Thorndike Press has all three of the shortlisted fiction titles for the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence. The American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medals, now in their 7th year, recognize outstanding fiction and nonfiction for adult readers. One of these authors, from a longlist of 46 titles, will be selected for a medal on February 11 in Denver, Colorado at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting. Announcements are made at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards Ceremony.
Check out the three award-winning titles:
MANHATTAN BEACH by Jennifer Egan
A love letter to the commerce arteries of New York featuring the first female diver at the Brooklyn Naval Station during Depression-era and World War II. With mobsters, the mysterious disappearance of a father and a stranded, motley merchant marine crew—there is more to the story than just the metamorphoses of the central character. Rich with detail and fluid prose, Egan has researched the Naval Yard since 2004. “Ultimately, Egan’s propulsive, surprising, ravishing, and revelatory saga, a covertly profound page-turner that will transport and transform every reader, casts us all as divers in the deep, searching for answers, hope, and ascension,” said the starred, Booklist review.
- Longlisted 2017 National Book Award Nominee
- LibraryReads and Indie Next Pick
- New York Times and 6 other bestseller lists
- Four Starred Reviews
“Egan, already a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is “at the top of her game,” with Manhattan Beach”
— a starred Library Journal“The book’s emotional power once again demonstrates Egan’s extraordinary gifts”
— a starred, Publisher’s Weekly“Utterly satisfying”
—a starred, Kirkus Review
SING, UNBURIED, SING by Jesmyn Ward
Heart-rendering, yet hopeful—a mystical, and forthright tale from multiple points of view of a Mississippi family just trying to survive despite the severe hardships of poverty, racial tension, incarceration, illness and drug addiction. Jojo is thirteen, his White father in prison, being raised by his Black grandparents—his grandmother gravely ill with Cancer. Jojo is also experiencing vivid memories of his long-dead Uncle. His mother Leonie’s addiction leaves her ill-equipped to parent Jojo and his two younger sisters. When high, she, too, has visions of her dead brother. When Jojo’s father is released from prison, Leonie gathers her children for a roadtrip reunion.
- Finalist for 2017 National Book Award Nominee
- 2011 National Book Award for Salvage the Bones
- Indie Next Pick
- New York Times and 4 other bestseller lists
- Three Starred Reviews
“Lyrical yet tough, Ward’s distilled language effectively captures the hard lives, fraught relationships, and spiritual depth of her characters”
— a starred, Library Journal“The heart of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is story—the yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps we’ll never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song…Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it”
—Buzzfeed
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO by George Saunders 
Set over the course of one night, this is a devastating and beautiful story inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s grief over the death of another child, his eldest son, less than a year after he became President of the United States. On February 22, 1862, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. Under cover of darkness and alone, Lincoln visits the crypt to spend time alone with his son’s body. Spirits of recently passed and long-dead haunt the night; sharing speculation on life and mortality, and observations of good and evil. A starred, Publisher’s Weekly review calls it “a mesmerizing historical novel.”
- 2017 Man Booker Prize
- Indie Next Pick
- New York Times and 8 other bestseller lists
- Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 Spring Literary Fiction
- Four Starred Reviews
“Saunders’s beautifully realized portrait of Lincoln…attests to the author’s own fruitful transition from the short story to the long-distance form of the novel”
— The New York Times“George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time”
— author Khaled Hosseini
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