The second annual Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, which celebrates books published in Alberta, has released its 30-entry longlist. With five titles each, NeWest Press and Freehand Books are the most well-represented publishers on the list.

A shortlist of five titles will be released on May 1, and one finalist, selected through online voting, will receive $10,000 on June 11. The nominees are:

• John Leigh Walters‘ A Very Capable Life: The Autobiography of Zarah Petri (AU Press)
• Ron Wood‘s All Roads Lead to Manyberries (Frontenac House)
• Clem and Olivier Martini‘s Bitter Medicine (Freehand Books)
• Yasmin Ladha‘s Blue Sunflower Startle (Freehand Books)
• Michael J. Martineck‘s Cinco de Mayo (Edge Publishing)
• J.A. Cullum‘s Cinkarion: The Heart of Fire (Edge Publishing)
• R.W. Gray‘s Crisp (NeWest Press)
• Stephen Legault‘s The Darkening Archipelago: A Cole Blackwater Mystery (NeWest Press)
• Paul Headrick‘s The Doctrine of Affections (Freehand Books)
• Rosella M. Leslie‘s Drift Child (NeWest Press)
• Myrna Dey‘s Extensions (NeWest Press)
• Jannie Edwards‘ Falling Blues (Frontenac House)
• Frances Klatzel‘s Gaiety of Spirit: The Sherpas of Everest (Rocky Mountain Books)
• Jeff Gailus‘ The Grizzly Manifesto (Rocky Mountain Books)
• Louise Penny‘s The Hangman (Grass Roots Press)
• Clea Roberts‘s Here Is Where We Disembark (Freehand Books)
• Fil Fraser‘s How the Blacks Created Canada (Dragon Hill Publishing)
• Art Hagen‘s I Once Was a Cowboy (Argenta Press)
• Spencer Beach and Naomi K. Lewis‘ In Case of Fire (Kingsley Publishing Services)
• Helen Waldstein Wilkes‘ Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery (AU Press)
• Alice Major‘s Memory’s Daughter (U of A Press)
• Bren Kolson‘s Myth of the Barrens (Eschia Books)
• Nathan Marchand‘s Pandora’s Box (Edge Publishing)
• Myrna Kostash‘s Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium (U of A Press)
• Garry Ryan‘s Smoked: A Detective Lane Mystery (NeWest Press)
• Gail Anderson-Dargatz‘s The Stalker (Grass Roots Press)
• Sarah Leavitt‘s Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (Freehand Books)
• Robert Kroetsch‘s Too Bad: Sketches Towards a Self-Portrait (U of A Press)
• Laurie MacFayden‘s White Shirt (Frontenac House)
• Peter A. Dettling‘s The Will of the Land (Rocky Mountain Books)

Michael Davie’s debut novel, Fishing for Bacon, won the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award in 2010.