2006 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
	... 1996 . 1997 . 1998 . 1999 . 2000 . 2001 . 2002 ...; 2003 2004 2005 -2006- 2007 2008 2009; ... 2010 . 2011 . 2012 . 2013 . 2014 . 2015 . 2016 ... In poetry: 2003 2004 2005 -2006- 2007 2008 2009
	Art . Archaeology . Architecture . Literature . Music . Science +...

The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Books[]

Literature[]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun
Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital (August 28)
Martin Amis - House of Meetings
Margaret Atwood - Moral Disorder
François Bégaudeau - Entre les murs
Peter Behrens - The Law of Dreams
T. C. Boyle - Talk Talk
James Chapman - Stet (January 7)
Douglas Coupland - jPod
Mark Z. Danielewski - Only Revolutions
Patricia Duncker - Miss Webster and Chérif
Dave Eggers - What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (October 25)
Rawi Hage - De Niro's Game
Anosh Irani - The Song of Kahunsha
Vincent Lam - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
David Mitchell - Black Swan Green
Alice Munro - The View from Castle Rock
Joyce Carol Oates - Black Girl / White Girl
Heather O'Neill - Lullabies for Little Criminals
Carolyn Parkhurst - Lost and Found
Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day (November 21)
Will Self - The Book of Dave
John Updike - Terrorist (June 6)

Children's and young adult fiction[]

Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson - Peter and the Shadow Thieves (July 15)
John Boyne - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony (September 12) (fifth in the Artemis Fowl series)
Charlie Higson - Blood Fever (January 1) (second in the Young James Bond series)
D. J. MacHale - The Quillan Games (May 16)
David Mitchell - Black Swan Green (April 11)
Robert Muchamore
- Divine Madness (novel) (fifth in the CHERUB series)
- Man vs Beast (sixth in the CHERUB series)
Garth Nix - Sir Thursday (March 1) (fourth in the Keys to the Kingdom series)
Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith (October 1) (third in the Tiffany Aching series)
Lemony Snicket - The End (October 13) (13th in A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Paul Stewart - Freeglader (US) (February 28) (eighth in The Edge Chronicles)
Jonathan Stroud - Ptolemy's Gate
Toshihiko Tsukiji and Senmu - Kämpfer (November 24)
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief (March 14)

Fantasy[]

Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself (May 4) (first in The First Law series)
R. Scott Bakker - The Thousandfold Thought (January 20) (third in the Prince of Nothing trilogy)
Steven Erikson - The Bonehunters (March 1) (sixth in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series)
Terry Goodkind - Phantom (July 18) (10th in the Sword of Truth series)
Laurell K. Hamilton - Mistral's Kiss (December 12) (fifth in the Merry Gentry series)
Sherrilyn Kenyon - Dark Side of the Moon (May 30) (15th in the Dark-Hunter Series)
Gregory Keyes - The Blood Knight (July 11) (third in The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series)
Dean Koontz - Brother Odd (November 28) (third in the Odd Thomas series)
Tanith Lee - Piratica II (second in The Piratica Series)
Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora (June 27) (first in the Gentleman Bastards series)
Patricia A. McKillip - Solstice Wood
Zhang Muye - Ghost Blows Out the Light (March)
James Patterson - School's Out — Forever (May 23) (second in the Maximum Ride series)
Angie Sage - Flyte (March 1) (second in the Septimus Heap series)
Darren Shan
- Bec (October 2) (fourth in The Demonata series)
- Demon Thief (June 7) (second in The Demonata series)
- Slawter (November 1) (third in The Demonata series)
Catherynne M. Valente - The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden (October 31) (first volume of The Orphan's Tales)
Jeff VanderMeer - Shriek: An Afterword (August 8)

Historical fiction[]

Kunal Basu - Racists
Bernard Cornwell
- The Lords of the North
- Sharpe's Fury
Charles Frazier - Thirteen Moons (October 3)
Michael Moorcock - The Vengeance of Rome (January 5) (fourth in the Pyat Quartet)
Naomi Novik - Temeraire (January 7)
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch (March 23)
Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White (August 8) (first in the Templar Trilogy)
Gene Wolfe - Soldier of Sidon (October 31) (third book in the Soldier series)

