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2010 Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards Announced

The winners of the 2010 Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards, sponsored by the Midwest Booksellers Association and chosen by member bookstores, are:
Fiction: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Nonfiction: The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow
Poetry:The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems by Bill Holm
Children's Picture Book: Otis by Loren Long
Children's Literature: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Honor Books: are:
Fiction: Driftless by David Rhodes
Nonfiction: Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François
Poetry: Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude edited by Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, Pamela Mittlefehldt
Children's Picture Book: Moose on the Loose by Kathy-jo Wargin, illustrated by John Bendall-Brunello
Children's Literature: Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

Shamus Award Nominees

The Shamus Award is given annually by the Private Eye Writers of America to honor excellence in the private investigator genre. The winner will be announced at this year's Bouchercon in October. The nominees are:
Best PI Hardcover:
The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta
Where the Dead Lay by David Levien
Locked In by Marcia Muller
Schemers by Bill Pronzini
My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Best First PI Novel:
Loser's Town by Daniel Depp
The Last Gig by Norman Green
The Good Son by Russel D. McLean
Faces of the Gone by Brad Parks
Chinatown Angel by A. E. Roman

2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize

Sam Shepard has won with the 2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement. Tribune editor Gerould Kern said, "In selecting Shepard, we recognize his significant influence on American culture. He transcends boundaries of form, with his talent stretching from the stage to page." Shephard is the Renaissance man: playwright, screenwriter, author, stage and film director, musician, songwriter and actor. He has received a Pulitzer Prize (Buried Child,, Drama Desk and Obie Awards, and Tony nominations for his playwriting; an Oscar nomination for his film acting (The Right Stuff); a British Academy of Film and Television Arts,BAFTA, nomination for his screenwriting (Paris, Texas); and Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his television acting. "Sam Shepard is the premiere dramatist of rural America," Tribune theater critic Chris Jones said. "His work chronicles wide-open spaces, domestic dysfunction and long, brooding silences on the prairie." Shepard joins an illustrious group of Literary Prize winners which includes 2009 winner Tony Kushner, Arthur Miller, Tom Wolfe, August Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, E.L. Doctorow and David McCullough.
The Chicago Tribune honored the 2010 Heartland Prizes recipients Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (nonfiction) and E.O. Wilson for Anthill (fiction) Skloot told the Tribune that the award is her first for the book. "I was absolutely ecstatic when I found about it. I was very humbled to be in (the previous winners') company." The past two recipients of the non-fiction Heartland Prize were Nick Reding's Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town and Garry Wills Head and Heart: American Christianities. Anthill is the 81-year-old biologist/naturalist's debut novel. He has had a notable career, winning two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature, and The Ants, with Bert Holldobler. Wilson told the Tribune: "The greatest surprise and the greatest pleasure from getting the Heartland award is that it's for fiction. For 43 years I've been publishing non-fiction. I thought I'd never publish anything else. But I had one novel in me." The previous two winners of the fiction Heartland Prize were Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark & Termite and Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project.

