Exciting news from the halls of ALA Midwinter in Boston! We’re thrilled to share our 2016 ALA Award Winners and Honor books. Congratulations to our authors and our publishers on these fantastic honors.
Year’s best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry named by RUSA readers’ advisory experts.
Fiction:
In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar (Knopf)
The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories by Anthony Marra (Hogarth)
Fortune Smiles: Stories by Adam Johnson (Random House)
A Little Life: A Novel by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday)
The Book of Aron: A Novel by Jim Shepard (Knopf)
Nonfiction:
Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard (Viking)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson (Crown)
The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell (Dutton)
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon (Random House)
M Train by Patti Smith (Knopf)
2016 Reading List Genre Winners
An annual best-of list comprised of eight different genres for adult readers.
Fantasy Winner:
Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Science Fiction Winner:
Golden Son: Book II of The Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown (Del Rey)
Women’s Fiction Winner:
Re Jane: A Novel by Patricia Park (Pamela Dorman Books)
2016 Sophie Brody Medal for Excellence in Jewish Literature
The Book of Aron: A Novel by Jim Shepard (Knopf)
The Stonewall Book Awards for GLBT Literature
Fiction Medal Winner:
The Gods of Tango: A Novel by Carolina De Robertis (Knopf)
Nonfiction Medal Winner:
Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial by Kenji Yoshino (Crown)
Nonfiction Honor Book:
Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt (Random House)
2016 Alex Awards
For the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)
Girl at War: A Novel by Sara Nović (Random House)
Half the World by Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey)
Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League by Dan-el Padilla Peralta (The Penguin Press)