Nora Roberts takes top prize at NY's Quill awards

Former Vice President Al Gore arrives at a news conference in Palo Alto, California, October 12, 2007 after winning the Nobel Peace Prize along with the U.N. climate panel. Gore will receive a second Quill award on Monday at the third annual event that was created to bring glamour and Oscar-style red carpet extravagance to the world of publishing.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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 and 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," Diane Setterfield will be awarded the debut author Quill for "The Thirteenth Tale" and Laura Lippman won the mystery/suspense/thriller award for "What the Dead Know."