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Two Janklow authors have been shortlisted for the 2017 Jhalak Prize. Kiran Millwood Hargrave?s The Island at the End of Everything and Xiaolu Guo?s Once Upon A Time in the East are both on the shortlist which includes six books in total. The prize, which was founded in 2017, works to highlight the quality and variety of work by writers of colour in contemporary Britain. On Xiaolu's memoir, travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa writes: ?This coming-of-age memoir takes us into communist China; a young girl?s struggle to escape the shackles of poverty and gender, and pursue her creative destiny. It will educate, amuse and sadden you, and inspire you to fight against the odds.? On Kiran's children's novel, novelist Tanya Byrne comments: ?After the success of her debut, this was Kiran?s difficult second album and she didn?t give in to the pressure and has produced an astonishingly beautiful book that is sure to be a future classic.?

The tenth book in Elly Griffiths' Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries series, The Dark Angel hit the Sunday Times bestseller lists at number eight this week. Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway is off on a working holiday to Italy. But the sunny hills of Lazio hold secrets as dark as any buried in the Norfolk marshes. A prominent Italian archaeologist has unearthed a two-thousand-year-old undisturbed grave with a difference: the skeleton inside has a mobile phone. A harmless academic prank, or is a more sinister message being sent? Knowing Ruth?s reputation, Dr Morelli persuades her to come to the hilltop village of Castello degli Angeli and investigate his impossible find. When DCI Nelson arrives in the area, Ruth is determined not to be distracted by what is either fate, or Cathbad?s meddling. Then a shocking murder rocks Castello degli Angeli. Whatever mysteries lie in the village?s past, someone will kill to protect them.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave's second novel, The Island at the End of Everything has been longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018. Amihan lives on Culion Island, where some of the inhabitants - including her mother - have leprosy. Ami loves her home - with its blue seas and lush forests, Culion is all she has ever known. But the arrival of malicious government official Mr Zamora changes her world forever: islanders untouched by sickness are forced to leave. Banished across the sea, she?s desperate to return, and finds a strange and fragile hope in a colony of butterflies. Can they lead her home before it?s too late? The award, along with its sister prize the Kate Greenaway Medal, is the UK's oldest book award for children and young people. The medals are judged by children's librarians. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 15th March 2018, with the winners being revealed on Monday 18th June 2018.

Sharon Cohen's debut children's novel, Starman and Me has been longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2018. The Branford Boase Award aims to reward the most promising new writers and their editors, and is given annually to the most promising book for seven year-olds and upwards by a first time novelist. The shortlist will be published on 2nd May 2018. The Starman and Me explores where we have come from and where we are moving to - it's about the magic of DNA, the power of identity, and the importance of caring for each other. Twelve-year-old Kofi first spots the prehistoric human on a supermarket roundabout. He is small and dark and curled into a tight ball. His name is Rorty Thrutch and he has zero memory of how he ended up in the unexceptional village of Bradborough, or why he's being hunted... Kofi soon finds out that Rorty can do amazing things. He can copy, paste and delete objects, using only the power of his mind. This is the discovery of the century and mad, greedy scientists will stop at nothing to track him down. Kofi and best friend Janie are on a mission. Not only must they protect Rorty, but they have to find his missing girlfriend Pogsy Blue, too. Our prehistoric ancestors have crashed headlong into the 21st century and time is running out to save them...

Two Janklow authors have been selected for the longlist of the 2017 Jhalak Prize. Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Island at the End of Everything and Xiaolu Guo's Once Upon A Time in the East have both been longlisted. Started by authors Sunny Singh and Nikesh Shukla and Media Diversified, with support from The Authors? Club and a prize donated by an anonymous benefactor the prize exists, to celebrate the achievements of British writers of colour. The aim is the find the best writers of colour in the country.

Two J&N authors have been selected for the category shortlists of the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Adam Rutherford's debut, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, has been nominated for Non-Fiction, while Xiaolu Guo's Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China (Once Upon a Time in the East in the UK) has been nominated for Autobiography. The awards, begun in 1975 and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prozes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book-review editors. The NBCC selects thirty finalists in six categories, with the winners announced on 15th March 2018. A Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home. In a captivating journey through the expanding landscape of genetics, written with great clarity and wit, Adam Rutherford reveals what our genes now tell us about human history and what history tells us about our genes. From Neanderthal discoveries to microbiology, from redheads to dead royals, criminology to race relations, evolution to epigenetics, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is a demystifying and illuminating new portrait of who we are and how we came to be.

Rebecca Stott's powerful memoir, In the Days of Rain, has won the Costa Biography Book Award. The judges said that the book was "a stand-out winner. We were all gripped and astonished by this unique life and the exquisite way she tells it." As Rebecca Stott?s father lay dying, he begged her to help him write the memoir he'd been struggling with for years. He wanted to tell the story of their family who for generations had all been members of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Yet each time he reached a certain point, he became tangled in a thicket of painful memories and couldn't go on. The Exclusive Brethren were a closed community who believed the world is ruled by Satan: nonBrethren books were banned, women were made to wear headscarves and those who disobeyed the rules were punished. Rebecca?s father, like her grandfather, had been an influential Brethren Minister: he preached in the ?Iron Room? of their meeting houses and made choices that would eventually come to haunt him. Rebecca was born into the Brethren, yet as an intelligent, enquiring child she was always asking dangerous questions. She would discover that her father had been asking them too, and that the fault line between faith and doubt had almost engulfed him. The Costa Book of the Year will be announced on 30th January 2018.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave's gorgeous second novel, The Island at the End of Everything, has been shortlisted for Best Story at the Blue Peter Book Awards. Since 2000, the enormously popular and influential Blue Peter Book Awards have been recognising and celebrating the best authors, the most creative illustrators and the greatest reads for children. The winners will be selected by an expert reading panel made up of hundreds of children in schools all over the UK. The winning titles will be revealed live on Blue Peter on 1st March 2018, World Book Day. The Island at the End of Everything is set on Culion Island, where some of the inhabitants - including Amihan's mother - have leprosy. Ami loves her home - with its blue seas and lush forests, Culion is all she has ever known. But the arrival of malicious government official Mr Zamora changes her world forever: islanders untouched by sickness are forced to leave. Banished across the sea, she?s desperate to return, and finds a strange and fragile hope in a colony of butterflies. Can they lead her home before it?s too late?

