Today in Bookish and Literary History, September 3

1998 The Giant, O'Brien by Hilary Mantel (UK)

It is a fictionalised account of Irish giant Charles Byrne (O'Brien) and Scottish surgeon John Hunter.

2018 Trust Me When I Lie by Benjamin Stevenson

Eliza Dacey was murdered in cold blood. Four years later, the world watched it unfold again on screen.

2019 Unknown text by John Locke “Reasons for tolerateing Papists equally with others” (1667-68), an argument for religious toleration announced discovered at St John’s College, Annapolis

2019 Dominicana by Angie Cruz 

Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes.

• Shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction

2020 The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (UK) 

A group of pensioners set about solving the mystery of the murder of a property developer in the luxurious Cooper's Chase retirement village near the fictitious seaside village of Fairhaven in Kent.

2024 Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

"Sadie Smith," a pseudonymous freelance spy, works to undermine environmental activists. After being hired to disrupt a farming cooperative in France, she begins to suspect that her mission risks undermining her own humanity.

• Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
• Longlisted For The 2024 National Book Award
• Longlisted For The 2025 Pen Faulkner Award For Fiction

2024 The First Friend by Malcolm Knox 

The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia.

• Longlisted for the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

2024 Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.

• Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize
• Winner of the 2024 New York City Book Award
• Finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

2024 Colored Television by Danzy Senna

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

2024 Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

• Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
• Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

2025 The Physician of Nineveh by Glenn Cooper

For fans of historical fantasy, archaeological thrillers, and sweeping time travel fiction, Glenn Cooper’s newest novel brings the ancient world vividly to life. The Physician of Nineveh blends the intrigue of an ancient Mesopotamian empire with the heart of a love story across centuries.