Skip to main content

Reviewer Event 2024

Reviewer Event 2024

Are you planning to give books as gifts this holiday season? Please check all that apply.

November 22, 2024, 520 voters

November 22, 2024 - December 13, 2024

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of November 22 - December 13.

Percival Everett, author of James

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, who recently has returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

The National Book Awards 2024

The winners of the 2024 National Book Award in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature and Young People's Literature were announced on November 20th at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony.

Two lifetime achievement awards also were presented as part of the evening’s ceremony. W. Paul Coates, the founder of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing, received the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. And Barbara Kingsolver, who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, DEMON COPPERHEAD, was recognized with the Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Niall Williams, author of Time of the Child

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean that he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow and remains there, having missed one chance at love --- and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family and their role in their community are changed forever.

Nemonte Nenquimo, author of We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest --- one of the last to be contacted by missionaries in the 1950s --- Nemonte Nenquimo had a singular upbringing. She was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling and shamanism by her elders. At age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened. Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism. In WE WILL BE JAGUARS, she partners with her husband, Mitch Anderson, founder of Amazon Frontlines, digging into generations of oral history, uprooting centuries of conquest, and hacking away at racist notions of indigenous peoples.

Nikki May, author of This Motherless Land

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather gray. Worse still, her mother’s family is cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin, Liv. Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends, but the choices their mothers made haunt them. And when a second tragedy occurs, their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding and ambition.

Editorial Content for The Fabled Earth

Teaser

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape.

Promo

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape.

About the Book

Sometimes the truth is found in a folktale.

1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.

1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly 30 years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist who has come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend --- and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost --- someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.