ABIAs 2024 Shortlist Announced
21 May 2024
The shortlists for the 2024 edition of the Australian Book Industry Awards have been announced. Find out more information about shortlisted titles below.
General Fiction Book Of The Year
The Bookbinder Of Jericho by Pip Williams
Published in large print in August 2023.
Oxford, 1914. When the young men are drawn away to fight, it is the women who must keep going. Twin sisters Peggy and Maude work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of studying - but is often reminded that her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, is extraordinary and vulnerable. She wants nothing more than what she has, and Peggy must watch over her.
When refugees arrive from devastated Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and the sisters' lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future: one where she can use her intellect and not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back...
Everyone On A Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
Published in large print in March 2024.
When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a Who's Who of crime-writing royalty. The debut writer (me!). The forensic science writer. The blockbuster writer. The legal thriller writer. The literary writer. The psychological suspense writer. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime. Or commit one...
International Book Of The Year
Spare by Prince Harry
Published in Large Print, CD and MP3 CD audiobook and uLibrary eAudiobook in May 2023.
Before losing his mother Diana, twelve-year-old Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled with anger, with loneliness - and, blaming the press for his mother's death, with life in the spotlight. Whilst the discipline of the British Army gave him structure, he soon felt more lost than ever. Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple's romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, they were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, Harry saw no other way to prevent history repeating itself but to flee the Royal Family. Now he tells his story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.