News: books

Gail Honeyman scoops Authors' Club Best First Novel Award

Gail Honeyman has won the 2018 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award for her debut Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (HarperCollins). Read more

Debuts dominate Glass Bell longlist

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine author Gail Honeyman is one of the seven debut novelists to be longlisted for the 2018 Glass Bell Award.... Read more

'Awe-inspiring' debut wins Desmond Elliott Prize after being snubbed by publishers

Preti Taneja has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for her "awe-inspiring" retelling of King Lear, We That Are Young.... Read more

Bluemoose's Myers wins £25k Walter Scott Prize

Benjamin Myers has won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction with The Gallows Pole, published by small Yorkshire-based independent press Bluemoose Books.... Read more

Strong start for Feminist Book Fortnight

The starting pistol for Feminist Book Fortnight sounded this weekend, with approaching 50 independent bookshops around the country taking part. Read more

McCormack’s Solar Bones wins €100k Dublin International Literary Award

Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones (Tramp Press) has won the €100,000 2018 Dublin International Literary Award, formerly known as the IMPAC Award.... Read more

Mslexia removes Shriver as judge over 'alienating' comments on diversity

Women’s writing magazine Mslexia has removed Lionel Shriver as a competition judge following the author’s controversial statements on diversity in publishing.... Read more

Dialogue joins with gal-dem on Literature course which ‘rewrites canon’

Sharmaine Lovegrove, publisher of Dialogue Books, is collaborating with women of colour magazine gal-dem to create a 12-month literature course tasked with “rewriting the literary canon to... Read more

Honours for Waterstone, Ishiguro, Beard and Calder

Tim Waterstone, founder of the eponymous bookshop chain Waterstones, has been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List with a knighthood for "services to bookselling and charity".... Read more

PRH 'drunk on virtue' over diversity drive, says Shriver

Lionel Shriver has branded Penguin Random House (PRH) "drunk on virtue" after seeing a "by turns fascinating, comical and depressing" questionnaire for authors to complete as part of... Read more

Shamsie scoops 2018's Women’s Prize for Fiction

Kamila Shamsie has scooped this year's £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her "extraordinarily topical" novel Home Fire (Bloomsbury Circus). ... Read more

Harvill Secker launches BAME crime writing competition

Harvill Secker is launching a competition in partnership with Bloody Scotland to find a debut crime writer from a BAME (black, Asian, minority ethnic) background.... Read more

'Ambitious' account of English Reformation wins Wolfson History Prize

Professor Peter Marshall of Warwick University has won the £40,000 Wolfson History Prize 2018 for Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (Yale University Press)—a book seven years in the... Read more

Keyes criticises 'sexist' Wodehouse Prize

Bestselling author Marian Keyes has reportedly accused the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize of sexism after failing to make the shortlist. Read more

Oval Office comes to Waterloo courtesy of PRH

Penguin Random House has unveiled a replica Oval Office inside London Waterloo station complete with a Donald Trump lookalike and secret service bodyguards. Read more