Members of the American Booksellers Association have begun voting to determine winners in eight categories of the 2017 Indies Choice Book Awards and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards. (Finalists can be seen here.) Voting concludes April 30. Winners will be announced May 3 and will be feted May 31, along with the honor book recipients, at ABA's Celebration of Bookselling and Author Awards Lunch during BookExpo in New York City.
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Kiran Millwood Hargrave won the overall £3,000 (about $3,746) Waterstones Children's Book Prize for The Girl of Ink and Stars, as well as the £2,000 (about $2,498) younger fiction category. Judge Florentyna Martin, children's book buyer for Waterstones, called the book "an absolute joy to read. It is always exciting when we see this level of outstanding talent in a new writer and Kiran has crafted a mesmerizing world full of myths, magic and adventure.... Our booksellers have assuredly chosen a writer who delivers the whole package: a beautifully written and hugely imaginative story with a strong and loveable protagonist and a page-turning plot."
Other category winners were writer and illustrator Lizzy Stewart's There's a Tiger in the Garden (illustrated books) and Patrice Lawrence's Orangeboy (older fiction)
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A shortlist has been unveiled for the first time in the 45-year history of the £40,000 (about $49,900) Wolfson History Prize, designed to "promote and encourage standards of excellence in the writing of readable and scholarly history suitable for a general audience," the Bookseller reported. Organizers said they hoped the shortlist would "encourage debate about what makes brilliant, accessible history." Each shortlisted author will receive £4,000 (about $4,995). The winner will be announced May 15. This year's finalists are:
Henry IV by Chris Given-Wilson
Sleep in Early Modern England by Sasha Handley
Henry the Young King, 1155-1183 by Matthew Strickland
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsar by Daniel Beer
Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper