Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2022

Congratulations to Tom Lin and Hanif Abdurraqib, the 2022 winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. Lin won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for his novel, THE THOUSAND CRIMES OF MING TSU, published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group. Abdurraqib won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for his book, A LITTLE DEVIL in America: In Praise of Black Performance, published by Random House, a division of Penguin Random House.

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The Maid by Nita Prose

January 2022

In Nita Prose’s debut novel, THE MAID, Molly Gray is a socially challenged hotel maid who prides herself on delivering top service to the guests at the Regency Grand Hotel. One day, she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black and finds him dead in his bed. All fingers point to Molly as the killer, so she works to unravel the mystery of what happened to Mr. Black to free herself as a suspect. Molly’s life has been shaped by the words of her Gran, who died a few months ago. She approaches each seemingly insurmountable task by sharing what her Gran would have said to do.

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The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain

January 2022

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE STREET is the latest book from Diane Chamberlain. While I loved her previous effort, BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN, this one surpasses it as my favorite. The novel takes place in the mid-'60s, during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and in the year 2010. Some characters overlap, which is not often the case with dual storylines. Here, questions can be answered by folks who are still around, though whether or not they are being totally truthful remains to be seen.

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Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham

1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz's Deli, new-fangled TVs. But in the Perlman's walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rachel came to Manhattan in a wave of displaced Jews who managed to survive the horrors of war. Her Uncle Fritz fleeing with her, Rachel hoped to find freedom from her pain in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron. But this child of Berlin and daughter of an artist cannot seem to outrun her guilt in the role of American housewife, not until she can shed the ghosts of her past.

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