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Charles Cumming has been long-listed for this year's Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Now in its ninth year, the award was created to celebrate the very best in crime writing and is open to British and Irish authors.The short-list will be announced on the 6th June.

It has just been announced that Adam Marek, winner of the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, has been short-listed for this year?s Edge Hill Prize. Now in its seventh year, the Edge Hill Prize is the only UK award that recognises excellence in a published collection of short stories. Among the finalists for the ?5,000 prize are Irish writer Kevin Barry, Jon McGregor, Emma Donoghue and Jane Rogers. The judging panel includes award-winning writer Sarah Hall, Scottish author and literary critic Lesley McDowell and Jim Lee, Regional Buyer at Waterstones.

Last night Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair was one of twenty titles to have 25,000 copies gifted out across England and Ireland for World Book Night 2013. World Book Night is a yearly celebration of reading and books, that encourages tens of thousands of passionate volunteers to share their love of reading within their communities by handing out free copies of specially chosen and printed books. Follow this think to find out more, and get involved.

Gavin Corbett is one of 5 short-listed authors for the 2013 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award announced last night at Dublin?s Mansion House. The award was adjudicated this year by Robert McCrum, Observer Associate Editor and former editor-in-chief of Faber & Faber, together with poet and playwright, Rita Ann Higgins. Gavin Corbett was born in the west of Ireland and grew up in Dublin, where he studied History at Trinity College. This is the Way, his second novel, was published earlier this year by Fourth Estate in the UK and Faber in the US.

Xiaolu Guo and Sunjeev Sahota have been selected for Granta?s prestigious Best Of Young British Novelists. Published every ten years, the issue collects new work by twenty writers who represent the future of literature in Britain. The magazine is out now. For three consecutive decades, Granta has had an astonishing high strike rate for predicting which young novelists will take a permanent place in the literary firmament ? past selections have included Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Rose Tremain, Alan Hollinghurst, A.L. Kennedy, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Jeanette Winterson, David Mitchell and Zadie Smith. This year is no different. Sahota?s extract, described by Salman Rushdie as ?strong, fresh and true?, is taken from his forthcoming novel, THE YEAR OF THE RUNAWAYS, that will be published by Picador next year. And Guo, one of the twelve female writers dominating this year?s selection, will have the full version of her novel, CHINA, published by Random House in 2015. For more information please visit the Granta website.

Visit Cambridge Wordfest on 12/13/14 April and immerse yourself in a literary world filled with everything from fiction to history, science to philosophy and travel to current affairs. Tim Radford will be taking to the stage with Richard Fortey, to talk about Richard's book,The Earth,for The Guardian Science Book Club. There will also be workshops from Olivia Laing and Alok Jha, and a d?but author panel event by Jack Wolf. Follow this link for more information.

John Eliot Gardiner will be celebrating his 70th birthday with a Bach marathon at the Royal Albert Hall in London. On the 1st April, over nine hours, he will conduct his own Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists and introduce leading performers in Bach chamber and solo works. The Royal Albert Hall?s Eastertide Bach Marathon will be broadcast on Radio 3, with a supporting documentary shown 2 days previously, on the 30th March, on BBC2. His own biography of Bach, Music in the Castle of Heaven, will be published by Penguin in October.

Dr Adam Rutherfod, author of Creation: The Origin and The Future of Life, is to present this year's Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture. With a special guest introduction from Stephen Mangan, Adam will discuss how, after four billion years of evolution, and a century of taking cells apart to find out how they work, we have a pretty robust understanding of DNA, evolution and the mechanics of life, and the way scientists are just beginning to put them back together to do two things: recreate the origin of life, and invent new lifeforms to kick-start a global industrial revolution. The lecture takes place tonight at The Royal Geographical Society. Click here for more information.

Dr Kevin Fong talks about his first book 'Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body'.

This week on BBC Radio 4?s ?From Our Own Correspondent? programme,Tim Butcher meets up with an old friend and Kosovan refugee, who brings back memories of time spent together in the former war zone. Follow this link to listen again. Tim's third book, The Trigger: The Journey That Led the World to War in 1914, will be published in 2014 to coincide with the centenary of the beginning of the First World War.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian and amateur pianist, set himself the seemingly impossible task of conquering Chopin?s Ballade in G Minor, described as 'one of the hardest pieces in the repertoire', in just one year. This video is a short introduction to his endeavour. PLAY IT AGAIN: An Amateur Against the Impossible, his full account of this inspiring and unbelievable feat, will be published by Jonathan Cape tomorrow.

A great start to 2013; Pirates! Band of Misfits, the Aardman film based on the brilliant Pirates! series, by Gideon Defoe, has been nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Oscars 2013. Results will be announced at the official ceremony on the 24th February. Click here for more information.

The launch party for The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones, complete with anatomical heart cake and elusive white owl, was a huge success. What better setting for the introduction of Tristan Hart, madman and medical genius, to the world than The Old Operating Theatre, London Bridge. Photos can be seen, here, on the book?s Facebook page.

The Sunday Times named A Foreign Country their thriller of the year yesterday! ?Charles Cumming deservedly won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award earlier this month for A Foreign Country (HarperCollins), in which a disgraced spook hunts for Amelia Levene, who has disappeared shortly before becoming MI6?s first female boss. Often compared to John le Carr?, Cumming here emerges from his shadow in a thriller that has everything you could ask for ? a twisty, sexy plot, topical themes, memorable characters and plentiful spy lore.? John Dugdale