Baillie Gifford Prize longlist 2017

The £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize (formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize) is the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing. It covers all non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

This year’s longlist has recently been announced. Here is the longlist in full:

• Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
• The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
• How to Survive A Plague by David France
• Plot 29 by Allan Jenkins
• Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
• I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad by Soaud Mekhennet
• An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
• A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rosselis and the Fight Against Mussolini by Caroline Moorehead
• To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell
• The Story of The Jews: Belonging by Simon Schama
• Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow

Chair of Judges, Sir Peter Bazalgette, says: ‘We’re really excited about this longlist. We’ve got history, science, biography, polemic and memoir. But two things link them all – they’re wonderfully well-written and they’re really contemporary.’

The shortlist will be announced on 6 October, and the winner will be announced on 16 November. The winner will receive £30,000 and each of the shortlisted authors will receive £1,000. Find out more about the Baillie Gifford prize here.

2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award Winner

Josephine Wilson has been named the winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award for her second novel, Extinctions!

Humorous and poignant, Extinctions is a story about all kinds of extinction – natural, racial, national and personal – and what we can do to prevent them.

The Miles Franklin judges say Extinctions is a ‘compassionate and unapologetically intelligent novel that explores ageing, adoption, grief and remorse, empathy and self-centredness’.

Award-winning author Charlotte Wood also praised this novel’s ‘cool intelligent wit and piercingly observant examination of ageing, time, interracial adoption, family, aesthetics and engineering’. She said: ‘Just when you think you know what this book is, it gives you the slip and surprises you again.’

First awarded in 1957, the Miles Franklin Literary Award is presented annually to a novel of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases. As the winner, Wilson will receive $60,000 in prize money.

You can find out more about the Miles Franklin Literary Award here.

Ned Kelly Awards winners 2017

Congratulations to the 2017 winners of the Ned Kelly Awards for the best in Australian crime writing.

Best Fiction

Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty

Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty is the newest installment in his popular detective series set in 1980s Belfast. In this novel, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy heads down his most dangerous road yet. Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs and with his relationship on the rocks, he will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.

Best first fiction

The Dry by Jane Harper

Jane Harper’s debut novel follows federal police officer Aaron Falk as he returns to his rural hometown to investigate an apparent murder-suicide, that might be more than it seems. The Dry was one of our best sellers last year.

Best true crime

2017 has seen two books named as co-winners in the true crime category.

Getting Away With Murder by Duncan McNab

Around 80 men died or disappeared in NSW from the late 70s to early 90s during an epidemic of gay-hate crimes. Getting Away With Murder is the story of this time in Australian history.

The Drowned Man by Brendan James Murray

The Drowned Man by Brendan James Murray is a true story of life, death and murder on HMAS Australia, and search for answers.

Love Your Book Shop Day - August 12 2017

This Saturday August 12 is annual Love Your Book Shop Day. Pop in to Oscar & Friends Double Bay or Surry Hills for a chocolate or lolly to make your browsing a little sweeter in this early Spring weather. At Surry Hills, we will offer our early browsers a slice of chocolate mud cake hand made by our friends at Lixie Chocolaterie a few doors up the road. And at Double Bay, Barb and Jeremy will be offering FREE PATS to any dog you bring into the store (and chocolates and balloons to any humanoids). Happy love of books, and shops, and shops that sell books day!

2017 Man Booker Prize Longlist

Oscar & Friends are very excited about this year's Man Booker Prize Longlist. Natalie's hankering to read Home Fire, which is not due to be released in Australia until September 7, while Pip's money is behind Days Without End, Ali Smith's Autumn was one of Will's favourite books of 2016, and Oscar & Friends blow-in, Paul, has tipped Solar Bones to win. Come and badger us with your own opinions on who the winner will be, to make the wait more interesting! 

2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award Finalists

the finalists for the 2017 Miles Franklin Literary Award are:
• AN ISOLATED INCIDENT by Emily Maguire (Pac Macmillan Australia)
• THE LAST DAYS OF AVA LANGDON by Mark O’Flynn (University of Queensland Press)
• THEIR BRILLIANT CAREERS by Ryan O’Neill (Black Inc)
• WAITING by Philip Salom (Puncher & Wattmann)
• EXTINCTIONS by Josephine Wilson (UWA Publishing)