Sean Hughes, Tony Hawks

Both comedians have enjoyed considerable success with their books. Hughes follows The Detainees with another brutally funny and harrowing novel about a man called Shea who finds his father hanging from a light-fitting on Boxing Day and sets out to find what could possibly have cast so dark a cloud over his family's happy Blairite lives. Hawks' new travel story Playing the Maldovans at Tennis is the result of another dodgy wager with Arthur Smith. It's a comic masterpiee, now shortlisted for the first Everyman Wodehouse Award.