Hilary Mantel | featured news

EL James's best seller Fifty Shades of Grey has been named popular fiction book of the year at the Specsavers National Book Awards in London. The erotic novelist beat competition from Kate Mosse, JoJo Moyes, Victoria Hislop, Bernard Cornwell and Dorothy Koomson to win the accolade. This year's Booker Prize winner, Hilary Mantel, was chosen as the UK author of the year for a second time.

The dead cluster around Thomas Cromwell in this darkly magnificent sequel to “Wolf Hall.” He keeps them with him, giving the names of his beloved wife and daughters to the falcons he flies with his king, Henry VIII, and nursing memories of his disgraced mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, whose persecutors will soon suffer Cromwell’s vengeance. Deceased enemies also linger in his thoughts: He’s forced to reconsider his hatred for his brutal father, and he can’t seem to dismiss Thomas More, whom he maneuvered to execution in 1535. More’s bitter aphorisms resurface to remind Cromwell of the dangerous path he has chosen in serving Henry’s capricious royal will.

Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel and National Book Award finalists Jayne Anne Phillips and Bonnie Jo Campbell were among the nominees announced Saturday night for the National Book Critics Circle prize. Other finalists include memoir writer Mary Karr, former U.S. poet laureate Louise Glueck and former National Book Award winner William T. Vollmann, cited by critics for his 1,300-plus-page "Imperial."