The musical with the strangest title on Broadway, The Book of Mormon, by the creators of South Park, won the Tony for Best Musical last night, as well as winning in eight other categories. Newmarket Press recently released the official companion book, which features the complete script and song lyrics.

The Book of Mormon: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, Matt Stone Retail Price: $19.95 Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Newmarket Press – (2011-06-07) ISBN / EAN: 1557049939 / 9781557049933

War Horse received the second most awards, with five Tonys, including best play. It is based on the book by Michael Morpurgo (Scholastic, 2007) and is also being adapted into a film, directed by Steven Spielberg, scheduled for release on Dec. 28th.

One of the most talked about debuts of last year, Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, has won the Orange Prize for Fiction. At 25, she is the youngest person ever to win this award.

Her book won over a short list of strong contenders, including Emma Donoghue’s Room, Jennifer Egan’s National Book Critic Circle Award winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and Nicole Krauss’s Great House.

The Award was announced in London. The Orange Prize was established to recognize fiction  by women and is open to any woman writing in English.

The Washington Post describes the Nebula Awards as “the Screen Actors Guild of the sci-fi world, a prestigious, peer-selected award voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.”

The winner in the novel category, the two-parter Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis (Spectra/Random House; Audio, Brilliance; ebook, OverDrive) is the story of 3 historians who travel from the year 2060 to Britain during WW II. Booklist starred Blackout saying, it “…depicts the times and the spirit of the British people remarkably vividly, and bits of comic relief leaven any somberness.”

The full list of winners is available on the Tor site.

Noting that the SFWA, held in Washington D.C. over the weekend, is not an “outlandish Comic-Con…[but] a writerly conference for writerly people,” the Washington Post reporter comments,

One of the geekier pleasures of living in Washington is wandering past any large Hilton or Marriott, or the Mount Vernon Square Metro stop, and playing “Guess That Convention.” Are the participants…carrying tote bags (librarians) or plastic binders (engineers) or gourmet snacks (pharmacists)?

We always suspected that the locals had us spotted.

Following close on the heels of the announcements of two other major mystery awards, the Edgars and the Agathas, the 25th annual Anthony Award nominees were announced last night.

Several titles crossed over from the other lists. One of the nominees in the Best Critical/ Non-Fiction category, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Yunte Huang, (W.W. Norton) has already won both an Edgar and an Agatha. The book received considerable attention when it was released last summer.

Winners will be chosen by the vote of attendees of the 2011 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in St. Louis (Sept. 15 – 18).

Below are the nominees in the book categories (for the short story category, go to the full list) as well as the Website/Blog category. We have noted titles that also recieved Edgar or Agatha nods, as well as information on other available formats.

Best Novel

Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny (Minotaur; Large Type, Thorndike) — Agatha Winner and ALA RUSA Reading List, Mystery Winner

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin  (William Morrow; Large Type, Thorndike; OverDrive, audio and ebook) — Edgar Finalist

Faithful Place – Tana French, (Viking; Large Type, Thorndike; Audio, Recorded Books; OverDrive, ebook) — Edgar Finalist and ALA RUSA Reading List, Mystery Finalist

I’d Know You Anywhere – Laura Lippman, (William Morrow; Audio, HarperAudio; Large Type, HarperLuxe; OverDrive, ebook) — Edgar Finalist

The Lock Artist – (Steve Hamilton, (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne; Audio, Brilliance; Large Type, Center Point) — Edgar Winner. Also an Alex Award winner

Best First Novel

Damage Done – Hilary Davidson – (Forge/Macmillan)

The Poacher’s Son – Paul Doiron – (Minotaur/Macmillan; Audio, Macmillan Audio; Large Type, Center Point) — Edgar Finalist

Rogue Island, Bruce DeSilva, (Forge/Macmillan; Audio, Tantor; Large Print, Thorndike) — Edgar Winner

The Sherlockian – Graham Moore, (Twelve/Grand Central; Large Print, Thorndike; Audio, Hachette Audio; OverDrive, audio)

Snow Angels – James Thompson – (Berkley Prime Crime/Putnam; Large Print, Thorndike;  Overdrive, ebook) — Edgar Finalist

Best Paperback Original

Drive Time – Hank Phillippi Ryan, (Mira/Harlequin; Large Type, Thorndike; Overdrive ebook); — Agatha Finalist for Best Novel

Expiration Date – Duane Swierczynski, (Minotaur/Macmillan) — Edgar Finalist

The Hanging Tree – Bryan Gruley, (Touchstone /S&S; Audio, Recorded Books)

