Best of

Ahead of tomorrow night’s National Book Awards, Amazon has named Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad as their book of the year. (While it’s early days, the book is already the clear leader in our aggregation of best book of the year lists, as well.) Also on their top 10, however, is another NBA fiction candidate, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn. Young People’s Literature nominee Nicola Yoon also makes the Amazon list. There were some technical glitches when the “best books of 2016” package first went live — omitting Zadie Smith’s Swing Time from the top 20 carousel (even though it was listed in […]

Awards The winners of the Kirkus Prize were announced Thursday night at a ceremony in Austin, TX. C.E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings (FSG) prevailed in fiction, with Susan Faludi’s memoir In the Darkroom (Metropolitan) taking the nonfiction category. Finally, As Brave As You by Jason Reynolds won in Young Readers’ Literature. Separately, Poets & Writers announced today that their 2017 Writers for Writers Awards will be given to Francisco Goldman, Ann Patchett, and Richard Shelton. The Editor’s Award is going to Fiona McCrae and Jeff Shotts at Graywolf Press. Yasuko Thanh‘s Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. […]

As you know, many publishers ran away from November and the election for their big releases, but nothing stops the lists of monthly recommendations. At Amazon, Michael Chabon’s Moonglow is their spotlight pick for November with Donna Everhart’s already-published The Education of Dixie Dupree as the featured debut (indeed four of Amazon’s selections were published October 25). The rest of their list features: Swing Time, Zadie Smith The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon You Will Not Have My Hate, Antoine Leiris Walk Through Walls, Marina Abramovic The Earth Is Weeping, Peter Cozzens Night School, Lee Child Bear: The Life and […]

Paul Beatty’s wickedly funny and thoughtful novel The Sellout — first published by FSG in the US in 2015, but issued in the UK by independent Oneworld in 2016 — won the Booker Prize. Oneworld also published last year’s winner, Marlon James’s A Brief History In Seven Killings. That makes the 54-year-old New Yorker the first American to ever win the prize, which opened to American contestants in 2014. An emotional Beatty told the crowd at the awards ceremony, “I wasn’t expecting this I have to say…. I can’t tell you guys how long the journey this has been for me.” He […]