Stedman wins Book of the Year PERTH writer ML Stedman must be getting used to the plaudits for The Light Between Oceans. Recently the film rights to her book were snapped up by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Studios and now it's been awarded Book of the Year at the 2013 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs). Stedman's debut novel was also awarded Literary Fiction Book of the Year and Newcomer of the Year at the awards, held in Sydney as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival. Brisbane-based writer Kate Morton took home the prize for General Fiction Book of the Year for her international best-seller The Secret Keeper. In the non-fiction categories, late AFL legend Jim Stynes was posthumously awarded the Biography of the Year prize for his book Jim Stynes: My Journey, co-written with Warwick Green. Stynes died of cancer at the age of 45 in March of last year. Richard De Crespigny won the General Non-Fiction Book of the Year for QF32: The Captain's Extraordinary Account of How One of the World's Worst Air Disasters Was Averted. Pictures as well as words gained attention on the night with the Illustrated Book of the Year awarded to two titles - Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent by the late Paul Lockyer and The Lost Diggers by Ross Coulthart. Lockyer died in a helicopter crash near Lake Eyre while making an ABC documentary in 2011. In children's literature, The 26-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths gained the Book of the Year prize for older kids while The Very Hungry Bear gained Nick Bland the award for younger readers.