There is a big
resurgence of interest in fabric pattern and design, and there are few patterns
more evocative and intricate than the seats of a tube train! A charming new
book from Safe Haven celebrates all the London Transport patterns and I
think this delightful hardback could do extremely well. In the Thirties top
artists like Paul Nash and Enid Marx were commissioned to design patterns;
nowadays every underground and overground line like gets its own unique,
colour-co-ordinated moquette pattern. Seats of
London, A Field Guide to London Transport Moquette Patterns (£12.99,
pb, 978 1916045316) by Andrew Martin is
published in conjunction with the London Transport Museum, which has the
definitive archive. There’s just been a great feature on the Londonist
website on the book where you can browse through the patterns – that’s here
– and I urge you to order this fascinating guide which I think will be an
ideal gift book for either nerdy transport fans, or Insta-conscious design-obsessed
millennials!
Beaches, marshes, mangroves, cliffs,
deserts, forests, bays, deltas and estuaries; coastlines take many different
forms. Now a handsome new book from Amber celebrates the world's most stunning
shores, with a series of gorgeous photographs capturing the beauty of remote
tropical islands, volcanic peninsulas and windswept beaches with captions
explaining the story behind each entry. You can see the photographs here
in
this terrific article which is just up on the Mail Online. Coast (hb, £19.99, 978 1782748984) by David Ross was
published this week by Amber.
Rather than being seen as a data-driven
machine, a school should be viewed as a place that enables children to develop
thoughtful perspectives on the world, through which they can pursue wisdom and
be free to join in with the ancient and continuing conversation about what is
it to be human. A brilliant new title Athena Versus
the Machine by Martin Robinson (978
1785833021, £14.99, pb) examines how we can construct a curriculum that will
allow liberal education to flourish. Anti-gimmick and pro-wisdom, the
principles that he advocates will make a big difference to teachers and pupils’
lives, and will help to ensure that our young adults are better educated. It’s out
on 4 October from Crown.
“On an overstretched earth,
sustainability is sacred and the elderly are made to feel as if they have
overstayed their welcome. Gripping, fast-moving and tightly plotted, Overdrawn
imagines a future in which we can no longer afford the luxury of old age.”
So said one reviewer of Overdrawn (£8.99,
pb, 978 1789550221) by N.J. Crosskey and
it had a brilliant review here
today
in the Daily Mail who said “Crosskey paints a terrifying and
profoundly upsetting portrait of a future in which the ‘snowflake’ generation
is being culled by euthanasia. This compelling page-turner is so disturbingly
real, I can’t stop thinking about it.” There’s a month-long Insta tour – all
the details of which you can see below. It’s just out from Legend.
This week sees the publication of Alice Jennings’ SORTED!
Essential Systems for Successful Small Businesses (£14.99, pb, 978 1788600996) and there has been
coverage in Female First magazine: Top tips to get your tech working
for you, that’s here
and it also featured in the Extraordinary
Business Book Club newsletter, in Home Business Magazine, and will
be featured on the Home Business podcast. Alice’s mission is to help
business owners make informed choices in the systems and tools they use by
giving them the information they need to confidently take their business to the
next level. Since starting her own small business, she has worked with over 200
business owners sharing simple tips that enable better working as well as
helping implement more complex systems to support growth and reduce stress. It’s
published by Practical Inspiration.
There was quite a bit of publicity for Lynda Clark, the ex-Waterstone’s bookseller
shortlisted for the 2019 BBC National Short
Story Award, you can read the piece in the Bookseller here.
and
she was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme. As well as
having her short story published in the anthology, Lynda’s debut novel Beyond Kidding (pb,
£8.99, 978 1912054848) will be published on 31 October by Fairlight. When Robert decides to impress at a job
interview by making up a son, he discovers that maintaining the lie is far
harder than he thought, so he invents a story that `Brodie' has been kidnapped.
After all, it's not like they're going to find the fake boy. But a few weeks
later, he receives a call to collect his non-existent son from the police
station, a boy who looks exactly like the picture he photoshopped... “This
is a remarkable debut, written with great warmth and wit. By turns devastating
and hilarious, it had me from the very start, and it didn't let me go” wrote
Sarah Jackson and I’m sure there will be more praise to come for this dark and
quirky debut.
Hannah Pearl won Simon and Schuster’s Books and the City #heatseeker short story competition in 2017 and is now about
to have her first novel a warm, light-hearted romance entitled Evie’s Little Black Book,
published by Choc Lit. This is a major achievement for anyone, but
especially so for Hannah, who suffers from ME, and whose writing has allowed her
to escape from the reality of feeling ill all the time. There’s been quite a
bit of publicity for this one, with a good article on Female
First,
some local press coverage with an interview on BBC Cambridge, an article
coming in ME.org and a review in Heat magazine
in October. If any bookseller would like a reading copy, then please email info@choc-lit.co.uk with Evie in the subject
line and your bookshop name and address.
There are now some more photos of the
customers, clients and colleagues at our fabulous party a couple of weeks ago to
celebrate Compass’s 21st birthday. Have a look here
to
see them!
And in this week’s Hot Topics, here's
an interesting report on how although there’s
been a welcome increase in BAME characters in children’s books; there has also
been an increase in sweeping generalisations, a disproportionately high number of
female characters named Jasmine for example. Here's how much Daniel Craig’s teeny tiny
James Bond swimming trunks sold for, and here's
an update on what Theresa May is doing these
days…
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@compassips.london
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