Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, and Louise Erdrich led the list of fiction finalists for the National Book Awards this year.
Follow the links below to read free samples of the finalists in every category–who is your favorite?
The finalists were announced on MSNBC this year, a new twist for the prestigious award. The winners will be revealed at a gala ceremony on November 14 in New York City at Cipriani Wall Street.
FICTION
Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King
McSweeney’s Books
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds
Little, Brown and Company
NONFICTION
Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 (No sample available yet)
Doubleday
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Random House
Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4
Knopf
Domingo Martinez, The Boy Kings of Texas
Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press
Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
POETRY
David Ferry, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
University of Chicago Press
Cynthia Huntington, Heavenly Bodies
Southern Illinois University Press
Tim Seibles, Fast Animal
Etruscan Press
Alan Shapiro, Night of the Republic
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Susan Wheeler, Meme
University of Iowa Press
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE
William Alexander, Goblin Secrets
Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Carrie Arcos, Out of Reach
Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
Patricia McCormick, Never Fall Down
Balzer+Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Eliot Schrefer, Endangered
Scholastic
Steve Sheinkin, Bomb: The Race to Build—- and Steal– – the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon
Flash Point, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press