National Book Award Long/Shortlists for 2019

The National Book Award Longlists have been announced, with the fiction category released in late September. Comment and tell us which of these are you looking forward to reading most? The winners will be announced November 20th & we will create a new list and a display in-store for you when that happens. In the meantime, feel free to browse this list! If there's anything you just can't live without, you can click the Buy Online Now button to shop our online store. 

Nonfiction:

​The first chronicle of A Tribe Called Quest, the visionary, award-winning group whose jazz-infused records and socially conscious lyrics revolutionized rap in the early 1990s.

​University of Texas Press, American Music Series. Paperback, $16.95.

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.

The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power.

Grove Press, Hardcover. $26.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically “thick”: deemed “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,” McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. 

The New Press, Paperback. $15.99

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.

Penguin Random House, Hardcover. $28.00

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​From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

Doubleday, Hardcover. $28.95

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes’ distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. This book is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

Riverhead Books, Paperback, $17.00

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​Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation—democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America has a new symbol: the border wall.

Metropolitan Books, Hardcover. $30.00

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​Burn the Place is a galvanizing memoir that chronicles Iliana Regan’s journey from foraging on the family farm to running her Michelin-starred restaurant, Elizabeth. Her story is raw like that first bite of wild onion, alive with startling imagery, and told with uncommon emotional power.

Agate Midway, Hardcover. $25.00

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Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The push to uplift Black homeownership descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind.

UNC Press, Hardcover. $30.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world.

Grove Press, Hardcover. $26.00

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Poetry:

Acting as poetic records of light, the poems in Variations on Dawn and Dusk follow the sun as it warms, cools, colors, and shifts the space of Robert Irwin’s untitled (dawn to dusk) in the desert of Marfa, TX. Through this deeply engaged ekphrasis, Dan Beachy-Quick uses language to participate in the overpowering elegance of Irwin’s structure. Here, the very foundation of our vision—light—forms the vocabulary from which these poems are built.

OmniDawn Publishing, Paperback. $13.95

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie?

Copper Canyon Press, Paperback. $17.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​“I”: New and Selected Poems shows the reader both the closeness of the enemy and the poet’s inherent courage, inventiveness, and joy. It is a record of one woman’s response to the repressive and fracturing forces around the subjects of race, class, color, gender, and sexuality. Each poem is an act of victory, finding a path through repressive forces to speak with both beauty and truth.

University of Pittsburgh Press, Hardcover $29.95

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This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains. ​Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory.

Haymarket Books, Paperback. $16.00

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear—all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea—Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time’s vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.

Gray Wolf Press, Paperback. $16.00

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​A Sand Book is about change and quantification, the relationship between catastrophe and cultural transmission. It moves among houses of worship and grocery stores, flitters between geological upheaval and the weird weather of the Internet.

Tin House Books, Hardcover. $24.95 

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​In Dunce Mary Ruefle returns to the poetic practice that has always been at her core. With her startlingly fresh sensibility, she enraptures us in poem after poem by the intensity of her attention, with the imaginative flourishes of her being-in-the-world, always deep with mysteries, unexpected appearances, and abiding yearning.

Wave Books, Hardcover. $25.00

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Be Recorder offers readers a blazing way forward into an as yet unmade world. The many times and tongues in these poems investigate the precariousness of personhood in lines that excoriate and sanctify.  Carmen Giménez Smith turns the increasingly pressing urge to cry out into a dream of rebellion—against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our complacency in an America that depends on it. 

Gray Wolf Press, Paperback. $16.00

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​From the current phenomenon of drawing calligraphy with water in public parks in China to Thomas Jefferson laying out dinosaur bones on the White House floor, from the last sighting of the axolotl to a man who stops building plutonium triggers, Sight Lines moves through space and time and brings the disparate and divergent into stunning and meaningful focus.

Copper Canyon Press, Paperback. $16.00

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​Doomstead Days is a lyrical series of experiments in embodied ecological consciousness. Drafted on foot, these site-specific poems document rivers, cities, forests, oil spills, mountains, and apocalyptic visions. They encounter refineries and urban watersheds, megafauna and industrial toxins, each encounter intertwining ordinary life and ongoing environmental crisis. 

Nightboat Books, Paperback. $17.95

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Translated Literature:

​An unflinchingly raw and lyrical exploration of a mother's grief and how it transforms her relationship to time, reality, and language. Intensely moving, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back explores what is it to be a family, what it is to love and lose, and what it is to treasure life in spite of death’s indomitable resolve.

Coffee House Press, Hardcover. $22.95

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​Eliane Brum is a star journalist in Brazil, known for her polyphonic writing that gives voice to people often underrepresented in popular literature. Told in the vibrant and idiomatic language of the people Brum writes about, The Collector of Leftover Souls is a vital work of investigative journalism from an internationally acclaimed author.

