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Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 29, Issue 10, 1 October 2026

IN THIS ISSUE

New Reviews at Compulsive Reader
Literary News
Competition News
Sponsored By
Coming Soon

Hello dear readers. Happy October! Here are the latest batch of reviews and interviews:

A review of Shelf Life by Hemat Malak

Shelf Life is a finely written book, so polished and confident in its voice that it’s difficult to believe it’s Hemat Malak’s first collection. The work balances a self-reflection that feels very human and open with a wry expansiveness that isn’tafraid to laugh, cry, or reinvent itself. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/28/a-review-of-shelf-life-by-hemat-malak/

A review of Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood by Tom Cox

The author’s name is new to me, I am surprised to admit, because Cox’s goofy, solipsistic clowning short stories (some no more than a paragraph) are so captivating. You are guaranteed to read and giggle or skim and smile. At least a number ofcelebrated writers who have read Cox have done just that. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/26/a-review-of-curious-events-lately-occurring-in-this-neighbourhood-by-tom-cox/

A review of Mine by Adam Ouston

There are several narrative threads and poetic refrains that twist in and out of the narrative as we move through the arc of this unnamed mind in the mine. Sometimes he is pragmatic and precise, working through his dilemma in logical steps, and sometimes he’s feverish and wild. I found the writing and the way in which it traveled through time and space, history, trauma, love and loss to be haunting and yet surprisingly compelling. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/23/a-review-of-mine-by-adam-ouston/

The Zingers of Adam Sedia and the Voice of Ancient Egypt: 3 books by Adam Sedia

Sedia has the unique gift of employing what I call “Zingers”— a combination or interplay or juxtaposition of words which are so unique and unusual (and unusually good) that they just pop out at you. Not only is Sedia a careful, measured poet with extremely fine and precise diction, but he manages to combine commonly-used words in uncommon ways in addition to the “Zingers”, which elevate his writing to a whole new level. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/22/the-zingers-of-adam-sedia/

A review of The Book of the After by Rebecca Higgie

I won’t give anything away here other than to say that The Book of the After is most certainly an epic, as beautiful and grand as Otto, the 24-metre blue whale skeleton from the Boola Bardip museum in Perth who features so prominently in this story. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/20/a-review-of-the-book-of-the-after-by-rebecca-higgie/

A review of Man Overboard by Kathleen Rooney

And perhaps most delightful, with her humor and clever word play, we could never mistake Kathleen Rooney for any other writer. Man Overboard sparkles. As Rooney’s Kick makes observations about his dilemma, we are treated to a glistening stream of consciousness as he riffs, with bitterness or resolve, on his stamina, his estranged mother, annoying brother-in-law, patient girlfriend and more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/16/a-review-of-man-overboard-by-kathleen-rooney/

What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison edited by Chad Wriglesworth

Their acute understanding of friendship’s importance in life fuels the collection, fuels and energizes readers. Kenyon’s and Mattison’s direct prose addressing their love, care and concern for one another outshines social media likes and emojis, but that, of course, relies on the near-outdated notion of relationship intimacy. The letters now live, as Mattison and Wriglesworth note, in university archives, bequeathed by Kenyon’s husband, poet Donald Hall. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/13/what-clever-friends-the-selected-letters-of-jane-kenyon-and-alice-mattison-edited-by-chad-wriglesworth/

A review of In Common Things by Jefferson Singer

Shining gems of individual phrases adorn every page, yet the meanings of the entirety of some of the poems eluded this knucklehead reviewer … until reaching the final three pages of Notes. Consider bookmarking those Notes, to refer to them either before or immediately after reading each poem. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/12/a-review-of-in-common-things-by-jefferson-singer/

A review of Of a Certain Age by Tricia Gates Brown

Brown’s reverence for the natural world is another unifying theme of this collection. In “Resilience” she speaks of carrying a table out back and noticing things. She is nourished in the noticing, and we are fed by the usual images she gifts to us. She attends to the world around her great love. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/07/a-review-of-of-a-certain-age-by-tricia-gates-brown/

A review of Reckonings by Thomas Farber

Similar to trompe l’oeil – to trick or deceive the eye: the images draw you in and consume you before you realize the demonic nature illustrated. Perhaps a slight metaphor of our present state of affairs and how we came to fine ourselves here. Not just a red state/blue state problem: we all share the blame and that is why it is imperative to determine how it all went so wrong. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/05/a-review-of-reckonings-by-thomas-farber/

