Winners of the Shirley Jackson Awards:

Novel: Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett
Novella: ”Mysterium Tremendum” by Laird Barron
Novelette: ”Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman
Short story: “The Things” by Peter Watts
Collection: Occultation by Laird Barron
Anthology: Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

Also given at Readercon are the Rhysling Awards for speculative poetry, and the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which went to Katherine MacLean, the award’s first living winner.

On a related note, the Mythopoeic Awards were also recently announced. The winner in the Adult Literature category was Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord.

Why not check out some of this award-winning speculative fiction?

Winners included Sharon Sala (Lifetime Achievement), Jill Shalvis (Best Contemporary Single Title Romance), Sharon Ashwood (Paranormal Romance), Karen Rose (Romantic Suspense), and many more.

So, check out the full list of winners and then come check out one of their books for these hot, steamy summer days!

This book was very compelling and difficult to put down once I started it.

The premise itself is interesting - the narrator is a woman who has lost her memory due to an accident, and while she can form new memories throughout the day, she can not retain them to the next day. While she sleeps each night, her mind is wiped blank, and every morning she wakes up having forgotten over half of her life. She has a husband who explains this to her every day, telling her pieces of their history. As you can probably imagine, this is very confusing and disorienting for her, and so with the help of a doctor, she begins to keep a journal in order to keep track of who she is and what is happening in her life. Through this she comes to realize that not everything in her life is as it seems, and perhaps she is mistaken in the people she trusts.

Watson’s writing takes this premise beyond interesting and into fascinating, thrilling, and creepy. There is a sense of mystery, danger, and fear throughout the book, and even when I thought I knew what was happening or where the story was going, I was never certain. It’s hard to believe this is the author’s first novel; I look forward to seeing what else Watson does in the future.

This book had a very unique narrative voice. It was told from the combined perspective of 3 sisters, but more as though it were being told by the sisterhood itself. I have heard it said that a marriage is like a third person in a relationship, and here the sisterhood took on a persona as though it were a fourth individual in the family. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, but soon I came to really enjoy it. I also really enjoyed the language of this book - it was lyrical and beautiful without being overly wordy or flowery. It really drew me in and made me feel as though I was surrounded by this family and town, and I longed for the lazy feel and the homeyness of somewhere similar.

Although the plot of this book was not exactly what I expected (honestly, I was drawn in by the title & cover and didn’t really read what it was about), and when I first started it I was a bit unsure of if I would enjoy it (the title refers to the 3 witches of Macbeth, because the father in the story is a scholar of Shakespearean literature, and he, as well as other characters, quote Shakespeare often, which I found a bit contrived), I am very glad I read it through to the end.

I am going to include a passage that I particularly loved the feel of, though I fear it may turn some off to this book. I will add that the reason I loved this bit (and other similar ones), was because the whole book wasn’t like this. There were these moments of quiet lulls that were relayed so well, but the book itself did not move this slow or quietly. In fact, there was a restless feel to the characters and story that worked amazingly well, especially when interspersed with these moments of calm clarity.

“Sunday morning, thunderheads loomed above, thick and rich with rain. Cordy had been up before us all making pancake batter with blueberries purloined from the neighbor’s bushes, their delicate bodies splitting against the wooden spoon, staining the batter with violent violet.”

It was just magically descriptive without being tedious - dripping with the feeling of the moment as opposed to the details. I guess that’s as well as I can explain it - I really encourage you to read it for yourself and get to know these 3 sisters and their lives.

The Audies

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the winner of Audiobook of the Year was Life, Keith Richards’ memoir. It’s read by Keith Richards, Johnny Depp, and Joe Hurley. This audiobook also won the biography/memoir category award.

The fiction winner was Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, read by Emma Galvin. This book has also been made into an outstanding movie.

To see all the winners, and nominees, check out the Audies website!

So Much Pretty begins as the story of a missing girl, and it slowly spreads to those who the case touch - a reporter, other community members, and most especially another girl in the town. The way events unfold and are relayed is like a puzzle slowly coming together, and it makes a disquieting picture as it does so.

At first I was bothered by the fact that I had no idea what exactly was going on, how the different stories that were being intermingled were related, or why we kept traveling backwards and forwards in time and touching base with several different characters. But soon I let go of caring about a complete understanding and just enjoyed the story and atmosphere. Of which there was plenty to enjoy. And then when I reached the end and it all came together, I was quite surprised.

Though it feels slightly heavy with messages at times (mainly about the state of our food, factory farms, and those who rally against these things as well), the writing is so enjoyable I could easily overlook the somewhat forced points. Plus, I think the way it is presented not everyone will walk away with the same message or ideas, which will make it good for discussions. I would recommend this suspenseful and almost poetic book to anyone looking for something slightly different and intriguing. It’s not an especially fast mover, but was a fairly quick read all the same. And somewhere around the middle I realized it had absorbed me completely.

Every one of the characters, and the story as a whole, felt very real and true to me. Grief, friendship, love, uncertainty - all the feelings that make up a life, or several lives - were portrayed quietly and convincingly, without being over done. It was not extremely sappy, it did not try to be a tear-jerker, the book simply felt as though I was given a glimpse into the real lives of this intertwined group of women.