Horror[]

James Patterson & Peter de Jonge - Beach Road (May 1)
Victor Heck - Downward Spiral (November 27)
Stephen King
- Cell (January 24)
- Lisey's Story (October 24)
Thomas Ligotti - Teatro Grottesco
James Robert Smith and Stephen Mark Rainey (ed.) - Evermore

Humor, satire[]

Max Barry - Company (January 17)
Ben Elton - Chart Throb
Bobby Henderson - The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (March 28)
Maddox - The Alphabet of Manliness (June)
Carl Hiaasen - Nature Girl (November 14)
Vladimir Sorokin - Day of the Oprichnik

Mystery & Crime[]

Gilbert Adair - The Act of Roger Murgatroyd
Robert Baer - Blow the House Down a novel, (May 30)
Mary Higgins Clark - Two Little Girls in Blue
Michael Connelly - Echo Park (October 9)
Patricia Cornwell
- At Risk (May 23) (first in the At Risk series)
- Book of the Dead (October 24) (15th in the Kay Scarpetta series)
Clive Cussler - Treasure of Khan (December 5)
Jeffery Deaver
- The Cold Moon (May 30) (seventh in the Lincoln Rhyme series)
- More Twisted (December 16)
Nelson DeMille - Wild Fire (November 6)
Thomas Harris - Hannibal Rising (December 5) (fourth in the Hannibal Lecter series)
Tony Hillerman - The Shape Shifter (November 1) (12th in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee series)
Dean Koontz - The Husband (May 30)
Val McDermid - The Grave Tattoo (February 6)
James Patterson
- Cross (November 14) (12th in the Alex Cross series)
- Judge and Jury (July 31)
James Patterson & Maxine Paetro - The 5th Horseman (February 13)
Michael Slade - Kamikaze (November 7)
Thomas Sullivan - The Water Wolf (October 3)
Andrew Vachss - Mask Market
Samantha Weinberg - Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries
Jack Whyte - The Eagle (December 26) (ninth in the Camulod Chronicles series)

Romance[]

Karen Marie Moning - Darkfever (October 31)
Stephenie Meyer - New Moon
Nicholas Sparks - Dear John (October 30)
Danielle Steel - H.R.H. (October 31)

Science fiction[]

Aaron Allston - Betrayal (May 30) (first in the Legacy of the Force series)
Troy Denning - Tempest
David Louis Edelman - Infoquake (July 5) (first in the Jump 225 trilogy)
Drew Karpyshyn - Path of Destruction: a Novel of the New Republic (September 26)
Paul Levinson - The Plot to Save Socrates (February 6)
Cormac McCarthy - The Road (September 26)
Yvonne Navarro - Ultraviolet (March 1)
Tim Powers - Three Days to Never (August 1)
J. D. Robb - Born in Death (November 7) (23rd in the In Death series)
Masamune Shirow - Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor
Charles Stross - Glasshouse (June 27)
Karen Traviss
- Bloodlines (August 29) (second in the Legacy of the Force series)
- Triple Zero (second in the Star Wars: Republic Commando series)
Peter Watts - Blindsight (October 3)
Stephen Woodworth - From Black Rooms (October 31) (fourth in the Violet series), alternate history crime novel
Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight (January 31)

New drama[]

Salvatore Antonio - In Gabriel's Kitchen
Jacob M. Appel - Arborophilia
Howard Brenton - In Extremis
John Cariani - Almost Maine
Nilo Cruz - Beauty of the Father
Brian Friel - Faith Healer
Richard Greenberg - A Naked Girl on the Appian Way
Rinne Groff - What Then
Lisa Kron - Well
Neil Labute - Fat Pig
David Lindsay-Abaire - Rabbit Hole
Itamar Moses - Bach at Leipzig
Adam Rapp - Red Light Winter

Poetry[]

Main article: 2006 in poetry

Non-fiction[]

Karen Armstrong - Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time
Philip Ball - The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science
Christopher Catherwood - A Brief History of the Middle East
Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme - My Life in France
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Alain de Botton - The Architecture of Happiness
Alan Downs - The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World
Wayne Federman (with Terrill and Maravich) - MARAVICH: The Definitive biography of Pistol Pete Maravich.
Al Gore - An Inconvenient Truth
Glenn Greenwald - How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
John Grisham - The Innocent Man
Derrick Jensen - Endgame
John McQuaid & Mark Schleifstein -Path of Destruction: the Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms
Larry Miller - Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Contemporary Life
Max and Monique Nemni - Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Father of Canada, 1919-1944
Richard Sennett - The Culture of the New Capitalism
Zhi Gang Sha - Soul, Mind, Body Medicine
James Sites - Inger!
Tavis Smiley - What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America
Hywel Williams - Days That Changed the World: the 50 Defining Events of World History

Short stories[]

Out of 40 stories published in both of these two annual anthologies, stories from The New Yorker are represented eight times, Zoetrope: All-Story four times, Tin House and One Story three times each, and all of these magazines had stories in both collections.

Best American Short Stories 2006[]

Of 20 stories, four came from The New Yorker, three from Zoetrope: All-Story and two each from The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Tin House and One Story.

Paul Yoon	"Once the Shore"	One Story
Tobias Wolff	"Awaiting Orders"	The New Yorker
Donna Tartt	"The Ambush"	Tin House
Maxine Swann	"Secret"	Ploughshares
Mark Slouka	"Dominion"	TriQuarterly
Patrick Ryan	"So Much for Artemis"	One Story
Benjamin Percy	"Refresh, Refresh"	The Paris Review
Edith Pearlman	"Self-Reliance"	Lake Effect
Alice Munro	"The View from Castle Rock"	The New Yorker
Kevin Moffett	"Tattooizm"	Tin House
Thomas McGuane	"Cowboy"	The New Yorker
Jack Livings	"The Dog"	The Paris Review
Yiyun Li	"After a Life"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Aleksandar Hemon	"The Conductor"	The New Yorker
Mary Gaitskill	"Today I’m Yours"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Nathan Englander	"How We Avenged the Blums"	The Atlantic Monthly
Robert Coover	"Grandmother’s Nose"	Daedalus
David Bezmozgis	"A New Gravestone for an Old Grave"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Katherine Bell	"The Casual Car Pool"	Ploughshares
Ann Beattie with Harry Mathews	"Mr. Nobody at All"	McSweeney’s

O. Henry Prize stories[]

Of thisTemplate:Clarify year's 20 stories, four came from The New Yorker, four from Epoch, and two each from Harper's Magazine, One Story and The Georgia Review

Edward P. Jones	"Old Boys, Old Girls"**	The New Yorker
Jackie Kay	"You Go When You Can No Longer Stay"	Granta
Lydia Peelle	"Mule Killers"	Epoch
Paula Fox	"The Broad Estates of Death"	Harper's Magazine
Neela Vaswani	"The Pelvis Series"	Epoch
David Lawrence Morse	"Conceived"	One Story
William Trevor	"The Dressmaker’s Child"	The New Yorker
Stephanie Reents	"Disquisition on Tears"	Epoch
David Means	"Sault Ste. Marie"	Harper's Magazine
Karen Brown	"Unction"	The Georgia Review
Terese Svoboda	"’80s Lilies"	Indiana Review
Alice Munro	"Passion"**	The New Yorker
George Makana Clark	"The Center of the World"	The Georgia Review
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer	"Wolves"	Prairie Schooner
Douglas Trevor	"Girls I Know"	Epoch
Louise Erdrich	"The Plague of Doves"	The New Yorker
Xu Xi	"Famine"	Ploughshares
Lara Vapnyar	"Puffed Rice and Meatballs"	Zoetrope: All-Story
Melanie Rae Thon	"Letters in the Snow [...]"*	One Story
Deborah Eisenberg	"Window"**	Tin House

