TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill on Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award longlist

We are delighted that TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill has been longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.

The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award was established in 1954, making it the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and, except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden, the oldest literary prize in Britain. Past winners include Gail Honeyman, Jackie Kay and the late Gilbert Adair, also a Blake Friedmann client.

The other titles on this year’s longlist are: TO FILL A YELLOW HOUSE by Sussie Anie, THE DICTATOR’S WIFE by Freya Berry, MY NAME IS YIP by Paddy Crewe, EDGWARE ROAD by Yasmin Cordery-Khan, LITTLE BOXES by Cecilia Knapp, WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, BLACK BUTTERFLIES by Priscilla Morris, I’M A FAN by Sheena Patel, MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER’S DAUGHTER by Lizzie Pook, THE WHALEBONE THEATRE by Joanna Quinn and NO COUNTRY FOR GIRLS by Emma Styles.

Lucy Popescu, the chair of the judging panel, said: ‘We are delighted to announce our longlist of 12 debut novelists tackling a fascinating diversity of subjects. These compelling novels explore art and privilege, war, loss, blackmail and theft as well as love, desire, obsession and the pursuit of power. We visit several UK locations and are transported to the American frontier, Australia, Trinidad, Eastern Europe and the siege of Sarajevo.’

The shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on 20 March, with the winner being revealed at the National Liberal Club on 24 May.

TIEPOLO BLUE follows the unravelling of revered art historian Donald Lamb. Freed from the constraints of academia, it looks like the anarchic contemporary art scene of 1990s London might be his salvation, but he soon suffers an earth-shattering fall from grace that leaves him questioning everyone and everything.

TIEPOLO BLUE was published in hardback by Sceptre in June 2022 to great acclaim. It attracted widespread praise, including from Patrick Gale and Stephen Fry (the latter describing it as ‘The best novel I have read for ages’), and was also included in the BBC’s and Times Literary Supplement’s ‘Best of 2022’ lists. It will be published in paperback on 27 April 2023.

James is currently writing his second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, which will be published in hardback by Sceptre in Summer 2024. Set in New York, London and Switzerland, the novel reveals the secret history of a reclusive artist, a monomaniacal collector, and the art dealer caught between them.

Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE

‘The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill. The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence – except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously’ – Edmund White

‘The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read… There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.’ – Stephen Fry

‘Imagine if Hollinghurst and Murdoch collaborated on a witty update of DEATH IN VENICE and you'll see the appeal of James Cahill's assured debut.’ – Patrick Gale

‘The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst’s THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY.’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

‘Beautifully captures disorientation, tenderness and heat without tipping into excess…an electric new novel written by an author skilled in the evocation of vertiginous, heightened emotion.’ – Michael Donkor, The Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’

‘The plot is propulsive, though the crafted ambience of unease simultaneously destabilizes the reader at every turn. The prose is fluid and precise but the tone equivocal, bathos merging into pathos, tragedy into farce and back again… Oscar Wilde’s paradoxes – about the relationship between art and life, illusion and reality, true and false selves – lie half submerged throughout this bravura debut, but so does the vulnerability of Thomas Mann’s Gustav von Aschenbach… It is the moments when rawness and confusion burst to the surface that prevent this witty yet unnerving book from being too clever.’ – Lucasta Miller, Times Literary Supplement

About James Cahill

Picture Credit: Darren Wheeler

James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery.

His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.

He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London.

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THE HYACINTH GIRL by Lyndall Gordon longlisted for 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Lyndall Gordon’s ground-breaking biography THE HYACINTH GIRL: T. S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse has been longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.

The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography was established in 2008 by Rodman L. Drake and awards excellence in biography writing. The winning title is considered by the judges to be a work of ‘exceptional literary, narrative, and artistic merit, based on scrupulous research’, with previous winners including the likes of Amy Stanley’s STRANGER IN THE SHOGUN’S CITY and LOOKING FOR LORRAINE by Imani Perry.

The finalists for the 2023 award will be announced in early February and the winner revealed at the annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony at New York’s Town Hall on the 2nd of March. The other shortlisted titles for the 2023 award are as follows: AN AMERICAN MARTYR IN PERSIA: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville by Reza Aslan, CIVIL RIGHTS QUEEN: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin, DILLA TIME: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas, THE ADVENTURES OF HERBIE COHEN by Rich Cohen, G-MAN: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage, GURU TO THE WORLD: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda by Ruth Harris, MR. B: George Balachine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans, THE POPE AT WAR: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer, and SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy.

