British and
Irish fairies have been around since 500 AD. But ever since the Cottingley
Fairy Hoax of 1917-21, their credibility and popularity have been in sharp
decline. However, with the new-found popularity of fantasy series such as Game
of Thrones, those wishing to be “away with the fairies” is on the increase
once more, and British fairies are regaining their old lustre. Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies by Dr Simon Young and Dr
Ceri Houlbrook (hb, 9781783341238,
£16.99) is the first major history of the tiny folk in almost half a century
and as the Herald wrote recently, is “a big insight into the lives of
little people… provocative.” This handsome hardback has just been published
by Gibson Square, and has already had some extremely good review
coverage, with the Mail on Sunday calling it “enchanting” the Independent
calling it “a gazetteer of myths, legends, and sightings” and the Sunday
Telegraph describing it as “engaging and authoritative… British fairies,
it turns out, are classic eccentrics.” It contains black and white
illustrations, is 300 pages and has a gorgeous evocative cover – the ideal
browse on a cold winter’s night!
The
Cottingley Fairies are probably the most famous example – but who’d like to see
some others? Here are
the Top Five “real” fairies caught on camera! This is a very entertaining
five-minute film – but I’m afraid it does seem to be narrated by an alien – or
possibly Siri.
The Book of Tbilisi (pb, £9.99, 978 1910974315) was published by Comma Press right at
the end of last year – so you may have missed it. It was named as one of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2017
– you can read about all of the titles chosen here. In the 26 years since Georgia declared
independence from the Soviet Union, the country and its capital, Tbilisi, have
endured unimaginable hardships: one coup d'état, two wars with Russia, the
cancer of organised crime, and prolonged periods of brutalising, economic
depression. Now, as the city begins to flourish again – drawing hordes of tourists
with its eclectic architecture and famous, welcoming spirit – it's difficult to
reconcile the recent past with this glamorous and exotic present. With wit,
warmth, heartbreaking realism, and a distinctly Georgian sense of
neighbourliness, the ten stories in The Book of
Tbilisi do just that. This new
collection of translated stories is part of Comma’s very popular Reading the City series
which already includes Tokyo (978
1905583577), Gaza (978 1905583645), Dhaka (978 1905583805) and Khartoum (978 1905583720). Coming in February is The Book of Havana (978 1910974018) – which I’ll
tell you more about next week!
Food and
Sex: two appetites the modern world stimulates, but also the ones we are
expected to keep under control. But what happens when we don't? Embarking on an
affair, lonely wife and mother Naomi blossoms sexually in a false spring while
David, the fattest boy at the local comprehensive and best friend of her son,
struggles to overcome bullying and the apathy of his divorced mother. Appetite (£8.99, pb, 978 1910453476) by Anita Cassidy is an
exciting debut novel which has just been published Red Door; it’s
featured in this week’s Bella magazine and there is a feature on Anita
coming up in the Guardian. Tipped as one of the Bookseller’s One to Watch in 2018 titles, Appetite is a pacy, thought-provoking novel
making a potent statement against Big Food, Big Pharma, Government and the
school system, as well as our 'sofa-box-set-take-away' culture. First
written as a novel about food and sex, Appetite evolved
into a book about love. It is about how people manage their relationships with
food, and sex, and other people, and how to take that first step towards
change, by becoming more self-aware. Great cover!
I am so
pleased to say that Mya Guarnieri Jaradat has been shortlisted for the £4,000 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize for
her for her exploration of the lives of asylum seekers and migrant workers in The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others (£14.99, pb, 978 0745336442). This beautifully
written book, which draws on a decade of courageous and pioneering reporting,
captures the voices and the struggles of some of the most marginalised and
silenced people in Israel today. It is published by Pluto. The prize
shortlist, celebrating writing demonstrating the "depth and
diversity" of Jewish writing globally, comprises one novel, two
memoirs, a work of investigative journalism, a history and a biography and
you can read more about it in the Bookseller here.
The Great Siege of Malta is the subject of In Our Time on Radio 4 all
this week; and will be available as a podcast after that. Oxbow have the
definitive title on one of the most famous battles of the early modern world; The Great Siege of Malta: The Epic Battle between the Ottoman
Empire and the Knights of St. John by Bruce
Ware Allen (pb, £16.00, 978
15126-01169). Drawing on copious research and new source material, Allen stirringly recreates the two factions'
heroism and chivalry, while simultaneously tracing the barbarism, severity, and
indifference to suffering of sixteenth-century warfare. The Great Siege of Malta is
a fresh, vivid retelling of long hot summer of bloody combat, embroiling
knights and mercenaries, civilians and slaves, in a desperate struggle for this
pivotal point in the Mediterranean.
You’d think
it would be hard to confuse Randall Hansen’s Fire and Fury, a 2008
military history book with a second world war bomber on its cover, with Michael
Wolff’s No 1 bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,
whose jacket shows the US president mid-rant. Yet Hansen, a Canadian academic,
wryly revealed this week that the shared title had helped his 10-year-old study
to return to three of Amazon’s category bestseller lists. Hilarious! How
many other books have benefitted from a title mix-up? Well, titles as diverse
as Life After Life, WTF and Autumn have all sometimes been a bit
confused.com – you can read more about the muddles in this amusing Guardian piece
here!
