Cover Stories: Man Booker prize; sport autobiographies

It's rare for Penguin to have no titles in contention for the Man Booker prize - not a single book features on the 22-strong long-list from Viking or Hamish Hamilton, the group's literary imprints.

It's rare for Penguin to have no titles in contention for the Man Booker prize - not a single book features on the 22-strong long-list from Viking or Hamish Hamilton, the group's literary imprints. Neither can Random House flagships Cape and Secker & Warburg muster a single title, although stablemate Harvill has two, from Gail Jones and Nicholas Shakespeare. But Simon & Schuster's newish literary-fiction imprint, Scribner, manages three - by Neil Cross, Louise Dean and Sam North - in a coup for its editor, Ben Ball. On the other hand, the little guys have not been overlooked. Maia Press takes a Man Booker bow with Lewis Desoto's debut, A Blade of Grass. The publisher, set up by Maggie Hamand and Jane Havell, operates out of a former pub in Hackney and is named after the Greek goddess Maia, which means "midwife".

* No doubt publishers are rushing offers of book contracts to the Kent home of Kelly Holmes. Meanwhile, Paula Radcliffe will be busy writing the closing chapters of her autobiography, signed up by Simon & Schuster last year in the wake of her London Marathon run. Written with David Walsh, it will be a full life story, but its ending will inevitably be somewhat downbeat. Off the track, Orion this week publishes a memoir by horsewoman Pippa Funnell, who won both team and individual medals in Athens.