"My great hope is that this will be the last time we must fight for the education of our children. We want everyone to unite to support us in our campaign so that we can solve this once and for all. Like I said, we have already taken many steps in the right direction. Now is the time to take a leap. It is not time to tell the leaders to realize how important education is--they already know it--their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action."

The 2014 Prime Minister's Literary Award winners (You can find a complete list here), which were announced Monday, stirred up some controversy in the fiction prize category, which had joint winners: A World of Other People by Steven Carroll and the Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, who plans to donate his share of the $80,000 prize money.

Flanagan

In his acceptance speech, Flanagan said, "Words, my father told me, were the first beautiful things he ever knew.... I intend to donate this $40,000 to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation for its work with Indigenous children, helping them to read. I hope it might perhaps grow a few things. My mortgage will go on as mortgages do, but if one of those books helps a few children to advance beyond the most basic literacy to one that is liberating, then I will consider the money better spent."

Flanagan was not the judges' choice for the prize, however. The Australian reported that PM Tony Abbott stepped in and overruled the panel, insisting that Flanagan share the award, despite his being an outspoken critic of the government who had previously said the PM's commitment to coal made him "ashamed to be Australian."

"At our last meeting we arrived at one winner," said a judge who asked not to be named. "Obviously, the PM chose not to accept our recommendation. It was a surprise to us; the first we knew about it was when the PM announced the two winners."

Poet Les Murray, one of the judges, "launched an indignant attack" on Abbott's intervention, the Australian wrote. "I feel like I have been treated like a fool," he said. "It was nasty the way it was done on the night. I was shocked that they went behind the scenes and worked a swifty."

Publisher Louise Adler, chairwoman of the panel, countered that while the judges were tasked with making recommendations, the final decision rested with the Prime Minister: "These are not Louise Adler's literary awards or Les Murray's literary awards--they are the Prime Minister's literary awards.''

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During the awards ceremony, the prime minister also announced the government will establish a new Book Council of Australia to "promote Australian writing nationally and internationally and encourage and promote reading," Books+Publishing reported. A joint statement from the PM and the Minister for the Arts said the Book Council "will ensure Australia's literary sector and its writers are strongly supported. It will strengthen the sector's capacity to respond to rapid change brought by new technologies."

Members will be drawn from a range of literary and industry organizations. Their main tasks "will be to run industry-wide campaigns to raise the profile of Australian writing; establish an integrated strategy for a sustainable industry; assist in ongoing research and data collection; increase industry access to professional development activities; and support new initiatives in the literary sector," Books+Publishing wrote.

Australian Booksellers Association CEO Joel Becker said he was "thrilled" that a book industry body was being formed "after years of lip service.... This is a positive outcome after all the hard work of the Book Industry Collaborate Council."

Beginning in January, Stone Alley Books & Collectibles, Galesburg, Ill., is relocating to 238 E. Main Street and partnering with For the Win gaming store. On Facebook, Stone Alley posted: "It's bittersweet to say goodbye to our first location and awesome neighbors on Seminary Street, but it's time to turn the corner. Literally."

Owner Ben Stomberg told WGIL: "Part of the reason there's a bookstore in Galesburg is because Jay Matson, the landlord here, wanted there to be a bookstore in Galesburg. [He] gave us a sweetheart deal on our location here. But that's been going on for five years now. And, Jay's found other tenants that are going to be paying quite a bit more rent than we could ever pay. So it's time for us to move on."

The two businesses already share some of the same customers, Stomberg said, adding: "One of the things I look forward to with partnering with For the Win, is that if I had any inkling of how popular gaming was when we first opened the show, we would have been selling gaming right from the get-go. But I didn't know, and I wasn't aware." 

Donations to Ferguson, Mo., Municipal Public Library have now exceeded $350,000 since the library announced last month that it would remain open and "do everything in our power to serve our community" in the wake of the grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown.

