For fans of  Downton Abbey, here are some books to read while you're waiting for the new season to begin.

Here is an interesting take on the best books of the year from Publishers Weekly:

PW's Top 10 Authors Pick Their Favorite Books of 2013.

Here are The New York Times picks for the  "10 Best Books of 2013."

Here are Entertainment Weekly's picks for the best books of 2013:

10 Best Fiction Books of 2013
10 Best Non-fiction of 2013

Here are some links to lists of the best books of 2013:

New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2013"
Publishers Weekly

The winners of the 2013 National Book Awards were announced last night.  The fiction winner is James McBride's The Good Lord Bird and the non-fiction recipient is George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.

Check out our November/December issue of Fiction News with our staff recommendations:

Best Books Lists for 2013 are starting to appear.  Here are the top ten from Publishers Weekly.

Longbourn by Jo Baker is a recent staff favorite that been getting a lot of buzz.   Here's Carole's take on this new novel: 

In this captivating twist on Pride and Prejudice, the focus is on the lives of the servants in the Bennet houshold, with just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs as there is upstairs.   While the marriage prospects of the Bennet girls preoccupy the family upstairs, the housekeeper Mrs. Hill has her hands full managing the staff that keeps Longbourn running smoothly; the young housemaids Sarah and Polly, the butler Mr. Hill, and they mysterious new footman, James Smith.  While Jane Austen fans will find much to savor, Longbourn stands along as an engrossing, intelligent historical novel, enhanced by fully realized characters, fine writing, and insight into the social, cultural, and political realities of the Regency era.

This is a busy time of year for book awards. 

Yesterday, the The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton was chosen as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize.  At 28, New Zealander Eleanor Catton is the youngest recipient of the award.

And this morning, the shortlist for the National Book Awards was announced.  Here is the link to the finalists.

Congratulations are in order for Alice Munro who was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, in recognition of her role as the "master of the contemporary short story."

The National Book Foundation has released the Longlists of Nominees for the 2013 National Book Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature.The winners will be announced on November 20th.

Here are some of our recent Staff Picks:

The shortlist  for The Man Booker Prize has been announced.

This month marks the launch of a new reading recommendation list called Library Reads.  Each month librarians from across the country will vote on their picks for the best new releases.  Here is the September inaugural list.

While Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer, it also means that the release of new books for fall begins.  There's a lot to look forward to with new books by Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan, Malcolm Gladwell, and Stephen King, to name just a few popular authors with titles coming in the next few months.  Here's Entertainment Weekly's list of books to be on the lookout for.

BookPage picks its favorite Historical Fiction debuts so far this year.

Here are the winners of this year's PEN Literary Awards.

For all Philippa Gregory fans, The White Princess, the 5th entry in her Cousins' War series is here!

If you like reading fiction in which authors are the main focus, here are some titles that have well-known writers as their protagonists from an article entitled "7-Better-Than-Beach-Reads About Famous Writers."

The "Longlist" of nominees for England's  Man Booker Prize 2013 was announced today. It's quite an impressive list.

If you want something to look forward to, BookPage has a preview of some of the most anticipated titles scheduled for publication in the coming months

For the many fans of the Bruno, Chief of Police mystery series by Martin Walker, the latest installment in the series, The Devil's Cave, has arrived.  If you've never read one of the Bruno mysteries, with the enchanting backdrop of France's pastoral heartland, a cast of local characters as vibrant as their surroundings, and enough sumptuous repasts to satisfy any literary gourmand, this is great a series to try.

Here's Oprah's O Magazine recommendations for "Beach Reads You'll Blaze Through."

Here's a staff recommendation for Transatlantic by Colum McCann:

Three amazing journeys (the first transatlantic flight in 1919, abolitionist Frederick Douglass's 1845 speaking tour of Ireland, and former Senator George Mitchell's mediation of the 1998 Belfast Peace Agreement) intersect and inspire four generations of remarkable women.  Believing that "fiction can capture history" and "the small moments make the large moments," McCann elegantly interweaves fact with fiction and the celebrated with the unsung."  Transatlantic is a book to savor and share. (Recommended by Elise)

Here's a list of recommended titles from the Los Angeles Times Summer Reading Guide.

Private Eye July

BookPage is having a month long celebration called Private Eye July with a recommended reading list.

If you're looking for a smart, irreverent and witty summer read about women of a certain age, Elinor Lipman's The View from Penthouse B should fit the bill.   When Gwen's beloved husband dies, Margot, her recently divorced older sister, invites Gwen to move into her luxurious West Village apartment.   While somewhat of an "odd" couple, the two are bound by sisterly love as they seek to reinvent themselves in often hilarious and sometimes touching ways.

