iraqi immigrants who came to this country fleeing a tyrannical dictator who poisoned his own people and by the time the crisis in Flint hit, she was an established pediatrician, researcher, and educator who had oriented her practice toward social justice. The book as we initially conceived it, wove these strands together – the immigrant story, the story of her incredible work before and after the crisis at the Hurley Pediatric Center, and, of course, the thrilling core narrative: the crisis and the bold detective work and outspoken advocacy that forced the whole country to pay attention. But the sum of the book had to be more than those three pieces. “A great book always needs to elevate its story with a theme that gives it deeper meaning – in other words, Dr. Mona and I had to figure out what the bigger story was that she was trying to tell. We didn’t just want a riveting, thrilling story of rule-breaking citizen activism; and we didn’t just want to provide much-needed information about lead and water. We realized that we wanted readers to be changed by the book – to see in the incredibly important story of Flint an even bigger story. Flint wasn’t just an anomalous event or even a tragedy. It was a deliberate government-abetted crime that reflected a twisted set of values. And we wanted the book to show how a different set of values–fighting for justice, respecting science, caring for the most vulnerable, especially children, and choosing truth over personal security or careerism—might point us toward a different way, with different outcomes. Dr. Mona and others have used the crisis as an opening for incredible, creative work in Flint, where they are building models for how communities can recover from histories of policy-driven violence and deprivation. We wanted the book to be a creative model in its way, too. “Our goal was to get all of this into the book and I think Mona succeeded. The book is a thriller about a crisis – ‘Grishamesque’ is how O Magazine described it—but more than that, it’s a book about the most urgent and timely challenges we’re facing right now as a society. It’s about how we must care for each other better. How we must tell the truth, even in the face of awful repercussions. And it’s about how we – as citizens – don’t have to wait for our politicians to get their acts together. We can fight for change where we stand, right now, because the stakes are too high to wait. “Dr. Mona will be appearing all over the media and traveling the country over the next weeks and months talking about her book and these deeper ideas. And just as Flint discovered in the water crisis, I think the country at large will find that our present crisis has met its ideal advocate: the daughter of immigrants, a driven scientist and caregiver, a passionate defender of children, and a powerful, fearless truthteller.” See and hear Dr. Mona talk about WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE in conversation with Chelsea Clinton tonight at Barnes & Noble Union Square in NYC beginning at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Random House was the U.S. hardcover publisher of his first novel, LETTING GO (1962), and the astonishing PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT (1969). Bantam, long before its integration with Random House, reprinted those titles, as well as GOODBYE, COLUMBUS (1959), OUR GANG (1971) and THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL (1973), in widely read mass market paperback editions. Later, Vintage became the paperback publisher of every one of his major books, from GOODBYE, COLUMBUS to NEMESIS, his last: “A series of novels,” said The Guardian, “that shaped the course of American letters in the second half of the 20th century.” To view a complete list of his Vintage canon of titles, click here. It is our singular privilege to be the publisher of Philip Roth, and to continue to present multi-generations of his writings to U.S. readers.

The bubbly flowed again when Fat Rice chef Abraham Conlon, co-author of THE ADVENTURES OF FAT RICE: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau (Ten Speed Press), won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes. Congratulations to Ms. Hamilton and Mr. Conlon as well as their editors and publishers. View the complete list of 2018 James Beard Foundation Chef and Restaurant Awards winners here.