Thrilling Shortlist

The Whitbread Prize is now renamed the Costa Prize after the coffee chain that took it over from the brewery, and has announced its first shortlist under that name. Here are the finalists in the fiction category:

William Boyd -Restless
Neil Griffiths - Saving Caravaggio
Mark Haddon - A Spot of Bother
David Mitchell -Black Swan Green

and in the First Novel category:

Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night
Marilyn Heward Mills - Cloth Girl
Stef Penney -The Tenderness of Wolves
James Scudamore -The Amnesia Clinic

(You can read a synopsis of all the shortlisted titles on Costa's website.)

John Ezard notes that the shift in sponsorship seems to have lead to a shift in taste in favour of the thriller:

Two of the four books picked for the novels shortlist released last night for the inaugural £50,000 Costa award are marketed by their publishers as "gripping", "tremendously exciting", "gritty" and "thrilling". ... One of the four books in the first novel category, The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, is "a story of betrayal and treachery" ending in a "thrilling revelation".

I know that will be just my friend Krishna's cup of coffee.