The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winners in the book categories are:

Fiction —  The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, April 2015)

History — Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, T.J. Stiles (PRH/Knopf)

Biography or Autobiography — Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, (Penguin Press)

Poetry — Ozone Journal, Peter Balakian, (U. Of Chicago Press)

General Nonfiction —  Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS (PRH/Doubleday; BOT)

In addition, Hamilton wins the Drama Award.

Once again, the criticism award does not go to book coverage, but to Emily Nussbaum, for television reviewing, in the New Yorker. The last time the award went to a book reviewer was in 2001, to Gail Caldwell who was then chief book critic for The Boston Globe.

Marking its one hundredth anniversary, the Pulitzer Prize Awards will be announced today at 3 p.m. ET.

The very first award for a fiction title went to the now largely forgotten His Family, by Ernest Poole (Macmillan), but that was followed by many titles that went on to become classics (winners in the category originally designated as Novels 1918 through 1947, are listed here; since 1948, it was designated as Fiction; winners are listed here).

In recent years, the Fiction Award has created best sellers (e.g.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout), or added longevity to titles that were already best sellers (last year’s winner, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr just passed it’s 100th week on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list).

In addition to Fiction, the other Pulitzer Prize book categories are:

History (1917-present)

Biography or Autobiography (1917-present)

Poetry (1922-present)

General Nonfiction (1962-present)

There is also an award for Criticism (1970-present), a wide-ranging category which includes film and book reviewing (the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani won in 1998), and even reviewing of automobiles.

A live stream of the awards announcements is below:

The shortlist of six finalists for the 2016 Booker International Prize has been announced. A younger sibling to the more well-known Booker Prize for Fiction (that longlist will be announced in July), it has been given every two years since 2005 to authors who are not citizens of the Commonwealth, for an entire body of work in any language (past winners have included Canadian Alice Munro and US citizens Philip Roth and Lydia Davis).

Now that the main Booker Award is open to all writers in English, regardless of citizenship, the International Award has been changed to one for individual novels in English translation, recognizing not only the authors, but also the translators, a change that the Guardian notes, “should help raise the profile of translated books.”

The judges call this shortlist “exhilarating,” praising its diversity.

The finalist best-known in the US is Elena Ferrante for The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four, translated by Ann Goldstein (PRH/Europa Editions, Sept. 1, 2015; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample). All the titles in the author’s series have been best sellers here, with even the translator achieving celebrity status.

Also having received attention here is The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (PRH/Hogarth; Feb. 2, 2016; OverDrive Sample)

A profile of the author in the daily NYT Books section calls the novel, which was published ten years ago in South Korea,  a “mesmerizing mix of sex and violence.” The review in the NYT “Sunday Book Review” comes with the warning that nothing can “prepare a reader for the traumas of this Korean author’s translated debut in the Anglophone world.”

The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature is also among the finalists, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for A Strangeness in My Mind, translated by Ekin Oklap (PRH/Knopf, Oct. 20, 2015; BOT; OverDrive Sample)

Daily NYT reviewer Dwight Garner calls this a minor work, lacking the “the visceral and cerebral impact of Mr. Pamuk’s best novels.”

The other titles on the list are:
A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins (Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept. 13, 2016) — “Like John Williams’ Stoner or Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, A Whole Life is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.” — from the description on the Booker site

The Four Books, Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas (Perseus/PGW/Legato/Grove Press, March 8, 2016; OverDrive Sample)– ” No other writer in today’s China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule.” — the Guardian

A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn (PRH/Archipelago, Dec. 15, 2015; OverDrive Sample) — “a wild patchwork of a novel that tells the story of Angola through Ludo, a woman who bricks herself into her apartment on the eve of Angolan independence. For the next 30 years she lives off vegetables and pigeons, and burns her furniture to stay warm. ” — from the description on the Booker site..

The winner of the Prize will be announced on May 16th.

In recognition of her efforts to aid the citizens of Baltimore during the 2015 protests that followed the death of  Freddie Gray while in police custody, Melanie Townsend Diggs, Pennsylvania Avenue Branch manager of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library is the recipient of the  2016 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity, announced yesterday in a press release.

Ms. Diggs will receive $10,000, a certificate, and an “object selected from the personal collection of author Daniel Handler,” aka Lemony Snicket.

In the ALA press release Diggs says :

“in some ways it was a typical day, with people coming and going. But you also would have seen customers and community leaders coming in and thanking us for being open. A woman bringing us flowers, pastries. The media coming in to charge up their batteries, use the restrooms. You would have seen a young man coming in to fill out a job application online, and then coming back the next day to say that he had an interview scheduled for May 5. All of these things happened. If we had not opened our doors, we would have missed all those things.”