National Public Radio Top 100 Thrillers

The National Public Radio, NPR, audience nominated some 600 novels to the NPR "Killer Thrillers" poll and cast more than 17,000 ballots. The final roster of winners is diverse, varying in style and period from Dracula to The Da Vinci Code, Presumed Innocent to Pet Sematary. What these top 100 titles share, however, is that all of them are fast-moving tales of suspense and adventure. Who is the NPR audience's favorite thriller writer? It's the King, of course — Stephen King, who landed six titles in the top 100. Lee Child comes next, with four winning books. And, at three titles each, Michael Crichton, Dennis Lehane, Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson tie for third.
The top Thrillers are:
1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
3. Kiss the Girls by James Patterson
4. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
6. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
7. The Shining by Stephen King
8. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
9. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
10. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
12. The Stand by Stephen King
13. The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
14. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
15. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
16. A Time to Kill by John Grisham
17. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
18. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
19. The Day of the Jackal by Daphne Maurier
21. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
22. It by Stephen King
23. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
24. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
25. Jaws by Peter Benchley
26. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
27. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
28. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
29. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
30. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
31. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
32. Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane
33. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
34. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
35. Subterranean by James Rollins
36. Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy
37. Salem's Lot by Stephen King
38. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
39. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
40. The Poet by Michael Connelly
41. The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
42. Cape Fear by John MacDonald
43. The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker
44. Pet Sematary by Stephen King
45. Dead Zone by Stephen King
46. The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
47. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
48. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
49. Tell No One by Harlan Coben
50. Consent to Kill by Vince Flynn
51. The 39 Steps by John Buchan
52. Blowback by Brad Thor
53. The Children of Men by P.D. James
54. 61 Hours by Lee Child
55. Marathon Man by William Goldman
56. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
57. 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs
58. Psycho by Robert Bloch
59. The Killing Floor by Lee Child
60. Rules of Prey by John Sandford
61. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
62. In the Woods by Tana French
63. Shogun by James Clavell
64. The Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
65. Intensity by Dean Koontz
66. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
67. Metzger's Dog by Thomas Perry
68. Timeline by Michael Crichton
69. Contact by Carl Sagan
70. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
71. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
72. The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
73. Charm School by Nelson DeMille
74. Feed by Mira Grant
75. Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
76. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
77. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
78. The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders
79. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
80. The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell
81. Primal Fear by William Diehl
82. The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry
82. The Hard Way by Lee Child [tie]
84. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
85. Six Days of the Condor by James Grady
86. Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler
87. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
88. The Eight by Katherine Neville
89. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
90. Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
91. Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
92. The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
93. Hardball by Sara Paretsky
94. The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
95. The Deep Blue Good-by by John MacDonald
96. The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais
96. Berlin Game, by Len Deighton [tie]
98. A Simple Plan by Scott Smith
99. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
100. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

2010 RITA Awards

The Romance Writers of America recently announced the winners of the 2010 RITA awards:
Inspirational Romance: The Inheritance by Tamera Alexander
Novel With Strong Romantic Elements: The Lost Recipe for Happiness by Barbara O'Neal
Romance Novella: "The Christmas Eve Promise" by Molly O'Keefe in The Night Before Christmas
Contemporary Series Romance: A Not-So-Perfect Past by Beth Andrews
Contemporary Series Romance Suspense/Adventure: The Soldier's Secret Daughterr by Cindy Dees
Historical Romance: Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas
Regency Historical Romance: What Happens In London by Julia Quinn
Paranormal Romance: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole
Romantic Suspense: Whisper of Warning by Laura Griffin
First Book: One Scream Away by Kate Brady
Contemporary Single Title Romance: Too Good To Be True by Kristin Higgins
Young Adult Romance: Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Auel's Final Book in Earth's Children to be published in March 2011

Author Jean M. Auel's prehistoric book series, Earth's Children, will end with the sixth and final novel to be published in 2011. Auel's U.K. publisher Hodder & Stoughton has announced that The Land of Painted Caves will be published March 29 next year. Auel started her series in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which an orphaned Ayla, a Cro-Magnon, is adopted by a group of Neanderthals. The book was turned into a movie in 1986 starring Daryl Hannah.

Crime Writers' Association International Dagger Award

Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room has won the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger award for a crime novel that has been translated into English. Judges called the novel "impossible to reduce... to ghost story, a police procedural or a gothic tale." Theorin bested a shortlist that included Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, Tonino Benacquista's Badfellas, Andrea Camilleri's August Heat, Arnaldur Indridason's Hypothermia and Deon Meyer's Thirteen Hours.

Man Booker Longlist

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for fiction has been announced. Chair of judges Andrew Motion said, "Here are thirteen exceptional novels--books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain." The shortlist will be announced September 7, with the winner revealed on October 12. This year's longlist:
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
C by Tom McCarthy
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
February by Lisa Moore
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Trespass by Rose Tremain
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner

2010 Dagger Awards

The Crime Writers' Association,CWA,has announced the winners of several Dagger Awards. These include:
Dagger in the Library: Ariana Franklin, “the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users”;
Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction: Ruth Dudley Edwards for Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing & the Families’ Pursuit of Justice;
International Dagger: Johan Theorin for The Darkest Room;
Short Story Dagger: Robert Ferrigno for "Can You Help Me Out There" (which appeared in Thriller 2);
Debut Dagger: Patrick Eden, for his noir tale "A Place of Dying."

New Franz Kafka Manuscripts Found

On Tuesday an Israeli judge rejected a request for a gag order on the contents of a box containing manuscripts written by Franz Kafka. Most of the found documents are letters and manuscripts belonging to Kafka and Max Brod, Kafka's close friend and editor. The box also contains a never before seen handwritten manuscript of a Kafka short story. The handwritten manuscript is of great value since Brod edited Kafka's work. There are more safe deposit boxes to be opened; more documents and manuscripts of the two authors are expected to be found.