Janklow & Nesbit has authors in three categories of this year's Costa Book Awards. In Biography, Xiaolu Guo's Once Upon a Time in the East and Rebecca Stott's In the Days of Rain make up half of the total shortlist for the category. Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Island at the End of Everything has been nominated in the Children's category, while Kiran herself is also a judge in the Poetry category. Running since 1971, the Costa prizes are the only major UK book prize open to authors resident in the UK and Ireland. The category winners will be announced on 2nd January, while the overall winning Book of the Year will be announced on 30th January. ?These shortlists are a showcase of everything the Costa book awards celebrate: terrific books with broad appeal that will be enjoyed by readers of all tastes,? said Dominic Paul, managing director of Costa.

MJ Arlidge has continued his bestselling streak with the paperback release of the newest DI Helen Grace title, Love Me Not, which entered the Sunday Times Bestseller List at number 9 this week. She Loves Me A woman?s body lies in the road. At first it looks like a tragic accident. But when Helen Grace arrives on the scene it?s clear she?s looking at a coldblooded killing. But why would anyone target a much loved wife and mother? She Loves Me Not Across town, a shopkeeper is killed while his customers are left unharmed. But what lies behind the killer?s choices? She Loves Me Who lives? Who dies? Who?s next? The clock is ticking. She Loves Me Not If Helen can?t solve this deadly puzzle then more blood will be shed. But any mistake and it might be her own?

Harriet Cummings, whose debut novel We All Begin as Strangers was released in April this year, has been nominated by booksellers for the shortlist of the Breakthrough Author category in the Books are my Bag Readers Awards 2017. The novel is set in 1984 in England, and someone is slipping into homes through back doors and open windows in the village of Heathcote. What's more, the perpetrator knows everything about everyone - leaving curious objects in their homes, or taking things from them. When beloved Anna goes missing, the whole community fears she's been kidnapped. But as the villagers search for Anna, it's their own darkest secrets they're desperate to keep hidden... Inspired by real events, and with a brilliant cast of characters, is a beautiful debut novel you'll want to recommend to everyone. The BAMB Readers Awards, now in their second year, are the only book awards with shortlists curated by bookshops - and the only major awards voted for by booklovers. Harriet Cummings is a freelance writer with a background in history of art and gender studies. As a script writer, she has had work performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as independent venues around London. While studying at Faber Academy, Harriet threw herself into her first novel and hasn't looked back since. She lives in Leamington Spa with her husband and springer spaniel.

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong has been selected for the shortlist for The Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2017. The prize is in its 30 year, and celebrates the best science writing for a non-specialist audience. The judges praised the variety of books on the shortlist, each grappling with "the big questions of our time", as well as the creative techniques used to marry scientific discovery with an engaging "comprehensive and enjoyable" narrative. In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems. We learn the invisible and wondrous science behind the corals that construct mighty reefs and the squid that create their own light shows. We see how bacteria can alter our response to cancer-fighting drugs, tune our immune system, influence our evolution, and even modify our genetic make-up. And we meet the scientists who are manipulating these microscopic partners to our advantage. In a million tiny ways, I Contain Multitudes will radically change the way you think about the natural world, and the way you see yourself. The 2017 winner will be announced at a ceremony hosted by Professor Brian Cox on the 19th September.

Derek B. Miller's novel The Girl in Green has been selected for the 2017 shortlist of the Gold Dagger Award. The Girl in Green is a brilliantly original and timely tragi-comedy about the consequences of the war in Syria and misguided attempts to help. Iraq 1991. US soldier Arwood Hobbes is bored. When British Times journalist Thomas Benton ? embedded in Arwood?s U.S. Army company ? bribes Arwood with an ice cream to let him into the rebel-held stronghold of Samawah, Arwood perks up and an off-book mission is born. Three hours later, the village of Samawah is razed by Saddam?s helicopter gunships, Benton is trapped, and a village girl in a green dress dies in Arwood?s arms. Twenty-two years later, in 2013, Arwood has become an arms dealer and Benton a washed-up hack. As refugees fleeing the war in Syria flood over the border into Kurdistan, the two men see TV footage of a mortar attack on a food queue, which seems to injure the same girl in the same green dress. It can?t be her, of course, but their sense of needing to make up for the past takes them back to Iraq to rescue the girl. It is a mad-cap mission that can only go wrong, and spectacularly wrong it goes ? Set in a Middle East filled with refugees, humanitarian organizations, insurgents, and national staff trying to rebuild their shattered world, The Girl in Green is not a war novel. It is a humane, compassionate, funny and haunting journey through that undefined space between war and peace. The award has run since 1955 is presented annually to the best crime novel of the year.

David Bellos' The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventures of Les Miserables has been longlisted for the Historical Writers' Association's Non-Fiction Crown 2017 awards. Packed full of information about the book?s background and design, The Novel of the Century brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d??tat and political exile; how he pulled off the deal of the century to get it published, and set it on course to become the novel that epitomizes the grand sweep of history in the nineteenth century. Yet this biography of a masterpiece also shows how and why the moral and social message of the novel remains full of meaning for our time. The shortlist for the award will be announced on 13th July 2017, and the winners will be presented with their awards in November.