Drawing on the dramatic new material of the only recently unsealed 1,131 letters, THE HYACINTH GIRL casts new light on T. S. Eliot’s life and great poetry, and restores a quiet, talented woman to prominence in literary history.

Virago published the hardback edition of THE HYACINTH GIRL in the UK in October last year, while the American edition was published by W. W. Norton in November. It has received enormous acclaim – from fellow biographers as well as readers and critics – and was highlighted by many publications as being one of the best non-fiction titles of the year. The UK paperback edition will be published in August 2023.

Lyndall also recently appeared in a BBC documentary about Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, which forms part of programming across BBC television and radio designed to celebrate the centenary of the publication of the celebrated poem. You can read more about the documentary here. Lyndall is one of the luminaries appearing at the T.S .Eliot Summer School in the UK, 8-16 July 2023.

Photo credit: Nina Hollington

About Lyndall Gordon

A much-celebrated biographer, Lyndall Gordon lives in Oxford. Her ability to make the subjects of her biographies come vividly to life has won her many literary awards, including the Cheltenham Prize and the James Tait Black prize. She has also been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Comisso Prize in Italy for her Emily Dickinson biography LIVE LIKE LOADED GUNS.

Her previous biographical work on T. S. Eliot – two biographies, ELIOT’S EARLY YEARS and ELIOT’S NEW LIFE, incorporated into an updated edition, THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT – won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and Southern Arts prize. THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. Eliot was also selected by the New York Public Library as one of 25 ‘Books to Remember’ from 2000 and by the Independent on Sunday as one of the ‘30 best biographies of the twentieth century’. Translator Xu Xiaofan won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for her translation of THE IMPERFECT LIFE OF T. S. ELIOT, published in China by Shanghai Literature and Art.

Praise for THE HYACINTH GIRL

‘Exemplary… revealed that the great man’s poetry was a lot less impersonal than he led us to believe.’ – Lucasta Miller, The Spectator, ‘Books of the Year’

 ‘A number of good books have marked the centenary of “The Waste Land”… but, for me, the most brilliant and incisive new book on Eliot is Lyndall Gordon’s The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot’s Hidden Muse, which looks at Eliot’s poetry in the light of his recently opened correspondence with Emily Hale.’ – Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, ‘Best Books of the Year’

‘Lyndall Gordon’s sensitive study of Emily Hale, Eliot’s childhood sweetheart in America’ – Iona McLaren, The Telegraph, ‘Best Biographies of 2022’

 ‘Gordon does an admirable job navigating the ambiguities of the tangled situations she chronicles; she is respectful of complications, of emotional messiness, of unusual attachments. She patiently evokes the intricacy and singularity of each intimate relationship. There is a human richness to Eliot’s cerebral poetry that we can appreciate more in the context of his knotted emotional life, and Gordon’s art is in drawing this out. She is also adept at mapping Eliot’s well-known religious and spiritual yearnings onto the sexual and emotional struggles that fed his beliefs. This is delicate and tricky work, if one is not overly reductive, and Gordon allows the reader to live with Eliot’s conflicts and contradictions. She is not interested in reducing or bludgeoning the mystery of his words, but in exploring layers and resonances.’ – Katie Roiphe, The New York Times

 ‘Exquisitely nuanced’ – Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

‘Lyndall Gordon is the first biographer to uncover the life of T.S. Eliot’s hidden muse, the inspiration of one of his greatest works of poetry …This is a work that will change the way that Eliot is seen.’ – Miranda Seymour, author of I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE: THE HAUNTED LIFE OF JEAN RHYS

‘There is no finer guide into the mind of T.S. Eliot than Lyndall Gordon. Drawing upon Eliot’s newly unsealed letters to Emily Hale, THE HYACINTH GIRL reimagines one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth century… Thanks to Gordon’s meticulous research and inspired storytelling, we will never read these poems the same way again: It turns out that the great poet of ‘impersonality’ was baring his soul all along. Emily Hale, too, finally gets her due in this brilliant and revelatory work from one of our greatest biographers.’ – Heather Clark, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist RED COMET: THE SHORT LIFE AND BLAZING ART OF SYLVIA PLATH

Visit Lyndall’s website.

OXBLOOD by Tom Benn and CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet longlisted for Gordon Burn Prize

We are delighted that OXBLOOD by Tom Benn and CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet have been longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, selected by judges Jonathan Liew, Denise Mina, Stuart Maconie, Heather Phillipson and Chitra Ramaswamy.

Also longlisted are Free by Lea Ypi, Companion Piece by Ali Smith, Your Show by Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser, About A Son by David Whitehouse, Aftermath by Preti Taneja, Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson, Keeping the House by Tice Cin, The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers and Wayward by Vashti Bunyan.

