From the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction to the National Book Award or the Man Booker Prize, there are a wide variety of book awards that celebrate the best in writing or literature in their area of focus: Mysteries (the Edgar); Fiction (Hugo); Science Fiction (Nebula); Children's Literature (Newberry) to name a few. Award winning literature is the best of the best, and worth sharing.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the Let's Talk Books: Horror discussion. This is a list of the books we talked about during that discussion.. To find the upcoming Let's Talk Books events check out https://www.icpl.org/events/ages/adults
The night watchman : a novel
Erdrich, Louise, author.
FICTION Erdrich Louise
It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal? Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie - 'Patrice' - Paranteau has no desire to wear herself down on a husband and kids. She works at the factory, earning barely enough to support her mother and brother, let alone her alcoholic father who sometimes returns home to bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to get if she's ever going to get to Minnesota to find her missing sister Vera. In The Night Watchman multi-award winning author Louise Erdrich weaves together a story of past and future generations, of preservation and progress. She grapples with the worst and best impulses of human nature, illuminating the loves and lives, desires and ambitions of her characters with compassion, wit and intelligence.
Hamnet : a novel of the plague
O'Farrell, Maggie, 1972- author.
FICTION O'Farrell, Maggie
England, 1580. A young Latin tutor-- penniless, bullied by a violent father-- falls in love with an eccentric young woman who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford. She becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their young son succumbs to bubonic plague. -- adapted from jacket
Winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.
- Beth
The Song of Achilles
Miller, Madeline.
FICTION Miller Madeline
An adaptation of Homer's Iliad, set during the Greek Heroic Age, The Song of Achilles is told from the perspective of Patroclus. The novel follows Patroclus' relationship with Achilles, from their initial meeting to their exploits during the Trojan War, with particular focus on their romantic relationship.
Winner of the 2012 Women's Prize for Fiction (at the time called the Orange Prize).
- Beth
The Lacuna
Kingsolver, Barbara.
FICTION Kingsolver, Barbara
The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds -- Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s -- and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century's most tumultuous events.
Winner of the 2010 Women's Prize for Fiction (then known as the Orange Prize)
- Beth
Home
Robinson, Marilynne.
FICTION Robinson, Marilynne
Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack―the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years―comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.
Winner of the 2009 Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize for Fiction) and the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
- Beth
The last thing he told me : a novel
Dave, Laura, author.
FICTION Dave Laura
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to who the note refers-Owen's sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah's increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen's boss, as a U.S. marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn't who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen's true identity-and why he really disappeared. Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen's past, they soon realize they are also building a new future-one neither of them could have anticipated.
Named the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2021 through the Goodreads Choice Awards.
- Beth
Project Hail Mary : a novel
Weir, Andy, author.
SCIENCE FICTION Weir Andy
Ryland Grace has been asleep for a very, very long time. He's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. He can't remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance. -- adapted from jacket
Winner of both th 2021 Best Science Fiction, Goodreads Choice Awards; and 2021 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
- Beth
Braiding sweetgrass
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
508 /Kimmerer
"As a leading researcher in the field of biology, Robin Wall Kimmerer understands the delicate state of our world. But as an active member of the Potawatomi nation, she senses and relates to the world through a way of knowing far older than any science. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she intertwines these two modes of awareness--the analytic and the emotional, the scientific and the cultural--to ultimately reveal a path toward healing the rift that grows between people and nature. The woven essays that construct this book bring people back into conversation with all that is green and growing; a universe that never stopped speaking to us, even when we forgot how to listen"--
Winner of the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award.
- Beth
Network Effect
Wells, Martha, author.
SCIENCE FICTION Wells Martha
"Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel, Network Effect. When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then
Book 5 in the Murderbot Diaries series, Network Effect won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Novel; the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novel; and the 2021 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
- Beth
The stone sky
Jemisin, N. K., author.
SCIENCE FICTION Jemisin N. K.
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS... FOR THE LAST TIME. The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women. Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe. For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.
The final book in the Broken Earth trillogy, The Stone Sky was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel; the Nebula Award for Best Novel; and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2018.
- Beth
The Calculating Stars
Kowal, Mary Robinette, 1969- author.
SCIENCE FICTION Kowal Mary
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York's experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn't take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can't go into space, too. Elma's drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.
The first book in the "Lady Astronaut" series, The Calculating Stars won the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novel; the 2019 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel; and the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel,
- Beth
American gods
Gaiman, Neil.
SCIENCE FICTION Gaiman Neil
Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break. Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2002. This book was adapted into a series of comic books and a television series of the same name.
- Beth
Blackout
Willis, Connie.
SCIENCE FICTION Willis, Connie
Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill’s next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London’s Blitz. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone’s schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas--to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.
Blackkout and it's sequel All Clear are considered a novel in two volumes, and together they won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2011 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
- Beth
The year of magical thinking
Didion, Joan.
BIOGRAPHY Didion, Joan
"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years. The weeks and months that followed "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience. Her portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad, will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, a wife, or a child.
The Year of Magical Thinking won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
- Beth
Between the world and me
Coates, Ta-Nehisi, author.
BIOGRAPHY Coates, Ta-Nehisi
"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ... In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police"--
Between the world and me won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
- Beth
Miss Benson's beetle
Joyce, Rachel, author.
FICTION Joyce Rachel
"It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson--a sensible schoolmarm and lonely spinster--is just trying to get through life. But one day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and her tidy, circumscribed life, to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of an insect that may or may not exist: the golden beetle of New Caledonia, Margery's childhood obsession ever since her father gave her a book on cryptozoology right before he killed himself. The assistant Margery hires to accompany her, Enid Pretty, in her pink hat and pompom sandals, is not the companion she had in mind. But together they will find themselves drawn into an adventure that exceeds all expectations: a cross-ocean voyage to a remote island covered with dense jungle--the last place two proper British ladies would expect to find themselves. They must risk everything and break all the rules, but at the top of a mountain deep in the South Pacific they will discover their best selves. This is a charming, uplifting story about the power of belief in all its forms; it is an intoxicating adventure that explores what it means to be a woman; and it is a tender exploration of the transformative power of friendship"--
Winner of the 2021 Adventure Writing Prize for Best Published Novel.
- Beth
Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
- Beth