* Full title: "Letters in the Snow—for kind strangers and unborn children—for the ones lost and most beloved"
** "Juror favorites"

Deaths[]

January 4 - Irving Layton, age 93, Canadian poet
January 16 - Jan Mark, 62, British children's writer
January 30 - Wendy Wasserstein, 55, American playwright
February 2 - Chris Doty, 39, dramatist
February 4 - Betty Friedan, 85, feminist writer
February 8 - Michael Gilbert, 93, British crime writer
February 11 - Peter Benchley, 65, American novelist
February 17 - Sybille Bedford, 94, novelist and non-fiction writer
February 20 - Lucjan Wolanowski, 86, Polish writer, journalist and traveller
February 21
- Gennadiy Aygi, 71, Chuvashian poet and translator
- Theodore Draper, 93, historian
February 22 - Hilde Domin, 96, German writer
February 24 - Octavia E. Butler, 59, American science fiction writer
February 25 - Margaret Gibson, 57, Canadian novelist and short story writer
March 27 - Stanisław Lem, 84, Polish science fiction writer
March 30 - John McGahern, 73, novelist, dramatist and short story writer
April 6 - Leslie Norris, age 84, Anglo-Welsh poet and author
April 13 - Muriel Spark, 88, novelist
April 25 - Jane Jacobs, 89, urban planning critic and activist
May 9 - Jerzy Ficowski, 81, poet, writer and translator
May 17 - Clare Boylan, 58, Irish novelist
May 18 - Gilbert Sorrentino, 77, novelist and poet
June 17 - James McClure, age 66, crime writer
June 28 - Nigel Cox, 55, New Zealand novelist
July 17 - Mickey Spillane, 88, crime writer
July 28 - David Gemmell, 57, British fantasy novelist
August 21 - S. Yizhar, 89, Israeli novelist
August 30 - Naguib Mahfouz, 94, Egyptian novelist, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature
September 1 - György Faludy, 95, Hungarian poet, writer and translator
November 1 - William Styron, 81, American novelist
November 4 - Nelson S. Bond, 97, American writer
November 9 - Ellen Willis, 64, American journalist and critic
November 10 - Jack Williamson, 98, American science fiction author
November 13 - G. Gordon Strong, 92, Canadian-American publisher
November 15 - George G. Blackburn MC,90, Canadian author of Guns of Normandy
November 23
- Jesús Blancornelas, 70, Mexican journalist, founding editor of Zeta magazine
- Richard Clements, 78, British journalist
November 24
- William Diehl, 81, American author (Primal Fear, Sharky's Machine)
- Phyllis Fraser, 90, American actress, writer, and publisher
- George W. S. Trow, 63, American writer and media critic
November 27 - Bebe Moore Campbell, 56, Negro author (What You Owe Me)

Awards[]

Nobel Prize in Literature: Orhan Pamuk
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Cormac McCarthy, The Road
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Byron Rogers, The Man Who Went into the West: The life of R.S. Thomas
The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Belinda Castles, The River Baptists
Compton Crook Award: Maria Snyder, Poison Study
C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: John Tranter, Urban Myths: 210 Poems
Eric Gregory Award: Fiona Benson, Retta Bowen, Frances Leviston, Jonathan Morley, Eoghan Walls
2006 Governor General's Awards: see article
Griffin Poetry Prize: Sylvia Legris, Nerve Squall and Kamau Brathwaite, Born to Slow Horses
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Jaya Savige, Latecomers
Man Booker Prize: Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss.
Miles Franklin Award: Roger McDonald, The Ballad of Desmond Kale
Premio Nadal: Eduardo Lago, Llámame Brooklyn
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Fleur Adcock
Scotiabank Giller Prize: Vincent Lam, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
Wallace Stevens Award: Michael Palmer
Whiting Writers' Awards:
- Poetry: Sherwin Bitsui, Tyehimba Jess, Suji Kwock Kim
- Fiction: Charles D’Ambrosio, Yiyun Li, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Nina Marie Martínez, Patrick O’Keeffe
- Plays: Stephen Adly Guirgis, Bruce Norris