This week there has been a lot of talk of awards and long and shortlists after the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010
long list was announced on Tuesday. I must confess to having read only a very small number of those on the list but I will certainly be keeping an eye out for them in Bridgnorth Books as possible future good reads!
In the meantime, I had a look in the shop earlier and noticed that Russell already has a large number of previous prize winning books in stock. I’ve listed just a handful of some of my favorites that he currently has available below. As usual, I’ve also linked each image to more information about the book. I'm sure you'll see, that there are some great reads even in that short selection! If you wish to secure any of these titles just get in touch, remember with used copies Bridgnorth Books only has one of each and when it’s gone, it’s gone!
1. Life of Pi by Yann MartelThe ManBooker PrizeRRP:£7.99Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50
Will the tiger be menacing; will the ocean be threatening; will the island be something out of Frankenstein or will it be an Eden?"--Yann Martel Life of Pi, first published in 2002, became an international bestseller and remains one of the most extraordinary and popular works of contemporary fiction.
2.Vernon God Little by DBC PierreThe ManBooker PrizeRRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50Vernon Little is fifteen years old and lives with his mother in Martirio, a flea-bitten Texan town. His best friend just massacred sixteen of their classmates before killing himself. The town wants vengeance and turns its sights on Vernon, who is arrested at the start of the story.
3. Samuel Pepys by Clare TomalinThe Whitbread Book AwardRRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50
For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.
4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark HaddonThe Whitbread Book AwardRRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50Narrated by a fifteen-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, this dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions.
5. Property by Valerie MartinOrange Prize for Fiction
RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50Valerie Martin’s Property delivers an eerily mesmerizing inquiry into slavery’s venomous effects on the owner and the owned. The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.
6. Small Island by Andrea LevyOrange Prize for FictionRRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, "Small Island "is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.
So there are my half a dozen. Have you read any good prize winning books lately? If so please feel free to share your thoughts with us using the comments feature below.
Russell has several of your contemporary children’s authors too but I personally still prefer the likes of Fantastic Mr Fox or Georges Marvellous Medicine anyday! Roald Dahl brings back such wonderful memories. 
