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Voters across Ireland have chosen John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas as their all-time favourite of the 21 books which have won the annual Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award since the awards began in 1990!
The Bisto Ballot was launched in March 2011 to mark the 21st anniversary of the awards. A specially commissioned 21st anniversary exhibition documenting the history of the awards and each of the winning titles has been on tour for the past ten months, allowing people the length and breadth of the country to cast their votes.
Winner of the 2007 – or 18th – Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has sold more than five million copies worldwide since it was published in 2006, appeared on bestseller lists the world over and was made into a highly acclaimed feature film in 2008.
Responding to the news that his book had been selected as the nation’s favourite, John Boyne said:
“Considering the number of extraordinary books which have won the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year since 1991, I feel humbled and honoured that my novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has been selected by voters as their favourite winner. It’s a novel that I hoped would touch young readers and thanks in no small part to those people who are evangelical about the promotion of children’s literature – librarians, teachers, Children’s Books Ireland, and the advocates in the media – it reached a far wider audience than I ever imagined possible. I hope it proves that serious and complex subjects can and should be explored in children’s literature.”
Mike Gayle’s brilliantly unique new book is out today! watch the trailer here
The Stag and Hen Weekend is the story of Phil and Helen, a couple in their thirties about to commit their lives to one another . . . that is of course if they can just manage to get through their respective stag and hen weekends (his: Amsterdam; hers: a country house and day spa in the Peak District) without falling apart. Told in the unique form of two separate stories that have common characters as well as themes and conclusion, The Stag and Hen Weekend can be read from front to back or from back to front putting the reader in the driver’s seat as to which story they wish to read first. Feisty, fun and thought provoking.
Andrew Miller was awarded the Costa Book Award 2011 for his novel Pure, published by Sceptre, at the prize ceremony in London last night.
Pure has received much critical acclaim since hardback publication in 2011. “Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind. Pure is one” said the Telegraph; the Guardian called it “Gripping”; the Literary Review said it was “Superb”.
At the Costa awards ceremony, Chair of the judging panel Geordie Greig said: “Pure is a rich and evocative historical novel which engrosses with its vivid portrait of pre-revolutionary France,” describing the novel as a “memorable gothic tale of morality and mortality”.
Pure beat competition from Matthew Hollis’ biography category-winner Now All Roads Lead to France (Faber) and poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s The Bees (Picador).
Miller thanked agent Simon Trewin and Sceptre publisher Carole Welch, whom he called “the best editor in London”.
Congratulations to Kate Williams for the phenomenal set of reviews for her debut novel THE PLEASURES OF MEN. You can watch a video interview with her here
A wonderfully ripe, imaginative and gripping piece of Victorian pastiche, with a spider’s web of a plot and a spine-tingling atmosphere of menace and suspense (The Times )
Fans of Sarah Waters will love this (Good Housekeeping )
The Pleasures of Men shares with Wolf Hall an ambitious, challenging concern with form combined with a pitch-perfect historical ear . . . This intoxicating and disturbing novel is properly thrilling and extraordinarily well-written. Kate Williams is already an accomplished biographer; The Pleasures of Men shows a soaring talent let loose (Independent on Sunday )
A dark story of murder and obsession (Elle )
Catherine Sorgeuil’s obsession with a series of murders of young girls in London’s East End enmeshes her in deceit, betrayal and danger. A spine-tingling, seductive thriller (Woman and Home )
An intense, intelligent and hugely entertaining read (The Guardian )
Historian Kate Williams successfully makes the move from non-fiction, creating a society, and protagonist, on the brink of hysteria (Psychologies )
A sure-footed evocation of seamy Victorian London (Sunday Telegraph )
Part-bodice-ripper, part-slasher, the book’s elaborate plot moves along at a brisk clip with a nod to the likes of Sarah Waters and Peter Ackroyd (Daily Mail )
As crowded with sensation as a Victorian parlour with furniture (The Scotsman )
Not since Sarah Waters have I seen so much lesbian sex in a historical novel (Mariella Frostrup Radio 4 Open Book )
Williams creates an extraordinary world with unforgettable characters and a dark heart – highly recommended (The Bookseller )
An eerie murder mystery set in the corrupt heart of Victorian London (Marie Claire Good Book Club pick )
This is a fast-paced thriller written by an expert on all things Victorian. Fans of Sarah Waters and Michel Faber will revel in this charged and colourful Victorian epic (The Bookseller )
Congratulations to Andrew Martin for being on the shortlist of the Ellis Peters Historical Award for his novel THE SOMME STATIONS. The full announcement follows….
