Nibbies shortlists announced

The shortlists for the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards have just been announced. The awards are also known as the Nibbies and the category winners will be revealed by Richard and Judy on April 9th at a ceremony at Grosvenor House in London.

It's a wide and varied list this year and we’re thrilled to see so many of the shortlisted books are available as audio downloads. The shortlisted titles and authors are:

Reader’s Digest Author of the Year

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Khaled Hosseini
• Doris Lessing
• Ian McEwan
• David Peace

Tesco Biography of the Year Award

• Agent Zigzag by Ben MacIntyre
• The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell
• My Booky Wook by Russell Brand
• On The Edge by Richard Hammond
• Spilling the Beans by Clarissa Dickson-Wright

Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year Award

• Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
• Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell
• The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
• Exit Music by Ian Rankin
• The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid

Waterstone’s Newcomer of the Year Award

• The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award

• The Ghost by Robert Harris
• An Absolute Scandal by Penny Vincenzi
• The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
  
  Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award
• Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson
• A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr
• Don't Stop Me Now by Jeremy Clarkson
• Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman
• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

Richard and Judy’s Best Read of the Year

• Blood River by Tim Butcher
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• A Quiet Belief in Angels by R J Ellory
• The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
• Notes From an Exhibition by Patrick Gale
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• The Visible World by Mark Slouka
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
• Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann

WH Smith Children’s Book of the Year

• Kiss by Jacqueline Wilson
• Born to Run by Michael Morpurgo
• That's Not My Penguin by Fiona Watt
• My Pony Care Book by Katie Price
• Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman by Francesca Simon

Julie Murphy, Online Editor

See The Welsh Girl on Richard & Judy today

The final episode of Richard & Judy’s book club airs today and as expected all 10 books featured this year have gone on to become instant bestsellers.

Viewers will now have the chance to vote for their favourite book from the list with the winner receiving the coveted Richard & Judy's Best Read Award at The British Book Awards on 9th April.

If, like me, you are at work on Wednesdays at 5pm and missed the Book Club programmes, you can catch the Richard & Judy interviews on the British Book Awards website.

The final book to feature on this year’s show is The Welsh Girl, the booker longlisted first novel by Peter Ho Davies. The novel is set in Wales in 1944. A German Jewish refugee is sent to interview Rudolf Hess; in Snowdonia a 17 year-old girl, the daughter of a fiercely nationalistic shepherd, dreams of the bright lights of an English city; and in a nearby POW camp, a German soldier struggles to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honour. As their lives intersect, all three will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie.

For a list of all the Richard & Judy Book Club choices available as downloads go here.

Mister Pip features on Richard and Judy today

Richard and Judy's Book Club will today feature Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. This novel makes a wonderful audiobook, particularly as it contains so many references to reading stories aloud, and it is read brilliantly by Flinty Williams.

Since we last spoke about this year’s Richard and Judy list we have managed to get more of the titles in the collection.

The books on this year's list that we now have are:

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon
• A Quiet Belief in Angels by R J Ellroy
• The Visible World by Mark Slouka
• Blood River by Tim Butcher
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

We are still missing three books on the list: Notes from an Exhibition, Then We Came to the End and Random Acts of Heroic Love. Hopefully we’ll get these to Audible some time soon!

To see a list of all the Richard & Judy Book Club choices that are available to download from Audible go here.

Richard and Judy's Book Club

Richard & Judy have announced the ten books that will appear on this year’s book club. Publishers can now look forward to ‘the Richard and Judy effect’ as they know that those authors who are included in this list will go on to become overnight bestsellers. Novels that have benefited in previous years include Audrey Niffenegger's The Time-Traveler's Wife and Kate Mosse's Labyrinth.

The books on this year's list are:

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
• Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann
• The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon
• A Quiet Belief in Angels by R J Ellroy
• Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale
• The Visible World by Mark Slouka
• Blood River by Tim Butcher
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

Two of the books on this year’s list are already available as audio downloads: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, also set in Afghanistan; and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip, which was shortlisted for 2007's Man Booker prize, and won the Commonwealth Writers' book of the year award. We will be working hard over the next few weeks to bring the rest of this list to Audible.

The first episode of 2008's Book Club will be shown on 9th January. Viewers then vote for their favourite book and the winner earns the title of Richard and Judy's Best Read at the Galaxy British Book Awards in April.

To see a list of all the Richard & Judy books that are available to download from Audible go here.