BTW News Briefs

The sixth annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The festival is free and open to the public.

More than 70 well-known authors, illustrators, and poets are scheduled to be featured in various pavilions, including Teens & Children, Fiction & Fantasy, Mysteries & Thrillers, History & Biography, Home & Family, and Poetry. The Library of Congress Pavilion will feature a variety of interactive family-centered activities about the importance of lifelong literacy, cultural preservation, and preserving digital culture. Festival coverage will be streamed live on C-SPAN's website, www.booktv.org.

Participating authors include bestselling novelists Khaled Hosseini (Kite Runner) and Geraldine Brooks (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her book March); novelist and essayist Joan Didion; historians John Hope Franklin and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Donald Hall, the recently named 14th Poet Laureate of the U.S.; and bestselling mystery and thriller authors, including Michael Connelly, Lisa Scottoline, Kathy Reichs, and Alexander McCall Smith.

"The Thriller" Awards Debut

On July 1, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners for its debut awards at a gala celebration in Phoenix, Arizona, an award that has been branded and named simply "The Thriller." The awards were divided into four categories and the winners were:

• 2006 Best Novel: The Patriots Club, Christopher Reich (Delacorte Press)
• 2006 Best First Novel: Improbable, Adam Fawer (William Morrow)
• 2006 Best Paperback Original: Pride Runs Deep, R. Cameron Cooke (Jove)
• 2006 Best Screenplay: Cache (Hidden), Michael Haneke

At the end of the evening, the 2006 ThrillerMaster Award, which recognizes an "illustrious body of work and for many contributions to the thriller genre," was presented to Clive Clussler.