Compass Points 132

A lovely bright and sunny day here at Compass Towers, so naturally that leads me to thoughts of despondent depressing music – yep, that’s right, I must be talking about those miserable Mancunians, The Smiths.  Sorry, sorry, of course I meant to say the most important alternative rock band to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980s. But how irritating must it be to be a member of such an iconic group only to be booted out just before they become properly famous (aka the Pete Best syndrome)? In September, we bring you Boy Interrupted, Memoir of a Former Smith by Dale Hibbert. Dale was a member of The Smiths during their formative years, so was privy to the hopes and dreams and bizarre ideas of young Morrissey and Johnny Marr. He is a fund of hitherto untold stories – how The Smiths were to be launched as a 'gay' band, each of them bearing the stage name of a serial killer. There was also a plan to wear stage clothes based on American baseball teams. Dale helped shape the band's sound at his recording studio. He produced their first demo tape. He even gave Morrissey a lift to sessions on the back of his motorcycle. On the cusp of The Smiths’ breakthrough, Hibbert was replaced on bass by Andy Rourke. For the first time, he reveals the full details of his sacking. And, The Smiths aside, Dale has lived an incredible life, often tragic but always dogged and hopeful. It is also a comprehensive look at Manchester and its fascinating music scene both before and just after the advent of punk rock. The imminent publication of Boy Interrupted has already got Smiths fans all het up – I give you a sample of some of the online comments:

“That is actually so sad. Why ... oh why do people do it?”

 “I always thought that dale handled the situation great.”

“Yes it was right to replace dale with andy. andy suited the smiths perfectly. dale understood that, anyone would have but i am amazed that he controlled himself. if i was replaced by andy i would have gone but not before i had broken both morrisseys and marrs nose.”

“Think how terrible it is to be thrown out of the smiths......... I mean its the smiths for godsake.”

 “Kudos to you Dale you are a great guy”,

 “Why the negative attitude here? We have someone who has a genuine insight into a pivotal period in the story. I, for one, am very interested in what Dale has to say.”

 “Genuine insight? He was the bass player for about 6 months. He could have titled his autobiography differently, without the word "smiths" in it since this life period was rather small compared to his whole life.”

 “The Smiths were a gay band. Anyone who disagrees is either straight or stupid – The Smiths were the gayest band ever.”

“What does that even mean lol...”

 “Am I the only person sceptical of these claims?”

Ooh – we at Compass Points do love a bit of informed, intelligent online comment – and all this controversy can only be good for sales of the book Boy, Interrupted (£9.99, pb, 978 1904590309 )which is out from Pomona Books in September!

Order it here!

And here they are at their brilliant best – sorry Dale, I don’t think they’re missing you!

Breezeway by John Ashberry (pb, £9.99. 978 1784101152) has just been published by Carcanet. John Ashberry is undoubtedly America’s greatest living poet and this is a momentous new collection encompassing a colourful range of subjects from Middle English mysticism to a peculiarly-paced samba, a drugstore, a supermarket, and Batman and his dog, Pastor Fido.  John Ashberry has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Circle of Book Critics Award, and many more, and has produced over twenty volumes of poetry including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. The Financial Times said last week of Breezeway; “His acrobatic, jazz-like, playful verse merits multiple readings” and it was also the Guardian Poem of the Week which you can read here_. I think you will enjoy it; as the Guardian commented; it contains “a generous measure of fun.”

You can find out more and order Breezeway here

The BBC is rarely out of the news at the moment. Whether it’s sacking Clarkson, justifying its licence fee or loosing the Olympic coverage; everyone in the country has an opinion on “auntie”. But what is it actually like to work there? Getting Out Alive by Roger Mosey is the memoir of one of the most respected figures from the broadcasting industry and provides a fascinating account of what it's like to be at the very top of the BBC; the pressure of handling big broadcasting events, the personalities, the day-to-day politics – and the pain for some individuals. Roger Mosey was in senior roles at the BBC for more than twenty years, from being editor of Radio 4's Today programme and head of television news to leading the coverage of the London 2012 Olympics, and finally becoming the BBC’s editorial director. He was at the centre of BBC Sport, too, responsible for abolishing Grandstand and then building the BBC’s acclaimed role in the Olympics. Getting Out Alive is a unique and candid insider account of the BBC, how it works and where it falls down. John Humphrys has called it “Perceptive, revealing and honest, Getting Out Alive reveals what makes the BBC tick. It’s funny, too. A delight” and as you would expect, the media are all over this book like a rash.  Roger Mosey has been interviewed in the last week on LBC, BBC Radio 5 live, BBC Radio Ulster, BBC Radio Leeds, Talk Radio Europe, BBC Radio Cambridge and BBC Radio Lincolnshire. There have been articles in the Express, the Times diary column and the Sunday Telegraph and there was a big article on it in the Spectator which you can read here. Getting Out Alive by Roger Mosey (hb, £20.00, 9781849548311) has just been published by Robson Press and you can find out more and order it here.

