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Indie booksellers honor Ottessa Moshfegh, Jonathan Lethem and the Natural History Museum

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Ottessa Moshfegh, Jonathan Lethem and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are among the winners of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Assn. annual book awards.

The winners were named at the SCIBA Fall Trade Show in San Gabriel.

Moshfegh took home the fiction award Saturday for her novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” The other fiction nominees were Steven Rowley’s “The Editor” and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “Daisy Jones & The Six.”

Lethem’s “The Feral Detective” won the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award. The novel, set in the California desert, was nominated for the prize along with John McMahon’s “The Good Detective” and Don Winslow’s “The Border.”

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In the nonfiction category, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County won for “Wild LA: Explore the Amazing Nature in and Around Los Angeles.” Also nominated were Susan Orlean’s bestselling “The Library Book” and David Kipen’s “Dear Los Angeles.”

The biography award went to author and screenwriter Mallory O’Meara for “The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick.” Other biography nominees were Huda Al-Marashi for “First Comes Marriage,” Mary Lea Carroll for “Saint Everywhere: Travels in Search of the Lady Saints” and Leslie Zemeckis for “Feuding Fan Dancers.”

SCIBA gave the Glenn Goldman Award for Art, Architecture and Photography to Los Angeles artist Kenton Nelson for “Water: California Idealism,” a book of paintings. The category’s other nominees were Mike Kelley (“New Architecture Los Angeles”) and Paul Martineau (“Icons of Style”).

Three authors of books for young readers also received Book Awards. Isabel Quintero won in the picture book category for “My Papi Has a Motorcycle.” Cynthia Kadohata took home the prize for best middle grade fiction book for “A Place to Belong.” Julie Berry was named the winner in the young adult fiction category for “Lovely War.”

This is the last year the regional book awards will be presented. SCIBA members voted to dissolve the organization on Friday, Publishers Weekly reports, noting discussions about a possible statewide book organization in the future.

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