Magickal Millenials: A review of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn by Felix John Taylor

Felix John Taylor achieves a grand academic sweep of the field. His Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: Magic Arts and the Occult Revival is a work of prodigious scholarship, tracing in minute detail the origins, the rivalries, the infighting inherent to magickal team building. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/04/magickal-millenials-a-review-of-the-hermetic-order-of-the-golden-dawn-by-felix-john-taylor/

A review of Dreamboat by Jeffrey Skinner

We enter the collection meeting the speaker as he experiences a bout of insomnia during a river cruise in Germany. The Rhine River transforms into a pack of stampeding dogs of various breeds. Logic does not rule—the poems are untethered, capable of moving anywhere at any moment. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/03/a-review-of-dreamboat-by-jeffrey-skinner/

A review of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

The book promises to speak to everyone, but whether it does is a different question. Norman succeeds as a manifesto for designers but falls short as a practical guide for everyone else because the examples he uses, the vocabulary within the guide, and proposed solutions to said designs are tailored to people with the power to change it – not the everyday people he claims to be writing for. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/03/a-review-of-the-design-of-everyday-things-by-don-norman/

A review of In the Shadows of Service by Cynthia Hamilton Urquhart

Urquhart allows the stories to unfold, tell themselves with few scattered phrases across the page. This technique allows the reader to inhabit the scene. Suspense and pathos are constructed line by line, slowly building as the reader begins to grasp the enormity of the scene’s significance, the weight of these life-altering moments. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2026/09/01/a-review-of-in-the-shadows-of-service-by-cynthia-hamilton-urquhart/

All of the reviews and interviews listed above are available at The Compulsive Reader on the front page. Older reviews and interviews are kept indefinitely in our extensive categorised archives (currently at 3,820) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

LITERARY NEWS

In the news this month, The American University in Cairo Press has announced the shortlist for the 2026 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the passing of Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. The six shortlisted titles were chosen from 143 novels submitted from 23 countries across the Arab world and outside it. The shortlisted authors are: This is Not a Bullet by Abdullah Nasser (Saudi Arabia) Al-Karma Publishers, The Origin of the Species by Ahmad Abdulatif (Egypt) Hayat Publishing, Longa-Cairo Nuweiba by Ganna Adel (Egypt) Waziz Books, A Swiss Summer by Inaam Kachachi (Iraq) Al Dar Al Masriah Al Lubnaniah, No Mail to Gaza by Mohamed Jubaiti (Palestine) Dar Al Adab, and An Old Egyptian Madness by Talal Faisal (Egypt) Diwan Publishing. The winner of the medal will be announced in December 2026.

The winners of the 2026 Hugo Awards, honouring the best in science fiction and fantasy, were presented at the LACon V. The winner of the best novel was The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK). The complete List of 2026 Hugo Award, Lodestar Award and Astounding Award Winners can be found here: https://www.lacon.org/2026hugos/

Josh Silver won the £2,000 YA Book Prize, which celebrates fiction for teenagers and young adults written by authors living in the UK and Ireland, for his novel Traumaland. The winner was named at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in a ceremony hosted by writer and former recipient of the prize Juno Dawson.

The shortlist has been selected for the US$75,000 2026 Cundill History Prize, honoring the best in history writing in English and administered by McGill University. Administered by McGill University, the Cundill History Prize is the world’s leading award for history writing. The prize is awarded annually to the book that demonstrates excellence across the prize’s guiding criteria: craft, communication, and consequence. The two runners-ups each receive US$10,000.Chaired by Emily Greenwood, James F. Rothenberg Professor of Classics at Harvard University, the 2026 jury includes leading historians and writers Ned Blackhawk, Fergal Keane and Barbara Weinstein. You can find the whole list here: https://www.cundillprize.com/news/the-2026-cundill-history-prize-shortlist

A longlist has been selected for the 2026 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction. The shortlist will be released on October 1 and the winner named on November 4. The winning author receives £50,000 shared with the translator where applicable. To see the 13 longlisted titles, click here: https://www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/year-by-year/2026

