Cover Stories: Jonathan Littell; Inside the Jihad; Jo Lloyd; Katie Price

*No surprises at the Prix Goncourt in Paris, where France's premier literary award went to Jonathan Littell's sensationally long (and lurid) wartime epic Les Bienveillantes. Littell, the Barcelona-based Francophone American (and son of thriller king Robert), didn't turn up for the bash. We'll see The Kindly Ones from Chatto in 2008, but it would be nice to have British interest in this week's second big Paris prizewinner. The Congo-born Alain Mabanckou, a gifted and prolific voice out of French Africa, won the Renaudot for his fable-like Memoirs of a Porcupine.

*With the al-Qa'ida-linked Dhiren Barot now jailed, next week's release by Basic Books of a portrait of life in Afghan training camps is timely indeed. Inside the Jihad is by "Omar Nasiri", who spent the 1990s in Europe's terrorist underground, and in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Eventually, he became a spy. Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, describes it as "chillingly detailed".

*Given the sluggish celebrity market, editors are reviving an old trend: the blockbuster. Having watched Tasmina Perry enjoy success with Daddy's Girl, a Shirley Conran-esque retro romp for HarperCollins, Transworld has snapped up Platinum, a solo outing by Jo Lloyd (who formerly teamed up with Emlyn Rees), set in a world of "luxury yachts, Russian billionaires and Hollywood escorts". Transworld won't confirm a price rumoured to be in excess of £500,000.

*Katie "Jordan" Price's success is largely responsible for publishers' headlong dash into celebrity. Random House is anxious to keep her happy, and now she wants to write a children's book. So Random editors need to find a ghost - but no one has yet found the terms attractive enough to sign up for the task.