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Football Season 2: Where Football Saves the World by Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton and Spike Gerrell (Walker) has been shortlisted in the 9-13 year-olds category of the 2018 Laugh Out Loud Awards (The Lollies). In the same category is Tom Gates: Epic Adventure (Kind Of) by Liz Pichon (Scholastic), My Mum?s Growing Down by Laura Dockrill and David Tazzyman (Faber), Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure by A. L. Kennedy and Gemma Correll (Walker). Picture book duo Kes Gray and Jim Field, who won the 2017 ?best laugh out loud picture book? prize, are shortlisted for the same prize for the next book in the installment, Oi Cat! (Hachette Children?s Group). Field?s The Squirrels Who Squabbled, with words by Rachel Bright (HCG), is also in the running alongside Mr Bunny?s Chocolate Factory by Elys Dolan (OUP) and I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt (PRH). In the 6-8 year-olds category, Jim Smith, is shortlisted again for Barry Loser and the Birthday Billions. He is competing against The Big, Fat, Totally Bonkers Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp (Scholastic), There?s a Werewolf in My Tent! by Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham (Nosy Crow), and Lyttle Lies: The Pudding Problem by Joe Berger (Simon and Schuster). Three of the winners of last year?s awards are on the shortlist for the 2018 prizes, chair of the judges Michael Rosen revealed today. Commenting on the shortlist, Rosen said: ?Anyone around children looking for books to have them giggling and laughing over and over again, these 12 books will do the job. They are infectious and contagious and dangerous. Children will want to read them and ask for more. People talk about the importance of getting children reading, well, these shortlisted books do the work all by themselves.? Rosen and the judging team chose the shortlist from 120 submissions. The final winners will be picked by school pupils and announced in January 2019.

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Sharon Cohen's debut novel, The Starman and Me, has been shortlisted for the 2018 Branford Boase Award. Now in its 19th year, the Branford Boase is considered to be one of the most important awards in children's literature. Of the award, the Branford Boase panel chair and children's director of the Hay Festival, Julia Eccleshare, said 'Each year the Branford Boase Award discovers authors with outstanding talent and promise: this year is no exception.' 'A proper adventure for all curious middle graders' (Bookbag), 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. When twelve-year-old Kofi spots a prehistoric human he would come to know as Rorty Thrutch curled into a tight ball at a supermarket roundabout, he would never have suspected his amazing powers. Rorty 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? The winner of the 2018 Branford Boase Award will be announced on Wednesday 4th July at a ceremony in London. The winning author will receive a cheque for ?1,000 and both author and editor receive a unique, hand-crafted silver-inlaid box.

The RSL Ondaatje Prize, now in its 15th year, is an annual award of ?10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place. Founded in 1820 the Royal Society of Literature is Britain?s national charity for the advancement of literature. In addition to the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the RSL runs the Encore Award for best second novel of the year, the V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, RSL Literature Matters Awards and the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction, as well as regular events, and manages a schools outreach programme. This year?s judges are Tahmima Anam, Eva Hoffman and Daljit Nagra. ?[Once Upon a Time in the East is] an incredible story of extreme hardship leading to intellectual glory; an event-packed account that?s as much about an undernourished girl?s hunt for food as it is about the mountains and villages of China.? - Daljit Nagra Xiaolu Guo is a novelist, essayist, screenwriter and filmmaker based in London. Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (2008) was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2013, she was named one of Granta?s ?Best of Young British Novelists?.

Elly Griffiths' novel, The Chalk Pit, has been longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2018. The prize was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction and is open to UK and Irish crime authors whose novels were published in paperback from 1 May 2017 to 30 April 2018. 2018 marks the 14th year of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. The winner is announced at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, hosted in Harrogate each July. The festival was established in 2003 by Val McDermid, agent Jane Gregory, and arts charity Harrogate International Festivals. The award is run in partnership with T&R Theakston Ltd, WHSmith, and The Mail on Sunday. The longlist of 18 titles were selected by an academy of crime writing authors, agents, editors, reviewers and members of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Programming Committee. Executive director of T&R Theakston, Simon Theakston, said: ?2018?s longlist shows how strong and dynamic the genre is as it features so many debut novels, alongside established names. It shows how crime fiction not only dominates publishing but shapes our cultural landscape.? The longlist will be promoted in a dedicated online campaign with WHSmith and a nationwide library promotion. The shortlist of six titles will be announced on 27 May, followed by a six-week promotion in libraries and in WHSmith stores nationwide. The overall winner will be decided by the panel of Judges, alongside a public vote. The public vote opens on 1 July and closes 14 July at www.theakstons.co.uk. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony hosted by broadcaster Mark Lawson on 19 July on the opening night of the 16th Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. They?ll receive a ?3,000 cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakston Old Peculier. The awards night will also feature the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award, with past recipients over the years including PD James, Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill and Colin Dexter.

Xiaolu Guo's memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, has been shortlisted for the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize. 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. Xiaolu Guo?s extraordinary memoir is a handbook of life lessons. How to be an artist when censorship kills creativity and the only job you can get is writing bad telenovela scripts. How to be a woman when female babies are regularly drowned at birth and sexual abuse is commonplace. Most poignantly of all: how to love when you?ve never been shown how. Announcing the shortlist, the 2018 judges Kate Summerscale, Nikesh Shukla and Jim Crace said: ?We were startled and delighted that so many valuable and rewarding books could be published in a single year. We read a fantastic array of fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, and all eighty titles nominated by the Academy were genuine contenders. ?The eight books we?ve finally chosen are very different from one another, and they?re all wonderful. Overall, the experience has left us optimistic about the current good health and fine spirit of books in the English-writing and English-reading world.? The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the British Library in London on 8 May 2018.

Xiaolu Guo's memoir Nine Continents (Once Upon a Time in the East in the UK) has won the Autobiography category of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The awards, begun in 1975 and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book-review editors. 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.

Olivia Laing is one of eight writers who have been recognised by the Windham-Campbell Prize. The judges said that she "searches the depths of the self" in her writing, and described her as "a cartographer of human emotion, mixing memoir, biography and critical engagement with an acute sense of place." Each recipient of the prize receives $165,000, which is intended to give them the freedom to write liberated from money worries. In her upcoming book, Crudo, Olivia radically rewires the novel in a brilliant, funny and emphatically raw account of love in the apocalypse. A Goodbye to Berlin for the 21st century, Crudo charts in real time what it was like to live and love in the horrifying summer of 2017, from the perspective of a commitment-phobic peripatetic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker. The awards, which go to English-language writers from anywhere in the world, were set up in 2013 by the late Donald Windham, in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy M Campbell.

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.