Founded in 2012, the Gordon Burn Prize covers both fiction and non-fiction, and seeks to award works that push boundaries, cross genres or otherwise challenge readers’ expectations. It remembers the Newcastle-born writer Gordon Burn, a journalist and author of 10 books including Alma Cogan and Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son. Past winners include A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib, This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsey, For The Good Times by David Keenan, The Long Drop by Denise Mina and In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies.

The 2022 shortlist will be announced in August. The winner will be announced at Durham Book Festival on Thursday 13 October 2022. The winner will receive a £5,000 award and a three-month retreat at Gordon Burn’s cottage in the Scottish borders.

OXBLOOD by Tom Benn

‘One of the most powerful and urgent writers of our times.’ — David Peace      

‘Powerful and so beautifully written – like David Peace wrote Alan Warner’s The Sopranos and so lyrical, too.’ – Harriet Tyce     

‘Reading OXBLOOD is a compelling and deeply unsettling experience; this is a novel that glitters with the dark energy and lifeblood of its characters’ – Naomi Booth

*

Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985.

The Dodds family once ruled Manchester’s underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby.

Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly’s return from prison.

Her grieving daughter-in-law Carol is visited by both the welcome intimate ghost of her murdered lover, and by Mac, an ageing criminal enforcer, a man who may just offer her a real and possible future.

And then there is Jan—the teenage tearaway running as fast as she can from her mother, her grandmother and her own unnamed baby.

Over the course of a few days, the Dodds women must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives, and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good.

A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief and the extraordinary power of love.

About Tom Benn

Tom Benn is an author, screenwriter and lecturer from Stockport, England. His first novel, THE DOLL PRINCESS (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger, and a The Daily Mirror Book of the Week. His other novels are CHAMBER MUSIC (Cape) and TROUBLE MAN (Cape). He won runner-up prize in the 2019 International Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, and his creative nonfiction has appeared in The Paris Review Daily. He won the BFI’s iWrite scheme for emerging screenwriters. His first film, ‘Real Gods Require Blood’, premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival.

Follow Tom Benn on Twitter

CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet

‘A novel of mind-bending brilliance.’ – Hannah Kent

‘A thrilling investigation into sanity and identity.’ – Alice O’Keeffe, The Bookseller

‘Fun and funny, sly and serious, a beguiling literary game that manages to say more about the nature of the self than any number of more self-consciously solemn works.’ – David Szalay

*

I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.

London, 1965. An unworldly young woman suspects charismatic psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite of involvement in a death in her family. Determined to find out more, she becomes a client of his under a false identity. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything.

In CASE STUDY, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents both sides: the woman’s notes and the life of Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling, page-turning and wickedly humorous meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.

About Graeme Macrae Burnet

Graeme Macrae Burnet was brought up Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London. He has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Ireland, Germany and France, as well as in the UK.

His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017.

HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Awards. It has been published to great acclaim around the world and film rights have been optioned by Synchronicity.

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THE LAST THING TO BURN by Will Dean makes The Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2022 longlist

We are delighted that Will Dean’s highly acclaimed thriller, THE LAST THING TO BURN,  has been longlisted for The Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2022. 

Now in its sixth year, the Glass Bell Award celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction, regardless of genre. The other titles longlisted for this year’s prize include: TALL BONES by Anna Bailey, MRS MARCH by Virginia Feito, THE WOLF DEN  by Elodie Harper, THE OTHER BLACK GIRL by Zakiya Dalila Harris, SISTERSONG by Lucy Holland, THE PROPHETS  by Robert Jones Jr, THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS by Ruth Ozeki, ARIADNE by Jennifer Saint, DAUGHTERS OF NIGHT by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, THREADNEEDLE by Cari Thomas and WE ARE ALL BIRDS OF UGANDA by Hafsa Zayyan.

David Headley, Goldsboro Books co-founder and MD, and founder of the Glass Bell, says: ‘Every year, we are chomping at the bit to get together and discuss our favourite books published in the previous year; and 2022 was no exception. Once again, the longlist is incredibly exciting and without one weak link. Every year, the judging process gets more difficult as the standard of publishing continues to grow - this year might be our trickiest yet.’

The shortlist of six will be announced on 28th July, with the winner revealed on 8th September.

THE LAST THING TO BURN is an extraordinary story of resilience and determination in the most chilling of circumstances. As well as winning praise from both readers and reviewers, THE LAST THING TO BURN has been longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and  Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, as well as voted International Book of the Year by the Rick O’Shea Book Club.  It was first published by Hodder Books in January 2021, and is now available to buy in paperback.

