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The winners were announced earlier this month.

Here are a few:

Fiction: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
Nonfiction: Rough Crossings: Britain, the slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama
Biography: James Tiptree Jr.: The Double life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips
Autobiography: The Lost: a search for six of six million by Daniel Mendelsohn

There's no need to search through all of our fiction shelves to find a good mystery. We have made it easier to browse the collection by separating the mysteries from general fiction. Come and see for yourselves.
Check out The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, which was among the winners of the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television and film published or produced in 2006.

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, which honors the best book of the past year written in English by a woman, for Half of a Yellow Sun. The 29-year-old author is the first African to win the prize, and also the youngest. Among her competition were Anne Tyler, Kiran Desai and Rachel Cusk.

For the second week in a row, a Nigerian novelist has been honored for outstanding contributions to the world of literature. Chinua Achebe, the renowned author of Things Fall Apart and Anthills of the Savannah was awarded the Man Booker International Prize, awarded every other year to honor "a living author who has contributed significantly to world literature."

hink about this: 20,000 librarians descending on downtown DC. That was the scene this weekend as the American Library Association held its annual conference featuring hundreds of programs, sessions, thousands of exhibitors, and the 2006-2007 president of ALA, Princeton's own Leslie Burger. Then there was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill Bradley, Julie Andrews, and so many more luminaries.

One of the programs I attended featured the Alex Award winners, 10 adult books that will appeal to teen readers, chosen by the Young Adult Library Services Association. The unexpected surprise was author Ron Rash, who read from his first novel,

That doesn't happen every day.

Some highlights from this year's list of Hugo award winners, announced Saturday:

Best Novel: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (Tor)
Best Novella: A Billion Eves by Robert Reed (Asimov's, Oct./Nov. 2006)
Best Novelette: The Djinn's Wife by Ian McDonald (Asimov's, July 2006)
Best Short Story: "Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt (Asimov's, July 2006)
Best Related Non-Fiction Book: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips (St. Martin's)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Pan's Labyrinth, screenplay and directed by Guillermo del Toro (Picturehouse)

The winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines and administered on their behalf by the World Science Fiction Society, is Naomi Novik.

Doris Lessing, the highly regarded author of such books as The Golden Notebook, The Good Terrorist, and The Cleft (among many others), has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In an article in today's New York Times, the author said she wasn't surprised, “because this has been going on for something like 40 years,” referring to previous times she has been on the short list for the Nobel. “Either they were going to give it to me sometime before I popped off or not at all.”"

The Nobel Prize has struck Princeton. Institute for Advanced Study Professor Eric Maskin has been awarded a Nobel Prize for economics for his advancement of mechanism design theory, the institute announced Monday. Other Nobel names, of late, include Gore, and, of course, Lessing…

Last week, the National Book Award finalists were announced. Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End; Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying; Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke; and Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great are among those who made the list. Winners will be announced November 14th.

Stay tuned for the winner of the Booker Prize, which will be announced later this evening...the two favorites are Ian McEwan for On Chesil Beach and Lloyd Jones for Mister Pip. Bets, anyone?

Irish author Anne Enright took the honors last night for her book, The Gathering. Read more about it in today's Times.

The 2007 winners of the Quill Awards (The Golden Globes of the book scene) were announced on Tuesday, and will be featured on NBC on Saturday, October 27th. Voting is done by readers, booksellers and librarians in nineteen categories ranging from Book of the Year to Young Adult/Teen to Children's Picture Books. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore won a Quill for The Assault On Reason; and Nora Roberts took home Book of the Year for Angels Fall.

Last week the American Library Association announced the top books for children and young adults.

The John Newberry Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature was awarded to Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village written by Laura Amy Schlitz. In this title thirteenth-century England comes to life through a series of 21 interconnected monologues that introduce characters, which range in age from 10-15, that live in and around an English manor.

The Caldecott Medal is presented to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children, this year recipient is Brian Selznick for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The black & white pencil illustrations evoke the images of silent films which the book pays homage to. The title character, Hugo is a young orphan secretly living in the walls of a train station where he labors to complete a mysterious invention left by his father. In a work of more than 500 pages, the suspenseful text and wordless double-page spreads narrate the tale in turns.

The Michael L. Printz award for excellence in literature written for young adults was presented to Geraldine McCaughrean for The White Darkness. Fourteen year-old Symone’s excting vacation to Antartica turns into a struggle for desperate survival when her uncle’s obsessive quest leads them into danger in the frozen wilderness.

To read more about these award winners and other award books for children and young adults click here.
Submitted by R. Gutierrez, Librarian.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

The Booker Prize is Britain's best known literary award. Winners will be announced October 14th. Interested in reading one of the shortlisted titles with your book group? Click here to access readers guides for each of the titles.