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The Times/Chicken House 2024 longlist is here!

Thank you to everyone who entered our competition. As always, the standard of entries is incredibly high and our readers are continually blown away by the imagination and talent of authors – it’s been a tough job to narrow down to the final nineteen.

This year the longlist is split between 8 middle-grade and 11 YA manuscripts. There are chilling thrills, murders, monsters and dragons, but also football, families and heartful friendships. A bit of everything!

So, drumroll please, here is the 2024 longlist:

• All Your Numbered Bones by Sarah Bates
• A Celestial Family by Meena Mistry
• Chance and the Seventh Son by Anna Hattersley
• Dragon. Fly! by Debbie Nuttall
• Earth Elite by Alan Joyce
• James Doug: Monster Hunter by Anthony Barletta
• The Pieces of Eight by Kirsty Little
• Pippa Strella: A haunting on Hemlock Lake by David Bellwood
• Sin Queen by Kristy Gillespie
• Stay and Watch Me Die by Amanda Poll
• The Corner Shop on Apocalypse Street by Tommy Finlayson
• The Guide to Catching Sun Thieves by Maya Kaddah
• The Night Veil by Sara Lilley
• The Oversharers by Caitlin Taylor
• The Seven by Jennifer Combes
• The Tithe That Binds Us by Arlen Ren
• The Wandering by Melissa Catena
• When Mina Murray met Drake Stoker by Marisa Noella
• You Have Selected Power Drive by Lucas Maxwell

Massive congratulations to our talented longlisted authors. We can’t wait to find out which five of these stories will reach our shortlist – and which will win our two prizes of publication! We hope to announce the shortlist here on our website and across our social media channels early September, so watch this space for more news…