Stars of the Party

Earlier this year, Kirkus Reviews announced the creation of the Kirkus Prize, “one of the richest annual literary awards in the world.” Flavorwire explains that “in order for a work to be eligible, it needed to receive a Kirkus star (denoting quality) and to be published between November 2013 [and] November 2014. The judges ended up sifting through quite a few books: 266 fiction; 225 nonfiction, 446 children/teens; and 70 self-published Kirkus Star titles. The winners will be announced at a special ceremony in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, October 23, 2014.” Below are the finalists.

Fiction:
• The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt (Simon & Schuster)
• Euphoria, by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• All Our Names, by Dinaw Mengestu (Knopf)
• Florence Gordon, by Brian Morton (Houghton Mifflin)
• The Remedy for Love, by Bill Roorbach (Algonquin Books)
• The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters (Riverhead)

Nonfiction:
• Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)
• Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press)
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Holt)
• The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science, by Armand Marie Leroi (Viking)
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty (Harvard University Press)
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau)

Young Readers’ Literature:

Picture Books:
• The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus, by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans)
• Aviary Wonders Inc.: Spring Catalog and Instruction Manual, by Kate Samworth (Clarion)

Middle Grade:
• El Deafo, by Cece Bell (Amulet/Abrams)
• The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza, by Jack Gantos (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Young Adult:
• The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim, by E.K. Johnston (Carolrhoda Lab)
• The Freedom Summer Murders, by Don Mitchell (Scholastic)