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Riverhead's Dinaw Mengestu Wins 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize First Fiction Award for The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Riverhead Books is thrilled that Dinaw Mengestu's critically-acclaimed debut novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, has won the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize First Fiction Award, announced this past weekend at the LA Times Book Festival. Dinaw's novel was also a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, in addition to being chosen as the newest selection for this year's Seattle Reads program. Dinaw will be in Seattle for five days in early May participating in ongoing events in support of the Seattle Reads program.

Ron Currie, author of God is Dead (Viking/Penguin), has won the NYPL 2008 Young Lions Fiction Award. The announcement was made at a ceremony at the New York Public Library this past Monday, hosted by actor Ethan Hawke. The Young Lions Fiction Award is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or collection of short stories. Each year five young fiction writers, which this year also included Riverhead's Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, are selected as finalists by a reading committee of Young Lions members, writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of award judges, including novelists Han Ong, Helen Shulman, and last year's winner Ogla Grushin (for her Putnam/Marian Wood book, The Dream Life of Sukhanov), selected Ron Currie the winner of this year's $10,000 prize.

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Harlan Coben's Hold Tight Debuts at #1 on The New York Times Bestseller List

Dutton veteran Harlan Coben's newest thriller, Hold Tight, has debuted at #1 on The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for the week of May 4th, marking Coben's first New York Times #1 bestseller. And in addition to the New York Times list, the book also has the #1 position on Publishers Weekly's hardcover fiction list for the week of April 28th, as well as The Wall Street Journal's April 25th hardcover fiction list.

Hold Tight has received rave reviews, and Coben continues to get great media coverage for his opinions on parental use of spyware, including appearances on CBS' "The Early Show," CNN's "Glenn Beck," and in the pages of the New York Times. The book was also featured in the "Book Buzz" column of USA Today and a review of Hold Tight is expected to run in the upcoming edition of People magazine, on-stands April 25th.

Harlan has been greeted by swarms of fans as he tours around the country to promote the book. 300 people attended his first bookstore event at Bookends in New Jersey on April 13th, and another 200 turned out for his latest event at Barnes & Noble in Palm Beach Gardens last night. He also had a book party at The Stockyard in Boston, where over 100 people came to celebrate Hold Tight's publication.

Last weekend, Coben participated in a panel conversation at The Los Angeles Times Book Festival, and will be back in New York this week.

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Penguin Paperbacks Dominate The New York Times Bestseller List for the Week of April 27th and Paperback Division's Outstanding Success Celebrated in Great AP Story

Penguin Group (USA) paperback titles own an impressive 22 slots on The New York Times bestseller list, for the week of April 27th, a record number of titles on a single week's list, so far in 2008. These titles account for 40% of the mass market list; 30% of the nonfiction list (trade and mass combined); and 25% of the trade fiction list, with all five Penguin Group (USA) trade titles hitting among the top ten trade fiction slots.

On the mass market side, Penguin Group (USA) continues to rake in the bestsellers and dominate The New York Times bestseller lists. For seven weeks of the year so far, Berkley/NAL has owned eight or more titles on the mass market list - 40%! - and on both February 24th and March 30th, scored a record nine titles on a single list. Every mass market imprint is up compared with last year. In addition, DAW books scored their first mass market New York Times bestseller, with The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which hit at #11 this week.

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Two Penguin Group (USA) Authors Are Among the Five Finalists for the New York Public Library's 2008 Young Lions Fiction Award

Ron Currie, Jr., author of God Is Dead (Viking) and Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead), are among the five young literary talents chosen as finalists for the New York Public Library's 2008 Young Lions Fiction Award, honoring the works of authors age 35 and under who are making an indelible impression on the world of literature.

Each year, five young fiction writers are selected as finalists by a reading committee of Young Lions members, writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of award judges, including novelists Han Ong, Helen Shulman, and last year's winner Olga Grushin (who won for The Dream Life of Sukhanov) a Putnam/Marian Wood title, will select the winner of the $10,000 prize.

The winning writer will be announced on April 28th at a ceremony hosted by Young Lions co-founder and actor Ethan Hawke, to be held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Humanities and Social Sciences in New York.

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The Penguin Press Publishes Highly Anticipated Wolf Totem (to top)

Last November, retired Beijing professor Jiang Rong's extraordinary debut novel won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize - an award sponsored by The Man Group, which aims to recognize the best of new Asian literature and to bring it to the attention of the world literary community. The Penguin Press shares the Man Group's eagerness to introduce this remarkable novel to the world, and is proud to publish Jiang's Wolf Totem. Already a bestseller in its native China, Wolf Totem has broken all sales records there, selling at least one million copies in the first year alone - along with 6 million black market copies - and earning the distinction of being the 2nd most read book in China after Mao's little red book. There is much international excitement, too - to date, rights have been sold in 14 countries. The publication of Wolf Totem is an international event across Penguin Group, with Penguin UK and Penguin Australia publishing simultaneously with The Penguin Press, and Penguin Group also publishing Wolf Totem in South Africa and India.

Set in 1960s China, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Wolf Totem tells the story of Chen Zen, a Beijing intellectual who volunteers to live in a remote settlement on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where he lives among the Mongols, a proud and ancient race of people whose lives are built around their religion - a kind of cult of the wolf. At the core of their belief is the notion of a triangular balance between the earth, wolf, and man, whose fates are all intricately linked. Chen Zhen becomes fascinated with Mongol life, and when he kidnaps a wolf pup to raise it himself secretly, his scholarly interest in the wolf blossoms into full-fledged obsession. After many years living in solitude with the nomads and the wolves, the peace is shattered with the arrival of the Han Chinese, who launch a campaign to exterminate the wolves. Once the age-old balance is disrupted, it sends the Mongols' way of life into a spiral that leads inevitably to extinction: the extinction of a species, and the extinction of a culture that was built around tending to it.