Today is the first day of our Adult Summer Reading Program.  Submit an entry form for every book you read and every audiobook you listen too, and you'll be eligible for one of weekly prize baskets.  Entries can be made online or pick up paper entry forms next time you're in the library. 

Here is NPR's Summer Books 2013 list as selected by their critics.  There are lots of good titles on this list!

For Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce fans, here is an interesting video clip of an interview with Sylvia Beach, owner of the Parisian bookstore Shakespeare & Company  that was a hangout for Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce.  In it, she talks about her relationship with the two literary greats.

The Art Forger by Barbara Shapiro is our newest addition to our Book Club Corner titles.  The library along with Books on the Common and The Aldrich Contemporary Art  Museum will be co-sponsoring an author talk with Ms. Shapiro on July 11th at 7 PM.  The talk will take place at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.  Please register on the library's website if you plan to attend.

We've added three more titles to our Book Club Corner:  Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, The Round House by Louise Erdrich, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  If you would like to reserve any of these titles for a book group discussion contact Karen Kazzi, Inter-Library Loans, 203-438-2282 x 1011 or kkazzi@ridgefieldlibrary.org.

Louise Penny has done it again.  For the fifth time, she has won the Agatha Award for the best novel of the year for an entry her Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series.  The latest entry, The Beautiful Mystery, takes this year's prize.

Dennis Lehane's Live by Night takes home this year's Edgar Award for Best Novel and Chris Pavone's   The Expat has been selected as Best First Novel.  Here is the complete list of winners and nominees.

The award-winners keep coming.   Here are the picks for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes announced on April 19th.  In the Fiction category, Bill Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, which also won this year's National Book Critics Circle Award, took the honors.

For all the fans of Willa Cather's works, here is an interesting article entitled "10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Willa Cather" that appeared in Publishers Weekly. It discusses some of the revelations that come to light in the newly released book The Selected Letters of Willa Cather edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Strout.

While it may seem early to pick the best books of the year, BookPage has selected 20 titles as the best of 2013 so far.   Included in the list is Me Before You by JoJo Moyes, which is one of my personal favorites from this year's new releases (Adult Services Librarian Dorothy Pawlowski),
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Every ten years, Granta, the London-based literary magazine, selects a list of 20 authors who they cite as "The Best of Young British Novelists."  In order to qualify, an author must be under 40 years of age. The fourth iteration of this list of novelists has just been selected by Granta.

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday.   After not awarding a winner in the Fiction category last year, the judges have selected The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson as this year's recipient.
Other finalists in this category were What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander and The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

Though Jim and Bob Burgess are both lawyers living in New York City, the legacy of their Maine childhoods and of the circumstances of their father's death remain.   Their sister Susan has never left the small town where they were raised, and when her teenage soon is accused of a possible bias crime involved Somali immigrants, the brothers are called to her aid.  Jim is a high profile lawyer whose success is legendary in the town.  But as the present crisis unfolds, the complicated dynamics among the siblings and their own spouses and offspring are revealed.  While Strout's characters are all flawed human beings, sometimes frustratingly so, the strength of this novel lies in their journeys toward self-awareness and in their efforts to reconcile the legacy of the past with their present lives.  (Submitted by Adult Services Librarian Dorothy Pawlowski.)

Looking for a thriller to read.  Checkout this list of nominees for the 2013 Thriller Awards that will be awarded in July by the International Thriller Writers.

In her new novel The Obituary Writer, Ann Hood offers parallel but converging tales of two women.  Vivien becomes an obituary writer after losing her lover in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; and Claire, a former TWA flight attendant, is a young mother working on the 1960s Presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.  Separated by time, these two women struggle with the meaning of love and loss, the bonds of women to their children, and with making their way in a world offering tantalizing glimpses of freedom.   With these two beautifully drawn characters, Hood explores the universal struggles of women balancing their own needs with the demands placed on them in their roles as lovers, wives, and mothers. (Recommended by Adult Services Librarian Dorothy Pawlowski.)

Did you know that you can have monthly newsletters about new books available at the Ridgefield Library sent to you via email each month.   Go to our Newsletter Signup page and choose from a list of 14 newsletters including Fiction and Nonfiction Bestsellers, Mystery, Business, Children's Chapter Books and more!

Here are the winners of the recently announced National Book Critics Circle Award.

Each year the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association bestows the Alex Awards.   These awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.  Here are this year's winners.