National Book Awards + Blade Runner
Every fall, the National Book Foundation announces the National Book Awards Finalists before the award ceremony in mid-November. There are five finalists for each of the following categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People’s Literature. In addition, the foundation recognizes debut fiction authors under the age of 35 in the 5 Under 35, and it is with great pleasure to say that all of the honorees in the latter category are women! It’s safe to say all of the books represented in these categories are most definitely worth your attention. To see the finalists in the four major categories, click here. To read more about the honored women in 5 Under 35, click here. The winners in each of the four major categories will be announced at the ceremony on November 15th, so stay tuned!
Speaking of notable works of art, Blade Runner 2049 hit theaters last Friday and the reviews have been explosive! The original Blade Runner came out in 1982 and was inspired by the very famous 1968 science fiction classic, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? by Philip K. Dick. Starring a young and incredibly handsome Harrison Ford and directed by the very swoon worthy Ridley Scott (The Martian, Alien, In Her Shoes, Thelma & Louise), the movie became an instant cult hit just like the book. While the setting in the book was a post-apocalyptic San Francisco in the year 2019, the movie took place in Los Angeles, which has become an archetypal setting for post-apocalyptic narratives. In the long-awaited sequel, the year is 2049, LA is more rugged than ever, Denis Villeneuve directs (Arrival, Sicario, Prisoners) and Ryan Gosling takes the lead (Homeboy can get it). Ford revives his role, and apparently the duo is unstoppable. If this press interview says anything about their companionship, I’m already rooting for many more sequels to come.
Last weekend was popping for another reason: it was the celebrated four-day-long New York Comic Con. Some of our Teenreads.com staff alongside a few ongoing contributors (and veteran attendees) were lucky enough to scope out the event this year. Between lots of cosplaying, celebrity sightings and learning about the latest graphic novel trends, the event was a total hit. Rebecca Munro, Editorial Coordinator of Teenreads.com and Kidsreads.com, said one of her favorite things about the convention was “seeing all of the Elevens from 'Stranger Things.'" You can read more about the things they saw and heard over on Teenreads.com, so click here.
Also, be sure to check out the Teenreads.com 20th Anniversary special! The site is celebrating turning 20 with a great giveaway featuring books throughout the years. Scroll down to learn more, or click here to enter now through Wednesday, November 1st at noon ET.
Here are some other books to check out right now:
In HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES: Stories, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts and girls-with-bells-for-eyes.
Jennifer Egan returns from her seven-year hiatus (think 2010's A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD) with MANHATTAN BEACH. Anna Kerrigan accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life and the reasons he might have vanished.
In season, thriller hotshot Stephen King makes his first co-authoring debut with his son, Owen King, with SLEEPING BEAUTIES. In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned and left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.
Happy reading!
5 Things To Obsess About This Very Moment, in no particular order:
1. E.L. James has another Fifty Shades of Grey book
2. The first stills of Felicity Jones as iconic Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the forthcoming biopic On the Basis of Sex
3. British heartthrob Idris Elba reading erotic fanfiction about himself
4. Netflix is doing a Swedish thriller series based on Malin Persson Giolito's QUICKSAND
5. Eve Babitz's works are getting the TV treatment on Hulu
--- Nicole Sherman
Teenreads.com's 20th Anniversary Giveaway!
We're celebrating Teenreads.com's 20th Anniversary in a BIG way. They're giving away 20 books representing a timeline of YA over the last two decades!
They've selected one book from each year, beginning with BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE by Annette Curtis Klause (1997) and ending with last year's TRUTHWITCH by Susan Dennard (2016). Click here to see all the included titles.
Enter now through Wednesday, November 1st at noon ET, for your chance to be the Grand Prize winner, who will win a copy of each of the 20 featured books, or one of five Second Prize winners, who will each win copies of four select titles.
AFTER THE ECLIPSE: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search by Sarah Perry(Memoir)
Audiobook available, read by Emily Woo Zeller
When Sarah Perry was 12, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home, and the killer escaped unseen. It would take the police 12 years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all, she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction --- all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
BEST DAY EVER by Kaira Rouda (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Graham Halstead and Amy McFadden
Paul Strom has the perfect life: a glittering career as an advertising executive, a beautiful wife, two healthy boys and a big house in a wealthy suburb. And he’s the perfect husband: breadwinner, protector, provider. That’s why he’s planned a romantic weekend for his wife, Mia, at their lake house, just the two of them. And he's promised today will be the best day ever. But as Paul and Mia drive out of the city and toward the countryside, a spike of tension begins to wedge itself between them and doubts start to arise. How much do they trust each other? And how perfect is their marriage, or any marriage, really? Reviewed by Leah DeCesare (www.leahdecesare.com).
THE BLACKBIRD SEASON by Kate Moretti (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Audiobook available; read by Cassandra Campbell, Gibson Frazier, Joy Osmanski and Rebekah Ross
In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall onto a high school baseball field, unleashing a horrifying and unexpected chain of events that will rock the close-knit community. Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alicia, are well-respected throughout town. That is, until one of the many reporters investigating the bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia claims that she and Nate are engaged in an affair, and when she suddenly disappears, the police only have one suspect: Nate. Nate’s coworker and sole supporter, Bridget Harris, is determined to prove his innocence. Reviewed by Leah DeCesare (www.leahdecesare.com).
CLOSE TO HOME by Robert Dugoni (Mystery/Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Emily Sutton-Smith
While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can’t turn her back on this kind of injustice. When she uncovers the driver’s ties to a rash of recent heroin overdoses in the city, she realizes that this isn’t just a case of the military protecting its own. It runs much deeper than that, and the accused wasn’t acting alone. As Tracy moves closer to uncovering the truth behind this insidious conspiracy, she’s putting herself in harm’s way. Reviewed by Rebecca Munro.
DON'T LET GO by Harlan Coben (Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Steven Weber
Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks --- and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For 15 years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for. When Maura's fingerprints turn up in the rental car of a suspected murderer, Nap embarks on a quest for answers that only leads to more questions --- mostly about Leo and Diana, whose deaths are darker and far more sinister than Nap ever dared imagine. Reviewed by Kate Ayers.
FRESH COMPLAINT: Stories by Jeffrey Eugenides (Fiction/Short Stories)
Audiobook available; read by Jeffrey Eugenides, Ari Fliakos and Cynthia Nixon
Ranging from the bitingly reproductive antics of “Baster” to the dreamy, moving account of a young traveler’s search for enlightenment in “Air Mail,” Jeffrey Eugenides’ first collection of short fiction presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people’s wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art founder under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in “Fresh Complaint,” a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her immigrant family lead her to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged British physicist. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
GOING INTO TOWN: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast (Graphic Memoir)
For native Brooklynite Roz Chast, adjusting to life in the suburbs (where people own trees!?) was surreal. But she recognized that for her kids, the reverse was true. On trips into town, they would marvel at the strange world of Manhattan: its gum-wad-dotted sidewalks, honey-combed streets, and "those West Side Story-things" (fire escapes). Their wonder inspired GOING INTO TOWN --- part playful guide, part New York stories, and part love letter to the city, told through Chast's laugh-out-loud, touching and true cartoons. Reviewed by Alex Bowditch.
HAUNTED: A Detective Michael Bennett Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Danny Mastrogiorgio
An idyllic country town in the Maine woods is haunted by an epidemic emptying its streets and preying on its youth. When local cops uncover a grisly crime scene buried deep in the woods, they consult the vacationing Detective Michael Bennett, who jumps at the chance to atone for his own sins. A young, hardscrabble and forgotten girl is haunted by a traumatic history. Homeless and destitute, she represents the closest thing Bennett has to a partner in his frantic hunt for the ghostlike perpetrator behind the violence. Will Bennett and his unlikely ally unmask the culprit before anyone else winds up haunted? Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado (Fiction/Short Stories)
Audiobook available, read by Amy Landon
In HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts and girls-with-bells-for-eyes. Reviewed by Maya Gittelman.
KEEP HER SAFE by Sophie Hannah (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available; performed by Fiona Hardingham, Caitlin Kelly and Nicole Poole
Pushed to the breaking point, Cara Burrows flees her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied --- by a man and a teenage girl. Soon Cara realizes that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving natural life sentences for her murder. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life? Reviewed by Ray Palen.
THE LAST DAY OF EMILY LINDSEY by Nic Joseph (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Victor Bevine
Detective Steven Paul has had the same nightmare for as long as he can remember, a strange symbol figuring prominently into his terror. He decided long ago that the recurring dreams are nothing more than an unfortunate side effect of his often traumatic profession. Until, that is, he's assigned to the case of Emily Lindsey, the beautiful, elusive and controversial blogger found alone, who can't possibly know the symbol from his nightmares...unless she does. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
LIES SHE TOLD by Cate Holahan (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Amy McFadden and Lisa Larsen
Liza Cole has one month to write the thriller that could land her back on the bestseller list, while her husband is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend, Nick. Liza’s latest heroine, Beth, suspects that her husband is cheating on her while she’s home caring for their newborn. Before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the East River. Then, the lines between Liza’s fiction and her reality eerily blur. Nick’s body is dragged from the East River, and Liza’s husband is arrested for his murder. Before her deadline is up, Liza will have to face up to the truths about the people around her, including her own. If she doesn’t, the end of her heroine’s story could be the end of her own. Reviewed by Dunja Bonacci Skenderović.
