Virginia Evans penned one of the most popular books of 2025, and now she can add “award-winning author” to her bio. Evans just bagged the inaugural James Patterson + Bookshop.org Prize for her novel The Correspondent, which is soon to be a film starring Jane Fonda.

The new prize, which celebrates debut authors published in the U.S., is awarded by independent booksellers, who were responsible for Evans’s late-2025 surge onto bestseller lists. Evans will receive $15,000 in prize money and be featured prominently on bookshop.org and in participating indie bookstores. Nice work if you can get it.

Milo Todd’s The Lilac People took runner-up and will take home $10,000.

Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half, Lucas Schafer’s The Slip (which won the 2025 Kirkus Prize), and Christina Rivera’s My Oceans were among the 10 titles that made the longlist.