Loot of the Month April 2019

This month's loot comprises the usual signed first edition club selections: Powell Indiespensable's Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, and A Capella's Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken.

And then there are the two British first editions and Booker prize winners. The first is Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings that was the 2015 Booker, beating Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread, Tom McCarthy's Satin Island, Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen, and Sunjeev Sahota's The Year of the Runaways. It was also a National Book Critics' Circle Award (NBCCA) finalist, losing to Marilynne Robinson's Lila. The second is Anna Burns' Milkman, the critically acclaimed novel of 2018 that won both the Booker and NBCCA.

The great things about these books are that they are signed, and that the authors also inscribed the first or last phrases of their respective work. Pretty cool. Only let down is Seven Killings' price-clipped dust jacket.