Will’s most recent standalone, FIRST BORN, was published by Hodder on 14th April 2022. He is also the author of the Tuva Moodyson Mysteries, a crime series set in Sweden and published by Oneworld. The fifth instalment, WOLF PACK, will be published later this year.

Praise for THE LAST THING TO BURN:

‘This is a brilliant, chilling depiction of life on the very edges of society. I read it in one sitting, and lived every second of the book with the characters. Compelling, horrifying and gripping, and written with such empathy and control, it's probably the best thing I will read this year’ — Jane Casey

‘MISERY meets ROOM ... a triumph’ — Marian Keyes

‘Ratchets up the tension to the point where I had to check my pulse’ — Liz Nugent

‘Brilliantly written... Terrifying’ — Ruth Ware

‘Outstanding. The best thriller in years’ — Martina Cole

‘THE LAST THING TO BURN is one of the best thrillers I have read in years: I consumed it in great gulps, desperate to find out how Thanh Dao’s story played out, and then read it again, more slowly, savouring her courage and her unvanquished sense of self, despite everything.’ — Alison Flood, Observer

Credit: Rosalind Hobley

About Will Dean:

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying law at the LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it's from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.

Follow Will on Twitter and Instagram, and visit his YouTube channel.

MAY GOD FORGIVE by Alan Parks longlisted for 2022 McIlvanney Prize

We’re delighted that MAY GOD FORGIVE by Edgar Award-winning author Alan Parks has been longlisted for the Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2022.

The McIlvanney Prize is Bloody Scotland’s annual prize awarded to the best Scottish crime book of the year and aims to raise the profile and prestige of the genre as a whole.

Also longlisted this year are:  A MATTER OF TIME by Claire Askew, THE SOUND OF SIRENS by Ewan Gault, THE BLOOD TIDE by Neil Lancaster, FROM THE ASHES by Deborah Masson, THE HERETIC by Liam McIlvanney, RIZZIO by Denise Mina, A CORRUPTION OF BLOOD by Ambrose Parry, A RATTLE OF BONES by Douglas Skelton and THE SECOND CUT by Louise Welsh.

Bob McDevitt, Director of Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, said:

‘I'm so pleased to see such an excellent longlist of books in the running for this year's McIlvanney prize. Police procedurals dominate this year, set all around Scotland and from the 1970s to the present day, along with a few striking historical novels (set before the 1970s!) and some contemporary Glasgow noir. Once again, the judges have their work cut out for them!’

The shortlist for the McIlvanney Prize will be revealed at the beginning of September, with the winner announced in Stirling on Thursday 15th September.

MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth in the highly acclaimed Harry McCoy series and was published in the UK by Canongate in April, and in the US by Europa in May.

Rights to the series have been sold in more than ten countries around the world and have also been optioned for television. The fourth book in the series, THE APRIL DEAD, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize in 2021. The third book, BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER, recently won the Best Paperback Original category at the 2022 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards.

MAY GOD FORGIVE by Alan Parks

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser's has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high.

When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go.

Detective Harry McCoy has twenty-four hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead, and it is going to mean taking down some of Glasgow's most powerful people to do it…

Praise for MAY GOD FORGIVE

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth instalment in a remarkable series that began with BLOODY JANUARY. The novels, as someone once said, can be read in any order; the important thing is to read them all.’ – Mark Sanderson, The Times

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is a bleak and violent book, full of grisly details not for the squeamish, but also tenderness, poignance and hard-earned wisdom.’ – Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

‘Enjoyably readable… Parks is a gifted story-teller’ – Allan Massie, The Scotsman

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is crime fiction which pulls no punches, powerfully told and, at times, heartbreakingly poignant. One of the crime novels of 2022.’ – Mike Ripley, Getting Away With Murder

About Alan Parks

Alan Parks was Creative Director at London Records in the mid 1990’s, then at Warner Music, where he created ground-breaking campaigns for artists including All Saints, New Order, The Streets, Gnarls Barclay and Cee Lo Green. He was also Managing Director of 679 Recordings, a joint venture with Warner Music. His debut novel BLOODY JANUARY propelled him onto the international literary crime fiction scene immediately and his work has been hailed by contemporary writers and critics alike.

BLOODY JANUARY was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, FEBRUARY’S SON was nominated for an Edgar Award, BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER was picked as a Times Best Book of the Year and THE APRIL DEAD was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year.

Alan was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in Moral Philosophy. He still lives and works in the city that is so vividly depicted in the 1970s setting of his Harry McCoy thrillers.

Follow Alan on Twitter

Visit Alan’s website