Announcing the 2018 Shortlist for “The Very Best!” Book Awards!

September is almost here and it is time to announce the shortlist for “The Very Best!” Book Awards. This year, to simplify things, I have narrowed down the categories to three:

• Fiction (Novel or Short Fiction)
• Non-Fiction
• First Book (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Also, this year, for the first time, I have a small, but unique, award to give each winner: a “soap book” which is a bar of handmade soap encased in a specially designed book cover! This gift was generously supplied by Miramichi’s own Clean Suds Soap Co. The scent is called “Miramichi Sunrise” and it has “dewy, green, fresh, fruity florals as well as apple, berries, cyclamen, water lily, rose and musk notes.”

Update: I have added a “next book up” prize for each of the three categories: a personal-size bar of Amber artisan soap from the Clean Suds Soap Co. of Miramichi.

Here is the 2018 Shortlist:

Fiction

• No Fury Like That by Lisa de Nikolits
• Once Upon a Time in West Toronto by Terri Favro
• This Side of Sad by Karen Smythe (also First Book)
• Finishing the Road by David Cozac(also First Book)
  
• The Honey Farm by Harriet Alida Lye (also First Book)
• Arrow’s Flight by Joel Scott
• Quarry by Catherine Graham (also First Book)
• Watermark by Jennifer Farquhar (also Best First Book)
• The Land’s Long Reach by Valerie Mills-Milde
• Through Sunlight and Shadows by Raymond Fraser
• Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel (Translated by Anita Anand) (also First Book)
• First Things First: Early and Uncollected Stories by Diane Schoemperlen
• Outside People by Mariam Pirbhai (First Book)
• Amah and the Silk-Winged Pigeons by Joycelyn Cullity (Historical Fiction; also First Book)

Non-Fiction

• The Art and Passion of Guido Nincheri by Melanie Grondin
• The Homing Place by Rachel Bryant (also First Book)
• Following the River by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
• Tappan Adney and the Heritage of the St. John River Valley by Keith Helmuth

The three winners will be announced Monday, September 10th!