Book News: Dick Cheney, James Crumley, Dylan Thomas Prize and more

Bart Gellman, author of "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," tells Harper's that "Cheney is a rare combination: a zealot in principle and a subtle, skillful tactician in practice." Excerpts of the book, out this week, are online at the Washington Post.

The shortlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize features a very international roster of authors, but no Americans -- although Nam Le and Dinaw Mengestu have both lived and studied in the U.S. Mengestu, who won the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction this year, is up for his book "Children of the Revolution" (published in the U.S. as "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears").

Crime writer James Crumley has died at age 68 in Missoula, Mont.; he was in ill health.

Another David Foster Wallace archive has gone online: The New Yorker published four of his stories, from "Several Birds" in 1994 to 2007's "Good People." All are now available through its website.

If you happen to be in Omaha this weekend, the parenthetically-named (Downtown) Omaha Lit Fest promises to be lively, with appearances by author Charles Bock and radio journalist Starlee Kine, a ritual re-banning of the once-scandalous book "Slogum House," and the theme "Plagiarism, Fraud & Other Literary Inspiration."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

White House photo by David Bohrer