Arrowsmith Press has released a list of finalists for this year’s Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, honouring the work of the St. Lucian Nobel Prize-winning poet by recognizing a book of poetry by a non-US citizen published anywhere in the world. The winner receives a $2,000 honorarium. The 2026 Walcott Prize finalists are: Mouth by Mona Arshi, Jonah and Me by John F. Deane, Minx by Karen Downs-Barton, At Beckett’s Grave by Robin Durnford, The Inferno by Lorna Goodison, The Ruins by Ye Hui, Men of the Same Name by Evan Jones, Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin, Archivium by Theresa Munoz, Plenitude by Thomas McCarthy, The Anchorage by Bernard O’Donoghue, Namanlagh by Tom Paulin, Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba, Banquet by Stav Poleg, and Fenestration by Othuke Umukoro.

The shortlist has been selected for the €25,000 2026 German Book Prize. The winner will be named October 5 in Frankfurt on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The shortlist: Shida Bazyar for Die Lücken (Kiepenheuer & Witsch), Franziska Gänsler for Orca (Kein & Aber), Valeria Gordeev for Die Zikade entschlüpft ihrer goldglänzenden Hülle (S. Fischer), Elias Hirschl for Schleifen (Paul Zsolnay), Peggy Mädler for Selbstregulierung des Herzens (Galiani Berlin), and Dana Vowinckel for Anton und Alma (Suhrkamp).

The 2026 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award shortlist has been anounced and includes Elizabeth Harrower: The woman in the watch tower by Susan Wyndham (NewSouth Publishing), Sideshow History by Jennifer Harrison (Black Pepper), Snake Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher (Text Publishing), The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared: Shere Hite and The Hite Report by Rosa Campbell (NewSouth Publishing), The Names of a Hare by Bernice Barry (Fremantle Press), and The Trap by Fiona Kelly McGregor (Picador Australia). Dear Madmanby Edwina Shaw (AndAlso Books) was highly commended by the judges. Each of the six finalists will receive the A$1,500 Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize. The winners of the Nib Literary Award and People’s Choice Prize will be announced on 19 November.

The 14-title longlist has been released for the C$100,000 Giller Prize, which honours “the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English.” The finalists, who will be unveiled October 5, receive C$10,000 each. The winner will be named November 16. For the first time in prize history, the longlist was selected by a pan-Canadian jury panel of independent booksellers representing all five regions of Canada. Find all of the longlisted titles here: https://gillerprize.ca/the-giller-prize-presents-its-2026-longlist/

Forest Xiao won the £5,000 (about $6,765) Klaus Flugge Prize, which recognises a published picture book by a debut illustrator, for Seven Babies.

The National Book Foundation has released the longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards. Finalists will be announced on October 6, and winners named on November 18 at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony. The Fiction list includes: Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi (Knopf), Red Ants by Kimberly Blaeser (Counterpoint Press), Dèy by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf), Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You by Julián Delgado Lopera (Liveright), Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich (Harper), The Disappearers by Marlon James (Riverhead Books), Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli (Knopf), Passengers by Alexander Maksik (Europa Editions), The Renovation by Kenan Orhan (Farrar, Strausand Giroux), and Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The full lists of all categories can be found here:

https://www.nationalbook.org/

The 2026 Western Australia Premier’s Book Awards have been announced. The winner of the newly named DrCharmaine Papertalk Green Smith Poetry Award is Past & Parallel Lives by Kaya Ortiz. For Children’s Book of the Year, Creature Clinic by Gavin Aung Than. For Young Adult Book of the Year A Murder is Going Down by Kate Emery, for Non-Fiction Book of the Year, Tjukurrpa Kurranyu. Tjukurrpa in the Front: The Yarnangu foundation for joint management in the Pila Nature Reserve by Jan Turner and Lizzie Marrkilyi Giles Ellis. For Fiction Book of the Year, O’Keefe by David Whish-Wilson. For

Emerging Writer of the Year and Book of the Year went to CryBaby by Mabel Gibson. For The Daisy Utemorrah Award sponsored by Magabala Books, Barefoot Running by Amanda Lott. For the full list of short-listed books, winners and judges’ comments visit: https://slwa.wa.gov.au/whats-on/awards-fellowships/western-australian-premiers-book-awards.