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Author John Lanchester has been chosen as the recipient of the E.M. Forster Award, given by the American Academy of Arts & Letters. The prize, worth $20,000, is given to a young writer from the United Kingdom or Ireland for a stay in the United States. His most recent book, Family Romance: A Love Story, was published last year in hardcover by Putnam and the trade paperback edition is currently available from Penguin.

The awards will be presented in New York in May at the Academy's annual Ceremonial. The literature prizes honor both established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The Academy's 250 members nominate candidates, and a rotating committee of writers selects the winners.

Monica Seles to Pen Memoir for Avery

Avery has acquired world rights to a new memoir by tennis icon Monica Seles, scheduled to be published in March 2009. In this inspiring and revealing memoir, Seles will explore her remarkable journey of brilliant tennis, fame, tragedy, loss and self-discovery. After years of having every aspect of her training, diet and life dictated and scrutinized by others, Monica took control, deciding what she wanted from life and set out to obtain it. Cutting through the fog of sadness, fear and frustration that made Seles overweight and unhappy, today she looks and feels better than ever and has created a life in balance. Seles is currently part of the cast of the sixth season of ABC-TV's hit show, "Dancing with the Stars."

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Penguin Group (USA) Has Nine Finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards; Viking Alone Garners Six Finalists

Penguin Group (USA) has nine finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards for 2007. Six of these titles are from Viking, which garnered more finalists than any other imprint in the industry. The nominated authors and their books are as follows:

• Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Viking) - Biography
• Ronald Brownstein, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (The Penguin Press) - Current Interest
• Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead Books) - Fiction
• Stewart O'Nan, Last Night at the Lobster (Viking) - Fiction
• Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead Books) - Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
• Åke Edwardson, Frozen Tracks: An Inspector Erik Winter Novel (Viking) - Mystery/Thriller
• Tana French, In the Woods (Viking) - Mystery/Thriller
• Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Viking) - Science & Technology
• Gino Segrè, Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics (Viking) - Science & Technology

The winners will be announced on Friday, April 25th, at UCLA, as part of the Los Angeles Times Book Festival.

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Oprah's First-Ever Live Interactive Webcast Class Enrollment for the #1 Bestselling A New Earth Surpasses Half a Million in Four Weeks

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle holds the record for the most copies ever shipped by Penguin Group (USA) in a four-week period, 3.45 million

Since A New Earth was named the 61st Oprah's Book Club selection on January 30, 2008 and Winfrey announced that she will join author and renowned spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle for the first time ever to teach a free, live interactive webinar exclusively on Oprah.com, more than 500,000 people - representing 125 countries from around the world - already have registered. This book holds the record for the most copies ever shipped by Penguin Group (USA) in a four-week period, 3.45 million.

Each weekly class will correspond to a chapter from A New Earth, with the 90-minute discussion focusing on each chapter's theme. During the week prior to the live Web event, students can access their personal interactive workbook - a guided online journal that complements each webinar session - that provides introspective questions as well as related exercises for awakening. The 10 weekly sessions will be webcast every Monday night from March 3 through May 5, at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT. To register for the class, log onto www.oprah.com/anewearth.

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"The Oprah Winfrey Show" to Promote A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle on Three Upcoming Shows As the World Gears Up for Oprah's First-Ever Live Interactive Webcast

Oprah Winfrey interviews Dutton President and Publisher Brian Tart as part of a segment on the phenomenon of the Oprah's Book Club selection and webcasts on tomorrow's show - which will also feature interviews with celebrities who love the #1 New York Times bestseller, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and two members of Oprah's Book Club from the US. A New Earth and the webcast will also be promoted next week, on the Monday, February 25th show. Then Thursday, February 28th, Oprah will devote the last segment of her show to message board comments about A New Earth and the upcoming webcast.

Beginning March 3rd, Oprah Winfrey will join author and renowned spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle to teach a free, live interactive webinar exclusively on Oprah.com. Each weekly class will correspond to a chapter from A New Earth, with the discussion focusing on the chapter's themes. The 10 weekly sessions will be webcast every Monday night from March 3 through May 5, at 9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT. To register for the class, log onto www.oprah.com/anewearth.

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Penguin Group (USA) Dominates The New York Times Bestseller Lists, With Four #1 Bestsellers Simultaneously for the Fourth Time in the First Eight Weeks of the Year

The House Also Owns Nearly 40% of The New York Times Hardcover Fiction List; 45% of the Mass Market List, and Has Nine Debut Bestsellers

Penguin Group (USA) once again holds four #1 positions simultaneously on The New York Times bestseller lists. This is the fourth time this year that Penguin Group (USA) has achieved four simultaneous #1 New York Times bestsellers in the same week.

For the week of February 24th, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (The Penguin Press) holds at #1 in its sixth week on the hardcover nonfiction list; The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (NAL) holds at #1 in its thirteenth week on the trade paperback fiction list; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) is #1 in its 55th week on the paperback nonfiction list; and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Plume) (see item above) holds at #1 in its second week on the paperback advice, how-to, and miscellaneous list.