If you’re looking for a book of women’s lives, emotions, and friendships, you could do worse than Bache’s the Art of Saying Goodbye. I would recommend this book to fans of Marisa de los Santos especially.

The book is written as a series of correspondences between English author Juliet Ashton and the residents of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, during the year 1946. Through the letters we get to know the islanders and many events of the war, both heartbreaking and hopeful. Though the correspondence begins coincidentally and casually between one particular island resident and Juliet (brought about by he acquiring a book that once belonged to her), it quickly grows and spreads, and forever changes the lives of those involved.

I was most impressed with the authors’ ability to blend humor and sadness in such a true way. My heart broke for the islanders and the hardships they suffered during the war, and yet the corners of my mouth would just as suddenly twitch into a smile at some peculiarity of Isola’s or a description of the literary society’s meetings. I was sad to reach the end of the book, though I was not disappointed in the ending. I just wished I could continue on amongst the cast of characters I had fallen in love with, hearing about their lives and daily events. I feel as though I have met a whole group of people who will stay with me for quite some time.

As a little something extra, it turns out someone has created a Google map of Guernsey with quotes and passages from the book tied to markers, information, and photographs of the very real-life places featured. Check it out!

What I found is that Nina does a remarkable job of weaving her own personal stories with those she read throughout the year. She wisely picks and chooses passages, quotes, and lessons from the books she read to relate to us and share her own feelings and experiences through. I was glad that her book was not a stringing together of reviews, and even more so that it was written in a down-to-earth, easy-going manner. Nina does not preach, or talk down to her audience; she does not use her 365 books of experience as a stool to stand upon and feel mightier than others. No, what Nina does is potentially spark an interest in a book or two, while actually making a connection to anyone who has experienced a loss in their life.

I did find the book got a little repetitive towards the end, but even still I savored the experience. The provision of a full list of the books read in the year is wonderful, and while not all of them interest me, there is certainly enough to keep me busy for a while. And, of course, there is the added bonus of Nina’s ongoing blog Read All Day.

The basis for Roman Polanski’s award-winning 1968 film and one of the first contemporary horror novels to become a best seller, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, throws an average couple into a world of witchcraft and obsession. The New York apartment Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse just moved into is in a classic Gothic building called the Bramford, which is rumored to have a disturbing history. When the couple meet their eccentric elderly neighbors, they are initially amused by their peculiarities, but Guy begins spending a lot of time with them. After becoming pregnant, Rosemary gets the sense of foreboding that someone is plotting against her and her unborn child. Levin generates a mood of escalating paranoia, and the reader will wonder with Rosemary, “Am I going crazy?”

Stephen King is a quintessential book-to-movie writer, and both The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation are at the top of their game. First published in 1977 and set in the brooding Overlook Hotel, it tells the story of former schoolteacher Jack Torrance. After being fired for drinking on the job and injuring a student, Jack, his wife Wendy, and his clairvoyant son, Danny, become the resort’s winter caretakers. It soon becomes apparent that something terrible happened here in the past, and the Torrance family may be the hotel’s next victims. A frightening exploration of the dynamics of a family trapped against an insidious force.

A weird kid, 12-year-old Oskar often pretends to stab his classmates in the suburban Stockholm snow. Eli is even odder. She wears a nightgown outside in the freezing night and never seems to eat. When the two outcasts form an unlikely friendship, Oskar quickly learns that Eli may not even be human. John Ajvide Lindqvist’s moody Let the Right One In is a disturbing moonlit tale about what one young boy is willing to do to find true companionship. In 2008, Tomas Alfredson directed the award-winning film; the U.S. remake is just out as Let Me In.

Snagging a six-bedroom Dutch Colonial with a pool and a boathouse for only $80,000 seems like an amazing deal to George and Kathleen Lutz. There’s only one catch-13 months earlier Ronald deFeo Jr. killed six family members within the very walls the Lutzes and their three children now inhabit. Twenty-eight days after moving in, the terrorized Lutzes flee their new home. Written in 1977 by Jay Anson and inspiring a series of films between 1979 and 2005, The Amityville Horror is a supposedly true story. [and let me tell you, this is the ONLY book that has ever scared me while reading it - and I have read every one of Stephen King's books - Sandra]

When a hedonist named Frank tracks down the Lemarchand box, said to open the doors to unlimited pleasure, he releases a race of masochistic demons. Unfortunately for Frank, the Cenobites can’t tell the difference between pleasure and pain, and he is dragged into their realm to experience an eternity of torture. Discovering that she can bring him back to life, Frank’s sister-in-law spirals into a life of seduction and murder. Clive Barker’s gore-splattered The Hellbound Heart is twisted, brutal, and terrifying. Barker wrote and directed the better-known film version, 1987’s Hellraiser.

The 1951 B movie classic The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing were both inspired by John W. Campbell’s 1938 story Who Goes There? (scroll down for the complete text). At an isolated research station in Antarctica, scientists discover an alien spaceship buried beneath the ice and thaw out the pilot. They soon discover that the revived alien has the ability to imitate the appearance of any life form. The witch hunt that ensues is a timeless exploration of self-preservation and mass paranoia. A classic of sf horror, Campbell’s novella is florid in style and claustrophobic in tone and perfectly captures a sense of secluded dread.