Library director Scott Bonner told the St. Louis Dispatch that total donations were about $50,000 less than the library's annual budget. "The Board is meeting tonight to work out next steps and make sure every penny is accounted for and worked into a plan," he said.

In addition, Left Bank Books said its annual Angel Tree Book Drive will benefit Airport Elementary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District: "Many of these students lack books of their own. Give them the gift of reading, and ignite a passion for a lifetime of learning! Stop by the store and choose a child's name and a book from our Angel Tree, or donate online."

Stone Soup Books and Café, Waynesboro, Va., will close at the end of the month after eight years in business, the News Leader reported. Co-owner Mary Katharine Froehlich, who has put the building and business up for sale as a package deal, said, "I like to kayak a lot, but I don't like to land on rocks. We've shifted our business model many times.... The cafe has kept us here longer than most traditional bookstores."

Froehlich noted that over the years, "her staff has put its time in to become part owners, through a stock ownership program, so each owner owns a different percentage of the business.... Through a work program, six employees spent three years 'paying their dues' by working minimum wage and no benefits to get partial ownership," the News Leader wrote, adding that if the store sells, the owners will receive their percentage of the sale.

Juan Flores, "a leading theorist of Latin American studies and a pioneer in the field of 'Nuyorican' culture," died December 2, the New York Times reported. He was 71. His books included From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture & Latino Identity and The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning.

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Nathaniel Branden, who became Ayn Rand's "most ardent disciple," died December 3. He was 84. Branden and Rand "became philosophical soul mates, unlikely lovers and business associates," the New York Times wrote, adding: "In 1958 he started the Nathaniel Branden Institute, where he helped repackage her ideas--Objectivism, she called her philosophy--into lectures, recordings, books and articles."

Effective January 1, Meredith Greenhouse is joining Perseus Books Group as v-p, international sales & marketing. Perseus's London and New York international sales teams will report to her, and she will be based in the New York office.

Greenhouse worked at HarperCollins for 12 years, most recently as senior director of international sales.

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Effective December 22, Suzanne Donahue is leaving Simon & Schuster, where she is v-p and associate publisher. She began her career at S&S in 1987 as an assistant at Touchstone/Fireside, then moved to managing editorial in 1988, and ultimately became executive managing editor. In 1997, she joined the publisher's office at Free Press and helped that imprint grow from a small conservative academic press to a mainstream trade publisher. She has been with the S&S imprint for the past two years.

S&S Publishing Group president and publisher Jonathan Karp said in a memo to staff: "In the past two years, I've had the privilege and pleasure of working with Suzanne. She has been an excellent colleague and an enthusiastic champion of our books, as well as a source of wisdom on Free Press and Simon & Schuster backlist. Please join me in thanking Suzanne for her many contributions to Simon & Schuster throughout the years, and in wishing her much happiness and success in her future endeavors."

Trafalgar Square Publishing's announcement last week about its new agreement with Penguin Random House incorrectly stated that the agreement includes Penguin Books South Africa and Random House Struik (South Africa). Titles by those houses actually continue to be distributed in the U.S. by International Publishers Marketing.

The agreement, effective January 1, does include Penguin Australia, Penguin U.K., Penguin New Zealand, Penguin Books India, Random House New Zealand and Random House India.

Your Yin Yang Body Type: The Korean Tradition of Sasang Medicine by Gary Wagman (Healing Arts Press).

Today on Fresh Air: Scott Saul, author of Becoming Richard Pryor (Harper, $27.99, 9780062123305).

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Tomorrow on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook: Andrew Lawler, author of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization (Atria, $26, 9781476729893).

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Tomorrow on the Meredith Vieira Show: Austin Mahone, author of Austin Mahone: Just How It Happened: My Official Story (Little, Brown, $21, 9780316286800).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, December 13
12 p.m. Coverage of the 11th annual Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, La. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m.)

7 p.m. Tavis Smiley, co-author of Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year (Little, Brown, $27, 9780316332767).

8:30 p.m. Thomas Maier, author of When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (Crown, $30, 9780307956798).

