LA Times Book Prize Winners

Yes, it's oh so late and we should have been home hours ago (panels start in eight hours!), but the Heineken was good, the company was better, and the chocolate dessert bar was divine.  I'll have more details tomorrow on the awards ceremony and the after-party buffet, but for now, here are the winners, in the order in which they were announced:

• Current Interest - Elizabeth D. Samet, Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point
• Young Adult Fiction - Philip Reeve, A Darkling Plain (The Hungry City Chronicles)
• First Fiction - Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
• Science & Technology - Douglas Hofstadter, I Am A Strange Loop
• Poetry - Stanley Plumly, Old Heart: Poems
• Mystery/Thriller - Karin Fossum, The Indian Bride
• History - Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
• Biography - Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin
• Fiction - Andrew O’Hagan, Be Near Me