Simon Trewin

Read The Spectator’s great review of Venetia Thompson’s wonderful memoir GROSS MISCONDUCT – My Year Of Excess In the City here . Lucy Beresford says,’ Thompson writes as she lives: fearlessly and with admirable energy’. Indeed.

Congratulation to Jeremy Dyson whose collection of short stories THE CRANES THAT BUILT THE CRANES has been long-listed for the prestigious Edgehill University’s Short Story Prize 2010.  

The entries are as follows:

• Regi Claire – Fighting It (Two Ravens Press), David Constantine – The Sheiling (Comma Press), Jeremy Dyson – The Cranes that Build Cranes (Little Brown), Jane Feaver – with Love Me Tender (Random House), Patrick Gale – Gentleman’s Relish (Harper Collins), Sian Hughes – The Beach Hut (Biscuit Publishing), Mark Illis – Tender (Salt Publishing).
• A.L. Kennedy – What Becomes (Jonathan Cape), Tom Lee – Greenfly (Harvill Secker).
• Michael J Farrel – Life in the Universe (The Stinging Fly), Ben Moor – More Trees To Climb (Portobello), Nuala Ní Chonchúir – Nude (Salt Publishing). Philip O Ceallaigh – The Pleasant Light of Day (Penguin), Robert Shearman – Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical(Big Finish).
• Charles Stross – Wireless (Little Brown), Craig Taylor – One Million Tiny Plays About Britain (Bloomsbury), Douglas Thompson – Ultrameta (Eibonvale Press) and Simon Van Booy – Love Begins in Winter (Beautiful Books).

The shortlist will be revealed on 8^th May and the winners announced at an awards ceremony in July at Charing Cross Blackwell Store in London.

Niamh Greene – the bestselling author of the Demented Housewife series and Letters to a Love Rat has a new novel Rules for a Perfect Life out in June 2010. She has started a wonderful new blog and you really should be following it here. Chocolate, hips, shopping bags, writer’s block and two goldfish called Pixie and Lily – all human life is here.

You can also follow her on twitter here

Congratulations to Claire Kilroy and John Boyne whose novels TENDERWIRE and THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS respectively have been shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Book Of the Decade. 

‘‘The start of perhaps the most exciting and original historical series this year.’ –The Bookseller

In the fifty years between 1757 and 1815, Britain lost an empire, won another and emerged from the epic Napoleonic wars as the greatest power the world had ever seen.

Grant Sutherland will be signing copies of his epic new novel, The Cobras of Calcutta, at the following bookstores on Saturday April 24th -

12-1pm Chepstow Books 13 St Mary Street, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, NP16 5EW

2-3pm Rossiter Books, The Corn Exchange, 7 The High Street, Ross-on-Wye Herefordshire, HR9 5HL

Historian Kate Williams’ debut novel THE PLEASURES OF MEN has generated huge interest worldwide in the week since it went on submission. Simon Trewin at United Agents submitted the manuscript at 4.45pm on Wednesday 25th and it was acquired in a major pre-empt at 9.30am the next day by Mari Evans at Michael Joseph/Penguin and by Mondadori (Italy) and Mouria (Holland) on the following Monday. The US auction was concluded by Zoe Pagnamenta 48 hours later with Elisabeth Dyssegaard at Hyperion winning the rights in a major deal. Canadian rights were pre-empted on the same day by Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada. Auctions in multiple territories are now underway.

THE PLEASURES OF MEN is set in 1840’s London and has, at its core, the sexual, obsessive underworld of murder, body-snatching, wrong science and torment that the Victorians tried to hide. Catherine Sorgeiul, nineteen years old and nervous of life, becomes preoccupied by a series of terrible murders of young girls sweeping London.. Details of the crimes are especially grim – the bodies have their limbs grotesquely folded behind them, their chests are slashed open and a twopenny coin rests on their bleeding hearts. Their hair has been newly-plaited, servered and thrust into their mouths and the serial killer is soon nick-named The Birdman. As the stench of murder reaches nearer her home Catherine realises that she has involved herself in a web of betrayal, deceit and terror that threatens her very being and the lives of those around her.

Kate Williams said, ‘In 2007, I visited a house in Princelet Street, Spitalfields, and I was suddenly absorbed in a new voice – that of Catherine, and her obsessions with murder. I began taking long walks around the East End, and the story became all absorbing. I went to live in Paris, and there, alone in a city I did not know, Catherine and her desires took me over.This past week has been a whirlwind. I am utterly delighted to be published by Michael Joseph, Hyperion and Harper Collins Canada. Simon, Zoe and Jessica have been incredible on the book’s behalf’.

Mari Evans/Fiction Publisher/Michael Joseph ‘Fiction debuts that make your spine tingle and keep you reading through the night – literally in this case – are all too rare, but Kate’s novel is distinctive in so many ways: from its riveting depiction of the dark underbelly of London’s East End in the 19th Century to its chilling plot, reminiscent of the best fin-de-siecle literature such as Shelley’s Frankenstein. Or in the beauty of the writing and the absolute commerciality of the tale Kate has chosen to tell through the mouthpiece of an unforgettable heroine. Stunning and exciting.’

Elisabeth Dyssegaard/Editor in Chief/Hyperion said ‘The Pleasures of Men is a fabulous debut –gripping, atmospheric, and informed throughout by her strong history background. It will be a publishing event’

Iris Tupholme/Editor in Chief HarperCollins Canada said ‘Kate Williams has brilliantly evoked the dark, strange and seductive world of Victorian London with its elaborate and restrictive courting
rituals, fascination with death and bizarre science. Compulsive reading for those who loved  Perfume, The Crimson Petal and the White and The Historian. I started it in the evening and was amazed to see the bright sun outside when I finally looked up hours later. Unforgettable’