10 p.m. Lindsay Mark Lewis, co-author of Political Mercenaries: The Inside Story of How Fundraisers Allowed Billionaires to Take Over Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, $28, 9781137279583). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)

11 p.m. Joel Klein, author of Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools (Harper, $27.99, 9780062268648).


Sunday, December 14
5 p.m. Nicholas Kristof, author of A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (Knopf, $27.95, 9780385349918).

6:15 p.m. Ted Genoways, author of The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food (Harper, $26.99, 9780062288752).

7:45 p.m. James Robbins, author of The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero (Regnery History, $29.99, 9781621572091).

10 p.m. Shane Harris, author of @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27, 9780544251793), at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

10:45 p.m. Tim McNulty, Paul Rosenzweig and Ellen Shearer, editors of Whistleblowers, Leaks and the Media: The First Amendment and National Security (ABA Publishing, $39.95, 9781627228251).

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, December 16:

A Nip of Murder: A Moonshine Mystery by Carol Miller (Minotaur, $25.99, 9781250019271) continues the Moonshine Mystery series.

Modern American Snipers: From The Legend to The Reaper---on the Battlefield with Special Operations Snipers by Chris Martin (St. Martin's Press, $26.99, 9781250067173) profiles several accomplished American snipers.


Now in paperback:

Spice and Wolf, Vol. 13: Side Colors III by Isuna Hasekura (Yen On, $13, 9780316336611).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcovers
Far As the Eye Can See: A Novel by Robert Bausch (Bloomsbury, $26, 9781620402597). "It is a delight to experience the Montana and Wyoming territories circa 1870-1876 through the adventures of Civil War veteran Bobby Hale. His original plan to travel to California fades as he rides west with settlers, scouts for the army, and cares for an injured woman who is running from her Indian husband. The dialect of the narrator and the language of the characters are accurate for the period, allowing the reader to be completely immersed in the setting of this rip-roaring tale." --Paula Steige, MacDonald Bookshop, Estes Park, Colo.

33 Artists in 3 Acts by Sarah Thornton (Norton, $26.95, 9780393240979). "In her previous book, Seven Days in the Art World, Thornton examined the institutions that form the channels through which contemporary art may find its way to the public. In 33 Artists in 3 Acts, she converses with some of today's most high-profile artists, including Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst. None of the artists display reticence or mystery; rather, philosophy, politics, narcissism, and even some genuine candidness are evident. Thornton does not overly editorialize, allowing the artists to speak for themselves, and the results are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes maddening, but always entertaining." --Michael Bristow, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Paperback
The Heart Does Not Grow Back: A Novel by Frank Venturini (Picador, $16, 9781250052216). "If you possessed the power of human regeneration, what would you do with it? In the case of Dale Sampson, debut novelist Venturini's antihero, you use your 'gift' for the ultimate good: reality television. After a horrific incident in high school, Dale realizes he has the ability to spontaneously regenerate his organs and limbs. Following years of depression, he decides--with the help of his longtime best friend and spurred on by the disastrously romantic idea of saving a high school sweetheart--to give himself up to the reality show moguls in Hollywood. As outlandish as the plot may sound, this novel is thought-provoking and inspirational, with more than a few laughs along the way." --Amanda Hurley, Inkwood Books, Tampa, Fla.

For Ages 9 to 12
Bugs: A Stunning Pop-Up Look at Insects, Spiders, and Other Creepy-Crawlies by George McGavin, illustrated by Jim Kay (Candlewick Press, $19.99, 9780763667627). "This book is so cool! Bugs are ooey-gooey, creepy, skin-crawling, fascinating, totally neat creatures, and McGavin and Kay's book captures all of that and then some. Bugs focuses on the curiosity-inducing bits of insects' lives with super cool pop-ups, including one that shows the anatomy of a beetle. Perfect for the amateur entomologist!" --Hannah Johnson Breimeier, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Stuck in a tourist bus rumbling past the highlights of Beijing and Shanghai is no way to learn about China. Neither is a U.S. Congressman's Chinese junket of site visits and media events with mid-level party bureaucrats capping off in late-night lazy Susan smorgasbords and gan bei toasts. Casey Walker's first novel, Last Days in Shanghai, tells congressional aide Luke Slade's story of a botched five-day meet-and-greet for his boss, southeast California Congressman Leo Fillmore, arranged and funded by Fillmore's wealthy benefactor Armand Lightborn.

