In his new novel, The Collectors, David Baldacci (left) sets a dead body in the the rare books room of the Library of Congress. To promote the book, Baldacci's taking part in a Warner Books sweepstakes with a tour of the Library as grand prize, including but not limited to the fictional murder scene. The two winners won't just be hanging out with Baldacci; they'll also be accompanied by John Y. Cole, the Library's historian. And afterwards, everyone'll get to go out to lunch somewhere fancy nearby. First prize—which is really second prize, of course, but "grand" and "first" sound so much more exciting, don't they?—is an iPod nano loaded up with everything in the Baldacci audiobook collection.

It's funny, though: What jumped out at me about The Collectors was the cover's broad similarities to Warner's other big Washington-based thriller of the season, The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer:

Oh, I know there's nothing more to it than the preponderance of black and gold hues, and a little something in the typefaces (although Brad's D is a little heftier than David's). I just notice these things, and then they get stuck in my head until I blog about them.