I’m excited to
tell you that The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns has been chosen as a BBC Radio 2 Book Club
pick and will be featured on the Jo Whiley Show on 19 August. There will
also be a review in the August edition of Cosmopolitan and a confirmed
feature in You magazine plus there is a major book blog tour for this
title. This is a powerful and heartbreaking literary novel set against the
backdrop of post-World War II Japan. Inspired by true stories, The Woman in the White Kimono begins in Japan in 1957. and illuminates a searing
portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart. It then moves to
present day America, and another woman on a journey to discover the secret that
has rippled across generations and a cultural divide. The Toronto Star
said it “weaves together past and present in wonderful ways …
richly-researched, moving and cinematic in feel.” It’s published on 15 July
by Legend.
Simon
Wren-Lewis believes the last decade in the UK has
been shaped by three big lies in which the mainstream media were complicit. The
first was austerity, the second was the 2015 election; where the slowest
recovery for centuries and falling wages were sold as a strong economy; and the
third was Brexit. He explores this in The Lies We
were Told (pb, £14.99, 978
1529202137) which has been was a bestseller for Policy Press. Professor Wren-Lewis explored the phenomena behind
these lies recently in a special public lecture with around 300 attendees and
if you weren’t one of them, then you can watch the lecture online here.
And if you think this important and relevant title would do well in your
shop, but would like to read it first – well, good news, you can! Policy
Press have sixteen proof copies to give away and if you email georgie.aldridge@bristol.ac.uk
with your name and bookshop address and The Lies We
Were Told in the subject line, then
she will send you one!
“On
Thursday July 7th 2005, four bombs were detonated in London killing 52 people and
injuring a further 700. It was the first successful suicide bomb attack on
British soil
and the
biggest terrorist atrocity since the 1988 Lockerbie bomb. The four suicide
bombers were named as Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Germaine Lindsay
and Hasib Hussain, 18, from Leeds. Hasib Hussain was my son.” My Son The
7/7 Suicide Bomber: A Father’s Anguish (£9.95, pb, 978 1909360679) by
Mahmood Hussain is
published by Empire/Gazelle on 8 July. All proceeds are being donated to
Victim Support. Mahmood Hussain was a
hardworking Pakistani immigrant who had lived and worked in Leeds for almost thirty
years by the time of the bombing. He was as astonished as anyone else that his
son had was one of the bombers and reveals that it was his amateur detective
work that helped the police to track down the terror cell of which his son had
been a part. Here he tells the story of Hasib's upbringing and the facts behind
many misreported aspects of his brief life. He has written the book “with a
strong belief in peace, justice and caring for humanity”. There has been
plenty of press coverage for this one with articles in the
Sun, the
Metro, the
Daily Mail and the
Star. And of course, there will be more coverage next week on the
anniversary of the bombing.
We've all been
there. The happy family dinner that suddenly turns into a full-fledged argument,
the difficulty of discussing politics on a first date. Today's divisive climate
and the seemingly never-ending circus of Brexit has made discussion of current
events uncomfortable and increasingly angry. So, how exactly do we find ways to
reach across the aisle to those whose views we find unpalatable? I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics (pb, £8.99, 978 1785905049) by psychotherapist and
lifetime liberal Jeanne Safer is part relationship guide, part anthropological
study. Above all it is a helpful and entertaining how-to for anyone who has
felt they are walking on eggshells in these increasingly uncertain times! It’s
published next week by Biteback and if you’d like to bag yourself a
reading copy before you place a (large) order for your bookshop, then please email
ashley.biles@bitebackpublishing.com.
Give him your name and the name of your bookshop, put I Love You in the subject
Line and the first two booksellers to email will get one!
On Monday 29th
of July at 9pm, BBC 2 will broadcast a documentary called Breaking
into the Elite, featuring the authors of The
Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to Be Privileged (978
1447336068, £19.99, hb) Sam Friedman and Daniel
Laurison as part of a season on
class. Friedman and Laurison show that a powerful ‘class pay gap’ exists in
Britain’s elite occupations, and that even when those from working-class backgrounds
make it into prestigious jobs, they earn less than colleagues from privileged
backgrounds. This ambitious and important title has already had quite a bit of
publicity, you can see articles in the Guardian here and here, in the Times, the Mail and the National. And if you want to be part of the solution
rather than part of the problem, then have a look at Ten Ways to Break the
Class Ceiling on the Policy Press blog here!
Alicia
Eaton’s Stop Bedwetting in Seven Days: 10th Anniversary Edition (pb, £12.99, 978 1788601115) is
published on 15 August This best-selling book is an easy-to-read guide for
parents, using the latest thinking from the fields of positive psychology, NLP
and hypnotherapy to help children overcome bedwetting more easily – there’s a
six week publicity campaign coming on its launch date and if you’d like to see
a copy then Practical Inspiration have some to give away! The first
three booksellers to email Judith@practicalinspirationpublishing.com
with their name and bookshop address and Stop Bedwetting in the subject
line will get one!