Although Luke wangled his job through his father's small-town fund-raising relationship with Fillmore, he has no romantic illusions about playing a role in shaping the future of the world. He knows his job is to keep his boss away from liquor long enough to stay on schedule. It can be messy work. "To prevent, as much as I could, full public knowledge of the crooked timber he was made from... Bullsh*t has its function. I grew up in farm country... and you can't knock manure if you want a harvest." After perfunctory visits to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square followed by yet another hard-drinking dinner, Fillmore goes off the rails and disappears on a bender, leaving Luke to stand in during key negotiations over a Chinese contract to build an airport in Fillmore's district. Luke inadvertently accepts a briefcase of cash to "facilitate" the deal, becomes implicated in the death of a regional Chinese mayor, and winds up in Shanghai with no sign of Fillmore or Lightborn and only the pretty translator Li-Li to help him untangle things and get his man back home in one piece with reputation intact.

A fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Walker spent time in China in 2007 and it shows. He's seen the ubiquitous construction cranes sending skyscrapers into clouds of smog where their "skysucking towers altered the whistle of Shanghai wind." He knows the shady ways that money changes hands and people's lives, the mantra of "embezzle, skim, divide the spoils." Last Days in Shanghai displays a good deal of cynicism about the "Chinese economic miracle" and the United States' naïve efforts to exploit it. But it's also a perceptive novel about the old giving way to the new and of one young man's attempts to find an abiding moral center in the heady swirl of a Washington-Beijing axis of money, power, women and corruption. Walker dances with the big global superpowers and waltzes away with a suspenseful modern story of sin, subterfuge and redemption. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Shelf Talker: Walker's first novel tells of a young Washington aide's fight to stay centered in the swirling chaos of modern China as his congressman boss succumbs to the temptations of booze and big money.

Stand Up Comics is a regular column by Adan Jimenez. These titles need no introduction: just read the column, then read some good comics!

Zenith: Phase One by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell (Rebellion, $25, 9781781082768)
Zenith is the world's only active superhuman. He's also a 20-something prat living the high life in '80s England. Instead of attempting to save the world like his forebears, Zenith is more concerned with being famous, which includes making sure his music stays at the top of the charts and showing up at every happening party he can get to. But a Nazi superhuman who's returned from the dead is attacking the depowered ex-members of the British superhuman team Cloud 9. Zenith will have to stop being an egotistical pop star--or be crushed like everyone else.

While Morrison had already had a few comics under his belt, Zenith was his first foray into the long-form superhero narrative. In this volume, you can see the beginnings of a lot of Morrisonian tropes: malevolent higher-dimensional beings (aka Cthulhu and his brethren); a healthy dose of mysticism, especially when it comes to saving the world; and finally, the trope Morrison loves playing with the most, the superhero as cultural icon and zeitgeist.

Zenith isn't Morrison's best work, but it's a fascinating glimpse into his early years, before he unleashed his genre-defining and genre-bending runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, New X-Men and Batman on unsuspecting American audiences.

Handselling Opportunities: Fans of the "British Invasion" of American superhero comics, and people who enjoy texts in which Lovecraftian horrors are the true enemy.

The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis (Self Made Hero, $19.95, 9781906838812)
"The Weather Clock said, 'Knife o'clock.' So I chained Dad up in the shed."

