This year’s winners of the Los Angeles 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 revealed at ceremony on Friday.

GalleyCat covered the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books all weekend. The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman told us how to pitch a comic book to publishers and three nonfiction writers shared The Only 3 Pieces of Writing Advice You Will Ever Need to Read.

2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners

Biography: Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell (Doubleday)

Current Interest: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Fiction: Luminarium by Alex Shakar (SoHo Press)

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Shards by Ismet Prcic (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic)

Graphic Novel: Finder: Voice by Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)

History: Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White (W.W. Norton & Company)

Mystery / Thriller: 11/22/1963 by Stephen King (Scribner)

Poetry: Double Shadow: Poems by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) (no excerpt available online)

Science & Technology: Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster)

Young Adult Literature: The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman (Scholastic Press)

2011 Robert Kirsch Award Winner: Rudolfo Anaya

Innovator’s Award: Figment co-founded by Jacob Lewis and Dana Goodyear