Handler adds, “During troubled times, we need open minds. Open minds need open books. Open books require an open library, and the work of Melanie Townsend Diggs provided such a necessary and hopeful beacon.”

Last year’s prize winner, Scott Bonner, was honored for keeping the library in Ferguson, Missouri open during protests there, and the 2014 winner Laurence Copel, was honored for her work in the Lower Ninth Ward Street Library of New Orleans.

Six authors made the leap from the longlist to the shortlist for Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the UK’s most prestigious award for women of all nationalities writing in English:

Ruby, Cynthia Bond (RH/Hogarth; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Bond’s debut novel was an Oprah pick last Feb. and made the NYT‘s bestseller list. It was also very much admired abroad with The Guardian offering: “Many will compare Ruby to the work of Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston … It may be most apt to compare Bond to Gabriel García Márquez [as] Ruby is woven with magical realism.”

The Green Road, Anne Enright (W. W. Norton; Thorndike; OverDrive Sample).

A Man Booker Prize winner, Enright was also on the Booker’s 2015 longlist for this title. When the hardback edition came out last May, People said, “With language so vibrant it practically has a pulse, Enright makes an exquisitely drawn case for the possibility of growth, love and transformation at any age.” It was one of  New York magazine’s 8 Books You Need to Read This May and an Indie Next pick.

The Glorious Heresies, Lisa McInerney (PRH/Tim Duggan Books; Random House Audio).

Also a debut, this title is scheduled to hit shelves in the US on Aug. 9. It is set in contemporary, post-crash Ireland. On that side of the ocean McInerney has already gained considerable praise with The Irish Times writing that she is “arguably the most talented writer at work in Ireland today.” 

The Portable Veblen, Elizabeth Mckenzie (Penguin Press; OverDrive Sample).

This was an Indie Next pick for Feb. 2016.  Bookseller Rico Lange, of Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA said: “This story of an engaged couple trying to navigate crazy family dynamics, betrayal, and professional dilemmas on their way to getting married is one of the funniest, most unique novels I’ve ever read.” Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly all gave it starred reviews.

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild (RH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample) is the final of the three debuts on the list, written by the incoming chair of London’s National Art Galley. Rothschild (yes, one of THOSE Rothschilds) is the first woman to hold that position. Naturally, her first novel is inspired by one of her favorite artists, Jean-Antoine Watteau. It was both a LibraryReads and a Indie Next pick.

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara (RH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample).

It is doubtful much more needs to be said about Yanagihara’s 2015 sensation. It was a National Book Award finalist and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. As we wrote when it published, it enjoyed lavish attention. The LA Times’ review began, “I’ve read a lot of emotionally taxing books in my time, but A Little Life … is the only one I’ve read as an adult that’s left me sobbing.” Vogue said the book announces “the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.” Kirkus, in a starred review, claims “The phrase ‘tour de force’ could have been invented for this audacious novel.”

The award winner will be announced on June 8th.

James Hannaham has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his novel Delicious Foods (Hachette/Little, Brown, March 2015). It is his second novel, after God Says No.

An associate professor of writing at the Pratt Institute in New York, Hannaham told The Washington Post that winning one of the most literary of awards is a surprise for a book he terms as “visceral … It’s also nasty, and it’s not at all genteel.”

Indeed not, as the paper summarizes, it tells the story “of an African American boy who, despite losing his hands, tries to rescue his mother from a Southern produce farm where she’s kept in virtual slavery. It’s a harrowing depiction of drug addiction and the plight of migrant workers. Among the novel’s most radical qualities is that parts of it are narrated by the voice of crack cocaine itself.”

As we reported earlier, the short list included literary darling The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, April 2015), Luis Alberto Urrea’s short story collection The Water Museum (Hachette/Little, Brown, April 2015), and two under the radar titles, Elizabeth Tallent’s short story collection, Mendocino Fire (Harper, Sept. 2015) and Julie Iromuanya’s debut novel, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, May 2015).

The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) has announced their awards for 2016 and the big winner is The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji López-Alt (Norton), which took home honors as both Cookbook of the Year and winner in the American category.

The book is already a hitl. It is a NYT Best Seller, entering the list at #4 in October and currently at #10 after 10 weeks.

Familiar names Madhur Jaffrey and Andrew Weil also took home prizes. Jaffrey for Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking (PRH/Knopf), which won the Single Subject category and Weil for Fast Food, Good Food: More Than 150 Quick and Easy Ways to Put Healthy, Delicious Food on the Table (Hachette/Little, Brown), which won the Health & Special Diet category.

