Congratulations to Keep This to Yourself by Tom Ryan (Albert Whitman & Company) which won the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature, and Aftershock by Alison Taylor (HarperCollins) which won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Fiction)! The Atlantic Book Awards works to promote and acknowledge excellence in Atlantic Canadian writing and book publishing through an annual awards ceremony and related events.
About Keep This To Yourself:
It’s been a year since the Catalog Killer terrorized the sleepy seaside town of Camera Cove, killing four people before disappearing without a trace. Like everyone else in town, eighteen-year-old Mac Bell is trying to put that horrible summer behind him―easier said than done since Mac’s best friend Connor was the murderer’s final victim. But when he finds a cryptic message from Connor, he’s drawn back into the search for the killer―who might not have been a random drifter after all. Now nobody―friends, neighbors, or even the sexy stranger with his own connection to the case―is beyond suspicion. Sensing that someone is following his every move, Mac struggles to come to terms with his true feelings towards Connor while scrambling to uncover the truth.
Tom Ryan is the author of Keep This to Yourself, winner of the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Best YA Crime Book and the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best Young Adult Novel; I Hope You’re Listening; and the recently-released If You Get the Chance, co-authored with Robin Stevenson. He has also been nominated for the White Pine Award, the Stellar Award, and the Hackmatack Award. Two of Tom’s books have been Junior Library Guild selections, and his young adult novels were ALA Rainbow List picks in 2013, 2014, and 2020. In 2017 he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction. Tom is represented by Samantha Haywood and Amy Tompkins.
About AFTERSHOCK:
Nightmares still haunt Chloe thirteen years after a fatal tragedy led to the disintegration of her family. Her mother, Jules, has a busy tech career, a long history of chronic pain—and little time for Chloe. After Chloe drops out of university to travel for a year, Jules’s OxyContin dependency quickly worsens. Aftershock follows their parallel journeys: Jules struggles to regain control of her life, while Chloe, after a rocky visit with her estranged father in New Zealand, resolves to go off the map and spend some time alone, travelling. When Jules suddenly can’t find her daughter, the feeling is all too familiar. Mother and daughter will need to address old secrets and the emotional impact they have wrought before they can reconcile with each other, and, finally, with themselves.
Alison Taylor was fired from jobs as a babysitter, a chambermaid, a barista and a farm hand, before spending twenty years as a television editor in Toronto, Ontario. They have previously published a short story in Exile Literary Quarterly, performed deadpan stand-up on various comedy stages and made several internationally screened experimental short films. They now live in Fredericton, New Brunswick with their partner and two bossy felines. Aftershock is their first novel. Alison is represented by Samantha Haywood.
To see the full list of winners, please visit: http://atlanticbookawards.ca/