LibGuides: National Book Critics Circle Award: 2020s

The National Book Critics Circle Awards
2020 - 2029

Fiction 2020-2029

WINNER

Hamnet by O'Farrell, Maggie
Call Number: FIC OFARR MAG H (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780525657606
Publication Date: 2020-07-21
A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague.
Hamnet [E-Book] by Maggie O'Farrell
Call Number: FIC OFARR MAG H Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780525657613
Publication Date: 2020-07-21
Hamnet [Streaming audiobook] by Maggie O'Farrell
Call Number: FIC OFARR MAG H Audiobk (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593212158
Publication Date: 2020

FINALISTS:

Inside Story by Martin Amis
If I Had Two Wings by Randall Kenan
How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa
Memorial by Bryan Washington

WINNER

The Love Songs of W. E. B. du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Call Number: FIC JEFFE HONF LO (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780062942937
Publication Date: 2021-08-24

FINALISTS:

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
Burntcoat by Sara Hall
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Second Place by Rachel Cusk
Call Number: FIC CUSK RAC SE (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780374279226
Publication Date: 2021-05-04

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Call Number: FIC WHITE COL HA (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9780385545136
Publication Date: 2021-09-14
Harlem Shuffle [E-Book] by Colson Whitehead
Call Number: FIC WHITE COL HA Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780385545143
Publication Date: 2021

WINNER

Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma

FINALISTS

Dr. No by Percival Everett
A New Name by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakam, translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

WINNER: I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore

FINALISTS:

Tremor by Teju Cole
North Woods by Daniel Mason
Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye ; translation by Jordan Stump
Blackouts by Justin Torres

Nonfiction 2020-2029

WINNER

Island on Fire: the revolt that ended slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner

FINALISTS:

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the violent history of the United States by Walter Johnson
Shakespeare in a Divided America: what his plays tell us about our past and future by James Shapiro
She Come by it Natural: Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs by Sarah Smarsh
Caste: the origins of our discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

She Come by It Natural : Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs by Sarah Smarsh
Call Number: BIO PARTO DOL S (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9781982157289
Publication Date: 2020-10-13
Explores how the music of Dolly Parton and other prominent women country artists has both reflected and validated the harsh realities of rural working-class American women.
She Come by It Natural [E-Book] : Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs by Sarah Smarsh
Call Number: BIO PARTO DOL S Ebook (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781982157302
Publication Date: 2020-10-13

Caste : the origins of our discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Call Number: 305.5 W681c (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780593230251
Publication Date: 2020-08-04
Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Caste [E-Book] : the origins of our discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Call Number: 305.5 W681c Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593230268
Publication Date: 2020-08-04

WINNER

How the Word is Passed [E-Book] : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America by Clint Smith
Call Number: 973.9496 S644h Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780316628587
Publication Date: 2021
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.
How the Word is Passed [Streaming audiobook] : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America by Clint Smith
Call Number: 973.0596 S644h Audiobk (OverDrive)
Publication Date: 2021

FINALISTS:

Empire of Pain: the secret history of the Sackler Dynasty by Patric Radden Keefe
The Family Roe: an American story by Joshua Prager
The Least of Us: true tales of America and hop in the time of fentanyl and meth by Sam Quinones
Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit

Empire of Pain : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
Call Number: BIO SACKL FAM K (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780385545686
Publication Date: 2021-04-13

WINNER

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler

FINALISTS

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández
Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by Joseph Osmundson
Fen, Bog, & Swamp: a Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

Fen, Bog and Swamp by Annie Proulx
Call Number: 333 P968f (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781982173357
Publication Date: 2022-09-27
From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx - whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth - comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth's most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx's explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada's Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia's Great Vasyugan Mire and America's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when 'in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.' Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display.
An Immense World : how animal sense reveal the hidden realms around us by Ed Yong
Call Number: 591.5 Y55i (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780593133231
Publication Date: 2022-06-21
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires (and fireworks), songbirds that can see the Earth's magnetic fields, and brainless jellyfish that nonetheless have complex eyes. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, and that even fingernail-sized spiders can make out the craters of the moon. We meet people with unusual senses, from women who can make out extra colors to blind individuals who can navigate using reflected echoes like bats. Yong tells the stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, and also looks ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

WINNER: We Were Once a Family by Roxana Asgarian

We Were Once a Family : a story of love, death, and child removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian
Call Number: 364.152 A818w (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780374602291
Publication Date: 2023-03-14
The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children-and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.