Tacos were big winners with Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman winning the Chefs and Restaurants category for Tacos: Recipes and Provocations (PRH/Clarkson Potter) and Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena winning the Reference & Technical category for Tacopedia (Phaidon).

The winners in all the book categories are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, IACP 2016 Cookbook Awards.

The interest in the hidden identity of Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan novels that have swept through the best seller lists, hit a boil this weekend, sending her titles soaring again on Amazon.

The real author behind the Ferrante pseudonym has rigorously kept her (or his) true identity private. She grants email interviews only and those exchanges pass through her publisher.

That only fuels speculation, and the latest, reports The New York Times, comes from an Italian author and professor who has conducted an historical and literary study of the books. He sets his eyes on a fellow professor from Naples named Marcella Marmo. Both Ms. Marmo and Ferrante’s publishers flatly deny it.

“It’s nonsense,” said the publishers and “I’m not Elena Ferrante,” said Ms. Marmo. Those predictable responses have not quelled speculation.

Holds and circulation remain high across the series that includes My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of The Lost Child (all published by Europa Editions)

Just last week, it was announced that Ferrante is on the longlist for the Man Booker International Prize, adding even more interest to this long-running literary parlor game.

The longlist of 20 titles for the Baileys’ Womens Prize for Fiction was announced on Tuesday, International Women’s Day. The prize was created in 1996 by a group of U.K. reviewers, librarians and others in the book world, to address the issue of  book prizes being disproportionately awarded to men. Now funded by R & A Bailey & Co, makers of Bailey’s Irish Cream, it is open to any woman writing in English

We were pleased to see one of the debuts on the list was part of our First Flights/Penguin Debut Authors program. Jackie Copleton, the author of  A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding (PRH/Penguin Books, Dec., 2015), a novel about survivors coping with the effects of the bombing of Nagasaki,  chatted with librarians in the program late last year.

Many authors with more novels under their belts, are on the list, including Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton (a number one LibraryReads pick) Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord, Anne Enright, The Green Road, Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins, and Attica Locke, Pleasantville

Also on the list is a second novel that received a great deal of attention last year, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

Libraries own most of the titles (three have not been released in the U.S.). Attached is our spreadsheet of the titles, for use in creating displays, Baileys Longlist, 2016

The PEN America Center offers so many awards that they can begin to blur, especially since many of the finalists have already appeared on end-of-the year best books lists, or have won other major national awards.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction shortlist offers two correctives this year, bringing attention to a pair of titles that have slipped under most radars.

Despite glowing praise in the NYT comparing her work to George Eliot, Elizabeth Tallent’s short story collection, Mendocino Fire (Harper, Sept. 2015), received scant additional attention. The same holds for Julie Iromuanya’s debut novel, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, May 2015), which received little notice beyond a mention in the NYT Sunday Book Review’s debut title round-up. As previously announced, it is also a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

The other PEN/Faulkner finalists fared better in the PR stakes.

Luis Alberto Urrea’s short story collection The Water Museum (Hachette/Little, Brown. April 2015) was on both the Washington Post ‘s and NPR’s best of the year lists. Urrea is well-known for his many other works, including Into the Beautiful North, one of 34 titles on NEA’s Big Read list. Showing particular relevance to today’s political discussions, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer says, The Water Museum “mines the tragedy, the dark comedy and the ultimate futility of erecting walls between cultures.”

The other two books on the short list are true literary darlings. James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods (Hachette/Little, Brown, March 2015) and The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, April 2015).

Both won major awards, or were on award short lists, and were on many end-of-year “best” lists. Showing remarkable range, The Sympathizer, called a “cerebral thriller about Vietnam and its aftermath” by the Washington Post, is also a nominee for a 2016 Edgar for Best First Novel as well as on the shortlist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Earlier this year, it won ALA’s Carnegie Medal for Fiction.

The winners of the PEN/Faulkner Awards will be announced on April 5th.

Ironically, for a year in which most of the Oscar categories were dominated by literary adaptations, the Best Picture winner, Spotlight was one of the few not based on a novel. The film does, however, have a book connection. Based on the story of the Boston Globe‘s Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into charges of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, the articles were published in book form in 2003 and re-released as a tie-in, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight, The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, (Hachette/Back Bay).

If the Oscars had a category for Book That Benefited Most from Film Adaptation, the winner this year would be Michael Punke’s The Revenant (Macmillian/Picador), which propelled the 2002 novel from obscurity to best seller lists. It also won in three official Oscar categories, Best Actor, Director and Cinematography.

