Orion dominates £10,000 Thumping Good Read Award shortlist

Orion dominates the seven-strong shortlist for W H Smith's Thumping Good Read Award with two titles up for the £10,000 prize. 

Orion stablemates Twisted by Steve Cavanagh and The Lido by Libby Page are shortlisted alongside The Passengers by John Marrs (Ebury) and Judgement by Joseph Finder (Head of Zeus). Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton (Bloomsbury), A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (Egmont) and Wrecker by Noel O’Reilly (HQ) are also in the running. 

All seven titles will be available in W H Smith High Street stores and readers are invited to vote for their favourite book to choose the overall winner of this year’s award. Readers will be able to get involved by voting for their favourite title on social media using the hashtag #ThumpingGoodRead.

Along with readers’ votes, judges will also be responsible for half the vote in choosing this year’s winner. Author Peter James returns to the judging panel for 2019 alongside last year’s Thumping Good Read winner Laura Purcell, who won the award with her debut novel The Silent Companions (Bloomsbury).

"It was such an honour to be named last year's winner. I'm delighted to be returning to Thumping Good Read in 2019 as a judge of this stellar shortlist. Readers have got some real treats ahead of them," said Purcell. 

James added: "The title says it all: Thumping Good Read. Isn’t that what all fiction should be? A book that grips, spellbinds and enriches the reader. A book that for a brief time becomes our constant companion, that one thing we most look forward to, a craving to curl up, open the pages and read on. A book that when we've finished leaves us lost, bereft and hungry to search out anything else that author has written. That’s how I’ve felt about all of these books and to have to select just one winner is going to be a tough task. To me they are all winners."