After that, Davis's weird little book gets odder still. Scarper Lee lives in a world where children create their parents from found objects (his father is a wind-powered brass horn with a sail, and his mother is a Bakelite hairdryer), household appliances all have souls and are considered gods, it literally rains knives, and everyone knows the exact day they're going to die. Scarper in fact has only three weeks left before his deathday.

In these last three weeks, Scarper's life is turned upside down. Vera Pike joins his school, his father goes missing, and he is convinced to go on what he thinks is a fool's errand to find the mythical Motherless Oven, where all mothers and fathers are said to be created, and the darkness beyond the boundary, which may be the only way to escape his deathday.

Rob Davis has created an original world that has no real antecedent. The details are so odd and compelling, you cannot help but keep reading to try to figure out just how this world even works. The characters of Scarper, Vera and their third amigo, Castro Smith (a "headcase" from the "deaf unit"), are equally odd and compelling, and are the perfect guides to a story that could have no other guides.

Handselling Opportunities: People who enjoy coming-of-age stories with a healthy helping of weird and people looking for something truly different.

Thanos: The Infinity Revelation by Jim Starlin, Andy Smith and Frank D'Armata (Marvel, $24.99, 9780785184706)
Thanos has been defeated by the heroes of Earth and lies comatose on his ship--until a cosmic metamorphosis comes that ordains Thanos be at the center of the cosmos. He is brought out of his coma, and encounters many cosmic characters on his travels to unravel the mystery of this metamorphosis, with his constant companion Adam Warlock.

Jim Starlin has been writing Thanos since he created him in 1973. This volume is something of a culmination of all those stories, with various threads from 40 years' worth of spacefaring tales woven together in a new story. This does not mean a reader needs to plow through 40 years of comics to understand the story, but older fans are likely to get more out of the slim volume (a few references will be lost on newer readers).

This is by no means Starlin's last Thanos and Adam Warlock story (corporate superhero comics being what they are, it will never be Thanos and Adam Warlock's last story), but it does boil the two characters down to their essences, and sets them up for their next cosmic adventure (and their next appearances in the movies).

Handselling Opportunities: Fans of cosmic superhero stories with huge repercussions for the shared universe, and fans of detailed character studies with a space opera backdrop.

Quantum and Woody: The Complete Classic Omnibus by Christopher Priest, M.D. Bright et al. (Valiant, $99.99, 9781939346360)
Eric Henderson and Woody van Chelton have been friends since grade school in the Hamptons. After their fathers die under mysterious circumstances, Eric and Woody investigate and find themselves at their fathers' lab. They get trapped in a testing chamber while wearing special armbands. There is an explosion, and now Eric and Woody have to "klang" their armbands together once every 24 hours or they dissipate into pure quantum energy. They become Quantum and Woody, the world's worst superhero team.

And so begins one of the funniest superhero comics of all time, complete with superpowered goats, body-switching shenanigans, and penis jokes aplenty. However, Priest and Bright aren't content with just giving us the yucks. Quantum and Woody also deals with issues of race, drugs and guilt in a mature fashion. Well, mostly mature. There is a superpowered goat, after all.

Originally published in the '90s, which was not a great time for superhero comics in general, the series lasted for 19 issues before it was cancelled. And then, when it was brought back, it lasted for another five issues, before being cancelled again. Quantum and Woody did not partake in most of the excesses of that period, but suffered in the same implosion that nearly destroyed the industry. Luckily for us, publishers are reprinting everything nowadays.

Handselling Opportunities: Fans of buddy comedies, and anyone nostalgic for early '90s superhero comics.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Curves 'Em Right by Milly Taiden
2. His Secretary: Undone by Melanie Marchande
3. The Elf on the Shelf by Carol V. Aebersold and Chanda B. Bell
4. Love, Laughter and Merrily Ever Afters by Various
5. 'Til Death by Bella Jewel
6. Mistletoe Kisses by Various
7. Unraveling You by Jessica Sorensen
8. Hardwired (The Hacker Series) by Meredith Wild
9. Roomies by Lindy Zart
10. Beneath Him by Komal Kant

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]