A total of 49 books (24 fiction, 25 nonfiction) have been selected for the longlist for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

The fiction category’s closest approach to genre comes in the magical realism of Alice Hoffman’s The World That We Knew, and perhaps Téa Obreht’s Inland, which reviews suggest features a ghost and an imaginary creature at points in the story.

The nonfiction category notably includes sff writer Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House: A Memoir about her abusive relationship with a former partner who is referred throughout as “the woman from the Dream House.”

Other longlisted nonfiction works of potential interest to Filers are Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, and Brian Jay Jones’ Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination.

Nor should one overlook Maria Popova’s Figuring, by the creator behind the website Brain Pickings, whose author Booklist applauds for bringing “her hunger for facts and zeal for biography to this exhilarating and omnivorous inquiry into the lives of geniuses who ‘bridged the scientific and poetic.’”

Six finalists will be announced on November 4, and two medal winners will be announced at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards event at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Philadelphia on Sunday, January 26. The Carnegie Medal winners will each receive $5,000.

Fiction

• Blake, Sarah. The Guest Book. (Flatiron)
• Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. Fleishman is in Trouble. (Random)
• Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Water Dancer. (Ballantine/ One World)
• Cruz, Angie. Dominicana. (Flatiron) 
• Danticat, Edwidge. Everything Inside. (Knopf)
• Ellmann, Lucy. Ducks, Newburyport. (Biblioasis)
• Gilbert, Elizabeth. City of Girls. (Riverhead)     
• Goldberg, Myla. Feast Your Eyes. (Scribner)      
• Hoffman, Alice. The World That We Knew. (Simon & Schuster)  
• Hustvedt, Siri. Memories of the Future. (Simon & Schuster)
• Luiselli, Valeria. Lost Children Archive. (Knopf)
• Obreht, Téa. Inland. (Random)
• Parker, Michael. Prairie Fever. (Algonquin)
• Patchett, Ann. The Dutch House. (Harper)       
• Phillips, Julia. Disappearing Earth. (Knopf)    
• Porter, Max. Lanny. (Graywolf)         
• Rooney, Salley. Normal People. (Hogarth)
• Rushdie, Salman. Quichotte. (Random)
• Schine, Cathleen. The Grammarians. (Farrar/Sarah Crichton)
• Smith, Zadie. Grand Union. (Penguin)
• Vijay, Madhuri.The Far Field. (Grove)
• Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. (Penguin)
• Whitehead, Colson. The Nickel Boys. (Doubleday)
• Woodson, Jacqueline. Red at the Bone. (Riverhead)    
   

Nonfiction

• Ackerman, Elliot. Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. (Penguin)    
• Arana, Marie. Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles of the Latin American Story. (Simon & Schuster)      
• Aronson, Louise.Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life. (Bloomsbury)  
• Brinkley, Douglas. American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race. (Harper)
• Broom, Sarah M. The Yellow House. (Grove)   
• Cep, Casey.Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. (Knopf)     
• Cullen, Dave. Parkland. (Harper)      
• de Waal, Frans. Mama’s Last Hug: Animal and Human Emotions. (Norton)  
• Forché, Carolyn.What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance. (Penguin)  
• George-Warren, Holly. Janis: Her Life and Music. (Simon & Schuster)  
• Gertner, Jon.The Ice at the End of the World: Greenland’s Secret Past and Earth’s Perilous Future. (Random)
• Higginbotham, Adam. Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. (Simon & Schuster)   
• Jones, Brian Jay. Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. (Dutton)
• Keefe, Patrick Radden. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. (Doubleday)   
• Kotlowitz, Alex. An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. (Doubleday)
• Macfarlane, Robert. Underland: A Deep Time Journey. (Norton)       
• Machado, Carmen Maria.In the Dream House: A Memoir. (Graywolf) 
• Morrison, Toni. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. (Knopf)  
• Perez, Caroline Criado. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. (Abrams)
• Popova, Maria. Figuring. (Pantheon)
• Rich, Nathaniel. Losing Earth: A Recent History. (Farrar/MCD) 
• Straight, Susan. In the Country of Women. (Catapult)      
• Treuer, David. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. (Riverhead)  
• Urbina, Ian. The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys across the Last Untamed Frontier. (Knopf)   
• Wallace-Wells, David.The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. (Crown/Tim Duggan)