Nora Roberts takes top prize at Quill awards

Best-selling author Nora Roberts won book of the year on Monday at the third annual Quill Awards, which were created to bring glamour and red carpet extravagance to the world of publishing.

"Romance rocks," Roberts told the crowd after accepting her award, which was voted online by the public, for a romance/thriller novel ANGELS FALL published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore was also among the 19 Quill Award winners, announced at a black-tie event attended by celebrities including actresses Brooke Shields, Joan Allen and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Gore's THE ASSAULT ON REASON won the Quill award for the history/current affairs/politics category -- the same award he won last year for his book AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

His daughter Karenna Gore Schiff accepted the award on his behalf, telling the crowd her father was in Europe meeting with leaders to discuss ways to combat the climate change crisis.

Comedian Stephen Colbert, a presenter at the ceremony, said Gore winning the Quill Award, which he adds to a collection that already includes an Academy Award and an Emmy, was "part of his cunning plan to save the Earth."

"He's going to take all his awards up to the Arctic Circle and use their shiny gold surfaces to reflect the sunlight back into space," he said.

Other Quill Award winners included Cormac McCarthy, who took the general fiction award with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel THE ROAD and Walter Isaacson, who won the biography/memoir award for EINSTEIN: HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE.

Amy Sedaris won the humor award for I LIKE YOU: HOSPITALITY UNDER THE INFLUENCE, 13709 was awarded the debut author Quill for THE THIRTEENTH TALE and Laura Lippman won the mystery/suspense/thriller award for WHAT THE DEAD KNOW.