Features

The National Book Critics Circle Awards 2024

The finalists for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced in six categories: Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. Other announcements included two lifetime achievement awards, the NBCC Service Award, the winner and finalists for the Nona Balakian Citation, the finalists for the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, and the shortlist for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the NBCC Awards. Distinguished guest Maxine Hong Kingston, who won the 1976 NBCC Nonfiction Award for THE WOMAN WARRIOR, will speak in honor of the semicentennial. The awards will be presented on March 20th at the New School in New York City, in a ceremony that will be free and open to the public.

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Week of March 24, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of March 24th include ONE PERFECT COUPLE by Ruth Ware, a high-tension thriller that follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them; CLOSE TO DEATH, the ingenious fifth literary whodunit in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz series, in which Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case --- a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community where suspects abound; Leigh Bardugo's THE FAMILIAR, a spellbinding fantasy that centers on Luzia, a servant in the household of an impoverished Spanish nobleman who reveals a talent for little miracles; REAL AMERICANS, an exhilarating novel of American identity from Rachel Khong that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?; and A GOOD BAD BOY by Margaret Wappler, an artful and contemplative tribute to late actor Luke Perry, best known for playing loner rebel Dylan McKay on "Beverly Hills, 90210."

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