Helen Marshall won the C$3,000 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic for her novel The Lady, the Tiger, and the Girl Who Loved Death.

Winners have been selected for the 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prizes, which honour “writers whose work uses the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.” The two winners--in fiction and nonfiction--receive US$10k each; runners-up receive US$5k each. They will all be celebrated at an awards ceremony in Dayton, Ohio, the weekend of November 7-8. In addition, author and bookseller Ann Patchett is receiving the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Fiction winner: The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman (Harper). Fiction runner-up: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron Books). Nonfiction winner: Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church by Kevin Sack (Crown), and Nonfiction runner-up: Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve Ewing (One World).

The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao won the £10,000 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, sponsored by the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation. The book is only the second debut novel to win the award.

The six-title shortlist has been released for the 2026 Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner, who will be named on November 9 in London, receives £50,000. Each of the finalists gets £2,500. This year’s shortlisted titles are: The End of Everything by M. John Harrison, The Disappearers by Marlon James, Black Bag by Luke Kennard, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, and John of John by Douglas Stuart.

Winners have been chosen for the 2026 Wainwright Prize, celebrating nature and the environment, nurturing respect for the planet, and informing readers of the threats that the earth currently faces. Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane’s The Book of Birds won the Wainwright Prize Book of the Year, with Thomas Halliday and Gavin Scott taking the Children’s Wainwright Prize Book of the Year for Otherlands: An Illustrated Journey Through Earth’s Lost Worlds. The 2026 Wainwright Prize category winners are:

Nature Writing: Ancient: Reviving the Woods that Made Britain by Luke Barley, Conservation Writing: The Savage Landscape by Cal Flyn, Illustrative Books: The Book of Birds by Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane, Children’s Fiction: The Danger of Small Things by Caryl Lewis, Children’s Nonfiction: Otherlands: An Illustrated Journey Through Earth’s Lost Worlds by Thomas Halliday, and Children’s Picture Books: The Great Bear by Annie Booker. The two overall winning books received £2,500, with the picture book award jointly shared by author and illustrator. Category winners were each awarded £500 per book.

A shortlist has been released for the 2026 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Prize, which recognises the “best Canadian novel or short story collection of the year.” The winner, who will be named at the Writers’ Trust Awards in Toronto on November 10, receives C$70,000and each finalist C$7,500. This year’s finalists are: Fancy Gap by Zak Jones, My Personby Téa Mutonji, Riverwork by Lisa Robertson, Treat Them as Buffalo by Blair Palmer Yoxall, and Seven Heavens Awayby Ashraf Zaghal.

Claudia Amuah won the 2026 Mo Siewcharran Prize for The Other Woman. This year the award, run as part of Hachette UK’s Future Bookshelf initiative, is being hosted by Bookouture and focuses on romance and psychological thriller submissions. Amuah receives £2,500 as well as detailed editorial feedback and a follow-up online session. She will also be offered an introductory meeting with a literary agent and have her submission taken forward to Bookouture’sacquisitions meeting where it will be considered for publication under their no advance, 45% royalty model. The first and second runners-up were F. G. Liauw’s The Song Beneath the Snow and Amara Ede’s The Benefits of Marriage. Liauwreceives £1,500 and Ede £750, with both also getting editorial feedback and a hamper of Bookouture books.

Finally, English PEN, together with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and the estate of Seamus Heaney, has released a shortlist for the PEN Heaney Prize, which recognises a single-author collection of poetry of “outstanding literary merit that engages with the impact of cultural or political events on human conditions or relationships.” The winner will be named December 1. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Egrets, While War by Tishani Doshi, Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda, translated by Mira Rosenthal, Dwelling by Máighréad Medbh, plastic by Matthew Rice, Pain Songs by Daniel Sluman, and October by Nur Turkmani.

Have a great month.

COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to LuAnn Morgan who won a copy of Living with Strangers: Healing a Wounded Heart in a Distant Land by Robin Rosenblut.

Congratulations also to Sharon Berger who won a copy of Days & Chances by Joanna Klink.

Our new giveaway is for a copy of Resonance: A Novel by Michael S. Tobin and Daniel S. Chertoff. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Resonance” and your postal address in the body of the message. If you want to enter some other way just let me know.

Good luck!

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