Teeth are
often considered the marker of health, attractiveness, success, and even
happiness. Yet our approach to dental care has been fearful, costly, and
segregated from other parts of the body. We've long known that oral health
echoes our overall well-being. But what if we were to flip the paradigm? What
if we thought about dental health as the foundation for our physical health? Dr Steven Lin, the world's leading dental
nutritionist, has forged a new scientific outlook to reshape our perception of
dental disease. The Dental Diet: The Surprising Link
between Your Teeth, Real Food, and Life-Changing Natural Health (978 1401953171, hb, £20.50) has just been published
by Hay House and was recently featured in What Doctors Don’t Tell You,
Psychologies and also Health Triangle Magazine.
Anyone of a
certain (my) age may well find this book reminds you of a once very well-known
and much quoted poem by Pam Ayres – so here it is –
apparently, it’s now on the GCSE English syllabus!
On Boxing
Day, STORGY magazine reviewed M. John
Harrison's You Should Come With Me Now,
(pb, £8.99, 978 1910974346) calling it a “a collection of short stories that
were quite different and a joy to read. What I really enjoyed most about these
short stories is that Harrison leaves each one open to the interpretation of
the reader…plays on the mind long after reading, …really make you think out of
the box.” You can read that article here.
More rave reviews flooded in over the festive period with SF
CrowsNest describing M. John Harrison as “a writer in a league of his own” and CNET
making the collection one of their Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2017.
Lastly there was a superb review in The Scotsman who wrote that: “In
the far-distant future, when hyper-intelligent scorpions are looking back on
the culture of the upright apes that once cluttered this planet, I think they
will be frankly bemused that Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature,
that Ian McEwan won the Man Booker Prize, that Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer and
yet all the time M John Harrison was staring them in the face.” Wow – how can you
not want to read it after praise like that! It’s from Comma.
Who’s got a
New Year’s resolution to try and become a bit richer in 2018? And who could not
be tempted by this
story in the Mirror of two lads who quit their £9-an-hour job
labouring on building sites to sell rare coins online – and who now make up to
£70,000 a year! If this appeals to you – then you’re definitely going to need a
new title from Oxbow: A Beginners Guide to
Ancient Coins (£9.99, pb, 978 1907427657)! It’s published in the Spink
Books Living History series on 31 March. It could easily be the best ten
quid your customers ever spent – how about displaying it in your shop next to a
clipping of the news article! David Sear is the eminent numismatic (that’s my new word learned
for today then) in this field, and this is a really approachable and
informative introduction to the hobby. Ancient coins have long fascinated
generations of collectors by virtue of their beauty, the stories they tell, and
for the unique insight they give into the history of the time in which they
were made – they are, quite literally, living history. This guide gives a
general background to the fascinating world of ancient Greek and Roman coins,
looking back more than twenty-six centuries.
Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? Very good question indeed, and it was good to see the
2018 edition of this superb title by Ian Dunt at number 5 this week in the Non-fiction Top 10 in
the Foyles Politics and History department. Nick Cohen in the Spectator
said this was “highly recommended” and Caroline Lucas said called it “compact
and easily digestible. I would encourage anyone who is confused, fascinated or
frustrated by Brexit to read this book. You will be far wiser by the end of
it.” What is special about this book? It is both blunt and informative
– and it is based on extensive research with experts across the law,
trade and politics. Michael Gove may think that the British public has had
enough of experts, but Ian Dunt and Canbury Press disagree. This incisive and
important guide is for people who still believe in evidence and reason.
I
Great news
for two of our publishers whose titles have been shortlisted in the Fiction With a Sense of Place category in the highly prestigious 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards,
which celebrate the broad scope of travel writing. Six of the award's
categories are open to a public vote which, combined with the judges’ verdict,
will determine the 2018 winners. You can read more in the Bookseller here.
The winners will be announced at a dinner on 1st February 2018 during the
Holiday and Travel Show at Olympia. The winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year (receives £5,000 and all winners receive an
antique globe trophy, to be presented at the awards ceremony. The two titles are
Hummingbird (pb, £8.99, 978
0995994607) by Tristan Hughes which is published in paperback by Parthian in
March; and The Bureau of Second Chances (pb, £8.99, 978 1846973925) by Sheena Kalayil from
Polygon.
If there’s
one movement guaranteed to get even bigger throughout 2018 it’s gender
diversity. Of course, one of the top publishers for this is Jessica Kingsley,
and some of their books have had some excellent press coverage recently.
Firstly Fox Fisher and Owl were featured here
in the Indy’s 9 LGBT+ people who defined and
defied in 2017. They mentioned their forthcoming book too! Then the Metro
featured Charlie Craggs, Fox Fisher and Owl,
and Jane Fae in their Trans Power List 2017-18: top activists and influencers
– with a mention for Charlie’s book To My Trans Sisters (pb, £12.99,
978-1785923432). You can see the whole list here.
The Indy 100 listed 12 books that
will make you a better person in 2018 which included Juno Roche’s frank funny and poignant Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure
and Relationships (pb, £12.99, 978
1785924064) which is published in April – that one is here
and then finally, the Independent in its Review of the Year: The Female Groundbreakers of 2017 included Charlie Craggs,
again with a mention of the book here.
OK, it’s
Friday, it’s January, we really need a super fun quiz. Try this
one over on Buzzfeed to find out How Many Clues Do You Need To
See Before Guessing The Movie? For each question you'll see a screenshot
from a film. If you correctly name the movie from just the first screenshot
you'll score ten points – for each further screenshot you need to see, the
score for a correct answer will decrease by two points. And yep, the better you
do, the more of a film freak you are!
That’s all for now folks! More next week!
This
newsletter is sent weekly to over 700 booksellers as well as publishers and
publicists. If you would like to order any of the titles mentioned, then please
talk to your Compass Sales Manager, or call the office on 020 8326 5696.
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