​Gray Wolf Press, Paperback. $16.00

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Space Invaders is the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate Estrella González Jepsen. The novel effortlessly builds a choral voice and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, Fernandez summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.

Gray Wolf Press, Paperback. $14.00

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​When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman’s struggle to survive and be believed. 

​Verso Fiction, Paperback. $19.95

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria’s ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination. A mixture of brutal, front-line reportage and surreal humor evocative of Beckett and Kafka, Death is Hard Work is an unforgettable journey into a contemporary heart of darkness.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Hardcover. $25.00

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Nearing the end of his life, Baron Bela Wenckheim decides to return to the provincial Hungarian town of his birth. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he wishes to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. What follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town's alternately drab and absurd existence.

New Directions, Hardcover. $29.95

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​The story of the author’s mother, a fierce, loving woman who for years protected her family from the violence encroaching upon them in pre-genocide Rwanda. Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother’s voice in a haunting work of art.

Archipelago Books, Paperback. $16.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.

Pantheon Books, Hardcover. $25.95

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Steeped in a rich heritage of bewitching Albanian myth and legend, this is a deeply timely and deeply necessary novel about the broken reality for millions worldwide, about identity in all its complex permutations, and the human need to be seen.

Pantheon Books, Hardcover. $25.95

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A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?

Riverhead Books, Hardcover. $27.00

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Young People's Literature:

​This poem is a love letter to black life in the United States. It highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion, and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes. Robust back matter at the end provides valuable historical context and additional detail for those wishing to learn more.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Hardcover. $17.99

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​Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society’s failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts. Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice—and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore.

Text Publishing, Paperback. $17.99

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question–How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Make Me a World, Hardcover. $17.99
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​A Japanese-American family, reeling from their ill treatment in the Japanese internment camps, gives up their American citizenship to move back to Hiroshima, unaware of the devastation wreaked by the atomic bomb in this piercing look at the aftermath of World War II.

Atheneum/Dlouhy, Hardcover. $17.99

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's


​Jason Reynolds conjures ten tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings, and brilliantly weaves them into one wickedly funny, piercingly poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.

Atheneum/Dlouhy, Hardcover. $17.99

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin’s murder. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth — and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.

Kokila, Hardcover. $17.99

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's


​From the author of Printz Medal winner Bone Gap comes the unforgettable story of two young women—one living, one dead—dealing with loss, desire, and the fragility of the American dream during WWII. 

Balzer + Bray, Hardcover. $17.99

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

1919 was a world-shaking year. Full of movements which reached their tipping point that year. Now, one hundred years later, these same social issues are more relevant than ever. Sandler traces the momentum and setbacks of these movements through this last century, showing that progress isn't always a straight line and offering a unique lens through which we can understand history and the change many still seek.

Bloomsbury, Hardcover. $24.99

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When a local psychiatrist is murdered by what seems to be werewolves, the town of Salem, Oregon, becomes even more hostile to "monsters," and Z and Aysel are driven together in an attempt to survive a place where most people wish that neither of them existed. The best Teen Zombie Werewolf Witchy Faerie fantasy murder mystery you’ve ever read––by debut author, Hal Schrieve. 

Seven Stories Press, Hardcover. $19.95

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Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be… until all of a sudden, it's not. Kiss Number 8, a graphic novel from writer Colleen AF Venable and illustrator Ellen T. Crenshaw, is a layered, funny, sharp-edged story of teen sexuality and family secrets.

First Second, Paperback. $17.99

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Fiction:

​A finely observed, timely exploration of marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition from one of the most exciting writers working today. Fleishman Is in Trouble is an insightful, unsettling, often hilarious exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of our great wariness and our great hope.

Wildfire, Hardcover. $27.00

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​Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Serpent's Tail, Hardcover. $27.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.

One World, Hardcover. $26.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's
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Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Michael Joseph, Hardcover. $30.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​Here is a timely and powerful novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant—at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. As the characters—deeply divided by race, religion, and class—tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love, messy and unpredictable, is born.

Bloomsbury, Hardcover. $25.95

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​With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.

Vintage Books, Paperback. $15.00

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Part domestic thriller, part speculative fiction, part psychological drama, The Need is a novel about Molly, a scientist and mother of two young children. When a masked intruder appears in her home and demonstrates an eerie familiarity with the inner workings of her life, Molly falls down a mind-bending rabbit hole. The book explores maternal love, loss, and what one human can be asked to do for another.

Viking Books, Hardcover. $26.00

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Shortlisted for the 2019 NBA's

​One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.

Scribner, Hardcover. $26.95

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​On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

Jonathan Cape, Hardcover. $26.00

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​Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.

Fleet, Hardcover. $24.95

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