The author, while able to attend the Oscars, is prohibited by his day job from appearing on the red carpet, the New York Times reports in a profile. As the United States ambassador to the World Trade Organization, he is not allowed to do any publicity for the movie, or even his own book.

Also benefiting from its film incarnation is Andy Weir’s The Martian (PRH/Broadway), which made its own unlikely journey from a series Weir offered for free on his web site to a best selling book, with the film adaptation bringing it to even wider readership. Despite its being nominated in six categories, the Academy passed over the movie, denying it a single win.

Both movies got special attention from Oscars host Chris Rock in the show’s opening parody.

The Grammy Awards are not known for celebrating books, but this year’s opening number has its roots in Ron Chernow’s biography Alexander Hamilton (Penguin, 2005), the inspiration for the hip hop musical Hamilton.

As a result, the book rose to #49 on Amazon’s sales rankings. Holds are growing in many libraries.

The cast recording went on to win Best Musical Theater Album, a category that included another musical adapted from a book Fun Home, based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel.

Hamilton‘s composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda accepted the award in rhyme:

This gives Miranda another footnote to add to his book, coming in April, about the musical’s improbable path to success, Hamilton: The Revolution,  (Hachette/Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Audio and Blackstone Audio)

The winner for Best Spoken Word Album is A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter (S&S Audio). This is Carter’s second Grammy. He won in 2007 for Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (S&S Audio).

The other nominees were:

Blood On Snow, Jo Nesbø, narrator, Patti Smith (Random House Audio)

Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, And Assorted Hijinks, Dick Cavett (Macmillan Audio)

Patience And Sarah, by Isabel Miller; narrators, Janis Ian & Jean Smart (Audible/Brilliance)

Yes Please, Amy Poehler (HarperAudio)

In terms of Oscar nominations, the force is not with Star Wars, which only received nominations in technical categories, but it is with book adaptations. Of the eight nominees for Best Picture, five are based on books, and one other, Spotlight, has a book connection. It is about the Boston Globe‘s Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles, which were released in 2003 in book form, and re-released as a tie-in. UPDATE; There is one more book connection. Although Bridge of Spies is “an original screenplay and not based on any underlying source material,” there are books about the story, including the 1964 memoir by James B. Donovan, played by Tom Hanks in the move, Strangers on a Bridge, republished last year by S&S/Scribner and Bridge of Spies by Giles Whittell, (PRH/Broadway, 2010)

Oscar Nominees — Adaptations (technical nominations not listed)

  

The Revenant – Best Picture, Director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Supporting Actor (Tom Hardy)

Won Golden Globe Awards for Drama and Best Actor in a Drama on Sunday. The movie has made a best-seller of the book originally released to middling success in 2002  It is currently at #2 NYT Paperback Trade Fiction Best Sellers list.

Tie-in:  The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke (Macmillian/Picador).
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The Martian — Best Picture, Actor (Matt Damon), Adapted Screenplay

Won Golden Globes for Best Musical or Comedy as well as Best Actor, Musical or Comedy (if you are scratching your head over that designation, you are not alone). The paperback is currently #1 on the NYT Paperback Trade Fiction and #2 on the Paperback Mass-Market Fiction Best Sellers lists.

The Martian, Andy Weir, (PRH/Broadway; mass market pbk)
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The Big Short — Best Picture, Director (Adam McKay), Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Adapted Screenplay

Tie-in:  The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis, (Norton)

Currently at #1 on the NYT Paperback Nonfiction Best Sellers list.

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Brooklyn — Best Picture, Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Adapted Screenplay

Tie-in, currently at #3 on NYT Paperback Trade Fiction Best Sellers list:

Brooklyn, Colm Toibin. (S&S/Scribner)
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Room — Best Picture, Director (Lenny Abrahamson), Actress (Brie Larson), Adapted Screenplay

Larson won a Golden Globe for Best Actress, Drama

Tie-ins: Room: A Novel, (Hachette/Back Bay), Mass Market, Audio CD

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Carol — Best Actress (Cate Blanchett), Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara), Adapted Screenplay;  based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price Of Salt, 1952.

Tie-in: Carol, Patricia Highsmith, (Norton)

Publisher Norton has created a clever recommendation web site, Choose Your Highsmith, which also features a video of several authors, including Alison Bechdel, expressing their enthusiasm for Highsmith.

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45 Years — Best Actress Charlotte Rampling

The movie is based on is in the lead story in the collection, In Another Country, (Biblioasis, June, 2015).
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Steve Jobs — Best Supporting Actress (Kate Winslet), Actor (Michael Fassbender)

Winslet won a Golden Globe for Supporting Actress.