Long Time Coming – Robert Goddard, (Bantam; OverDrive, ebook)– Edgar Winner

Vienna Secrets – Frank Tallis, (Random House; OverDrive, ebook) — Edgar Finalist

Best Graphic Novel

Beasts of Burden – Jill Thompson/Evan Dorkin, (Dark Horse)

The Chill – Jason Starr, (Vertigo Crime)

Richard Stark’s Parker, Vol. 2: The Outfit – Darwyn Cooke, (IDW Press)

Scalped Vol 6 – The Gnawing – Jason Aaron, (Vertigo)

Sickness in the Family – Denise Mina, (Vertigo Crime)

Tumor – Joshua Hale Fialkov/ Noel Tuazon, (Archaia Studios Press)

Best Critical /Non-Fiction

Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, John Curran (Harper; OverDrive, ebook) — Edgar Finalist; Agatha Winner

Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Yunte Huang, (W.W. Norton)– Agatha and Edgar Winner

Sherlock Holmes for Dummies – Steve Doyle  (Dummies Series/Wiley; OverDrive, ebook) — Agatha and Edgar Finalist

Thrillers: 100 Must Reads – David Morrell, (Oceanview) — Edgar Finalist

The Wire: Truth Be Told – Rafael Alvarez, (Grove Press)– Edgar Finalist

Best Website/Blog

Jen’s Book Thoughts – Jen Forbus

The Rap Sheet – J. Kingston Pierce

Sirens of Suspense – Chantelle Aimée Osman

Spinetingler – Sandra Ruttan

Stop. You’re Killing Me – Surber/Ulrich

Indie booksellers and indie publishers face many of the same challenges; one is getting recognition. So, the Brooklyn-based independent publisher and bookseller, Melville House joined with Shelf Awareness, the indie bookseller newsletter, to create the first award open only to books by independent publishers, the Indie Booksellers Choice Awards.

Independent booksellers from around the country voted and thirteen finalists have just been announced. The publisheres range from larger independents, like W.W. Norton and Grove/Atlantic to the very small, like The Dorothy Project and Two Dollar Radio.

Below are the finalists:

The Black History of the White House by Clarence Lusane  (City Lights)

Contingency Plans by David K Wheeler  (TS Poetry)

The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s)

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (W.W. Norton)

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes  (Grove/Atlantic)

Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions)

The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich  (Two Dollar Radio)

Orion You Came and Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan (Milkweed Editions)

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane (Graywolf)

The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled)

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns (Dorothy)

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)

Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic)

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on May 23rd.

Diana Kennedy’s Oaxaca al Gusto (U. of Texas Press), was named the Best Cookbook of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in an award ceremony on Friday night in New York.

In General Cooking, the winner is Amanda Hesser’s The Essential New York Times Cook Book: Classic Recipes for a New Century,”

Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking (Scribner, originally published in 1984; revised edition in 2004) was placed in the Cookbook Hall of Fame.

The other winners are listed here; all the nominees are here.

Thanks to hundreds of wonderful teachers and librarians, nearly ten thousand first- and second-graders voted on four finalists for the Irma Black Award and they chose How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills (Schwartz & Wade).

That so many of you read the finalists aloud to your students, led them in discussions, and encouraged them to vote, attests to the importance of the picture book format in supporting the development of critical thinking skills. As one of my second grade students put it, “Rocket should be the Irma Black winner because it tells the truth. You can’t learn to read in a day. It takes time. A lot of time. You can tell from the pictures; it takes seasons.”

Not only that, Rocket is a joy to read aloud, again and again.

Let the celebrating begin! Please join us:

May 19, 2011
Bank Street College of Education
610 West 112th Street
New York City

8:30 AM Light Breakfast | 9:00 AM Award Ceremony | 10:00 AM Book Signing

To RSVP or to make a contribution to the Irma S. and James H. Black Fund at Bank Street College of Education, please email Alesia Yezerskaya, or phone 212-875-4608.

Keynote Speaker: Perri Klass is a pediatrician who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She writes about children and families, about medicine, about food and travel, and about knitting. Her newest book is a novel, The Mercy Rule, and the book before that was a work of non-fiction, Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, written in the form of letters to her son as he starts medical school.

Perri lives in New York City, where she is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University. She is also Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization which works through doctors and nurses to promote parents reading aloud to young children.

Talk about sweet justice; Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, having already won a Pulitzer and a National Book Ciritcs Circle prize, picked up yet another award this weekend. Significantly, it’s the L.A. Times Prize for Fiction.

