Compass Points 11

Compass Points 11

Your weekly round up of publishing news, publicity information and trivia!

Wow, it’s great to start with a big bestseller! Sunshine on Scotland Street is at number nine in the Hardback Fiction chart on the Sunday Times Bestseller list this week! Alexander McCall Smith has sell-out appearances at the Edinburgh Book Festival coming up, as well a major interview in The Guardian and a piece on the author as performer for Chanel 4 news, so the book could rise even higher in the charts! Congratulations Sandy!

Order the book here

Have the Olympics inspired you to get out into the world a bit more – and visit some of the far flung countries that the athletes are representing? Hands up if anyone actually knows where Azerbaijan or Burkina Faso are? And who knows where the Winter Olympics in 2012 will be held? Well I can tell you – Russia. Which gives me a nice link to tell you about a new title from a bestselling series that’s coming out in October – City-Pick St Petersburg. The City-Lit and City-Pick books are published by Oxygen Books, and give you all the sights, sounds and flavours of city life in a collection of perfect gems of city writing. Already the series has taken us to the hearts of New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dublin, Amsterdam and Venice and the St Petersburg title is already attracting media attention – The Bookseller made it a non-fiction highlight, and the book will feature at the Manchester Literary Festival and  launch at Waterstone’s Piccadilly. The book includes writing from Helen Dunmore, J.M Coetzee and Malcolm Bradbury as well as Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Times said of this series  ‘Superb … it’s like having your own iPad loaded with different tomes’ All the City-Lit books have been Amazon UK Top Ten city bestsellers – don’t let Amazon grab all the sales for this new one! Visit the City-Lit Café here - a great website with info on the books and lots of cool info on the cities as well!

 And find out more about City-Pick St Petersburg here.

And while we’re on the subject of Russia – who has heard of thriller writer Anna Starobinets? Well, The Telegraph said “she has been compared with a host of literary greats, including Edgar Allan Poe and George Orwell, Ray Bradbury and HG Wells’” She is a Russian journalist and internationally published author who was nominated for Russia’s prestigious National Bestseller Prize. You can find out more by reading the Telegraph article here. Now Hesperus, the champion of intelligent, bestselling translated fiction bring us The Living. After a global catastrophe called the Great Reduction, the number of people living on Earth has become fixed, remaining a constant three billion. The concept of death no longer exists (yes yes, I know it sounds like Torchwood – but read on). Instead people are reborn anywhere on the planet with an in-code that keeps track of information about all their previous incarnations. Humankind is no longer made up of individuals – people are only particles making up one composite organism called The Living. These particles live happily and die happily, according to a government-determined schedule. Yet… there is one man born without an in-code - a spare human being. His birth increases the number of The Living by one, which threatens global harmony. Who is ‘Zero’ and how will The Living survive? This truly enthralling, disturbing and unique anti-utopian fantasy novel that will have the reader gripped from page one – and if you’d like to read the first chapter then please email Pat@compass-dsa.co.uk to request one! It's published in October - find out more here.

Now I like a bit of futuristic dystopia as much as the next person – but sometimes you just need a laugh. Here's a link to some hilarious cartoons by Tony Husband. I Nearly Died Laughing (which features his characters The Yobs) by Tony Husband is published in September and Marc Riley of 6Music said of Tony that ‘Over the last 30 years, it’s safe to say he’s made me laugh out loud more than anybody else… he comes from a dark, twisted place.’ And this latest book of cartoons will not disappoint. Tony has created cartoons for many leading publications, including The Spectator, Private Eye, The Times and Punch. His Yobs strip (Private Eye) is one of the best-known comic strips in the UK and, at 25 years, one of the longest running. The book has an intro by Stephen Fry –order it here!

Naked horseback riding. Being on a carousel for 24 hours. Fighting a bear. Leaving home. Illicit sex. If you stay Here this is just some of the things you’ll do. The Elsewhere series brings together some of the finest names writing today such as Michael Morpurgo, Joan Lindgard, Julia Donaldson, Roddy Doyle and Al Kennedy, to tell us through fiction and essays, tales of the real, the unreal, the known,  the unknown, the fantastical and the unbelievable. The series is quirky, saleable and the books are originally and beautifully packaged. There are four titles in the series: Here, There, Somewhere and Elsewhere, and they’re also available as a boxed set. The £7.99 price point is amazing value – big names, lovely looking books, a great price - what more do you need!

Here

There

Somewhere

Elsewhere

The complete boxed set of four titles

And finally – the latest in the eBooks versus real books debate. Like them or loathe them, estimates suggest over two million Kindles have been sold in the UK over the last three years. The Kindle e-reader has become one of the most iconic objects of our contemporary culture. But what happens when a Kindle dies? 101 Uses of a Dead Kindle shows the many imaginative, irreverent and often downright bizarre ways your dead Kindle can live on! It’s hilarious, weird and highly imaginative! The book should appeal to the vast range of Kindle owners and their friends across the UK and taps into the popularity of the 80s cult classic 101 Uses of a Dead Cat. It’s sure to become a must have gift for Kindle owners everywhere! Find out more about the book here!

This newsletter is sent weekly to over 400 booksellers. If you would like to order any of the titles mentioned, then please click here to go to the Compass New Titles Website.

Compass Points is now off on holiday - back in a fortnight!