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The 2023 Kirkus Prize

The winners of the 2023 Kirkus Prize in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature were announced on October 11th in a hybrid ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York that also was live-streamed on YouTube. This year’s winners were chosen from the 10,794 titles --- published between November 1, 2022 and October 31, 2023 (for Fiction and Nonfiction), and October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023 (for Young Readers’ Literature) --- that were reviewed by Kirkus.

Jesmyn Ward, author of Let Us Descend

LET US DESCEND is a reimagining of American slavery --- a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2024

The American Library Association (ALA) has selected THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters as the winner of the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian as the winner of the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Week of September 2, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 2nd include HOLLY, a thrilling novel that marks the return of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, Holly Gibney, who must uncover the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town; THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story --- and who gets to be believed; Jesmyn Ward's LET US DESCEND, a haunting masterpiece about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War; GOOD BAD GIRL, a drama-filled and surprising thriller from Alice Feeney in which nobody can be trusted and the twists come fast and furious; and WHILE YOU WERE OUT, Meg Kissinger's searing memoir of a family besieged by mental illness, as well as an incisive exploration of the systems that failed them and a testament to the love that sustained them.