FINALISTS:

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley
Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn't Enough by Dina Nayeri
The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

Biography 2020-2029

WINNER

Stranger in the Shogun's City: a Japanese woman and her world by Amy Stanley

FINALISTS:

The Price of Peace: money, democracy, and the life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter
Red Comet: the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
The Dead are Arising: the life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
The Equivalents: a story of art, female friendship, and liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

Red Comet : the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Call Number: BIO PLATH SYL C (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9780307961167
Publication Date: 2020-10-27
Heather Clark here brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, MA who had poetic ambition from a very young age, and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories before she became the star English student at Smith College. Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more. Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.
The Dead Are Arising : the life of Malcolm X by Les Payne; Tamara Payne
Call Number: BIO X MAL P (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9781631491665
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary." In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations-from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom.

WINNER

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: the true story of the American woman at the heart of the German resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner

FINALISTS:

Clairvoyant of the Small: the life of Robert Walser by Susan Bernofsky
Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's enduring message to America by Keisha N. Blain
Mike Nichols: a life by Mark Harris
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by Alexander Nemerov

WINNER

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by beverly Gage

G-Man : J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage
Call Number: BIO HOOVE JEDG G (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780670025374
Publication Date: 2022-11-22
A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage's monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover's life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party. G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.

FINALISTS

The Grimkes: the Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge
Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century by Jennifer Homans
Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhall & Rachael Wiseman
Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

WINNER: Winnie and Nelson by Jonny Steinberg

FINALISTS:

King : A Life by Jonathan Eig
The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts by Gregg Hecimovich
Daughter of the Dragon by Yunte Huang
Betty Friedan by Rachel Shteir

King: a Life by Jonathan Eig
Call Number: BIO KING MARL E (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780374279295
Publication Date: 2023-05-16
The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times
Daughter of the Dragon : Anna May Wong's rendezvous with American history by Yunte Huang
Call Number: BIO WONG ANNM H
ISBN: 9781631495809
Publication Date: 2023-08-22
The story of Anna May Wong, who fought virulent anti-Chinese xenophobia, unabashed sexism, cinematic exploitation, and the ageism that defined American culture in the 20th century to became Hollywood's first Chinese American film star.

Autobiography 2020-2029

WINNER

Minor Feelings: an Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

FINALISTS:

This is Major: notes on Diana Ross, dark girls, and being dope by Shayla Lawson
Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer
The Dragons, the Giant, The Women by Wayétu Moore
Home Baked: my mom, marijuana, and the stoning of San Francisco by Alia Volz

WINNER

Gay Bar: why we went out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

FINALISTS:

A Little Devil in America: notes in praise of black performance by Hanif Abdurraquib
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: a son's memoir by Rodrigo Garcia
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Concepcion: an immigrant family's fortunes by Albert Samaha

A Little Devil in America : notes in praise of Black performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
Call Number: 791.089 A136L (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781984801197
Publication Date: 2021-03-30
A Little Devil in America is an urgent project that unravels all modes and methods of Black performance, in this moment when Black performers are coming to terms with their value, reception, and immense impact on America. With sharp insight, humor, and heart, Abdurraqib examines how Black performance happens in specific moments in time and space--midcentury Paris, the moon, or a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. At the outset of this project, Abdurraqib became fascinated with clips of Black minstrel entertainers like William Henry Lane, better known as Master Juba. Knowing there was something more complicated and deep-seated in the history and legacy of minstrelsy, Abdurraqib uncovered questions and tensions that help to reveal how Black performance pervades all areas of American society. Abdurraqib's prose is entrancing and fluid as he leads us along the links in his remarkable trains of thought. A Little Devil in America considers, critiques, and praises performance in music, sports, writing, comedy, grief, games, and love.
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes by Rodrigo Garcia
Call Number: BIO GARCI GA G (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780063158337
Publication Date: 2021-07-27

