Hilary Mantel's blockbuster "Wolf Hall" took the top fiction prize at the National Book Critics Circle Awards in New York on Thursday night. The novel about Thomas Cromwell, henchman to King Henry VIII, also won Britain's prestigious Man Booker prize and is a bestseller in both the U.K. and the United States.
Mantel won over Southern California favorite Michelle Huneven, nominated for her novel "Blame." Another California writer, William T. Vollmann, also fell short of taking the prize; he was a finalist in the nonfiction category for "Imperial," his book about the state's border county. The nonfiction prize was awarded to Richard Holmes for "The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science."
