The Indies Choice Book Awards Return

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

📌 Book Riot is hiring a digital content specialist. If you love books and have video editing skills and demonstrated experience growing and managing social platforms, we’d love to hear from you.

The Indies Choice Book Awards Are Back

The American Booksellers Association has revived the Indies Choice Book Awards, last seen at BookExpo in 2019, to “celebrate the best Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Children’s Picture Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Debut Adult and Debut Children’s voted by indie booksellers.” Titles that appeared on the ABA’s Indie Next List, Kids’ Indie Next List, and/or Indies Introduce lists in 2025 are eligible. Voting is open now (participating booksellers only) through February 28th. Shortlists will be announced March 11 for voting through March 25, and the winners will be revealed April 8.

Here Comes Wuthering Heights

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights premiered this week, and it’s bound to have to have adaptation purists clutching their pearls. Vogue‘s Eileen Kelly, who attended the premiere, reports that the film “feels less like a revival and more like a provocation: sharper, darker, and far more feral.” She also notes that, “there is something unhinged about watching an explicitly sexual film in a room full of strangers,” so…there’s that. At this point, I’m more interested in the conversation about the film than in the film itself; however it turns out, Brontë’s book (which I will go to my grave yelling is not a romance) will remain just fine.

Shortlists for the 2026 Bram Stoker Awards

The Horror Writers Association has unveiled the shortlists for their annual Bram Stoker Awards, which are given “for superior achievement” in works of horror first published in English. Nominees compete in 13 categories—including screenplay, a category unique to the Bram Stoker Awards in literary prizedom—for a shot at the far-and-away coolest trophy among book awards. This year’s shortlisted titles include Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Fiction edited by Becky Siegel Spratford, Kylie Lee Baker’s Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, and Ryan Coogler for Sinners (good luck to the rest of the nominees in the screenplay category!). Voting is open through February 15.