Pritzker Military Library Literature Award Announced

The 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing will be awarded in October to military historian and journalist Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn, The Long Gray Line, Crusade and many others. The $100,000 honorarium will be presented at the annual Pritzker’s Liberty Gala in Chicago on October 22. "The Pritzker Award recognizes: [A] living author for a body of work that has profoundly enriched the public understanding of American military history." A national panel of writers and historians -- including previous recipients James M. McPherson, Allan R. Millett, and Gerhard L. Weinberg -- reviewed nominations and definitive works submitted by publishers, agents, booksellers, and other professional literary organizations.

Tess Gerritsen's novels Adapted to TV

The TV series, Rizzoli & Isles, based on Tess Gerritsen’s series of mystery novels, has started on TNT. The first show ranked as “the most watched ad-supported cable series launch of all time,” according to Deadline Hollywood. The TV series is largely based The Apprentice, book 2 of the series. The series, in order: 1. The Surgeon (2001); 2. The Apprentice (2002); 3. The Sinner (2003); 4. Body Double (2004);5. Vanish (2005); 6. The Mephisto Club (2006);7. The Keepsake (2008); 8. Ice Cold (2010)

50th Anniversary of Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

Published in 1960, Harper Lee's novel had been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. HarperCollins is releasing a special 50th anniversary hard cover edition that includes the original art work. The book Scout, Atticus, and Boo by Mary McDonagh Murphy recently was published. It contains interviews with people sharing their memories of the novel and its author. HarperCollins has a campaign "50 years, 50 events", for more information, see www.ToKillAMockingbird50Year.com

2010 Locus Awards

The winners of the 2010 Locus Awards, voted on by Locus magazine readers and announced on Saturday at the annual Science Fiction Awards Weekend:
Best science fiction novel: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
Best fantasy novel: The City & The City by China Miéville
Best first novel: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Best young adult novel: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Best novella: The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker
Best novelette: "By Moonlight" by Peter S. Beagle in We Never Talk About My Brother
Best short story: "An Invocation of Incuriosity" by Neil Gaiman in Songs of the Dying Earth
Best magazine: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Best publisher: Tor
Best anthology: The New Space Opera 2, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan
Best collection: The Best of Gene Wolfe by Gene Wolfe
Best editor: Ellen Datlow
Best artist: Michael Whelan
Best nonfiction/art book: Cheek by Jowl by Ursula K. Le Guin

Legendary Chicago Bookseller Stuart Brent Dead at 98

Stuart Brent, legendary bookseller in Chicago, died last week at the age of 98. He founded his first bookstore in 1946. A few years later, he opened Stuart Brent Books, which became a Chicago institution and closed in 1996. The Chicago blog of the University of Chicago Press called Brent "a bookseller of the most independent sort: well-read, opinionated, and willing (or more) to shape his customers' reading habits. Over the course of his fifty years in the business, bookselling became ever more concentrated in the mall stores, superstores, and virtual stores of billion dollar corporations. The books stocked in Stuart Brent Books were chosen by a personality, not an algorithm." The Chicago Sun Times wrote: "He was proud of his roots on the city's old West Side, where his Ukrainian parents taught Mr. Brent--then called Samuel Brodsky--folk tales, stories of shtetl life, and intellectual debate. Mr. Brent's love of reading came from his father, who devoured Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Yiddish authors." Brent wrote a memoir, Seven Stairs, named after his first bookstore. In a foreword for Seven Stairs, Saul Bellow wrote: "Stuart Brent is the Orpheus of Chicago booksellers, ready to challenge hell itself to bring a beautiful book back to Chicago and the light of its reading lamps."

Nobel Prize Winner Jose Saramago Dies

Jose Saramago, the first Portugeses language winner of the Nobel Prize, has died after a long illness. His first novel, Country of Sin, was published in 1947. For the next 18 years, he worked as a journalist, publishing travel and poetry books. In the 1980s, Saramago became one of Portugal's best selling novelists. Perhaps his most known novel is Blindness . He has said that it addresses the world's "blindness of rationality." In the novel, the population of an unknown city is struck by a mysterious blindness. Chaos and societial breakdown ensues. The novel was made into a 2008 film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Saramago critized his fellow man: "we're rational beings, but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world." He was outspoken and blunt, and his writing style was critized for its wordiness and lack of punctuation. His strong support ofCommunism also earned him criticism. His other books include: Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Stone Raft, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

