Indie Awards 2015 – shortlist

Each year, independent book sellers from around Australia nominate the best Australian books for a calendar year. The shortlists include choices for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Debut and Children’s literature.

As the people on the ground, and those with whom you can discuss your likes and dislikes in reading, their recommendations are valuable and inspiring to their customers. Thus, it is worth looking at this year’s list (announced January 29) and checking off some of the books they have considered for this year’s awards:

indie

Fiction

  • When the Night Comes (Favel Parrett, Hachette)
  • Amnesia (Peter Carey, Hamish Hamilton)
  • Golden Boys (Sonya Hartnett, Hamish Hamilton)
  • The Rosie Effect (Graeme Simsion, Text)

Nonfiction

  • This House of Grief (Helen Garner, Text)
  • The Bush (Don Watson, Hamish Hamilton)
  • Where Song Began (Tim Low, Viking)
  • Cadence (Emma Ayres, ABC Books)

Debut fiction

  • Lost & Found (Brooke Davis, Hachette)
  • Foreign Soil (Maxine Beneba Clark, Hachette)
  • The Strays (Emily Bitto, Affirm Press)
  • After Darkness (Christine Piper, A&U)

Children’s

  • The 52-Storey Treehouse (Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton, Pan Macmillan)
  • Pig the Pug (Aaron Blabey, Scholastic)
  • Withering by Sea (Judith Rossell, ABC Books)
  • Laurinda (Alice Pung, Black Inc.).

[List from: Books and Publishing ]

While obviously many of these books are not Young Adult literature, some could be suitable for a mature reader, and they certainly offer some interesting titles for teachers to consider.

The Children’s category is rather broad, and I am sure that there could be an argument for at least 2 sub-categories of this – especially when you compare Pig the Pug (picture book) with Laurinda (352p.).

The awards will be announced on March 25 – how many of these will you read before then?

For more about the awards, visit Indie Awards 2015.