Lawrence Wright

The National Book Foundation presents the 2013 National Book Award Finalists in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Young People's Literature.

British publisher Transworld has canceled its plans to publish "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief" by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright. The book will be published in the U.S. by Knopf on Jan. 17.

The reason Transworld dropped the book has attracted attention, according to the Telegraph. "The decision not to publish in this country has prompted questions, particularly as Transworld had previously agreed to it," the paper says. "It seems likely that the threat of libel action in the UK may have contributed to the decision."

The writer Lawrence Wright doesn’t seem at all the sort of person you’d find in public wearing a black cowboy shirt emblazoned with big white buffalos. He’s shy, soft-spoken, a little professorial. But as if he didn’t have enough to do, besides working on three plays simultaneously and getting ready to publish a new book in two weeks, Mr. Wright has been taking piano lessons with Floyd Domino, the two-time Grammy winner, and on a recent Saturday, in his buffalo shirt…