No tie-in, but the book was released in trade paperback around the time of the movie, (with the younger Jobs on the cover):

Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson, (Simon & Schuster)
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The Danish Girl — Best Supporting Actress (Alicia Vikander), Actor (Eddie Redmayne)

Tie-in: The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff, (PRH/Penguin)
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Trumbo — Best Actor (Bryan Cranston)

Trumbo (Movie Tie-In Edition), Bruce Cook, (Hachette/Grand Central)
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Spotlight — Best Director (Tom McCarthy), Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Supporting Actress (Rachel McAdams), Best Original Screenplay

About the Boston Globe‘s  Pulitzer Prize winning series . The articles were later published in book form in 2003 and re-released as a tie-in:

Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church : The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight, The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, (Hachette/Back Bay)

Among the awards announced at the ALA Midwinter Conference is the prestigious Sophie Brody Medal, given for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature.

Jim Shepard’s novel The Book of Aron (PRH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample) is this year’s winner. In praising the book the committee says,

“This book is an eloquent blend of fiction and non-fiction that recounts the story of the Warsaw Ghetto through the unvarnished voice of a child.  Shepard’s narrator, Aron, gives a chilling and realistic depiction of the progressive deterioration of his world.  Shepard weaves Aron’s voice with that of Dr. Janusz Korczak, a heroic historical figure dedicated to the welfare of the Jewish children in his charge. This is a haunting story of the Holocaust.”

Further details and the list of the four selected honor books can be found in the RUSA/CODES press release.

The ever-popular RUSA/CODES Reading List for the best genre books was announced during the ALA Midwinter meeting last week in Boston.

The titles are chosen from eight genres covering “adrenaline (suspense, thrillers, and action adventure), fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, and women’s fiction.”

The winners, with annotations by the committee, are:

Adrenaline:

Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins/Morrow; OverDrive Sample)

“Three sisters are driven apart in the aftermath of one’s disappearance. When a violent crime occurs new fears arise and relationships shift again. Long term effects of family grief are exploited by the compulsions of a psychopath. Brutal and disturbing, this is ultimately a story of love and empowerment.”

Fantasy:

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (RH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample)

“In this enchanted old-world fable, villagers threatened by a blighted magical wood allow the resident wizard to take one daughter into servitude for ten years. When he chooses klutzy Agnieszka, she faces an unexpected future and confronts the dangers of a wider political world and the roots of magical corruption.”

Historical Fiction:

Crooked Heart, Lissa Evans (Harper; OverDrive Sample)

“Raised by his eccentric ex-suffragette godmother to be a free-thinker, young Noel is thrown into chaos when the London Blitz forces him into the home of a scam artist loyal only to her layabout son. Thrust together, the two oddballs are forced to find a way through the wartime landscape 

Horror:

The Fifth House of the Heart, Ben Tripp (S&S/Gallery; OverDrive Sample)

“Flamboyant antiques dealer Asmodeus “Sax” Saxon-Tang made his fortune by accidentally killing a vampire with a horde of treasure. To protect the only person he loves, his niece, he’s forced to return to old Europe to assemble an eccentric team of vampire hunters in this gory, witty caper.”

Mystery:

The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney (Harper/William Morrow; OverDrive Sample)

“Cold cases cast a twenty-five year shadow of grief and guilt on the lives of two survivors of traumatic teenage crimes. New leads and new cases bring them back to Oklahoma City as past and present intersect in this poignant and compelling story of lives forever changed by random violence.”

Romance:

Taking the Heat by Victoria Dahl (HQN; OverDrive Sample)

“Sassy relationship advice columnist Veronica overcomes her commitment anxiety and gains confidence with the help of mountain-climbing librarian Gabe. Steamy romance evolves into a strong relationship as they scale a mountain of family conflicts and share secrets against a majestic Jackson Hole backdrop.”

Science Fiction:

Golden Son, Pierce Brown (RH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample)

“Insurgent Darrow inveigled his way into high Gold society in 2014’s Red Rising. In this dramatic, high octane follow-up, conflicting loyalties and his own ambitions lure Darrow into an untenable web of deceptions. Bolstered by new alliances, Darrow battles to overthrow corrupt lunar leadership and bring freedom to Mars.”

Women’s Fiction:

Re Jane by Patricia Park (Penguin/Pamela Dorman Books; OverDrive Sample)

“Anxious to escape the strict upbringing of her uncle’s Flushing grocery, Korean-American Jane accepts an au pair position in the pretentious household of two Brooklyn academics and their adopted Chinese daughter. Park has created a bright comic story of falling in love, finding strength, and living on one’s own terms.”

The RUSA press release also gives more fodder for readers advisors, with the four short-listed titles per category.