roundup national

book awards

More than 200 publishers submitted 1,258 books for the 2008 National Book Awards. Here are the finalists, which were announced Wednesday. The winners will be announced Nov. 19.

FICTION

The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

Riverhead / 304 pages / $24.95

A young writer in Chicago goes in search of the answers to why a police chief killed an Eastern European immigrant a century ago.

Telex from Cuba

by Rachel Kushner

Scribner / 336 pages / $25

When Cubans Fidel and Raul Castro lead a revolt, two youngsters on a U.S. plantation discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming.

Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

ModernLibrary / 912 pages / $40

A notorious outlaw of the Florida Everglades drives himself toward his own violent end.

Home

by Marilynne Robinson

Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 336 pages / $25

Taking place in the same time and place as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead, Marilynne Robinson tells the story of Glory Boughton, who returns to take care of her dying father.

The End

by Salvatore Scibona

Graywolf Press / 324 pages / $24

The End follows the characters in a carnival crowd across seven preceding decades - an elderly abortionist, an enigmatic drapery seamstress, a teenage boy and a jeweler.

NONFICTION

This Republic of Suffering

by Drew Gilpin Faust

Alfred A. Knopf / 645 pages / $31

Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust writes of the American struggle to comprehend the meaning and practicalities of death in the face of the Civil War.

The Hemingses of Monticello

by Annette Gordon-Reed

W.W. Norton & Company / 800 pages / $35

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after President Thomas Jefferson's death in 1826.

The Dark Side

by Jane Mayer

Doubleday / 400 pages / $27.50

An account of how the U.S. made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists - decisions that not only violated the Constitution but also hampered the pursuit of al-Qaida.

Final Salute

by Jim Sheeler

Penguin / 288 pages / $25.95

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Sheeler profiles a casualty notification officer who embarks on the most important mission of his life.

The Suicide Index

by Joan Wickersham

Harcourt / 336 pages / $25

Indexing every bit of family history, Joan Wickersham explores why her father killed himself.

POETRY

Watching the Spring Festival

by Frank Bidart

Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 72 pages / $25

Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems

by Mark Doty

HarperCollins / 336 pages / $22.95

Creatures of a Day

by Reginald Gibbons

Louisiana State University Press / 88 pages / $16.95

Without Saying

by Richard Howard

Turtle Point Press / 28 pages / $16.95

Blood Dazzler

by Patricia Smith

Coffee House Press / 90 pages / $16

The National Book Foundation; amazon.com