The Best of the Booker is a special award that will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize.

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a list of 41 Booker Prize and Man Booker Prize winners.

• Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
• Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
• J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
• J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
• Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist
• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

The winner will be announced July 10.

The Arthur Ellis Awards, named for Canada's former official hangman, are awarded to works within the crime genre published for the first time in the previous year. The respective authors must be either living in Canada, or Canadians writing from abroad.

The Arthur Ellis Awards have also recently begun awarding their "Unhanged Arthur" for best unpublished crime novel, designed to launch the careers of the next generation of Canadian crime writers.

Congratulations to Winnipeg's Anita Daher, who has two novels nominated in the juvenile category.

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Black Man$24.95 add to cart

This year's winner is Richard Morgan's Black Man, a tale about a genetically engineered assassin.

In knocking off its mainstream literary competition, Morgan's novel has returned the Arthur C. Clarke Award to its pure science fiction roots.

Clarke established the prize in 1987. The inaugural winner was Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Other winners include Geoff Ryman, China Miéville, Amitav Ghosh, M. John Harrison for last year's Nova Swing.

John Hart's thriller Down River has captured the Edgar for Best Novel, and Tana French was award the Prize for Best First Novel for In the Woods. Megan Abbott's Queenpin won for Best Paperback Original, and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters received the Critical/Biographical Edgar.

The Awards are presented by the Mystery Writers of America and named for Edgar Allen Poe, who is credited with the invention of the detective fiction genre.

For a complete list of the nominees, click here.

The winners of the 2008 Manitoba Book Awards were announced Saturday night at a gala event in Winnipeg.

Wayne Tefs won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for his novel, Be Wolf.

Kevin Marc Fournier won the McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award (Older Category) for Sandbag Shuffle.

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Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care)$29.95 add to cart

William Marsden has been awarded the 2008 National Business Book Award for Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care).

The National Business Book Award is one of Canada's most prestigious and respected literary awards. Co-sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and BMO Financial Group, the National Business Book Award honours the author of an outstanding Canadian business-related book with a $20,000 prize.

Michael Chabon's cross-genre alternate history novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, has won the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's of America's Nebula Award for best novel. Click here for a list of winners in all categories.

Carhullan Army$26.00 add to cart

Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army, a tale of a dystopian Britain, has won the 2007 James Tiptree Jr. Award. The Tiptree Award is presented annually to a work that expands or explores gender roles in science fiction and fantasy.

The Award was created in 1991 to honour Alice Sheldon, who used Tiptree as her pen name. Sheldon's short fiction was notable for its treatment of men's and women's roles in society.

The list of nominees for the 2008 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards has been released. The Eisner's, named after the man who coined the term "graphic novel" and creator of The Spirit have long been considered comic's "Oscars". 2008 brings a diverse collection of titles and creators to the award.

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