Nominees for Anthony Award Announced

The nominees for the Anthony Award were announced on the Bouchercon2010 blog. Named for the late Anthony Boucher, the award winners, chosen by the attendees of the convention, will be announced this October during Bouchercon in San Francisco.
The nominees are:
Best Novel:
The Last Child by John Hart
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan
Best First Novel:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff
Best Paperback Original:
Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman
Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins
Death and the Lit Chick by G. M. Malliet
Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Best Short Story:
"Last Fair Deal Gone Down" by Ace Atkins
"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron
"Animal Rescue" by Dennis Lehane
"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan
"Amapola" by Luis Alberto Urrea
Best Critical Non-Fiction:
Talking about Detective Fiction by P. D. James
The Line Up by Otto Penzler, ed.
Haunted Heart by Lisa Rogak
Dame Agatha's Shorts by Elena Santangelo
The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar

Mystery Writer Eleanor Taylor Brand Dies

Eleanor Taylor Bland, author of 13 mystery books, died of cancer on June 2. Her series features African American Marti MacAlister as a tough streetwise homicide detective who lives in a suburb about thirty miles north of Chicago with her two children. Bland lived most of her life in Waukegan. Her support of the written word was legendary. She served on the board of the Waukegan Public Library and chaired the friends of the library. She mentored writers Libby Fischer Hellman and Michael Dymmoch and served as president of Sisters in Crime. Bland once commented that "the most significant contribution that we (African American women writers) have made, collectively, to mystery fiction is the development of the extended family; the permanence of spouses and significant others, most of whom don't die in the first three chapters; children who are complex, wanted and loved; and even pets." Bland received the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, the Chester A. Himes Mystery Fiction Award, and the Most Influential African American of Lake County Award. On her blog, Chicago author Sara Paretsky wrote: "Our world of writers, readers, humans is diminished....Grace under pressure, gallantry, these are the images that come to mind, and, always, a smile that warmed us to the core of our souls. May your memory be a blessing to those of us you’ve left behind."

New York Times Names 20 Authors Under 40 to Watch

After a decade, the New York Times has presented a new list of authors under 40 that it describes as promising and "worth watching." The authors are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Adrian, Daniel Alarcón, David Bezmozgis, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Safran Foer,Nell Freudenberger, Rivka Galchen, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, Dinaw Mengestu, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, Téa Obreht, Z Z Packer, Karen Russell, Salvatore Scibona,Gary Shteyngart,and Wells Tower. In January, the newspaper's editors asked literary agents, publishers and other writers to suggest potential candidates. From those suggestions, the editors created a shortlist of about 40 eligible writers. A few well known writers, including Colson Whitehead and Dave Eggers, were not eligible due to their age. The shortlisted authors were required to submit new writing, such as a short story or an excerpt from a novel. Those who did not submit any writing were eliminated. The selected writers’ fiction will be printed in future New York Times magazines.
Adichie is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Purple Hibiscus and Half a Yellow Sun. Adrian,a pediatrician, is best known for his novel The Children's Hospital. In 2007, Alarcon's book Lost City Radio was selected as a best book of the year by many reviewers. Bezmozgis wrote Natasha and Other Stories, a collection vividly describing the ups and downs of immigrant life. Bynum's debut novel Madeleine is Sleeping was named a 2004 National Book Award Finalist. Ferris is best known for his novel, Then We Came to the End, a 2007 National Book Award Finalist. Foer's bestselling novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close received critical acclaim. Meyer's novel American Rust, a third person, stream of consciousness narrative, won several awards and was compared to James Joyce's work. It also made Newsweek's list of the Best of Books Ever. The New York Times selected Morgan's first novel All the Living for its Notable Books list; the title is from Ecclesiastes 9:3. In a rather surprising move, Obrent is on the list, yet her novel The Tiger's Wife will be published next year. However, excerpts have been published in the New Yorker. Chicago born Packer's short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, was a PEN/Faulkner Finalist. Critic Ben Marcus calls Karen Russell a "literary mystic"; she is best known for her short stroy collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Scibona's debut novel The End won several awards, including National Book Award Finalist. Shteyngart is known for his vast imagination; his novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan mix reality and absurdity. Tower's short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned reflects his belief that a writer "can be believably generous to a character, (a writer) can show somebody fumbling for redemption in a believable way."