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.

Read more

The nominees for 2009 Eisner Awards were just announced. Named after comic book pioneer Will Eisner, the awards “highlight the best publications and creators in comics and graphic novels” for the last 21 years.

Categories include Best Short Story, Best Continuing Series, and Best Graphic Album. For the 2009 awards, the number of prizes was reduced 29 to 26. The judges cut the Single Issue and Special Recognition categories, combined both the Writer/Artist and Writer/Artist-Humor categories, and renamed a teen category “Best Publication for Teens/Tweens.”

See the complete list of nominees here, along with a list of the judging panel. Here are the nominees for Best Digital Comic, complete with links for your Wednesday morning reading pleasure:

Bodyworld by Dash Shaw
Finder by Carla Speed McNeil
The Lady’s Murder by Eliza Frye
Speak No Evil by Elan Trinidad
Vs. by Alexis Sottile & Joe Infurnari