Library Collections
National Book Award Finalists 2009
Each year the National Book Awards are given by the National Book Foundation. Here are this year's finalists
Fiction
| American Salvage (Bonnie Jo Campbell) - FIC CAMPBELL: A lush and rowdy collection of stories set in a rural Michigan landscape, where wildlife, jobs, and ways of life are vanishing. Check Availability | |
| *Winner* Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) - FIC MCCANN: In 1974 Manhattan, a radical young Irish monk struggles with personal demons while making his home among Bronx prostitutes, a group of mothers shares grief over their lost Vietnam soldier sons, and a young grandmother attempts to prove her worth. Check Availability | |
| In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin) - FIC MUEENUDDIN: A volume of linked stories describes the intertwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in Pakistan, in a collection that explores such themes as culture, class power, and desire. Check Availability | |
| Lark and Termite (Jayne Anne Phillips) - FIC PHILLIPS: Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a novel about family, the repercussions of war, and the bonds that sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family--Lark, her brother Termite, their mother Lola, and Termite's soldier father, Robert Leavitt. Check Availability | |
| Far North (Marcel Theroux) - FIC THEROUX: Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps last citizen—patrols a city’s ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair. Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism. Check Availability |
Nonfiction
| Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (David M. Carroll) - FIC CAMPBELL: Presents a collection of pen-and-ink-illustrated reflections on the ecology of wetland creatures, in a volume that traces the life cycles of such subjects as hawks, tree frogs, and rare wood and spotted turtles. Check Availability | |
| Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Sean B. Carroll) - 508 CARROLL: Examines the contributions of pioneering scientists to the modern understanding of how Earth and the planet's life evolved, recounting such important events as Darwin's trip around the world, Charles Walcott's discovery of pre-Cambrian life, and the Leakeys' probe into humankind's remote past. Check Availability | |
| Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Greg Grandin) - 307.768 GRANDIN: The story of the auto magnate's attempt to recreate small-town America, along with a rubber plantation, in the heart of the Amazon details the clash between Ford and the jungle and its inhabitants, as the tycoon attempted to force his will on the naturalworld. Check Availability | |
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The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Adrienne Mayor) - ON ORDER: Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. |
| *Winner* The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (T.J. Stiles) - BIO VANDERBILT: Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Check Availability |
Young People's Literature
| Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith (Henry Holt) - J BIO DARWIN: Provides an account of Charles Darwin's life and evolutionary theory, examining how his personal life affected his work and vice versa because of his wife's strong religious beliefs. Check Availability | |
| *Winner* Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Philip Hoose) - J BIO COLVIN: Presents the life of the Alabama teenager who played an integral but little-known role in the Montgomery bus strike of 1955-1956, once by refusing to give up a bus seat, and again, by becoming a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case against the bus company. Check Availability | |
| Stitches (David Small) - BIO SMALL: The author recounts in graphic novel format his troubled childhood with a radiologist father who subjected him to repeated x-rays and a withholding and tormented mother, an environment he fled at the age of sixteen in the hopes of becoming an artist. Check Availability | |
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Lips Touch: Three Times (Laini Taylor) - ON ORDER: Three tales of supernatural love, each pivoting on a kiss that is no mere kiss, but an action with profound consequences for the kissers' souls |
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Jumped (Rita Williams-Garcia) - ON ORDER: Acclaimed author Rita Williams-Garcia intertwines the lives of three very different teens in this fast-paced, gritty narrative about choices and the impact that even the most seemingly insignificant ones can have. Weaving in and out of the girls' perspectives, readers will find themselves not with one intimate portrayal but three. |
For other good reads, check out our Suggested Reads Page.
** Descriptions are taken from Publisher Material