Us by David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date . . . and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce.

Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger. 

"Nicholls . . . has created in Douglas a man who has always known where he was and where he was going and who now is suddenly adrift emotionally as well as physically. And all the guidebooks and online tours won't be enough to right his course. Are you thinking this is a predictable tale of family dynamics? Think again; this is Nicholls, after all. For those who loved One Day, the author's latest is another heart-grabber about discovering what makes us happy and learning to let go." (Library Journal Reviews)

This highly anticipated new novel has received many positive reviews and is already on the long list for the Man Booker Prize. Place your hold for Us today.

National Book Award Fiction Longlist Announced

The National Book Foundation's mission is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.  Each year they present awards in multiple categories including Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and Young Reader Literature. For more information about the National Book Foundation click here.

The foundation's longlist for the 2014 Fiction awards are:

Winners of the 2014 National Book Awards will be announced on November 19th.

Best Thriller Award Shortlist Announced

The Crime Writers' Association announced their shortlist picks for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller 2014 (click here to see the official announcement.) Criteria for this award are very broad - novels can be set in any time period and include, but are not limited to, spy fiction, action and/or adventure stories. This year's picks are:

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty:

Sitting in a courtroom after being charged with murder, a geneticist and happily married mother of two reflects on her affair with a secret lover who claimed a connection to the British government and who seduced her with an irresistible combination of sexual power, justice and revenge.

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris:

A tale inspired by the infamous Dreyfus Affair finds Georges Picquart, the recently promoted head of Paris' late-nineteenth-century counterespionage agency, leading the effort to convict Dreyfus only to succumb to gradual doubts that a high-level spy remains at large in the military.

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes:

A debut thriller that traces a collision between two geniuses, including a tortured hero and a determined terrorist, in the aftermath of a murder that a world-class secret agent discovers has been conducted according to his own forensic techniques to hide the victim's identity.

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles:

When his father, a beloved family doctor and pillar of their Natchez, Mississippi community, is accused of murdering a nurse, Penn Cage, to save his father who refuses to speak up in his own defense, makes a shocking discovery that forces him to decide just how far he will go to protect those he loves.

The winner of this award will be named on October 24th.

Award Winning Fiction

Each year, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), honors the best literature published in the United States in six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The 2013 award winners were announced this past week (to read full announcement click here.) Today we'll focus on the fiction category.

Winner: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Americanah.

Summary: Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Americanah, a powerful, tender story of race and identity, was also named One of The New York Times's "Ten Best Books of the Year," an NPR "Great Reads" book, a Chicago Tribune "Best Book," a Washington Post "Notable Book," a Seattle Times "Best Book," an Entertainment Weekly "Top Fiction Book,' a Newsday "Top 10 Book," and a Goodreads "Best of the Year" pick.

The other finalists also considered for the NBCC 2013 award for fiction were:

Someone by Alice McDermott chronicles the ordinary life of a woman named Marie, from her childhood to old age, as she experiences the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn, in this novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived.

The Infatuations by Javier Marias: Breakfasting daily at a Madrid café where she fantasizes about her fellow patrons' idyllic marriage, María Dolz offers condolences to a widow whose husband has been shockingly murdered, an act that leads to a new relationship and disturbing insights into the crime.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki: A novelist on a remote island in the Pacific is linked to a bullied and depressed Tokyo teenager after discovering a Hello Kitty lunchbox that washed ashore.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: Taken in by a wealthy family friend after surviving an accident that killed his mother, thirteen-year-old Theo Decker tries to adjust to life on Park Avenue

And the Finalists Are...

The PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction is given to the best work of fiction published in a given year. To learn more about this award click here.

This year's finalists are:


The winner will be announced on April 2, 2014. In the meantime, scroll down for an overview of each title.

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón. Feeling unfulfilled in the wake of personal and professional setbacks, South American youth Nelson lands a starring role in a revival of a legendary play by his hero and confronts the realities of civil war while touring unfamiliar landscapes. Alarcón's novel has landed on the "Best Books of 2013" lists by NPR, BookPage, Bookriot, on the San Francisco Chronicle Favorite Books of 2013: Francisco Goldman," and Flavorwire's "15 Favorite Novels of 2013."

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel by Percival Everett. Everett's novel is a story inside a story inside a story. A man visits his aging father in a nursing home, where his father writes the novel he imagines his son would write. Or is it the novel that the son imagines his father would imagine, if he were to imagine the kind of novel the son would write? "This is a challenging book, but well worth the read; you won't think about popular fiction, the world of ideas, or old age in the same way again." (Library Journal Reviews)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Coming of age in middle America, 18-year-old Rosemary evaluates how her entire youth was defined by the presence and forced removal of an endearing chimpanzee who was secretly regarded as a family member and who Rosemary loved as a sister. Fowler's novel was named a Best of 2013 pick by: The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Newsday, Chicago Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, The Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and BookPage. It also received a starred review from Booklist Reviews: "Piquant humor, refulgent language, a canny plot rooted in real-life experiences, an irresistible narrator, threshing insights, and tender emotions—Fowler has outdone herself in this deeply inquisitive, cage-rattling novel." 

