Awards Lists at TBPL

This is the time of year that the “best of” lists start to appear and awards ceremonies begin. The library makes every effort to carry the items from these and here are a select few of the adult fiction awards we monitor and the most recent winners in them.

For general fiction, there is the Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2018 winner Esi Edugyan for Washington Black and the Governor General’s Literary Award for English fiction, won by Sarah Henstra for The Red Word. The library also carries all of the shortlisted titles for these two awards.

Genre fiction has many award categories, so in alphabetical order by genre to start we have the Christy Award for Christian fiction, with the 2018 winner True to You by Becky Wade (currently in the ordering queue).

Next is the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing with winners Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson for best crime novel and Full Curl by Dave Butler for best first crime novel.

The World Fantasy Award had a tie for the best novel: The Changeling by Victor LaValle and Jade City by Fonda Lee. The Aurora Awards are handed out by the Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction Association and they also selected Jade City as the best novel in 2018.

The unsurprisingly-named Bram Stoker Award is for best horror writing, with Christopher Golden’s Ararat as the most recent winner for superior achievement in a novel.

Mystery is such a popular genre that we make sure we carry the top books for two mystery awards: the Agatha and Edgar Awards, with winners Glass Houses: a Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny (best contemporary novel) and Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (best novel), respectively.

Romance has the RITA Award with quite a few categories.  The library carries the 2018 winners in mainstream fiction – Now That You Mention It by Kristan Higgans – and HelenKay Dimon’s The Fixer in romantic suspense.

Science fiction’s latest Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America went to N.K. Jemisin for The Stone Sky.

The Spur Awards have 19 different categories for the western genre and the library carries the 2018 winners in a few of them including best western historical novel – The Coming by David Osbourne – and Silver City by Jeff Guinn, best traditional novel.

There are so many more fiction and nonfiction lists for children and teens and if you come across titles that you think the library should have please feel free to make a suggestion for purchase either in a branch or through our web site at www.tbpl.ca/suggestions.

Sylvia Renaud –  www.tbpl.ca. If you have a comment about today’s column, we would love to hear from you. Please comment below!