New Stars in the Nebula

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the winners of the 2012 Nebula Awards this weekend.  Expand your universe with one of these stellar honorees:

Best Novel: Among Others by Jo Walton

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman.  [Bonus: read an original interview with author Delia Sherman and MPPL!]

Best Novella: The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011 – available to read online)

Best Short Story: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011 – available to read online)

Edgar Award Winning Mysteries

Follow the clues to discover the best mystery writing of the year.  The Mystery Writers of America recently named the winners of the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, and it would be a crime for you to leave these cases unsolved:

Best Novel: Gone by Mo Hayder

Best First Novel: Bent Road by Lori Roy

Best Fact Crime: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

Best Critical Biographical: On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda

Best Young Adult: The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall

Best Juvenile: Icefall by Matthew J. Kirby

LIST-O-RAMA: Orange Prize for Fiction

As Women’s History Month draws to a close, be sure to check out the best in women’s contemporary writing.  The Orange Prize for Fiction was created in 1996 to celebrate excellence, originality, and accessibility in women’s writing throughout the world.  Honorees include Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and On Beauty by Zadie Smith.

Click here to see a complete list of the winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction.

National Book Award Winners

“You owe it to yourself to read this book,” wrote Library Journal, and the judges emphatically agree.  Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn West is the newly announced winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.  In this powerful story, a pregnant 14-year-old living in dire poverty tells of her family’s struggle to prepare their rural Mississippi property for a hurricane that happens to be called Katrina. Stephen Greenblatt took top Nonfiction honors for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again won in the Young People’s Literature category.  Click here for a complete list of finalists and interviews with the authors.

Out-of-This-World Entertainment

The 2011 Hugo Awards, the leading honor in the field of science fiction and fantasy, were announced this weekend in a culmination of record voter turnout.  The big winner? The one-two punch of Blackout and All Clear, from the always excellent Connie Willis, in which time-traveling historians discover that World War II is spiraling out of control.

Best Novel - Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Best Novelette - “The Emperor of Mars” by Allen M. Steele (included in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form - Doctor Who, “The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Toby Haynes

Best Professional Artist - Shaun Tan

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer - Lev Grossman

Award-Winning Romance

If summer puts you in the mood for romance, snuggle up to one of the new winners of the 2011 RITA Awards.  Given by the Romance Writers of America, the RITA Awards celebrate outstanding published works in diverse categories of the romance genre.  Among this year’s honorees:

Best Regency Historical Romance - The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig 

Best Inspirational Romance - In Harm’s Way by Irene Hannon

Best Young Adult Romance - The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Best Romantic Suspense - Silent Scream by Karen Rose

Best First Book - Pieces of Sky by Kaki Warner

Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements - Welcome to Harmony by Jodi Thomas

Audie-dacious Audiobooks

June is Audiobook Month, and there’s no better time to open your ears to the winners of the 2011 Audie Awards.  In honor of its win as Audiobook of the Year, listen to the fascinating Life of Keith Richards as voiced by Johnny Depp.  Other winners:

Nonfiction - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Thriller/Suspense - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

Mystery - The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Personal Development - Put On Your Crown by Queen Latifah

Biography/Memoir - Life by Keith Richards

Narration by the Author - Nanny McPhee Returns by Emma Thompson

Solo Narration (Male) - Alan Cumming, narrator of Zorgamazoo

Teens - The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon

Children (Ages 8-12) - The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Mystery Solved!

It’s no longer a mystery.  The winners of the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television have been exposed:

Best Novel - The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Best First Novel - Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva

Best Paperback Original - Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard

Best Biographical - Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Best Young Adult - The Interrogation of Gabriel James by Charlie Price

Best Juvenile - The Buddy Files: The Case of the Lost Boy by Dory Hillestad Butler

Best Television Episode - Luther by Neil Cross

Mary Higgins Clark Award - The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

Pulitzer Time

Have you heard?  The 2011 Pulitzer Prizes, which honor excellence in journalism and the arts, have been announced!  Check out these winners:

Poetry - The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan

Nonfiction - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Biography - Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

History - The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner

Fiction - A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan 

Critics' Choice

Want to read a winner?  Try one of the newly announced 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award recipients.  Taking top prize for fiction is Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, a bold novel with overlapping stories about youth and life and what might be lost along the way.  The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson won Best Nonfiction for chronicling one of the great untold stories of American history.  Best Biography honors were bestowed on the intriguingly titled How to Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell.  Last, but by no means least, is Darin Strauss’s heartbreaking autobiography Half a Life about coming to terms with an long-ago accident that cost a girl’s life.