Leah Woodburn at Headline has pre-empted UK and Commonwealth Rights in three novels by my debut author Julia Crouch.
The first, Cuckoo, is to be published in summer 2011 and is the haunting story of a young couple whose perfectly constructed lives begin to fall dramatically apart from the moment an old friend comes to stay.
Woodburn said ‘it’s a deliciously unsettling and twisty psychological drama that had me utterly gripped from the start. It’s the kind of novel that gets right under your skin, in the best kind of way, and I’m thrilled to be publishing it.’
Julia Crouch started out as a theatre director and playwright. Then she moved into graphic and website design and she now writes full time in a shed at the bottom of her garden. She lives in Brighton with her husband, the actor and playwright Tim Crouch, and their three children.
She said ‘I am very excited about being signed by Headline. Their great commitment to my work has allowed me to make the move into full time writing. It is a dream come true for me.’
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 8th 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.
A shortlist of 50 of the best Irish books published between 2000 and 2010 was selected by a panel of industry experts and the winning title will be chosen by public poll. The accompanying promotion will be running in Irish bookstores and libraries from April 14th – to May 31st. Voting closes on May 28th. You can read full details and vote here.
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‘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.
But no empire comes about by accident. The spread of British power was fuelled by the ambition and zeal of a host of larger-than-life personalities. But while history records the actions of those who chose familiar public paths to make their mark, others who served under a necessary cloak of silence have left no memorials. There were men who gave their whole lives to these hidden struggles.
At the centre of these machinations lay one secret institution: the Decipherers – the code breakers, the interceptors of letters and messages, the analysers of intelligence – constantly locked in silent deadly combat with the Cabinet Noir, the Black Chamber, the secret agency of Britain’s greatest enemy, France. Working tirelessly with the Decipherers was a small number of trusted agents whose secret trade carried by neccessity into the deepest conflicts of empire and Alistair Douglas was one of them…
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
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