The Crime Writers’ Association has announced the shortlist for this year’s prestigious Ellis Peters Historical Award. The award is sponsored by the Estate of Ellis Peters, Headline Book Publishing Company and Little, Brown Book Group. It is given to the best historical crime novel (set in any period up to 35 years prior to the year in which the award will be made) by an author of any nationality, and commemorates the life and work of Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter) (1913-1995), a prolific author perhaps best known as the creator of Brother Cadfael.
CWA chair Peter James said: “Historical fiction remains as popular as ever and has seen the creation of some of crime writing’s most enduring characters. This year’s books continue that fine tradition.“The winner will be announced on November 30 at the Athenaeum in London. The shortlist is:
- Rory Clements, PRINCE: Rory Clements won the Ellis Peters award last year for Revenger, the second instalment in his John Shakespeare series. Prince is the third book to feature this Elizabethan intelligencer, and finds Shakespeare caught up in the infighting between the Queen’s rival favourites, Robert Cecil and Lord Essex, as he investigates a series of bombings targeting Dutch immigrants in London. There are some clever references to twenty-first-century concerns, as well as the wit and breakneck pace we have come to expect from Clements.
- Sam Eastland, THE RED COFFIN: Sam Eastland’s second novel sees the return of the brilliant special investigator Inspector Pekkala, once the trusted advisor of Tsar Nicholas II, now forced to work for Stalin. It is 1939 and rogue Russian soldiers are trying to precipitate war with Germany before Stalin’s secret weapon is ready– a super tank known as the “red coffin”. This manages to be a superbly entertaining thriller while fully conveying the horrors of life under Stalin.
- Gordon Ferris, THE HANGING SHED: The Hanging Shed was a massive success even before its print incarnation hit the bookshops, when it became one of the most downloaded books in Britain after being released on the Amazon Kindle. The setting is Glasgow in 1946, and the author’s delineation of the immediate post-war years has a bristling immediacy. Ferris’s protagonist Brodie is an ex-policeman, forced to save a childhood friend from hanging via a daunting odyssey through the dangerous backstreets of the Gorbals, obstructed by both bent coppers and murderous razor gangs.
- Andrew Martin, THE SOMME STATIONS: Martin’s novels featuring railway detective Jim Stringer reveal their treasures in subtle fashion with a winning synthesis of period atmosphere, intriguing plotting and a passion for steam railways. The Somme Station plunges into the horrors of WW1 trench combat. Stringer and his unit must undertake dangerous nocturnal assignments: driving the trains taking munitions to the front. Death is everywhere, as the trains travel through blasted surrealistic landscapes, and a single-minded military policeman continues to investigate a killing that occurred before the departure for France.
- RN Morris, THE CLEANSING FLAMES: Reading this splendid fourth entry in the RN Morris sequence of riffs on the detective Porfiry from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment is a bittersweet experience, as Morris is about to put the character on hold. In the new book, St Petersburg is in flames, and the fires are harbingers of the revolution that will tear the country apart. After a post-winter thaw, a body surfaces in a canal, and Porfiry is in business again. As before, character building, locale, and historical detail are all beautifully balanced.
- Imogen Robertson, ISLAND OF BONES: This is Imogen Robertson’s third novel to feature her wilful heroine Mrs Harriet Westerman and gives us some background to her sleuthing sidekick, the eccentric and reclusive amateur anatomist Gabriel Crowther, as the duo head to the Lake District to investigate when one corpse too many is found in the ancestral tomb at Gabriel’s family seat. Robertson expertly juggles family politics, murder mystery and kidnap thriller, while giving a fascinating picture of country life in the late 18th century.