Penguin Group (USA) Weekly Update - 5/5

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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.

Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, by Elizabeth Brown Pryor, which earlier this year won the prestigious Lincoln Prize from the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College, has now won the Jefferson Davis Book Award, which is given by the Museum of the Confederacy each year for the most outstanding narrative work on the Confederacy and the Confederate Period. The author will accept the Jefferson Davis Book Award at a ceremony in Richmond, Virginia on June 7th.

Not only has Reading the Man won these two prestigious prizes, but it was also the recipient of the Atlanta Civil War Roundtable's Richard B. Harwell Award for the best book published on a Civil War subject, announced earlier this month.

Reading the Man was published by Viking in May of last year. The paperback edition is due to hit the stores this coming Tuesday, May 6th.

Berkley Prime Crime is pleased to announce that author Sandi Ault will be taking home this year's prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award for Best Novel for Wild Indigo - but not before strutting her win around tonight at the 62nd Annual Edgar Awards reception and banquet!

Mary Higgins Clark Award winners are selected by a special Mystery Writers of America Committee for being the book most closely written in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition - according to guidelines set forth by Mary Higgins Clark herself.

Wild Indigo is the second book in Ault's heralded Wild mystery series starring Jamaica Wild and her fire (and crime!) fighting wolf.

Portfolio Acquires Major Book with Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer

Portfolio has acquired a major book about the rise and fall of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The author is Peter Elkind of Fortune magazine, who was the co-author (with Bethany McLean) of The Smartest Guys in the Room, Portfolio's 2003 bestseller about Enron. World rights were acquired by Portfolio president and publisher Adrian Zackheim from agent Liz Darhansoff at Darhansoff, Verrill & Feldman.

Elkind will be collaborating with Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), who is directing a simultaneous documentary about Spitzer. Elkind and Gibney had previously collaborated on Gibney's film adaptation of The Smartest Guys in the Room, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Penguin Group will publish a series of books based on the upcoming feature film and television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is in production at Lucasfilm Animation. The books will debut this summer, in advance of the August 15th theatrical release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The license between Lucasfilm Ltd. and Penguin Group marks the first global licensed publishing program based on the action-packed, CG-animated Clone Wars. The program spans multiple imprints within Penguin Young Readers Group, DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley) and Penguin Group (UK).

The Clone Wars takes place between Episodes II and III of the Stars Wars Saga and will be released in theaters in the U.S. by Warner Bros. on August 15th. International release dates will be announced soon. In the fall, The Clone Wars will continue as a prime-time television series on the Cartoon Network and TNT.

The U.S. on-sale date is July 26th, 2008. To find out more about Star Wars, visit www.starwars.com.

Penguin Young Readers Group threw a party to mark the 75th Anniversary of Viking Children's Books. Throughout its 75 years, Viking has been headed by only six people, and two of them were in attendance: Regina Hayes, who has been publisher since 1982, and George Nicholson, who headed the list from 1972 to 1978. Former Penguin chairman Peter Mayer was also on hand, along with Viking authors Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith, Simms Taback, Sarah Dessen, Laurie Halse Anderson and John Bemelmans Marciano, among many others. The party received prominent coverage in PW's Children's Bookshelf last week.

This week PW Children's Bookself will run "Viking Sales On: 75 Years of Innovative Children's Publishing" by the esteemed Leonard S. Marcus. This history can be also found on the Penguin website.

This week on the Penguin Podcast bestselling author Harlan Coben discusses his latest thriller, Hold Tight.

Four new debuts for Penguin Group (USA) on The New York Times bestseller list for the week of May 11th: Santa Fe Dead by Stuart Woods (G. P. Putnam's Sons) hits at #10 on the hardcover fiction list; The Soloist by Steve Lopez (G. P. Putnam's Sons) appears at #10 on the hardcover nonfiction list; Invisible Prey by John Sandford (Berkley) debuts at #5 on the mass-market fiction list; and Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen (Viking) appears at #2 on the children's chapter books list.

Here are more New York Times bestseller highlights for the week of May 11th:

On the hardcover fiction list, Hold Tight by Harlan Coben (Dutton) is at #2 in its second week; and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) is at #15 in its 49th week.

On the hardcover nonfiction list, Bad Money by Kevin Phillips (Viking) is at #8 in its second week; Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut (G. P. Putnam's Sons) is at #9 in its fourth week; and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (The Penguin Press) is #13 in its seventeenth week.

On the trade paperback fiction list, The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin) holds at #1 in its 97th week; The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs (Berkley) is #4 in its seventeenth week; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) is #4 in its 164th week; The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (NAL) holds at #8 in its 24th week; and Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos (Plume) stays at #15 in its ninth week.

On the mass market paperback fiction list, The Woods by Harlan Coben (Signet) holds at #2 in its fourth week; The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW) is #10 in its third week; Creation in Death by J.D. Robb (Berkley) is #11 in its fourth week; A Lady's Secret by Jo Beverley (Signet) is #18 in its fourth week; and High Profile by Robert B. Parker (Berkley) is #20 in its sixth week.

On the paperback nonfiction list, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin) holds at #1 in its 65th week; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) is at #2 position in its 66th week; The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin) holds at #13 in its 35th week; and I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley (Riverhead) is at #17 in its fourth week.

On the advice, how-to, and miscellaneous paperback list, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Plume) holds at #1 in its thirteenth week; and Getting Things Done by David Allen (Penguin) is at #8 in its 24th week.

In the young readers sector, Ladybug Girl holds at #9 on the children's picture book list in its sixth week; on the children's paperback list, Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Speak) moves up to #3 in its ninth week; and Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan (Philomel, hardcover and paperback) is at #8 in its 19th week on the children's series list.

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