The Christy Award, which recognizes “excellence in Christian fiction written by contemporary authors and highlighting the breadth and diversity of Christian fiction” has announced its 2008 nominees.
Unsurprisingly, Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon is a nominee in the Contemporary Series category.
Mystery phenom Robert Paker has written a pitch-perfect book with his second young adult novel, The Boxer and the Spy, which combines mystery, sports, and a teenage romance.
When a classmate turns up dead, 15-year-old boxer-in-training Terry Novak doesn’t believe the story his high school principal is spinning about steroid use leading to suicide. Instead Terry and his girlfriend, Abby, decide to look into the matter themselves and Abby creates a teenage cell-phone spy network to track the movement of their suspects.
As Terry and Abby get closer to the truth, Terry finds that the advice his trainer, George, has been giving him applies to much more than just boxing.
The Boxer and the Spy is a wonderfully empowering coming of age story about what it means to be a man and how to stand up for what you believe in when threatened with harassment and intimidation.
Check availability of The Boxer and the Spy at Fiction Addiction.
The 2008 Edgar Award winners have been announced.
I’m pleased to learn that Down River by John Hart (St. Martin’s, hardcover, $24.95), which is also a SIBA Award Finalist, has won for Best Mystery Novel. We’ve been a John Hart fan since his first novel, King of Lies, which was our first-ever hardcover mystery pick.
The winner for Best First Mystery Novel is In the Woods by Tana French, which will release in paperback on May 27th. Both my mom and I have read In the Woods and recommend it for fans of Val McDermid and other psychological British mysteries.
Joan Bauer’s new book, Peeled (Putnam, hardcover, $16.99), features Hildy Biddle, ace high school reporter. Hildy lives in Upstate New York in the normally quiet, peaceful town of Banesville, where life centers around the apple orchards and other agricultural pursuits. When the new owner of the town’s only paper begins playing up rumors of a violent ghost haunting an abandoned farm, Hildy learns an important lesson about journalistic ethics. Bauer, a Newbery Honor author, is known for creating strong, independent, witty, female teenaged characters such as Hildy.
Check availability of Joan Bauer books at Fiction Addiction.
Fans of Holly Black’s teen urban fantasies should enjoy Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr (HarperCollins, paperback, $8.99).
High school junior Aislinn lives with her grandmother in Huntsville, PA, just south of Pittsburgh. Like her grandmother and her mother before her, Aislinn has the sight and can see faeries. Following the rules her grandmother has drilled into her (don’t stare at invisible faeries, don’t speak to invisible faeries, don’t attrack the attention of faeires) has kept Aislinn safe so far, but all that changes when she attracts the interest of Keenan, the Summer King.
With the rules not helping her any longer, Aislinn confides in her friend Seth and together they work to withstand Keenan and the machinations of the Faerie court.
Check availability of Melissa Mar books at Fiction Addiction.
The Nebula Award winners were announced this weekend. The winner for best novel was The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon which coincidentally releases in paperback (HarperCollins, $15.95) today.
Check availability of Michael Chabon books at Fiction Addiction.
The 2008 Locus Award Finalists have been announced. The Locus science fiction and fantasy awards are presented to winners of Locus Magazine’s annual readers’ poll, which was established in the early ’70s specifically to provide recommendations and suggestions to Hugo Awards voters. Over the decades the Locus Awards have often drawn more voters than the Hugos and Nebulas combined.
I’m a little behind in my SF reading and so I’m afraid many of the finalists are unfamiliar to me, but the one I have read and greatly enjoyed was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, a finalist for Best First Novel.
The finalists for the 2008 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book Award have been announced and one of the cookbook finalists is Greenville’s own Soby’s New South Cuisine.
The finalists include the best Southern books of 2007 in the following categories: Children’s, Fiction, Cooking, Nonfiction, and Poetry.
We challenge you to read all the finalists and pick your favorites. If you guess the correct award winner in each of the five categories, you’ll be entered to win a prize.
Fiction Addiction’s business book club met tonight to discuss Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World by Diane MacEachern (Avery, paperback, $17.95).
We unanimously agreed that it is a wonderful resource for anyone — whether an individual or a small business — trying to become more environmentally friendly.
For those such as myself who are just starting out, this hefty (432 pages) tome can seem a little intimidating. But the author takes a very realistic approach — suggesting that you adopt just one or two practices at a time until your budget and habits adapt. She gives personal examples of the choices she and her family have made. For example, in the realm of personal care and beauty she decided that her first organic purchases would be for products that stayed on her body the longest, such as makeup and deodorant.
The more eco-advanced members of the book group were already following many of Diane’s suggestions, but the book contained enough new ideas and suggestions that everyone felt it a worthy purchase.
For May, the club will be reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell.
Fiction Addiction’s business book club is open to the public and meets on the 4th Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm at Thai Top Restaurant in our shopping center. Those who purchase the club pick from us during the month we are reading it will receive a 15% discount off the list price.
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin, hardcover, $22.95), the winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, is a very readable first novel set in the Mississippi Delta at the end of World War II. We first follow city-born Laura McAllan as she struggles to deal with the trials of keeping house and raising children on her husband’s newly purchased farm. Then two war heroes return to work the land – her white brother-in-law, Jamie, and Ronsel, the eldest son of her husband’s black tenant farmers — but are given very different homecomings. Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view, but their stories tie together seamlessly, giving a comprehensive view of racial tensions in the Jim Crow South. I recommend Mudbound for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and William Faulkner.
