Thanks to “Shelf Awareness” for the following information concerning the NAIBA Book of the Year Award Winners….

  • Fiction: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Algonquin). NAIBA commented: “Often compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, Hillary Jordan’s debut novel, Mudbound, is told in riveting personal narratives by the individual members of the McAllan and Jackson families. . . . This is storytelling at its most indelible–fierce, unflinching and deeply human.”
  • Nonfiction: The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (S&S). “Jacobs’s extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. This book charmed readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliffs Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable.”
  • Special Interest: Bronx Noir edited by S.J. Rozan (Akashic Books). “The writers represented in Bronx Noir know the borough so well that, reading the book, you’ll smell it, feel it, see it, hear it. The sights and scents will be multitudinous and as distinct as the neighborhoods. And everyone of them, in all their glorious mutual contradiction, is the Bronx.”
  • Picture Book: Zen Ties by Jon J Muth (Scholastic Press). “Jon J Muth’s highly acclaimed picture books are beloved around the world and have been translated into more than ten languages.”
  • Children’s Literature: The Patron Saint of Butterflies by Cecilia Galante (Bloomsbury USA). “While the novel is set on a commune and zealotry plays a role, at its heart is the universality of assessing, accepting, and embracing your own belief system, regardless of what people around you are doing and saying; and it’s the story of conviction and self reliance.”