Poet and novelist Ben Lerner has won The Believer Book Award for his novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the shortlist.

Check it out: “In Lerner’s hilarious and sensitive novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, a young poet named Adam Gordon plays a deeply identifiable (self-doubting, pretentious, plagued-by-his-moment-in-history) fool. Lerner’s three previous books of (marvellous) poetry were no doubt the training ground for his incredible sensitivity to the nuances of thought, for his beautiful and flawless sentences, and for his power to evoke scenes in the mind. The book is short, but so dense and full of life and feeling.”

Heather Christle won The Believer Poetry Award for her collection, The Trees The Trees.

Free Samples of The Believer Book Award 2012 Shortlist

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

The Curfew by Jesse Ball (Vintage)

Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt (New Directions)

Spurious by Lars Iyer (Melville House)

Widow by Michelle Latiolais (Bellevue Literary Press)

If you want more books, follow these links to our literary mixtapes with free samples of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners, the Orion Book Award finalists, the Best Mystery Books of 2011 and the Orwell Prize finalists.