PVLD Adult Services Blog

Last Monday, the Los Angeles Times announced finalists for its book prizes, to be presented April 23rd:

Biography

Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience

Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits

Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic

Melvin Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life

Kenneth Whyte, The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst

Current Interest

Dave Cullen, Columbine

Dave Eggers, Zeitoun

Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains

Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

T.R. Reid, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare

Fiction

Jill Ciment, Heroic Measures

Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat

Michelle Huneven, Blame

Kate Walbert, A Short History of Women

Rafael Yglesias, A Happy Marriage

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Petina Gappah, An Elegy for Easterly

Paul Harding, Tinkers

Philipp Meyer, American Rust

Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Graphic Novel

Gilbert Hernandez, Luba (A Love and Rockets Book)

Taiyo Matsumoto, GoGo Monster

David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe

Joe Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza

History

Richard Holmes, Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line

Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963

Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940

Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815 

Mystery / Thriller

Megan Abbott, Bury Me Deep

David Ellis, The Hidden Man

Attica Locke, Black Water Rising

Val McDermid, A Darker Domain

Stuart Neville, The Ghosts of Belfast

Poetry

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing

Amy Gerstler, Dearest Creature

Tom Healy, What the Right Hand Knows

Brenda Hillman, Practical Water

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, }Open Interval{

Science & Technology

Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe

Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

Bill Streever, Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science 

Young Adult Literature

James Cross Giblin, The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy

Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary

Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia