Today at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards event during the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Denver, these works of genre interest were among those recognized:

2018 Notable Books List: Year’s best in fiction, nonfiction and poetry

Fiction

• American War by Omar El Akkad. Alfred A. Knopf.
  A second Civil War turns lives upside down in this devastating vision of a dystopian future.
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
  Three characters stuck in an ambiguous limbo after their deaths narrate the story of the president’s visits to the graveyard following the tragic loss of his son.
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.
  A lyrical and psychologically astute exploration of the gravity of history that still ripples through the lives of a Mississippi family.

Nonfiction

• The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone. Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
  A biography of the forgotten heroine who founded American cryptography and cracked the Nazi Enigma machine.
• Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
  This candid account lays bare the author’s personal demons.
• Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore. Sourcebooks.
  In early twentieth century watch factories, dial painters suffer the deterioration of their bodies and fight to pave the way for workplace safety standards.

2018 Reading List: Year’s best in genre fiction for adult readers

Fantasy

Winner

• Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire. A Tor.com Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates.
  Twin sisters Jack and Jill discover a portal that leads them to the Moors, a dark and unsettling world that reveals their true selves. But will their conflicting desires tear them apart?

Horror

Winner

• Kill Creek by Scott Thomas. Inkshares.
  An homage to horror and the authors who write it, “Kill Creek” features four prominent authors who are lured into spending the night in a famous haunted house as a publicity stunt. The aftermath is both unexpected and terrifying.

Science Fiction

Winner

• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. Tor, a Tom Doherty Associates Book.
  In the Interdependency, each planet relies on its far-flung neighbors for survival. Now a galactic change is transforming the universal order, a new empress has been crowned, a rival is plotting a revolution, and a foul-mouthed captain is caught in the middle.

2018 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration for Adult Listeners

• “Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel” by George Saunders. Narrated by Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, Carrie Brownstein, Miranda July, Lena Dunham, and a full cast. Books on Tape. Abraham Lincoln pays one last visit to son Willie, laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery amidst a host of spirits keeping watch as the boy makes his final passage. An unprecedented cast of 166 narrators combine in a spectral chorus, telling their stories in an astonishing gabble of voices that teems with pathos, tragicomedy, and the tenderest love.