WINNER

Stay True by Hua Hsu

FINALISTS

Linea Nigra: an Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes by Jazmina Barrera, translated by christina MacSweeney
A Line in the World: a Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors, translated by Caroline Waight
Come Back in September: a Literary Educaton on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney
The Man Who Could Move Clouds: a Memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

WINNER: How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

FINALISTS:

I Would Meet You Anywhere by Susan Kiyo Ito
Secret Harvests by David Mas Masumoto
Rotten Evidence by Ahmed Naji
Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder

Poetry 2020-2029

WINNER

Here is the Sweet Hand by francine j. harris

FINALISTS:

Obit by Victoria Chang
Imperial Liquor by Amaud Jamaul Johnson
The Shore by Chris Nealon
Homie by Danez Smith

WINNER

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

FINALISTS:

Ceive by B. K. Fischer
The Renunciations by Donika Kelly
Cutlish by Rajiv Mohabir
The Rhinehart Frames by Cheswayo Mphanza

WINNER

Hotel Oblivion by Cynthia Cruz

WINNER: Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon; translation by Don Mee Choi

FINALISTS:

All Souls by Saskia Hamilton
The Gathering of Bastards by Romeo Oriogun
Information Desk by Robyn Schiff
Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan

Criticism 2020-2029

WINNER

Marking Time: art in the age of mass incarceration by Nicole R. Fleetwood

FINALISTS:

Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell
Grieving: dispatches from a wounded country by Cristina Rivera Garza
Unfinished Business: notes of a chronic re-reader by Vivan Gornick
Crap: a history of cheap stuff in America by Wendy A. Woloson

WINNER

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

FINALISTS:

Why Didn't You Do What You Were Told? by Jenny Diski
Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? by Jesse McCarthy
Everything and Less: the novel in the age of Amazon by Mark McGurl
The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan

WINNER

Free Indirect: the Novel in a Postfictional Age by Timothy Bewes

WINNER: Deadpan by Tina Post

FINALISTS:

The Chapter by Nicholas Dames
Creep by Myriam Gurba
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
Pleasure and Efficacy by Grace E. Lavery

John Leonard Prize 2020-2029

WINNER

Luster by Leilani, Raven
Call Number: FIC LEILA RAV L (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780374194321
Publication Date: 2020-08-04
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage--with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric's home--though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows. Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life--her hunger, her anger--in a tumultuous era. It is also a description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
Luster [E-Book] by Raven Leilani
Call Number: FIC LEILA RAV LU Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780374910334
Publication Date: 2020-08-04

FINALISTS:

Mill Town: reckoning with what remains by Kerri Arsenault
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Conejo Villavicencio
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Call Number: 364.1 C813u (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780399592683
Publication Date: 2020-03-24
Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the extraordinary stories of her fellow undocumented Americans. Her subjects have every reason to be wary around reporters, but Cornejo Villavicencio has unmatched access to their stories. Her work culminates in a stunning, essential read for our times.
The Undocumented Americans [E-Book] by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Call Number: 364.1 C813u Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780399592690
Publication Date: 2020-03-24

A Burning by Majumdar, Megha
Call Number: FIC MAJUM MEG BU (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780525658696
Publication Date: 2020-06-02
After a fiery attack on a train leaves 104 people dead, the fates of three people become inextricably entangled. Jivan, a bright, striving woman from the slums looking for a way out of poverty, is wrongly accused of planning the attack because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir, a slippery gym teacher from Jivan's former high school, has hitched his aspirations to a rising right wing party, and his own ascent becomes increasingly linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely, a spirited, impoverished, relentlessly optimistic hjira, who harbors dreams of becoming a Bollywood star, can provide the alibi that would set Jivan free - but her appearance in court will have unexpected consequences that will change the course of all of their lives. A novel about fate, power, opportunity, and class; about innocence and guilt, betrayal and love, and the corrosive media cycle that manufactures falsehoods masquerading as truths--A Burning is a debut novel of exceptional power and urgency, haunting and beautiful, brutal, vibrant, impossible to forget.
A Burning [E-Book] by Megha Majumdar
Call Number: FIC MAJUM MEG BU Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780525658702
Publication Date: 2020-06-02

Shuggie Bain by Stuart, Douglas
Call Number: FIC STUAR DOU S (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780802148049
Publication Date: 2020-02-11
Hugh "Shuggie" Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. His mother Agnes is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his siblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her-- especially her beloved Shuggie.
Shuggie Bain [E-Book] by Douglas Stuart
Call Number: FIC STUAR DOU S Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780802148056
Publication Date: 2020-02-11

Real Life by Taylor, Brandon
Call Number: FIC TAYLO BRA R (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780525538882
Publication Date: 2020-02-18
A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community
Real Life [E-Book] by Brandon Taylor
Call Number: FIC TAYLO BRA R Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780525538905
Publication Date: 2020-02-18

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by Zhang, C Pam
Call Number: FIC ZHANG CP H (Adult Fiction)
ISBN: 9780525537205
Publication Date: 2020-04-07
Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.
How Much of These Hills Is Gold [E-Book] by C. Pam Zhang
Call Number: FIC ZHANG CP H Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780525537229
Publication Date: 2020-04-07

WINNER

Afterparties by John Leonard Prize

FINALISTS:

Somebody'a Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Pop Song by Larissa Pham
Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa

Somebody's Daughter [E-Book] : a memoir by Ashley C. Ford
Call Number: YA B FOR-AC Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781250245304
Publication Date: 2021-06-01
Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration . . . and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down. Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.
Detransition, Baby [E-Book] by Torrey Peters
Call Number: FIC PETER TOR DE Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780593133392
Publication Date: 2021-01-12
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

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FINALISTS:

Black Pastoral by Ariana Benson
A Nimble Arc by Emlie Boone
The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer; translation by James YOung
When Crack Was King by Donovan X. Ramsey
Judgment and Mercy by Martin J. Siegel

National Book Critics Circle Award

Fiction 2020-2029

WINNER

FINALISTS:

Inside Story by Martin Amis

If I Had Two Wings by Randall Kenan

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Memorial by Bryan Washington

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FINALISTS:

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Second Place by Rachel Cusk

Burntcoat by Sara Hall

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

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Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma

FINALISTS

Dr. No by Percival Everett

A New Name by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakam, translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

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FINALISTS:

Tremor by Teju Cole

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye ; translation by Jordan Stump

Blackouts by Justin Torres

Nonfiction 2020-2029

WINNER

Island on Fire: the revolt that ended slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner

FINALISTS:

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the violent history of the United States by Walter Johnson

Shakespeare in a Divided America: what his plays tell us about our past and future by James Shapiro

She Come by it Natural: Dolly Parton and the women who lived her songs by Sarah Smarsh

Caste: the origins of our discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

WINNER

FINALISTS:

Empire of Pain: the secret history of the Sackler Dynasty by Patric Radden Keefe

The Family Roe: an American story by Joshua Prager

The Least of Us: true tales of America and hop in the time of fentanyl and meth by Sam Quinones

Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit

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The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler

FINALISTS

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández

Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between by Joseph Osmundson

Fen, Bog, & Swamp: a Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

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FINALISTS:

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley

Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn't Enough by Dina Nayeri

The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

Biography 2020-2029

WINNER

Stranger in the Shogun's City: a Japanese woman and her world by Amy Stanley

FINALISTS:

The Price of Peace: money, democracy, and the life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter

Red Comet: the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

The Dead are Arising: the life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

The Equivalents: a story of art, female friendship, and liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

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All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: the true story of the American woman at the heart of the German resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner

FINALISTS:

Clairvoyant of the Small: the life of Robert Walser by Susan Bernofsky

Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's enduring message to America by Keisha N. Blain

Mike Nichols: a life by Mark Harris

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by Alexander Nemerov

WINNER

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by beverly Gage

FINALISTS

The Grimkes: the Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge

Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century by Jennifer Homans

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life by Clare Mac Cumhall & Rachael Wiseman

Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

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FINALISTS:

King : A Life by Jonathan Eig

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts by Gregg Hecimovich