In March, the L.A. Times itself raised hackles when it characterized Egan’s NBCC win as a loss for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. That brought such a storm of protest that the paper offered an explanation of sorts. Back in the fall, when Franzen coverage seemed unrelenting (cover of Time, Oprah pick, NYT BR cover), Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult saw it as a reflection of the literary establishment’s sexism (Slate came up with an actual number; from 6/29/08 to 8/27/10, only 38% of books reviewed by the NYT were written by women). David Ulin, L.A. Times book critic acknowledged the validity of the issue, but was more concerned with defending Franzen.

Encouraging as it is to see a woman writer gather so many awards, and particularly this one from the L.A. Times, it doesn’t meant the discussion should be over. As the saying goes, it’s just the exception that proves the rule.

The Agatha Awards, given to books that best exemplify the Agatha Christie tradition, (i.e., no explicit sex, excessive gore or gratuitous violence) were announced this weekend. Canadian author Louise Penny picked up her fourth for Bury Your Dead, giving her Armand Gamache the most Agatha’s  ever for  books in a single series.

Winners in the book categories are:

Best Novel

Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny (Minotaur, 9780312377045; Large Type, Thorndike); the sixth in Penny’s series about Quebec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The audio already won an AudioFile award (Macmillan Audio and AudioGo). The seventh in the series, A Trick of the Light, (Minotaur, 9780312655457) arrives in August.

Best Children’s/Young Adult
The Other Side of Dark, Sarah Smith (Atheneum, 9781442402805) is the adult author’s debut novel for teens. Horn Book said of this story about a girl who communes with the dead, thus unearthing some painful truths about Boston and the slave trade, “well-researched historical detail weaves seamlessly into a contemporary mystery that’s also a head-on confrontation of the ongoing repercussions of racism and slavery.”

Best First Novel
The Long Quiche Goodbye, Avery Aames (Berkley, pbk original, 9780425235522); the first in a series set in a cheese shop. The second, Lost and Fondue (Berkley, pbk original, 9780425241585), releases tomorrow.

Best Non-fiction
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making, John Curran (Harper, 9780061988363). Christie’s 73 notebooks are painstakingly pieced together here. PW warned that even fans might be overwhelmed at the amount of detail, but also said it offers a “rare glimpse … into the mind of a writer, especially one as imaginative as Christie, who, though not a prose stylist, was expert at devising intricate plots.”

Michigan author Steve Hamilton won his second Edgar last night for The Lock Artist (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne; Audio, Brilliance; Large Type, Center Point). Also an Alex Award winner, it features an unreliable narrator. He’s an 18-year-old boy rendered mute by a childhood trauma, who has a natural ability to crack safes. It’s the author’s first stand-alone, after 7 titles in the Alex McNight series.  Marilyn Stasio gave it a strong thumbs up in her NYT BR Crime column back in January. Hamilton won his first Edgar in the First Novel category in 1999 for A Cold in Paradise.

The Lock Artist has was recently released in trade paperback.

The Lock Artist: A Novel Steve Hamilton Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0312696957 / 9780312696955

Lisa Von Drasek called the winner in the Best Juvenile category yesterday in her story about The Buddy Files. It’s the only book in that category that is aimed at younger readers (ages 6 to 8).

The winners in the other book categories are:

Young Adult — The Interrogation of Gabriel James, Charlie Price (FSG Books for Young Readers, 9780374335458)

Best First Novel — Rogue Island, Bruce DeSilva, (Forge, 9780765327260; Audio, Tantor; Large Print, Thorndike)

Best Paperback Original — Long Time Coming, Robert Goddard (Bantam, 9780385343619)

Best Fact Crime — Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime and Complicity by Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry (University of Nebraska, 9780803228108)

Best Critical/Biographical — Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Yunte Huang, (W.W. Norton, 9780393069624)

Mary Higgins Clark Award (honoring books in the Clark tradition) — The Crossing Places, Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Click here to view the winners and nominees in all categories.

Here’s an idea to steal for your library Web site. GalleyCat has created a “mixtape” of the Hugo Award Nominees, such as the story Amaryllis, available in full on the Lightspeed site.

It’s a great way to give readers access to nominees in the novella, short story and novelette categories, many of which have not appeared in book form.

Series titles dominated the Hugo Awards Best Novel nominations, announced yesterday. Women authors also dominated; 4 of the 5 authors are women.

