Vancouver Public Library

Award Winning Reads 2009

A listing of this past year's international award-winning titles created by the Popular Reading Library.

	All the Pretty Girls Mayor, Chandra FIC SS Lambda Literary Awards: Women's Fiction 2009 A collection of stories about the lives of girls and young women living with violence, abuse, and hope. Mayor insists that all girls are pretty, and even amid squalor and chaos true beauty is achieved by reaching for something, anything.
	The Bishop’s Man MacIntyre, Linden FIC Giller Prize 2009 The Bishop’s Man centres on the abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests on children. Father Duncan has been employed to look into the excesses of the priests and suppress the evidence. Family and community ties are tested.
	Blue Heaven Box, C.J. FIC Edgar Allan Poe Awards 2009 Siblings Annie and William Taylor, ages 12 and 10, witness a gruesome murder in the woods outside a small Idaho town. They run away after being seen by the killers, a group of crooked LAPD cops. Rancher Jess Rawlins becomes the children's only hope of survival after they take refuge in his barn.
	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Diaz, Junot FIC Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2008 A curse has haunted Oscar ‘s Dominican family for generations. From his New Jersey home, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, self-described ghetto nerd Oscar dreams of being the next Tolkien and finding love.
	A Case of Exploding Mangoes Hanif, Mohammed FIC Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best First Novel 2009 In 1988, an airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals crashed, killing all on board. Fact and fiction merge to provide a startling examination of religious fundamentalism, dictatorship and abuse of power.
	The Cruelest Month Penny, Louise FIC MYS Agatha Awards: Best Novel 2009 Armand Gamache investigates another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines. As the townspeople gather in the abandoned Hadley house for a séance with a visiting psychic, Madeleine Favreau collapses, apparently dead of fright. Gamache knows there's more to the case.
	De Niro’s Game Hage, Rawi FIC IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2008 Lebanese Christian boys Bassam and George are faced with two choices for survival - to take a chance in a foreign city, or join the corrupt militia. Bessam commits petty crimes to fund his flight, while George amasses power in the militia-ruled underworld.
	The Golden Mean Lyon, Annabel FIC Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2009 Forced to tutor a young Alexander the Great, Aristotle must delay his aspirations. Horrified by the idea of living in the backwater of his youth, he is eventually won over by Alexander’s intellectual promise. Only later does Alexander’s warrior nature reveal itself.
	Home Robinson, Marilynne FIC Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 Jack, gone twenty years, has returned home looking for refuge and to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father.
	Let the Great World Spin McCann, Colum FIC National Book Award 2009 In August, 1974, a mysterious tightrope walker leaps between the twin towers. In the streets below, ordinary lives are transformed. An intricate portrait of a city and its people, illuminating the pain and promise of New York City in the 1970s.
	Man Gone Down Thomas, Michael FIC IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009 Born poor, black, and brilliant in Boston, the unnamed protagonist is trying to keep his family afloat. A gifted poet and musician, he is expected to transcend his alcoholic parents' troubles. Instead he develops his own drinking habit. At 35, his family life and career have veered off course.
	The Mistress of Nothing Pullinger, Kate FIC Governor General's Literary Award 2009 Sally, maid to Lady Duff Gordon, makes a journey down the Nile with her Lady. Along the way, Sally comes to realizations about the nature of power – its seductiveness, its elusiveness and its ability to alter the soul.
	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio Le Clézio, J.M.G. FIC Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 Le Clézio has been writing since age seven. His first work was a book about the sea. After majoring in French literature, he became well-known at age 23 with the publication of his first novel Le Procès-Verbal (The Interrogation).
	Herta Muller Muller, Herta FIC Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 With the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, Muller depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." Born in 1953 in Romania, her work is inspired by her search for freedom and freedom of speech. The novels Herztier, The Land of Green Plums , and The Appointment give a portrait of daily life under a dictatorship.
	Olive Kitteridge Strout, Elizabeth FIC Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2009 A collection of 13 linked stories detailing the lives of residents of Maine, from a musician haunted by a past romance to a former student who has lost the will to live. All held together by the flawed and fascinating character of Olive Kitteridge.
	The Origin of Species Ricci, Nino FIC Governor General's Literary Award 2008 Thirty-something Alex is plagued by a sense of being a fraud in all aspects of his life. He is by all accounts an unexceptional man, save for the fact that he is haunted by an extraordinary experience in the Galapagos Islands.
	The Outcast Jones, Sadie FIC Costa Book Award: Best First Novel 2008 After WWII, 10 year-old Lewis’s life hums along until his mother drowns tragically. Ignored by his grief-stricken father, Lewis becomes a troublemaker. A decade later at 19, he returns home to seek forgiveness after time spent in jail. Forgiveness is not easily found.
	Powers Le Guin, Ursula K. YA FIC FAN The Nebula & Hugo Awards 2009 Gavir, a 14-year-old slave has visions that may or may not foretell the future. When his sister is raped and killed, Gavir leaves the city crazed with grief. He walks for three years meeting a variety of people, each one adding to his quest to uncover who he is and where he belongs.
	The Road Home Tremain, Rose FIC Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 Lev is on his way to Britain to seek work so that he can send money back Home to support his mother and young daughter. Once in Britain, he struggles with the mysterious rituals of ‘Englishness’, and the fashions and fads of the London scene.
	The Sealed Letter Donoghue, Emma FIC Lambda Literary Awards: Women’s Fiction 2009 What begins as a loyal effort to help a friend explodes into a courtroom drama. Based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864.
	The Secret Scripture Barry, Sebastian FIC Costa Book Award: Best Fiction 2008 The mental hospital where Roseanne McNulty spent her adult life is preparing to close. Leading up to closure, she talks with her psychiatrist; the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland.
	Shadow Country Matthiessen, Peter FIC National Book Award 2008 Traversing strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and outlaw E. J. Watson.
	The Slap Tsiolkas, Christos FIC The Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009 At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.
	Through Black Spruce Boyden, Joseph FIC Giller Prize 2008 A powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life. When beautiful New York model Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her leaving behind their Uncle Will, a man haunted by loss.
	We Disappear Heim, Scott FIC Lambda Literary Awards: Gay Men’s Fiction 2009 Scott, a drug addict, travels home at the request of his ill mother who's become obsessed with missing children. When she becomes too ill to carry on her research, Scott goes on the road to continue her quest for answers
	The White Tiger Adiga, Aravind FIC Man Booker Prize 2008 Servant, philosopher, entrepreneur, and murderer, Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Over the course of seven nights, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
	Wolf Hall Mantel, Hilary FIC Man Booker Prize 2009 England is in the grip of a self-interested parliament, and King Henry VIII swings between romantic passions and murderous rages. Wolf Hall imagines the arrival of Thomas Cromwell, a man ruthless in the pursuit of reform.