A trio of books with local authors or publishers won gold in the 2019 Foreword Indies Book of the Year awards and two other books also received recognition.
In the romance category, “The Lady and the Highwayman” by Sarah M. Eden, published by Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain Publishing imprint, is the gold winner, and “A Proper Scandal” by Esther Hatch, published by Covenant Communications, is the silver winner.
In the young adult fiction category, “Waiting for Fitz” by Spencer Hyde, published by Shadow Mountain, is the gold winner.
In the juvenile fiction category, “A Monster Like Me” by Wendy S. Swore, also published by Shadow Mountain, is the gold winner.
In the women’s studies category, “Champions of Change: 25 Women who Made History” by Naomi Watkins and Katherine Kitterman and illustrated by Brooke Smart, published by Gibbs Smith, received an honorable mention.
The awards recognize books published in 2019 from small, indie and university presses, as well by self-published authors, according to a press release from Foreword Reviews about the annual awards announced June 17.
There we more than 2,100 entries in 55 categories, and Foreword’s editors choose approximately nine finalists per genre. Those finalists were then delivered to individual librarians and booksellers to select the gold, silver, bronze and honorable mention winners.