“The bestselling American writer Donna Tartt scooped her first British book prize last night after winning the £5,000 WH Smith literary award. With only her second novel, The Little Friend, she beat plays by the long-established Tom Stoppard and short stories by fellow American Sam Shepard in a contest open to drama as well as fiction…. The new novel beat Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia trilogy, Shepard’s Great Dream of Heaven, Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel Middlesex, The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher, and Iain Pears’ Dream of Scipio.” Guardian/UK