COSTA 2008 SHORTLISTS ANNOUNCED

Four male novelists have been nominated for the Novel category shortlist at this year's Costa Book Awards, after last year's all-female list.

Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture (Faber); Chris Cleave's The Other Hand (Sceptre); Louis de Bernieres' A Partisan's Daughter (Harvill Secker); and Patrick McGrath's Trauma (Bloomsbury) have all been selected.

Nonagenarian Diana Athill has been nominated for the biography prize, vying against debut author Sathnam Sanghera, while Orange-shortlisted The Outcast by Sadie Jones is up for First Novel.

The other shortlists:

Costa First Novel Award

Poppy Adams' The Behaviour of Moths (Virago)

Sadie Jones' The Outcast (Chatto & Windus)J

Jenny Rooney's Inside the Whale (Chatto & Windus)

Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 (Simon & Schuster).

Costa Biography Award

Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards The End (Granta)

Judith Mackrell's Bloomsbury Ballerina (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Sathnam Sanghera's If You Don't Know Me By Now (Viking)

Jackie Wullschlager's Chagall (Allen Lane)

Costa Poetry Award

Ciaran Carson's For All We Know (Gallery Books)

Adam Foulds' The Broken Word (Jonathan Cape)

Kathryn Simmonds' Sunday at the Skin Launderette (Seren)

Greta Stoddart's Salvation Jane (Anvil Press)

Costa Children's Book Award

Keith Gray's Ostrich Boys (Definitions)

Saci Lloyd's The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Hodder Children's Books)

Michelle Magorian's Just Henry (Egmont Press)

Jenny Valentine's Broken Soup (HarperCollins Children's Books)

A record 616 titles were entered this year. A prize of £5,000 will be awarded to each of the five category winners, who will be announced on 6th January 2009. The overall winner of the Costa Book of the Year will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards Ceremony on the 27th January, and will win £25,000.