RUSA announced the top books in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and genre; audio books; and reference books for adults – including the Notable Books List, Reading List, Sophie Brody Medal, Listen List, Dartmouth Medal and Outstanding Reference Sources – at its Midwinter Meeting in Chicago.
A list of all the 2015 award winners follows:
Notable Books List for excellence in fiction, nonfiction and poetry:
Fiction
“All My Puny Sorrows” by Miriam Toews (McSweeneys)
“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
“The Bone Clocks: A Novel” by David Mitchell (Random House)
“The Children Act” by Ian McEwan (Nan A Talese)
“The Crane Wife” by Patrick Ness (Penguin)
“The Enchanted: A Novel” by Rene Denfeld (Harper)
“Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Novel” by Richard Flanagan (Alfred A. Knopf)
“On Such a Full Sea” by Chang-Rae Lee (Riverhead)
“Orfeo: A Novel” by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton)
“Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories” by Ron Rash (Ecco)
“Station Eleven: A Novel” by Emily St. John Mandel (Alfred A. Knopf)
“Tigerman” by Nick Harkaway (Alfred A. Knopf)
Nonfiction
“The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” by Jonathan Eig (W.W. Norton)
“Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris” by Eric Jager (Little, Brown and Company)
“Dark Invasion: 1915 Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America” by Howard Blum (Harper)
“Factory Man” by Beth Macy (Little, Brown and Company)
“In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette” by Hampton Sides (Doubleday)
“Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story” by Rick Bragg (Harper)
“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau)
“The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses” by Kevin Birmingham (Penguin Press)
“No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State” by Glenn Greenwald (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt)
“Pandora’s DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree” by Lizzie Stark (Chicago Review Press)
“The Secret History of Wonder Woman” by Jill Lepore (Alfred A. Knopf)
“The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt)
Poetry
“The Blue Buick: New and Selected Poems” by B.H.Fairchild (W.W. Norton)
“Gabriel: A Poem”, by Edward Hirsch (Knopf)
For a complete list of 2015 winners and annotations, see the official announcement here. For a list of past winners and more information on the award and Notable Books Council, visit the Notable Books Award page.
Reading List for excellence in genre fiction:
Adrenaline
“Broken Monsters” by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland Books)
Fantasy
“The Goblin Emperor” by Katherine Addison (Tor)
Historical Fiction
“Bitter Greens” by Kate Forsyth (Thomas Dunne)
Horror
“The Lesser Dead” by Christopher Buehlman (Penguin)
Mystery
“Murder at the Brightwell” by Ashley Weaver (Minotaur)
Romance
“A Bollywood Affair” by Sonali Dev (Kensington)
Science Fiction
“The Martian” by Andy Weir (Crown)
Women’s Fiction
“My Real Children” by Jo Walton (Tor)
For a complete list of annotations, shortlist titles and read alikes for the 2015 list, see the official announcement here. For a list of past winners and more information on the Reading List Council, visit the Reading List award page.
Sophie Brody Medal for excellence in Jewish Literature:
“A Replacement Life” by Boris Fishman (HarperCollins)
Honorable mentions include:
“The Mathematician’s Shiva” by Stuart Rojstaczer (Penguin)
“In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist” by Ruchama King Feuerman (New York Review of Books)
For a complete description of the 2015 award winner and honorable mentions, see the official announcement here. For a list of past winners and more information on the Sophie Brody Medal, visit the Sophie Brody Medal award page.
Listen List for outstanding audiobook narration:
“The Bees” by Laline Paull. Narrated by Orlagh Cassidy. Blackstone Audio/HarperAudio.
“Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him” by David Henry & Joe Henry. Narrated by Dion Graham. Tantor Media.
“The Home Place” by Carrie La Seur. Narrated by Andrus Nichols. Blackstone Audio/HarperAudio.
“The Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd. Narrated by Jenna Lamia and Adepero Oduye. Penguin Audio/Recorded Books.
“Lord of Scoundrels” by Loretta Chase. Narrated by Kate Reading. Blackstone Audio.
“The Martian” by Andy Weir. Narrated by R.C. Bray. Podium Publishing.
“Moonraker” by Ian Fleming. Narrated by Bill Nighy. Blackstone Audio.
“The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins. Narrated by Ronald Pickup, Joe Marsh, Fenella Woolgar, Sam Dale, Jonathan Oliver, Jamie Parker, Sean Barrett, David Timson, John Foley and Benjamin Soames. Naxos AudioBooks.
“Queen of the Tearling,” by Erika Johansen. Narrated by Katherine Kellgren. Blackstone Audio.
“The Silkworm” by Robert Galbraith. Narrated by Robert Glenister. Blackstone Audio/Hachette Audio.
“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel. Narrated by Kirsten Potter. Books on Tape/Random House Audio.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Narrated by Bryan Cranston. Brilliance Audio.
For a complete list of annotations and listen alikes for the 2015 winners, see the official announcement here. For a list of past winners and more information on the Listen List, visit the Listen List award page.
Dartmouth Medal for the most distinguished reference publication:
“Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism” published by Princeton University Press.
For a complete description of the award and 2015 winner, see the official announcement here. For a list of past winners and more information on the Dartmouth Medal award, visit the Dartmouth Medal award page.
Outstanding Reference Sources for excellence in reference:
“American Indians at Risk” Edited by Jeffrey Ian Ross (Greenwood)
“Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century” by Monique W. Morris (The New Press)
“Bumblebees of North America” by Paul Williams, Robin Thorp, Leif Richardson and Shelia Colla (Princeton University Press)
“Consumer Healthcare” Edited by Brigham Narins (Gale Cengage Learning)
“Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon” Edited by Barbara Cassin. Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jaques Lezra, and Michael Wood (Princeton University Press)
“Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice” Edited by Jay S. Albanese (Wiley Blackwell)
“Encyclopedia of Deception” Edited by Timothy R. Levine (Sage Publishing)
“Encyclopedia of Humor Studies” Edited by Salvatore Attardo (Sage Publishing)
“Encyclopedia of the Wars of The Early American Republic, 1783-1812” Edited by Spencer C Tucker (ABC-CLIO)
“Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God” Edited by Coeli Fitzpatrick and Adam Hani Walker (ABC-CLIO)
For more information about the award, see the official announcement here. For a complete list of past winners and more information on the award, visit the Outstanding Reference Sources award page.
Selected by judging committees of librarians and other readers’ advisory experts, the awards highlight outstanding works for adult readers and libraries nationwide. For more information on RUSA’s Book and Media Awards, please visit www.ala.org/rusa/awards.
Hello! These seem to be very nicely done selections but I am commenting to ask what “Women’s Lit” is and why it constitutes a separate category? When I see this sort of category, I feel like it is pre-determining for readers that a book is only for women’s interests. How so? What are the determining factors? And if certain books are Women’s Fiction, shouldn’t there be a Men’s Fiction category as well to let women know we shouldn’t bother? I am very interested in this categorizing and the need for it. Thank you.