The 2024 Kirkus Prize

The winners of the 2024 Kirkus Prize in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature were announced on October 16th in an in-person ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York that also was livestreamed on Kirkus's YouTube channel.

Kirkus editor-in-chief Tom Beer said, “This year’s prize-winning books --- each written with elegance and lucidity --- illuminate tragedies both personal and historical, helping us to better understand our world and the spirit of human resilience.”

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Danielle Trussoni, author of The Puzzle Box

It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box. The box was constructed during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods, when the samurai class was disbanded and the shogun lost power. In this moment of crisis, Emperor Meiji locked a priceless Imperial secret in the Dragon Box. Only two people knew how to open the box --- Meiji and the box’s sadistic constructor --- and both died without telling a soul what was inside or how to open it. Every 12 years since then, in the Year of the Dragon, the Imperial family holds a clandestine contest to open the box. Every puzzle master who has attempted to open it has died in the process. But Brink is not just any puzzle master. He may be the only person alive who can crack it.

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Patricia Cornwell, author of Identity Unknown: A Scarpetta Novel

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find that her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue. As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil.

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Lynda Cohen Loigman, author of The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

On the cusp of turning 80, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs, an active senior community in southern Florida, she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy --- and the man who broke her heart 60 years earlier. Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago, and how did her plan involving her Great Aunt Esther’s most potent elixir go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her, or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?

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Ina Garten, author of Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

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