Massachusetts Center for the Book
is pleased to announce the Must Reads (long lists) in the 20th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards.
The books were selected from among hundreds of estimable submissions to this annual recognition of significant achievements in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, middle grade/young adult literature, and picture books/early readers published by the writers among us in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Center, collaborating with our literary partners, will promote the titles throughout the Spring and Summer. In August we'll announce the award and honors titles selected from among them. We plan to celebrate the books at Fall events (
remember those?
) in Massachusetts and Washington, DC.
The lists are below, alphabetical by title. We'll feature two titles a day from mid-April through May, and you can help us spread the good word by linking (below) to one or more of the social media platforms we'll use.
Must-Read Fiction
The Age of Light
by Whitney Scharer
(Little, Brown and Co)
Big Giant Floating Head
by Christopher Boucher
(Melville House)
Blue Hours
by Daphne Kalotay
(Triquarterly Books)
Bunny
by Mona Awad
(Viking)
A Kind of Solitude
by Dariel Suarez
(Willow Spring)
Leading Men
by Christopher Castellani
(Viking)
The Lesson
by Cadwell Turnbull
(Blackstone)
The Limits of the World
by Jennifer Acker
(Delphinium)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
(Penguin)
Repentance
by Andrew Lam
(Tiny Fox)
This Is Not a Love Song
by Brendan Mathews
(Little, Brown and Co)
Wake Siren
by Nina MacLaughlin
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Must-Read Nonfiction
American Radicals
by Holly Jackson
(Crown)
Black Radical
by Kerri K. Greenidge
(Liveright)
The Body Papers
by Grace Talusan
(Restless)
City on a Hill
by Alex Krieger
(Belknap)
Once More to the Rodeo
by Calvin Hennick
(Pushcart)
The Optimist's Telescope
by Bina Venkataraman
(Riverhead)
Some of My Friends Are
by Deborah L. Plummer
(Beacon)
The Soul of Care
by Arthur Kleinman
(Viking)
Stony The Road
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
(Penguin)
Walk this Way
by Geoff Edgers
(Blue Rider)
What We Will Become
by Mimi Lemay
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Womanish
by Kim McLarin
(IG)
Must-Read Poetry
Battle Dress
by Karen Skolfield
(Norton)
The Boy in the Labyrinth
by Oliver de la Paz
(Akron)
Here All Night
by Jill McDonough
(Alice James)
Little-Known Operas
by Patrick Donnelly
(Four Way)
The Lord of Everywhere
by John Hodgen
(Lynx House)
Love and I
by Fanny Howe
(Graywolf)
Memento Mori
by Charles Coe
(Leapfrog)
Nightshade
by Andrea Cohen
(Four Way)
Soft Science
by Franny Choi
(Alice James)
Ugly Music
by Diannely Antigua
(YesYes)
Voices of Dogtown
by James R. Scrimgeour
(Loom)
Wonder Tissue
by Hannah Larrabee
(Airlie)
Must-Read Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature
1919 The Year That Changed America
by Martin W. Sandler
(Bloomsbury)
Cilla Lee-Jenkins: The Epic Story
by Susan Tan
(Roaring Brook)
Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid
by Jeff Kinney
(Amulet)
Every Moment After
by Joseph Moldover
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Midsummer's Mayhem
by Rajani LaRocca
(Yellow Jacket)
The Next Great Paulie Fink
by Ali Benjamin
(Little, Brown)
Revenge of the Red Club
by Kim Harrington
(Aladdin)
Shouting at the Rain
by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
(Nancy Paulsen)
The Waning Age
by S.E. Grove
(Viking)
What Every Girl Should Know
by J. Albert Mann
(Atheneum)
White Rose
by Kip Wilson
(Versify)
XL
by Scott Brown
(Knopf)
Must-Read Picture Books/Early Readers
Because
by Mo Willems
(Hyperion)
Daniel's Good Day
by Micha Archer
(Nancy Paulsen)
Eek, You Reek!
by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple
(Millbrook)
Follow Chester!
by Gloria Respress-Churchwell
(Charlesbridge)
Gittel's Journey
by Lesléa Newman
(Abrams)
Here and Now
by Julia Denos
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Hundred-Year Barn
by Patricia MacLachlan
(Katherine Tegen)
Linus the Little Yellow Pencil
by Scott Magoon
(Hyperion)
Monument Maker
by Linda Booth Sweeney
(Tilbury House)
Tiny Feet Between the Mountains
by Hanna Cha
(Simon & Schuster)
¡Vamos! Let's Go to the Market
by Raúl the Third
(Versify)
What Miss Mitchell Saw
by Hayley Barrett
(Beach Lane)
You can support these writers and our larger literary economy by consulting the
NEIBA Map
to find a bookseller near you. Thanks in advance!
The Massachusetts Center for the Book is a public-private partnership, chartered as the Commonwealth affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and charged with developing, supporting and promoting cultural programming to advance the cause of books and reading in Massachusetts and throughout the nation.
