This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear

November 2020

Jacqueline Winspear’s memoir, THIS TIME NEXT YEAR WE’LL BE LAUGHING, takes readers with her to post-War England, where she shares wonderful stories about growing up in a country recovering from war. Readers may know Winspear from her award-winning Maisie Dobbs series, but even if you do not, her storytelling here will completely captivate you. I interviewed her a few weeks ago, and I felt like I was talking to an old family friend. Her stories of her family brought them all so alive to me.

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Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent

November 2020

Liz Nugent’s LITTLE CRUELTIES opens with this line: “All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral, although one of us was in a coffin.” It goes on to say, “Three is an odd number, so there had always been two against one, although we all switched sides regularly. Nobody would ever have described us as close.” It’s a great setup, and when I reread it, I saw just how clever it was.

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The National Book Awards 2020

The winners of the 2020 National Book Award in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature and Young People's Literature were announced on November 18th at the first-ever virtual 71st National Book Awards Ceremony. Two lifetime achievement awards also were presented as part of the evening’s ceremony: Walter Mosley was recognized with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, presented by Edwidge Danticat, and Carolyn Reidy posthumously received the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

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The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2020

The 2020 Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Douglas Stuart for SHUGGIE BAIN, the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Margaret Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drug epidemic is waiting in the wings. Click here to read more about Stuart and his blistering debut novel.

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