Shortlist

Picture the scene. It's 2015. For more than 30 years, I've been in law enforcement with the Military and Metropolitan Police. I've spent that time chasing the worst criminals, doing surveillance, bugging cars, and working every hour available.

Octavia Estelle Butler was named after two of the most important people in her life: her mother, Octavia Margaret Guy, and her grandmother, Estella. Her grandmother was an astonishing woman. She raised seven children on a plantation in Louisiana, chopping sugarcane, boiling laundry in hot cauldrons, and cooking and cleaning, not only for her family but for the white family that owned the land.  Read more

I thought I'd come to the wrong office: The entrance foyer to the publishing company was the color of a hospital waiting room in a second-tier city.  Read more

A poll conducted by the Publishers Association has found more than half of young readers credit BookTok, a subcommunity on the social media platform TikTok focused on books and literature, with helping them discover a passion for reading.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said she worries society is suffering from an "epidemic of self-censorship".

In a BBC lecture on freedom of speech, the writer said young people were growing up "afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong questions".