A poem from Zohar Atkins’ Nineveh (pb,
£9.99, 978 1784107390) was the Guardian Poem of the Week and you can
read it here.
Carol Rumens wrote “The poems in Nineveh
take ancient clay and sculpt vigorously innovative shapes: how very refreshing
to plunge into a collection which re-thinks historical Jewish religion and
culture with such subversive, witty originality. 'Revelatory' is not too strong
a word.” It has just been published by Carcanet.
The
Claim by David
Briggs (978 1910453735, £9.99, pb) is
a moving and accomplished new novel full of lust and intrigue set in the world
of gold panning in remote and beautiful rural New Zealand. Longlisted for the NZ Michael Gifkins Prize, Briggs is an
emerging new and unique literary voice and this is a stunning book about love,
loss and companionship that will shimmer under the surface of your thoughts for
months to come. It’s published by Red Door on 11 July, and to publicise
it they have five copies to give away to the first booksellers who email their
name and bookshop address with I Claim The Claim in the subject line to anna@reddoorpublishing.com.
There have
been some fab reviews for Lina Wolff’s The Polyglot Lovers (£10,
pb, 978 1911508441). The Guardian Review called it “A highly
enjoyable absurdist comedy about love and desperation,” the Spectator,
coined the phrase “Feminism for the Fleabag generation” and went on to
say “The Polyglot Lovers' blithe disregard for social norms and finer
feelings is exhilarating; it’s pitiless and scathingly funny” and the TLS
commented “The Polyglot Lovers is a quiet rapture unsparing, startling,
mesmeric, and told with the soberest of grins.” And this week there was a great
piece in the Financial Times’ Summer Books round-up saying "The
Swedish author of Bret Easton Ellis and Other Dogs enjoys nothing more than
savaging the myths of male authorship. Here she lays into notions of male
genius, as her protagonist, Ellinor, finds herself entangled with a literary
critic who is fixated on a narcissistic author who is in turn obsessed with
real-life enfant terrible of French letters, Michel Houellebecq." You
can see the whole piece here.
Zena
Cooper was born with Marfan Syndrome, a
connective tissue disorder which affects the heart, eyes, and bodily systems. It
meant she is nearly completely blind, yet she kept this condition hidden from
the world for four decades, until she met Munch. A guide dog with a huge
personality, Munch made Zena's invisible disability suddenly plain for all the
world to see. This book shares the story of Zena's journey with Munch, who
helped find the strength to find her place in the world and see the wonder in
living a different kind of life. What You See When
You Can't See: How Blindness Helped One Woman Discover the True Beauty of Life
(978 1788173193, £10.99, pb) is coming on 24 September from Hay House
and they have ten reading copies of this inspiring story to give away. If you
would like one then please email rachaelhegarty@hayhouse.co.uk
with your name, the name of your bookshop and What You See in the
subject line.
Jack
Straw (who was Foreign Secretary for five
years) was on the Today programme last Monday talking about the
developing US/Iran crises. His book, The English Job:
Understanding Iran and Why It Distrusts Britain (978 1785903991, hb, £20) could not be more relevant
in these turbulent times and is published on 11 July by Biteback. This
book seeks to illuminate Britain's difficult relationship with Iran, and in
doing so provide a better understanding of this extraordinary country. William
Hague wrote “For decades, British Foreign Secretaries have wrestled with the
great challenges of dealing successfully with Iranian leaders. Jack Straw has gone
beyond that to develop the rich understanding of the country's culture,
psychology and history revealed in this book.”
Jonathan
Wittenberg’s short
story from the excellent Refugee Tales III (£9.99, pb, 978 1912697113) which is published by Comma
next week was in the Guardian this week, you can read that here.
You can see Alex Preston's piece in the Observer last weekend
mentioning Refugee Tales III here.
Congrats to Polygon who have three titles nominated for the McIlvanney Prize this year. This is Bloody
Scotland’s annual prize which provides Scottish crime writing with recognition
and aims to raise the profile and prestige of the genre as a whole. On the
shortlist for Best Debut is Black Camp 21 (£8.99,
pb, 978 1846974601) which Lee Child called “excellent...highly recommended"
and two titles are longlisted for the Scottish
Crime Book of the Year: A Breath on Dying
Embers (£8.99, pb, 978 1846974755) and
Thunder Bay (£8.99, pb, 978 1846974731). The
winners are announced in September – and you can find out more about the prize here.
Who wishes
they were going to be at Glastonbury this weekend listening to the Killers in
the sunshine? Me, me, me. Have fun, any of you lucky booksellers that are there
right now! And for the rest of us, who can ace this Mr
Brightside lyrics quiz?
That’s
all folks, more next week!
This weekly
blog is written for the UK book trade. If you would like to order any of the
titles mentioned, then please talk to your Compass Sales Manager, or call the
Compass office on 020 8326 5696. Every Friday an e-newsletter containing
highlights from the blog is sent out to over 700 booksellers and if you’d like
to receive this then please contact nuala@compass-ips.london
