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Oyster now carries more than 1,000 books from Bloomsbury.

Subscribers to this service can access the eBook editions of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. The full Oyster library contains a selection of more than 500,000 titles.

Here’s more from the Oyster blog: “There’s a lot to choose from, so we’ve selected some more of our favorites to feature in today’s Spotlight. We’re excited to partner with such an incredible publisher to make these titles available to our readers and make our library better than ever.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Patricia Hruby Powell danced throughout the Americas and Europe with her dance company, One Plus One, before becoming a writer of children's books. She is the author of Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, an extraordinary portrait of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker written in exuberant verse. She lives in Champaign, Illinois. You can visit her online at talesforallages.com.

“Men We Reaped,” to be published on Tuesday by Bloomsbury, is as much an existential detective story as it is a personal history, as Ms. Ward searches for a unifying reason that her brother, Joshua, her cousin C. J. and friends Roger, Demond and Ronald — all young black men — died within a four-year period. 

She writes first about Roger Eric Daniels III, who died of a heart attack at 23 while using cocaine.

“They picking us off, one by one,” a friend tells Ms. Ward in the book, as they watch the hearse leave Mr. Daniels’s home. 

Who, she wonders, are “they”? 

“Was there a larger story that I was missing as all these deaths accumulated, as those I loved died?”

“Men We Reaped” is that larger story. With a novelist’s skill, Ms. Ward mines her memories of the men, like the girlhood crush she had on Ronald, or the night she enlisted a friend to wake her sister, who was dating C. J., to break the news of his death. What she finds are threads of the past that linger in the collective present, specifically the role that the South’s legacy of racism has played in how these young men lived and died.

Andrew Krivak has won the $10,000 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction for The Sojourn and Adam Hochschild took the $10,000 prize for nonfiction for To End All Wars. 

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation also picked two runners-up: Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin and Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo. All the winners will be celebrated at a ceremony hosted by journalist Nick Clooneyin Dayton on November 11th.

Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the books named as finalists for the prestigious prize.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Bloomsbury Publishing, the British publishing company that published the Harry Potter books, reported that its global eBook sales rose 70 percent year-over-year, during the period of March 1 through May 31st, 2012.

The company issued its Interim Management Statement last week, and revealed that print sales during the same period fell by 2 percent. ThisisMoney.co.uk has more: “Last year print sales were £78.9million and those for ebooks were £5.7million, meaning that if the latest trends continue throughout the year, they would result in an overall rise in turnover. Crucially for profits, ebooks should provide a higher margin.”

Bestselling titles that helped the publishing house during the period include: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s River Cottage Veg Everyday!, Wisden Cricketers‘ Almanack 2012, Double Cross by Ben MacIntyre, Heston at Home by Heston Blumenthal and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This review actually appeared online a couple months ago, but National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s piece on Merce Rodoreda’s Death in Spring made it onto “All Things Considered” last night.

I personally think Death in Spring is one of the most unique, and interesting books that we’ve published, and it’s fantastic that this is getting such great publicity. This is available at better bookstores everywhere, and through our website.

Additionally, this is part of our First 25, a collection of the first 25 titles we published, available for $200 $175. (Just enter “FIRST25” at checkout to receive the $25 discount.)

And to whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from Death in Spring:

I removed my clothes and dropped them at the foot of the hackberry tree, beside the madman’s rock. Before entering the river, I stopped to observe the color left behind by the sky. The sun-dappled light was different now that spring had arrived, reborn after living beneath the earth and within branches. I lowered myself gently into the water, hardly daring to breathe, always with the fear that, as I entered the water world, the air—finally emptied of my nuisance—would begin to rage and be transformed into wind that blew furiously, like the winter wind that nearly carried away houses, trees, and people. I had sought the broadest part of the river, the farthest from the village, a place where no one ever came. I didn’t want to be seen. The water flowed, sure of itself, confident with the weight that descended from mountains, snow and fountains escaping the shadows through holes in rocks. All the waters joined together for the delirium of joining and flowed endlessly, the land on both sides. As soon as I had passed the stables and the horse enclosure, I realized I was being followed by a bee, as well as by the stench of manure and the honey scent of wisteria that was beginning to blossom. The water was cold as I cut through it with my arms and kicked it with my feet; I stopped from time to time to drink some. The sun, filled with the desire to fly, was rising on the other side of Pedres Altes, streaking the white winter water. To trick the bee that was following me, I ducked under the water so it would lose me and not know what to do. I knew about
the obstinate, seven-year-old bees that possessed a sense of understanding. It was turbid under the water, like a glass cloud that reminded me of the glass balls in the courtyards beneath the strong wisteria vines, the wisteria that over the years upwrenched houses.

The houses in the village were all rose-colored. We painted them every spring and maybe for that reason the light was different. It captured the pink from the houses, the same way it took on the color of leaves and sun by the river. Shut inside in winter, we made paintbrushes from horsetails with handles of wood and wire, and when we had finished them, we put them away in the shed in the Plaça and waited for good weather. Then all of us, men and boys, would go to the cave on Maraldina in search of the red powder we needed for the pink paint . . . When we returned to the village, we would mix the red powder with water to make pink paint that winter would erase. In spring—bees buzzing about, blooming wisteria hanging from houses—we painted. And suddenly the light was different. [. . .]

I decided to stroll through the soft grass, up the incline; at the end of the slope the tree nursery appeared from behind some shrubs. The seedlings had tender trunks and no leaves; but all of them would carry death

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The National Book Award Winners were recently announced of the four winners three were female authors of color.

Jesymn Ward for Salvage the Bones (Fiction)
Nikkey Finney for Head off & Spilt (Poetry)
Thanhha Lai for Inside Out & Back Again (Young People's Lit)

Esi Edugyan, was the winner of the 2011 Giller Prize (a distinguished Canadian literary award) for Half Blood Blues. The novel was also shorlisted for Man Booker Prize. Unfortunately it won't be available in the States until March though if you can't wait you buy it now via amazon uk.

Much congratulations to Ward, Finney, Lai and Edugyan This congratulatory post is a tad late and I'd to look at it as more of a strategic delay as opposed to being too busy. I am anxiously awaiting the release of all the best of list for this year. If they are lacking in female authors of color I will be very dissappointed and will revisit this post to cheer me up and this one.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
This is the story of a family in a small Mississippi town. Set 12 days before Hurricane Katrina hits. The story is told by Esch the lone female voice. Esch lives with her father and three brothers. The mother died giving birth to the youngest son. Ward's does an excellent job of building this families world. I understood where every character was coming from.

A large part of this story is the relationship Esch's older brother Skeetah has with his pit bull China. With Skeetah, Ward created a character that took part in dog fights that not only did I not dislike but cared very much for. One would have to read the novel to believe me but its obvious how much Skeetah loves China. There are moments when my heart broke watching Esch, wanting someone to love her as much as Skeetah does his dog. The family is preparing for coming hurricane but that is very much in the background. Esch voice captured me from the very beginning, there's such an honest beauty to it that I loved.

Esch is around 15 or 16 before reading Salvage the Bones, I thought it might have some YA crossover appeal. After reading it I know its true. Since it's fiction and not YA there is adult content. However, I truly appreciated how everything was a reflection of reality. The author doesn't feel the need to over do it with language or sex because the strength of the writing will entice and keep readers interest.

A 2011 National Book Award Finalists