Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Here are the highlights:
Life Achievement
Ellen Asher and Jane Yolen
Novel
The Shadow Year, by Jeffrey Ford
 
Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
 
Novella
“If Angels Fight,” by Richard Bowes
 
Short Story
“26 Monkeys, also the Abyss,” by Kij Johnson
Anthology
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Collection
The Drowned Life, by Jeffrey Ford
Artist
Shaun Tan
The full list of winners can be found here.

Five books were named Macavity Award winners by the Mystery Readers International organization: 
Best Mystery Novel
Where Memories Lie, by Deborah Crombie
Best First Mystery
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
Best Nonfiction/Critical
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey
Best Mystery Short Story
“The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron from Wolfsbane & [...]

Several awards-related news items were announced within that last week. Here’s the latest:
The 2009 Guardian Children’s Prize went to Exposure, Mal Peet’s update of Othello.
At the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, winners were announced in eight categories for the 2009 Anthony Awards:
Best Novel
The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly
Best First Novel

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by [...]

Author E. Lockhart isn’t afraid of a good argument, as she made clear in her acceptance speech for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at the 2009 Michael L. Printz Awards (administered by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association and sponsored by Booklist).  Readers have had wildly different responses to the book’s title character, a prep-school sophomore [...]

As you might know from reading 10 inches below this post (or, if for some reason you gets infos from somewhere else other than our little Likely Stories, you already know from anywhere else), the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. And while the NBAs are no stranger to odd picks, especially in the [...]

Man, where did the year go? Awards season is gearing up again. The National Book Award finalists were announced today:
Fiction
American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips

Far North, by Marcel Theroux
Nonfiction
Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook, by David [...]

Hilary Mantel took home the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, the “prohibitive favorite” of the shortlist.
In completely different genre of literary prizes, Ian Frazier’s Lamentations of the Father won the Thurber Prize. You can view the shortlist here.

There’s no question that the Printz Honor–winning Octavian Nothing duet presents readers with an intellectual challenge. In his National Book Award acceptance speech for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; Volume One: The Pox Party, Anderson himself described the books as “a 900-page two volume historical epic for teens, written in [...]

Over the last week quite a number of books received awards. Here’s the best of best:
The 2009 NAIBA Books of the Year Prize winners are:
Fiction
 
A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick
Nonfiction
Hurry Down Sunshine, by Michael Greenberg
Trade Paperback Original
Buffalo Lockjaw, by Greg Ames
Picture Book
The Curious Garden, by Peter Brown
Children’s Literature
If I Stay, by Gayle Forman
Paul Auster (Invisible, [...]

Terry Pratchett’s Nation is so exciting and funny that’s it’s almost too easy to forget the tragedy at its center. Young Mau is paddling back to his tiny island nation after spending a month alone as part of his manhood ritual. When he gets there he finds that everyone has been wiped out by a [...]