THE choice of short-listed titles for this year’s Irish Book Awards features an extraordinary mix of authors and the outcome should be extraordinary too, because, for the first time, the public can vote for their favourite books.

THE book which last year claimed a senior politician, an airline pilot and a nun had admitted to taking cocaine has been shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.

PAUL McGrath, John Boyne, Patrick McCabe and Paul Howard, aka Ross O’Carroll Kelly, were among the winners at the prestigious Irish Book Awards 2007 announced at a glittering ceremony in Trinity College last night.