This year’s winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been revealed, celebrating the best books of the year.
Below, we’ve linked to free samples of the award-winning books for your reading pleasure. The winners were announced at ceremony on Friday.
Los Angeles Times Book Prizes 2012 Winners
Biography
- Robert A. Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson(Knopf)
Current Interest
- Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Fiction
- Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)
Graphic Novel/Comics
- Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)
History
- Fergus M. Bordewich / America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)
Mystery / Thriller
- Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)
Poetry
- Louise Glück / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Science & Technology
- Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
- Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
Young Adult Literature
- A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)