The nominees for Best Novel are below. The full list of nominees in all categories is here. Winners will be announced on Saturday, August 20th, at the World Science Fiction Convention

All Clear, Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra, Hdbk; 9780553807677); followup to Blackout; Audio, Brilliance — also nominated for Nebula Best Novel (winners TBA 5/21)

Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen, Hdbk; 9781439133941); Vorkosigan Saga; Audio, Blackstone

The Dervish House, Ian McDonald (Pyr, Hdbk; 9781616142049)

Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit, Mass Mkt. Original; 9780316081054); the first in the Newsflesh Trilogy. The second, Deadline (Orbit, Mass Mkt. Original; 9780316081061), is coming June 1; OverDrive WMA Audiobook

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, Trade Pbk. Original, 2/25/10, 9780316043915; Mass Mkt., 10/01/2010; 9780316043922); Audio, Brilliance; this is #1 in The Inheritance Trilogy. It was also nominated for Nebula Best Novel. On her author page, Jemisin notes she’s particularly excited about this nomination because of the “Hugos’ noted bias in favor of science fiction (and against fantasy), more notable embrace of well-known names (vs unknown n00bs), and most notablest aversion to girl cooties or any hint thereof…”
#2, The Broken Kingdoms came out in November (Orbit, Trade Pbk. Original, 11/03/2010, 9780316043960; Mass Mkt., 9/1/2011; 9780316043953).
#3 arrives this October, The Kingdom of Gods, (Orbit; Trade Pbk. Original, 9780316043939).

Having just won the National Book Critics Circle fiction award, Jennifer Egan is now adding the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction to the awards for A Visit from the Goon Squad, (Knopf). The two finalists were The Privileges by Jonathan Dee (Random House) and The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books). Absent from the list is Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, which is often mentioned in the same breath as Egan’s book (The Guardian recently pointed out that the two books share similar themes). In the introduction to a recent interview, Entertainment Weekly writes,

Unlike Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, which had years’ worth of hype before it sold its first copy, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, released last summer, has been a slower-burning literary sensation.

A Visit from the Goon Squad has just been released in paperback. Many libraries are showing heavy reserve ratios.

A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Anchor – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 9780307477477 / 9780307477477

Audio:

AudioGo (formerly BBC AudioBooks); 9780792771746; 8 CD’s; $79.95
Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive

In the other book categories, the winners are:

HISTORY

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, Eric Foner (W. W. Norton)

Audio: Tantor Media; OverDrive WMA Audiobook

BIOGRAPHY

Washington: A Life. Ron Chernow (The Penguin Press)

Large Type; Thorndike; 9781410431172
Audio: Books on Tape and Playaway

GENERAL NONFICTION

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)

Audio: Tantor Media

POETRY

The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,  Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

The Orange Prize for Fiction‘s short list, announced at the London Book Fair yesterday, includes three debuts and one second novel. Of the debuts, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, has already received a great deal of media attention (need we mention, again, that Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40?) and has appeared on the NYT best seller list. The UK bookies’ favorite, however, is Emma Dongahue’s seventh novel, Room, which has been a best seller in both the UK and the US. Reporting on the award, the Independent writes that Donoghue is working on her next book, about a murder in San Francisco in the 1870’s. Says Donaghue, “It’s nice to be doing something completely different to Room; some writers get caught up in weird simulacrum of their previous novel and it’s good to be plunging into a completely different world,” The well-respected A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagan, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, did not make the cut to the short list. The winner of the Prize, which is awarded to women writers from around the English-speaking world, will be announced on June 8th. The Orange Short List:

• Emma Donoghue (Canadian/Irish) – Room, Little, Brown, 9/13/11, 9780316098335 (7th novel); was on the Booker short list, but lost to Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question.

• Nicole Krauss (American) – Great House, Norton, 10/12/2010, 9780393079982; (3rd novel); Krauss, along with Obreht, is one of The New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award.

• Téa Obreht (Serbian/American) – The Tiger’s Wife, Random, 3/8/11, 9780385343831 (1st novel)

• Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) – The Memory of Love, Atlantic Monthly, 1/4/11, 9780802119650 (2nd novel); Set in Sierra Leone, Booklist calls this a “stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war,” It also received admiring reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle and the NYT Book Review. Nancy Pearl interviewed the author on Seattle Cable TV.

• Emma Henderson (British) – Grace Williams Says it Loud; not published in the U.S.; Sceptre in the UK (1st novel); a love story about two people who meet in a mental home.

I am thrilled to announce that over 10,000 children have registered to participate in the Irma S. Black Award for Excellence in Picture Books. Whoo Hooo!!!!! Thanks for helping us reach our goal.

It’s not too late to register and participate with your classes.

Nuts and Bolts available here. Remember, votes are due by midnight on April 11th.

If you are in the New York area and would like to attend the award breakfast, the date is May 19th. The keynote speaker is Perri Klass, noted pediatrician/ journalist talking about early childhood literacy. Questions? Just email me.