Announcing the Short Lists for the Indie Lit Awards!

The first of the year means that the Indie Lit Awards have announced their short lists! I'm excited to read and discuss the titles in the Fiction category with the rest of the team: Aths (Reading on a Rainy Day), Carrie (Nomad Reader), and Meg (Write Meg).  We won't be posting reviews until the winner is announced in March, but that doesn't mean we won't be busy reading and discussing.

Here's our list:

• Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney (Syracuse University Press)
• Cross Currents by John Shors (Penguin Group: NAL Trade)
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group)
• Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
• The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene (Penguin Group)

Have you read any of these? I'm looking forward to some new discoveries.


Interested in the categories? Here are their short lists:


Biography/ Memoir

• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (Penguin) 
• Bossypants by Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur Books) 
• I Pray Hardest When Being Shot At by Kyle Garret (Hellgate Press) 
• Little Princes by Conor Grennan (William Morrow) 
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch (Harper) 

GLBTQ

• Well With My Soul by Gregory Allen (ASD Publishing) 
• Swimming to Chicago by David Matthew Barnes (Bold Strokes Books) 
• Songs of the New Depression by Kergan Edwards-Stout (Circumspect Press) 
• Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Krieger (Beacon Press) 
• Huntress by Melinda Lo (little brown books for young readers) 

Mystery

• Missing Daughter, Shattered Family by Liz Strange (MLR Press) 
• The Cut by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur/LIttle, Brown) 
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press) 
• The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton) 
• Fun & Games by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown) 

Non-Fiction

• Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe (Putnam Adult) 
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (Crown) 
• Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper) 
• Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku (Doubleday) 
• The Social Animal by David Brooks (Random House) 

Poetry

• Beyond Scent of Sorrow by Sweta Vikram (Modern History Press) 
• Catalina by Laurie Soriano (Lummox Press) 
• What Looks Like an Elephant by Edward Nudelman (Lummox Press) 
• Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems by Ramos, Emma Eden (Heavy Hands Ink) 
• Sonics in Warholia by Megan Volpert (Sibling Rivalry Press) 

Speculative Fiction

• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Candlewick) 
• The Magician King by Lev Grossman (Viking) 
• 11/22/1963 by Stephen King (Scribner) 
• Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor Books) 
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Crown)