The longlists for the Australian Booksellers Association’s (ABA) Booksellers’ Choice Book of the Year Awards have been announced. These awards recognise the titles that booksellers most enjoyed reading and hand-selling during 2019.
This year, for the first time, the awards will be presented in three categories: adult fiction, nonfiction and children’s. Below are this year’s longlisted titles for each category.
Adult fiction
- The White Girl by Tony Birch
- Peace by Garry Disher
- Silver by Chris Hammer
- Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris
- There Was Still Love by Favel Parrett
- Call Me Evie by JP Pomare
- Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham
- Bruny by Heather Rose
- Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar
- Damascus by Christos Tsolkias
- The Wife and the Widow by Christian White
- The Yield by Tara June Winch
- The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
Nonfiction
- Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga by Todd Alexander
- Your Own Kind of Girl by Clare Bowditch
- The Lost Boys by Paul Byrnes
- Against All Odds by Craig Challen & Richard Harris with Ellis Henican
- When All Is Said & Done by Neale Daniher
- Banking Bad by Adele Ferguson
- Kitty Flanagan’s 488 Rules for Life by Kitty Flanagan
- Australia Day by Stan Grant
- See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill
- Finding the Heart of the Nation by Thomas Mayor
- The Whole Fish Cookbook by Josh Niland
- Tell Me Why by Archie Roach
- Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
Children’s
- Bluey: The Beach
- Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals by Sami Bayly
- All The Factors of Why I Love Tractors by Davina Bell & Jenny Løvlie
- The Tiny Star by Mem Fox, illus by Freya Blackwood
- Explore Your World: Weird, Wild, Amazing by Tim Flannery & Sam Caldwell
- As Happy As Here by Jane Godwin
- Mr Chicken All Over Australia by Leigh Hobbs
- It Sounded Better In My Head by Nina Kenwood
- Young Dark Emu: A Truer History by Bruce Pascoe
- The Glimme by Emily Rodda, illus by Marc McBride
- Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street by Felicita Sala
- Sick Bay by Nova Weetman
- Eddie Woo’s Wonderful World of Maths by Eddie Woo
The 2020 shortlists will be announced on Thursday, 4 June, with the winners to be revealed on Wednesday, 8 July.
