The 2024 Kirkus Prize

The winners of the 2024 Kirkus Prize in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature were announced on October 16th in an in-person ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York that also was livestreamed on Kirkus's YouTube channel.

Kirkus editor-in-chief Tom Beer said, “This year’s prize-winning books --- each written with elegance and lucidity --- illuminate tragedies both personal and historical, helping us to better understand our world and the spirit of human resilience.”

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Lauren Ling Brown, author of Society of Lies

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion. This visit is special because Maya also will be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi. But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya’s worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on. As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister’s death, she begins to realize how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya’s warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus --- the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it. The more Maya uncovers, the more terrified she becomes that Naomi’s decision to follow in her footsteps might have been what got her killed.

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Danielle Trussoni, author of The Puzzle Box

It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box. The box was constructed during one of Japan’s most tumultuous periods, when the samurai class was disbanded and the shogun lost power. In this moment of crisis, Emperor Meiji locked a priceless Imperial secret in the Dragon Box. Only two people knew how to open the box --- Meiji and the box’s sadistic constructor --- and both died without telling a soul what was inside or how to open it. Every 12 years since then, in the Year of the Dragon, the Imperial family holds a clandestine contest to open the box. Every puzzle master who has attempted to open it has died in the process. But Brink is not just any puzzle master. He may be the only person alive who can crack it.

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Sally Rooney, author of Intermezzo

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his 30s. In the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women --- his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player. In the early weeks of his bereavement, he meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude --- a period of desire, despair and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

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