2009 National Book Award nominees announced

The nominees for the 2009 National Book Awards were announced today. I knew only one of the five books in the fiction category -- Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark and Termite. The other nominees are: American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Far North by Marcel Theroux.

Non-fiction nominees are:

• David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook
• Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species
• Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
• Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates,
• Rome's Deadliest Enemy
• T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Visit the National Book Foundation's website for the nominees in poetry and young people's literature.

Never Say Never: Lehane to write sixth Kenzie-Gennaro novel

File this under the category of Never Say Never.

Author Dennis Lehane has long insisted he would never write another book featuring Boston P.I.s Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. But, now, Lehane has announced that the sixth entry in the series will be published sometime in 2010! And it will be a sequel to, Gone, Baby, Gone.

Read more about it here.

And, while we're on the subject of mystery writers, George Pelecanos has won the 2009 Dashiell Hammett Award (for literary excellence in the field of crime writing) for The Turnaround.

Nice to see George recognized.

Pelecanos appeared last month at the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington D.C. He told me then that he doesn't have a novel in the pipeline, but is, instead, working on a new television series with the crew from The Wire.