Timebound by Rysa Walker has won the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The YA novelist won a $50,000 advance and a publishing contract with Amazon Children’s Publishing’s Skyscape imprint.
Readers voted for the grandprize winner, picking Cary, North Carolina author as the winner of the sixth annual competition. Here’s more from the release:
Walker’s Timebound was inspired by her love of history and science fiction and explores how the choices we make affect our future. In the novel, 17-year-old Kate learns that she’s inherited a genetic license to time travel when her grandmother shares a strange blue medallion, an even stranger tale about future historians, and the unshakeable conviction that the fate of half the planet lies in Kate’s hands.
The remaining four finalists (listed below), each received a $15,000 advance and a contract with Amazon Publishing through the contest.
General Fiction: It Happened in Wisconsin by Ken Moraff, Lexington, MA: “follows an aging ballplayer who looks back on his teammates’ battle for justice, the struggle between ideals and temptation, his own bittersweet love story, and his glory days barnstorming the back roads and dusty ballparks of the old Midwest.
Mystery/Thriller: The Hidden by Jo Chumas, Barcelona, Spain: “a fast-paced thriller that takes place during the political turmoil of 1940s Egypt. Worlds collide when a popular young university professor is brutally murdered in the Sinai desert, leaving his new bride, a 20-year old Egyptian-born teacher, to search for answers and justice.”
Romance: A Man Above Reproach by Evelyn Pryce, Pittsburgh, PA: “a Regency romance featuring a stoic duke who falls for a mysterious piano player at a brothel and then must navigate the choppy waters of class, identity and love.”
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror: Poe by J. Lincoln Fenn, Haiku, HI: “a 23-year old obituary writer and college dropout runs afoul of an evil spirit while on a haunted house assignment and must uncover the common link between (among other things) a string of killings, his own deceased parents, and the strange numbered “code” that obsesses him.”
