HOT TOPIC: FICTION PRIZE WINNERS 2017

The Summer Holidays are behind us, and autumn on its way, and a good book is always the perfect companion for days relaxing in the sun, or in front of the fire.

Award winners are a good place to start, and Dunedin Public Libraries stock an extensive selection of the fiction award winners from 2017:

Costa book of the year award:

Days Without End. Sebastian Barry
Thomas McNulty has escaped the Irish famine and ends up in America, where he signs up for the US army in the 1850s, along with John Cole. Together they fight in the Indian wars and ultimately, the civil war. They forge a strong bond, and eventually adopt an orphaned Sioux girl.

Crime Writers Golden Dagger Award:

The Dry. Jane Harper
In a drought-stricken Kiewarra, a small-farming community in Victoria, Australia, what looks like a murder-suicide has taken place. Melbourne-based Federal Police investigator, Aaron Falk returns to his former home to attend the funerals and stays on to investigate. The tangled threads of his youth threaten to choke him as the locals turn on him and the investigation stalls.

Edgar Awards presented by Mystery Writers of America - Best Novel 2017:

Before the Fall. Noah Hawley
On a foggy summer night, eleven people depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are a painter and the four-year-old son of one of the passengers. A media frenzy is created in the aftermath as it becomes evident that the crash may have been more than a tragic accident.

Man Booker Prize:

Lincoln in the Bardo. George Saunders
In 1862 during the American civil war, Willie, son of Abraham Lincoln, dies and is buried in Georgetown cemetery. In death, Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional state called, in Tibetan tradition, a bardo, in which a battle erupts over Willie's soul.

Ockham New Zealand Book Awards:

The Wish Child. Catherine Chidgey
Germany 1939. Two children, Sieglinde and Erich find refuge in an abandoned theatre, amidst the rubble of Berlin as Germany's hope for a glorious future begins to collapse. The wish child watches over the children, yet his is a voice that comes from deep inside the wreckage of a nation’s dream.

Orange Prize - Fiction:

The Power. Naomi Alderman
In Naomi Alderman's new world sources of control have shifted. Children play differently, violence is enacted in surprising new ways and the link between physical strength, status, sex and power is made plain. Girls fight boys in the playground and win, pretty young women are not personal assistants but security guards. Women are stronger than men and the world has changed, utterly.

Pulitzer Prize:

The Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead
The story of Cora, a teenage slave who runs away from a Georgia cotton plantation with a literate new arrival named Caesar. They board the Underground Railroad together, which in Whitehead's conception is an actual railroad winding beneath the earth. Aware of being hunted, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.