The summer vacations are winding down but the heat is still at an all time high. So while you cool off in the comfort of your home, just grab a good book and relax. Finished all those beach reads? How about an award winner? These are the best of the best to add to your “must have” reading list.

Staff picks for adults

Here’s a selection of titles from the many 2012 Award Winners we have in our catalog. You can also stop by the front desk for more award winning suggestions.

Fiction

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction: established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. the previous year.

• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright

In Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin, it has snowed. Gina Moynihan, girl about town, recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for “the love of her life,” Seán Vallely. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina remembers their affair: long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. Now, as the silent streets and falling snow make the day luminous and full of possibility, Gina awaits the arrival of Seán’s fragile, twelve-year-old daughter, Evie, the complication, and gravity, of this second life. In this extraordinary novel, Anne Enright speaks directly to the readers she won with The Gathering . Here again is the momentous drama of everyday life; the volatile connections between people, the wry, accurate take on families, marriage, and brittle middle age.

Christy Award: named in honor of Catherine Marshall’s novel and of her contribution to growth of the fiction Christians love to read. The awards are now presented in nine different categories.

• Promises to Keep by Anne Tatlock (Contemporary Category)

The Anthony family, on the run from their alcoholic husband and father, leaves Minneapolis for the small town of Mills River, IL. But they’ve barely begun to acclimate when sassy old lady Tillie Monroe shows up at their doorstep explaining that the house once belonged to her and her late husband.

CWA Gold Dagger Award is the best known of those presented annually by the British Crime Writer Association (CWA) for the best crime fiction published in the previous year.

• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

In the 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32” Jones were boyhood pals in a small town in rural Mississippi. But then Larry took a girl to a drive-in movie and she was never seen or heard from again. He never confessed … and was never charged. More than twenty years have passed. Larry lives a solitary, shunned existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has become the town constable. And now another girl has disappeared, forcing two men who once called each other “friend” to confront a past they’ve buried for decades.

Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel: named for Edgar Allan Poe, father of the modern detective story. This award is presented by the Mystery Writers of America and is the most prestigious award in the realm of mystery and detective fiction for both fiction and nonfiction.

• Gone by Mo Hayder

Jack Caffery’s newest case seems like a routine carjacking, a crime he’s seen plenty of times before. But as the hours tick by and his investigation morphs into a nightmare, he realizes the sickening truth: the thief wasn’t after the car, but the eleven-year-old girl in the backseat. Meanwhile, police diver Sergeant Flea Marley is pursuing her own theory of the case, and what she finds in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel could put her in grave danger. As the chances for his victims grow slimmer, Jack and Flea race to fit the pieces together in time.

Pen / Faulkner Award: the largest peer judged Literary Award. It is named for William Faulkner and was created after he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 and donated his award money to establish a fund to support and encourage new writers of Fiction

• The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Julie Otsuka’s long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ nearly a century ago.

RITA Award: named after the Romance Writers of America’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for excellence in published romance fiction. The RITA awards have been announced every year since 1982, and are now presented in a dozen different categories.

• Boomerang Bride by Fiona Lowe (Contemporary Single Category)

Matilda Geoffrey risked it all for love. She left Australia to be with Barry—the man who had swept her off her virtual feet in their online romance. Now, wearing a wedding dress, she’s alone on Main Street in small-town Wisconsin, and things aren’t working out exactly as planned. Enter Marc Olsen, in town just for an annual family visit, who sees Matilda standing in the street looking for a groom. Note: this title is only available as an e-book.

Nonfiction

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction: established in 2012 to recognize the best nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. the previous year.

• Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie

The author relates the life of a minor German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729–1796). Her husband-to-be was the only living grandson of Peter the Great. Six months into her husband’s incompetent reign as Peter III, Catherine, 33, who had always believed herself superior to her husband, dethroned him, but probably did not plan his subsequent murder. Confident, cultured, and witty, Catherine avoided excesses of personal power and ruled as a benevolent despot. Magnifying the towering achievements of Peter the Great, she imported European culture into Russia, from philosophy to medicine, education, architecture, and art.

Pulitzer Prize: awarded by Columbia University since 1917. The Pulitzer in General Non-Fiction is presented for distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author. The Pulitzer in Biography is presented for distinguished book of the category by an American author

• The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (940.2 GREEN) (General Non-Fiction Category)

This engaging history of the birth of modernity and the Renaissance explores the rediscovery and popularization of Lucretious’ poem On The Nature of Things, by the book collector Poggio Bracciolini in the fifteenth century, and the impact of the ideas of humanism and science it contained on future generations form Galileo to Einstein. The work is engaging and appropriate for general readers with an interest in the history of science and the Renaissance.

• George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (B KENNAN)(Biography Category)

Drawing on extensive interviews with George Kennan and exclusive access to his archives, an eminent scholar of the Cold War delivers a revelatory biography of its troubled mastermind. In the late 1940s, George Kennan wrote two documents, the “Long Telegram” and the “X Article,” which set forward the strategy of containment that would define U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union for the next four decades. He was also an architect of the Marshall Plan, a prizewinning historian, and would become one of the most outspoken critics of American diplomacy, politics, and culture during the last half of the twentieth century.

Did you know? …

You can find all the award winning lists on our website. Just visit our homepage at www.wakegov.com/libraries and select the READING tab. There you will find the Reading and Booklists section. Click on Adults and hey, presto! You can select one or more of the many reading lists which suit your interests– from award winners to westerns.