2021 National Book Awards Finalists

The Prophets

“This was quite the stunning debut - I loved the meta quality of the narration and the overall lyrical writing style. A powerful and commanding story! ”

Lauren, Curious Iguana

On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two white fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today, this act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and... Read more »

A Little Devil in America

“Using Black performance as a loose organizing principle, Abdurraqib has written a brilliant, expansive, insightful, and personal book. There is something of Montaigne’s penchant for humility and brilliance in equal measure; of Susan Sontag’s use of cultural criticism to understand history and the self; of Zadie Smith’s verbal wizardry, playfulness, and wide-ranging curiosity; and Ross Gay’s sensitivity, sense of beauty and poignancy, and, ultimately, joyfulness. Another gift from this magical writer!”

Jeff Deutsch, Seminary Co-op Bookstores

Matrix

“Lauren Groff has created an incredibly powerful portrait of the compelling Marie de France, banished to 12th-century England to live in a failing abbey. I fell in love with Marie and the sisters she lives with.”

Rosanna Nissen, Barrett Bookstore

If you enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind, then you’ll love Cloud Cuckoo Land.

“I loved this book so much. The intersection of the various stories surrounding a profound awareness of the importance of books was perfect. I also appreciated the weaving of the classic tale intertwined all throughout the book. Each character's story could have been a book all by themselves, but having them all together was brilliant. This is a book that I didn't know I needed, but was the perfect book for the time I listened to it.”

Tim, Schuler Books

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they... Read more »

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.
 
WINNER: PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book... Read more »

Running Out

“A deep look into the complex problem of aquifer depletion in the Plains. A native of southwest Kansas, and an anthropologist by training, Bessire seeks to unravel why depletion continues despite many stakeholders actively working toward different outcomes. He puts depletion in its historical context finding to it be the latest in a series of depletions- colonization, genocide, over hunting. He also learns that despite many farmers seeking solutions, current economic structures reinforce the practice of depletion. Part memoir, he uses his grandmother’s research as a jumping off point; and despite a previously strained relationship, he leverages his father’s rights as a landowner to gain access to various water governing bodies and grows closer to him in the process. At 180 pages this is a short but powerful book, I highly recommend it.”

Amy, A Great Good Place for Books

Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother... Read more »

***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER***

***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER***

Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, and the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize 

A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club... Read more »

With passion and precision, Kekla Magoon relays an essential account of the Black Panthers—as militant revolutionaries and as human rights advocates working to defend and protect their community.

In this comprehensive, inspiring, and all-too-relevant history of the Black Panther Party, Kekla Magoon introduces readers to the Panthers’ community... Read more »

Acclaimed author of Ash Malinda Lo returns with her most personal and ambitious novel yet, a gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1950s.

"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its... Read more »

Too Bright to See

“This spooky and thoughtful book follows Bug, a soon to be middle schooler. How do you handle your uncle’s death when he’s still haunting your house, and when he seems to have a message for you? How can you “be you” when you don’t know what that means yet?”

Miriasha, Phoenix Books

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández's mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man's face on the magazine’s cover... Read more »