Fools by Joan Silber. When is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? From New York to India to Paris, from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street, the characters in Joan Silber’s dazzling new story cycle tackle this question head-on. Fools received a starred review from Booklist Reviews who stated "Silber deftly handles a variety of time periods and places with enough recurring motifs . . .to link them all together and creates a memorable meditation on work, religion, love, and the search for personal integrity."

Search Party: Stories of Rescue by Valerie Trueblood. A collection of thirteen intertwined short stories that feature characters who are each searching for something. "The diamond-sharp stories in Trueblood's second collection dazzle. . . Despite the obstacles thrown in their way by fate (one character is knocked unconscious by her lover; another is stabbed by her mother; another fights cancer), Trueblood's characters do keep at it, searching not for meaning or answers, but simply for rest." (Publishers Weekly Reviews)

2012 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence

These 6 books (3 fiction, 3 nonfiction) have made the shortlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Winners from both categories will be announced on June 24, at the American Library Association's annual conference.  Care to weigh in on which should win?

First-ever Bread & Roses Award for radical publishing goes to...

Congratulations to David Graeber, whose new book Debt: The First 5,000 Years has won the Bread and Roses Award for radical publishing.  The book narrowly edged out Nicholas Shaxson's Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World and Chavs: The Demononization of the Working Class by Owen Jones to win this newly created prize. Check out this article from The Bookseller for more details.

And the 'Edgar' mystery book winner is...

The winner of the 2012 Edgar Award for outstanding mystery fiction will be announced tomorrow, April 26, at the Mystery Writers of America conference.  Avid readers of great mysteries can hardly wait!  In the meantime, here are the 5 nominees:

• The Ranger by Ace Atkins - Returning to what has become his violently corrupt hometown in Mississippi after a tour in Afghanistan, Army Ranger Quinn Colson investigates his uncle's alleged suicide and uncovers shocking personal secrets.
• Gone by Mo Hayder - Investigating a serial carjacker whose actual targets are young children in back seats, Jack Caffery teams up once again with police diver Sergeant Flea Marley, whose life is endangered by a discovery in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel.
• The Devotion of Suspect X - A clever mathematics teacher orchestrates a cover-up after a confrontation between a violent man and his terror-stricken ex-wife results in the man's accidental death.
• 1222 by Anne Holt - Follows the experiences of travelers in Norway whose train is derailed 1,222 meters above sea level. They are stranded by a blizzard in a decrepit hotel where one of their number begins killing off the rest.
• Field Gray by Philip Kerr - In a historical suspense novel, chain-smoking, hard-drinking Bernie Gunther moves from riot-torn Berlin in 1931 to Adenauer's Germany in 1954--with a stop at a Russian prisoner-of-war camp along the way.

Happy reading from Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library!

No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012

In the end, the Pulitzer Prize committee could not agree on a winner in the "Fiction" category for 2012.  Could this mean that the three nominees for this prestigious literary prize, which recognizes American-themed fiction by American authors, are all equally good?  Check them out from Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library and decide for yourself.

• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson - Presents the story of early twentieth-century day laborer Robert Grainer, who endures the harrowing loss of his family while struggling for survival in the American West against a backdrop of radical historical changes.
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell - Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the smamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wresting.
• The Pale King by David Foster Wallace - The character David Foster Wallace is introduced to the banal world of the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, and the host of strange people who work there, in a novel that was unfinished at the time of the author's death. 

Just announced: 2012 Orange Prize shortlist

The Orange Prize, an annual UK award honoring English-language fiction by female authors, has just announced this year's list of finalists.  Three American authors have made the cut: Madeline Miller for The Song of Achilles (a debut novel!), Cynthia Ozick for Foreign Bodies, and Ann Patchett for State of Wonder.  The other three finalists are Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz, and Georgina Harding's Painter of Silence, which is not yet available in the United States.  Check these books out from Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library, and decide for yourself which of the finalists deserves to be the winner!

Christian Book Award Nominees at MMSCL

 

For high-quality Christian reading material, try one of these four newly-announced ECPA Award nominees available at Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library.  (The full list is here). 

• Queen by Steven James - (nominated for Best Novel) - While investigating a double homicide in an isolated northern Wisconsin town, FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers uncovers a high-tech conspiracy that twists through long-buried Cold War secrets and targets present-day tensions in the Middle East.
• The Reluctant Prophet by Nancy Rue - (nominated for Best Novel) - In obedience to a divine nudge, 47-year-old Allison Chamberlain buys a Harley and waits for further instructions, which turn her into a reluctant prophet and take her into the darkest parts of her city.
• Nearing Home by Billy Graham - (nominated for Best Nonfiction) - Sharing his experience of growing older, a world-renowned author, preacher, and evangelist teaches some important lessons on how to view our time here on Earth and makes it clear that God has a specific reason for keeping us here.
• The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson - (nominated for Best New Author) - In  this story loosely based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, seventeen-year-old Rose, a healer's apprentice, falls in love with the betrothed Lord Hamlin, who is seeking the sorcerer who cursed his future bride.

Cardholders, did you know you can also subscribe to our Christian Fiction e-newsletter?  Other genres, such as historical fiction, romance, science fiction, and mystery, are also available; sign up here.