The expert readers’ advisory librarians on the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Reading List Council have selected their top picks for 2012 in eight popular genres: adrenaline titles (including suspense, thrillers and action adventure), fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction and women’s fiction. View read-alikes and titles that made the short-list.
ALA Genre Awards 2012: Women's Fiction Winner. The story of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own past.
ALA Genre Awards 2012: Science Fiction Winner. Humanity has colonized the solar system. Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, "The Scopuli," they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted.
ALA Genre Awards 2012: Romance Winner. In this first installment in a scintillating new series, sisters from a scandalous aristocratic family--and the purveyors of London's most fashionable shop--find love as divine as the gowns they create.
ALA Genre Awards 2012: Mystery Winner. A clever mathematics teacher orchestrates a cover-up after a confrontation between a violent man and his terror-stricken ex-wife results in the man's accidental death.
ALA Genre Award Winner 2012: Horror. For years, a lighthouse at the top of a hill called Blade Ridge has lit up the surrounding woods. But when the lighthouse keeper is found dead, strange things begin happening to the people and animals in the area.
ALA Genre Award 2012 Historical Fiction Winner. After the burned body of a mixed-blood boy, Johnnie Sanders, is discovered in 1878 Dodge City, Kansas, part-time policeman Wyatt Earp enlists the help of his professional-gambler friend Doc Holliday.
ALA Genre Award 2012 for Fantasy Winner. A fierce competition is underway, a contest between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in "a game," in which each must use their powers of illusion to best the other. Unbeknownst to them, this game is a duel to the death, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.
American Library Association Genre Award 2012 for Adrenaline Fiction Winner. Without her husband's knowledge, Christine, whose memory is damaged by a long-ago accident, is treated by a neurologist who helps her to remember her former self through journal entries until inconsistencies begin to emerge, raising disturbing questions.
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