The shorlist for the Branford Boase has been announced.The award is presented annually for the most promising first novel to a first-time writer of a book for young people. At the same time, it marks the important contribution of the editor in identifying and nurturing new talent. The books are:

GIDEON THE CUTPURSE by Linda Buckley-Archer, edited by Venetia Gosling, Simon & Schuster

A SWIFT PURE CRY by Siobhan Dowd, edited and published by David Fickling

STONEHEART by Charlie Fletcher, edited by Anne McNeil, published by Hodder

BEAST by Ally Kennen, edited by Marion Lloyd, published by Marion Lloyd/Scholastic

THE AWFUL TALE OF AGATHA BILKE  by Sian Pattenden, edited by Aurea Carpenter, published by Short Books

YOU'RE A BAD MAN, MR GUM by Andy Stanton, edited by Leah Thaxton, published by Egmont

NOTE OF MADNESS by Tabitha Suzuma, edited by Charlie Sheppard, published by Random House

Chair of the judges, Julia Eccleshare said: “Currently, new talent is all around us. The Branford Boase Award has an excellent record in spotting the authors with a glittering future and propelling them on their way. Our fledglings have gone on to achieve even greater things.”

The judging panel included Nicolette Jones, writer and critic, Claudia Mody, fiction buyer for Waterstones, Annie Everall of Derbyshire Libraries and Frances Hardinge, who won last year for her debut novel, Fly by Night.

THE AWFUL TALE OF AGATHA BILKE

Most girls are lovely. They put fancy ribbons in their hair, they collect kittens, they sing about helping hungry people (even the greedy ones). And then there's Agatha Bilke. Agatha is a pyromaniac - that's a girl who likes setting fire to things. She is mean and selfish and bent on causing harm. Her parents despair of her. They send her to the TreadQuietly Clinic for Interesting Children, a wacky boot camp where she meets other problem kids - Paul who's afraid of toast, Brenda who can't stop shouting, Miriam who thinks a meteorite is about to drop on her head. But none of them are prepared for Agatha - least of all the people in charge, the bumbling Humphrey doctors, who seem powerless to stop her in her bid for destruction.

A SWIFT PURE CRY

After Shell's mother dies, her obsessively religious father descends into alcoholic mourning and Shell is left to care for her younger brother and sister. Her only release from the harshness of everyday life comes from her budding spiritual friendship with a naive young priest, and most importantly, her developing relationship with childhood friend, Declan, charming, eloquent and persuasive. But when Declan suddenly leaves Ireland to seek his fortune in America, Shell finds herself pregnant and the centre of a scandal that rocks the small community in which she lives, with repercussions across the whole country. The lives of those immediately around her will never be the same again.

BEAST

In the depths of a reservoir lives a monstrous creature. Its existence is unknown to anyone except the teenage boy who feeds it. Six years ago it was a vicious little baby. Now it has grown huge, and its rusting cage can't hold it much longer...Stephen is a boy with many secrets, and the Beast is the biggest. His life in foster care, always bad, is getting worse, and he's in trouble with the police. All the odds are against him finding a decent place in the world, but his efforts to free himself of the Beast make him a hero that readers will never forget.

GIDEON THE CUTPURSE

An encounter with an anti-gravity machine catapults Peter Schock and Kate Dyer back to the 18th century and sets in motion a calamitous chain of events. While a massive police hunt gets underway to find the missing children in the 21st century - in 1763, a hardened criminal, the Tar Man, steals the anti-gravity machine and disappears into the London underworld. Stranded in another time and forced to chase the Tar Man to his lair, Peter and Kate find a friend and guide in reformed cutpurse, Gideon Seymour. Gideon does every thing he can to help them, but will his dark past catch up with him before the machine is recovered?

STONHEART

Deep in the City something had been woken, so old that people had been walking past it for centuries without giving it a second look!' When George breaks the dragon's head outside the Natural History Museum he awakes an ancient power. This prehistoric beast, sentry-still for centuries, hunts him down with a terrifying wrath. And this is just the beginning! The taints and spits -- statues with opposing natures -- are warring forces; wreaking deadly havoc on the city landscape. The World War One gunner offers protection of sorts; and the wisdom of the Sphinx is legendary. But George and his companion Edie are trapped in a world of danger. And worse -- they are quite alone. The rest of London is oblivious to their plight. This epic adventure exposes forces long-layered in the fabric of London. After entering its richly original and breathtaking world, the city streets and skyline will never again seem the same!

YOU'RE A BAD MAN, MR GUM

Mr Gum is a truly nasty old man. He's absolutely grimsters. But this book is not just about him. There is also a little girl called Polly, an evil butcher, heroes and sweets and stuff, and Jake the dog, who must be saved from terrible, terrible evil.