MAGICIANS IMPOSSIBLE by Brad Abraham (Urban Fantasy)
Audiobook available, read by Bradford Hastings
Twenty-something bartender Jason Bishop’s world is shattered when his estranged father commits suicide. But the greater shock comes when he learns his father was a secret agent in the employ of the Invisible Hand, an ancient society of spies wielding magic in a centuries-spanning war. Now the Golden Dawn --- the shadowy cabal of witches and warlocks responsible for Daniel Bishop’s murder, and the death of Jason’s mother years before --- have Jason in their sights. His survival will depend on mastering his own dormant magic abilities, provided he makes it through the training. Jason's journey through the realm of magic will be fraught with peril. But with enemies and allies on both sides of this war, whom can he trust? Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds.
MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan (Historical Fiction)
Audiobook available; read by Heather Lind, Norbert Leo Butz and Vincent Piazza
Anna Kerrigan accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life and the reasons he might have vanished. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
THE SCARRED WOMAN: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Audiobook available, read by Graeme Malcolm
In a Copenhagen park, the body of an elderly woman is discovered. The case bears a striking resemblance to another unsolved homicide investigation from over a decade ago, but the connection between the two victims confounds the police. Across town, a group of young women are being hunted. The attacks seem random, but could these brutal acts of violence be related? Detective Carl Mørck of Department Q is charged with solving the mystery. Meanwhile, after an earlier breakdown, their colleague Rose is still struggling to deal with the reemergence of her past --- a past in which a terrible crime may have been committed. It is up to Carl, Assad and Gordon to uncover the dark and violent truth at the heart of Rose’s childhood before it is too late. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
SEVEN SUSPECTS by Renee James (Mystery)
Bobbi Logan is a successful businesswoman and a celebrated hairdresser. She is a witty, articulate woman who has survived rape, gender transition, a murder investigation, and countless acts of bullying and bigotry to get to where she is --- and she's made enemies along the way. Now one of them is stalking her. With each passing day, the threats become more brazen, more violent and more personal. Bobbi accumulates a list of six suspects and hunts them down, one by one. But as she confronts those men who may want to do her harm, the number seven keeps haunting her --- there must be a seventh suspect. And when she finds him, Bobbi’s world implodes. Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy.
SLEEPING BEAUTIES by Stephen King and Owen King (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Audiobook available, read by Marin Ireland
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned and left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world. Reviewed by Ray Palen.
WHAT HAPPENED by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Politics/Memoir)
Audiobook available, read by Hillary Rodham Clinton
For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. Reviewed by John Bentlyewski.
WOLF'S REVENGE: A Leo Maxwell Mystery by Lachlan Smith (Mystery)
Audiobook available, read by R. C. Bray
Attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family’s deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. When the consequences strike heartbreakingly close to home, Leo, his brother Teddy, and the rest of the family are forced into a winner-takes-all confrontation with men who don’t care how many innocents they harm in achieving their goals. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
DISAPPEARED by Francisco X. Stork (Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Young Adult 12+)
Audiobook available, narrated by Roxana Ortega and Christian Barillas
Four months ago, Sara Zapata's best friend disappeared, kidnapped by the web of criminals who terrorize Juarez.. Four hours ago, Sara received a death threat --- and with it, a clue to the place where her friend is locked away. Four weeks ago, Emiliano Zapata fell in love with Perla Rubi, who will never be his so long as he's poor. Four minutes ago, Emiliano got the chance to make more money than he ever dreamed --- just by joining the web. In the next four days, Sara and Emiliano will each face impossible choices. But when the web closes in on Sara, only one path remains for the siblings: the way across the desert to the United States. Reviewed by Brynn S., Teen Board Member.
ONE DARK THRONE (Three Dark Crowns) by Kendare Blake (Fantasy)
Katharine, once the weak and feeble sister, is stronger than ever before. Arsinoe, after discovering the truth about her powers, must figure out how to make her secret talent work in her favor without anyone finding out. And Mirabella, once thought to be the strongest sister of all and the certain Queen Crowned, faces attacks like never before --- ones that put those around her in danger she can’t seem to prevent. Reviewed by Danielle F., Teen Board Member.
SPINNING by Tillie Walden (Graphic Memoir)
For ten years, figure skating was Tillie Walden’s life. Skating was a central piece of her identity, her safe haven from the stress of school, bullies and family. But as she switched schools, got into art and fell in love with her first girlfriend, she began to question how the close-minded world of figure skating fit in with the rest of her life, and whether all the work was worth it given the reality: that she, and her friends on the team, were nowhere close to Olympic hopefuls. The more Tillie thought about it, the more Tillie realized she’d outgrown her passion --- and she finally needed to find her own voice. Reviewed by Jessi H., Teen Board Member.
THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END by Adam Silvera (Fantasy, Fiction, Love & Marriage, Young Adult 14+)
Audiobook available, narrated by Michael Crouch and Robbie Daymond
On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure --- to live a lifetime in a single day. Reviewed by Gabby B., Teen Board Member.
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