The Kitschies are awarded to novels containing elements of the speculative and fantastic. Now in its sixth year, there are four categories and the winners receive a total of £2,500 in prize money, as well as one of the prize’s Tentacle trophies. The Kitschies’ 2014 finalists were selected from 198 submissions, from over 40 publishers and imprints. The winners will be announced on the 4^th March.

The Golden Tentacle category for best debut-

• Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
• The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne
• Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta
• The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

This year a self-published novel – Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small – has made the shortlist too.

The Red Tentacle award for best novel

• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
• Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
• The Peripheral by William Gibson
• The Way Inn by Will Wiles
• The Race by Nina Allen

The Inky Tentacle award for cover art –

• The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin, design by Steve Marking
• A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar, cover by Ben Summers
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, cover by Emily Carroll and Sonja Chaghatzbanian
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, cover by Rafaela Romaya & Yehring Tong
• Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, cover by Glenn O’Neill

The final award is the Invisible Tentacle for natively digital fiction. The shortlist is made up of  Twitter fiction @echovirus12, curated by Jeff Noon (@jeffnoon), Ed (@3dgriffiths), James Knight (@badbadpoet), violet sprite (@gadgetgreen), Richard Biddle (@littledeaths68), Mina Polen (@polen), Uel Aramchek (@ThePatanoiac), Graham Walsh (@t_i_s_u), and Vapour Vox (@Wrong_Triangle); Kentucky Route Zero, Act III, by Cardboard Computer; 80 Days, by Inkle Studios; and Sailor’s Dream by Simogo.