Free Book Samples!

Free Samples of the 2013 National Book Award Finalists 

The National Book Foundation has revealed its complete list of finalists for the National Book Awards. Below, we’ve collected free samples of all the books on the shortlist for your reading pleasure. The winner will be announced on November 20, 2013. Download excerpts from the longlist here.

"We hope readers will find in them a representation of the best work of the year in writing for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature, and be encouraged to read all of the NBA Finalist books." - National Book Award Foundation

Click any of the highlighted links below to read these finalists, then come in and pick up your copy. 

Fiction Finalists
Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA)
Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press/Penguin Group USA)
George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House)

Nonfiction Finalists
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

Young Adult Literature Finalists
Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp
Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck
Tom McNeal, Far Far Away
Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone
Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints

Poetry Finalists
Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (Alfred A. Knopf)
Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke (Penguin Poets/Penguin Group USA)
Matt Rasmussen, Black Aperture (Louisiana State University Press)
Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems (Graywolf Press)