Of course we all know that if you really want to know what goes on at the BBC, you just watch the highly entertaining W1A - here's one of its many hilarious moments!

The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City under Fire by Atef Abu Saif (pb, £9.99, 978 1905583713) published by Comma Press has been shortlisted for a MEMO (Middle East Monitor) Palestine Book Award. You can find the whole shortlist here. The Drone Eats With Me is a first-hand account of life in Gaza during Israeli bombardment of summer 2014, from the editor of The Book of Gaza. Atef’s eye-witness diary pieces were published in a range of major outlets (The Sunday Times, the Guardian, New York Times, etc) and became a unique porthole into the conflict for western readers. The Drone Eats With Me offers a compelling perspective on one of the world’s most contested political crises and taps in to current discussions about drones, refugees, terrorism and western foreign policy.

Street Culture: 5o Years of Sub Culture Style by Gavin Baddeley is getting some great publicity and you can see lots of the brilliant pictures from it on a Guardian gallery here – the Guardian describes the book as taking the reader from hippies to hip-hop heads: 50 years of style tribes in pictures; which is an excellent summary of its contents! Street Culture explores the family tree of youth movements, examining the lines that tie beatniks to bikers, punks to emos, goths to metalheads and is illustrated throughout with over 125 fab black and white images. Beatniks, Rockers, Hip-Hop, Hippies, Punks, Grunge, New Romantics, Metalheads, Goths, Teddy Boys, Mods, Hipsters, Psychobillies, Skinheads – they are all in here, and Street Culture takes us from sharp-suited mods and acid-dropping hippies to leather-clad metalheads and straight-edge hardcore punks; piecing together a vibrant history of countercultural rebellion. Street Culture: 5o Years of Sub Culture Style by Gavin Baddeley (978 0859654753£14.99, pb) is published by Plexus and you can find out more and order it here

There is also an excellent ten minute interview with the Street Culture author Gavin Baddeley; and you can watch that here.

When it come to affairs of the heart; I daresay, like many of us here at Compass, you spend some time wishing that the men in real life were half as dashing as those between the pages of romantic novels. But are you yearning after Mr Darcy – or are you more of a Christian Grey fan? Take this BuzzFeed quiz to find out which literary hero is the right man for you!

And if you’re having a bit of a BuzzFeed Friday – then how about finding out if your sex style is determined by your taste in books? It brings a whole new meaning to the term hardcover that’s for sure– and you can take that quiz here!

We like a celebrity endorsement for a book, and they don’t get much more “slebby” that Elton John. This week he said “Paul has been my friend for over forty years. He is a brilliant and honest individual who suffered demoralising and unnecessary anguish. This book more than puts the record straight. Read it and get very angry!” The Paul he is referring to is of course Gambaccini, whose account Love, Paul Gambaccini: My Year Under the Yewtree (hb, £17.99, 978 1849549110) will be published by Robson Press in September. Paul Gambaccini was arrested in October 2013. Forced awake in the middle of the night, he had many of his possessions confiscated for more than a year. He was disgraced in the press and made unemployable, despite having to pay tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees during a year in which he had no income. Finally, and inevitably, he became the latest celebrity to be exonerated over allegations of historic sexual abuse. This book is a full, no-holds-barred story of Paul Gambaccini’s twelve months of horror and trauma. This is the inside story that looks set to trigger a change in how we prosecute allegations of abuse in the UK, and there will be a major press campaign with a guaranteed serial in a major national newspaper. Helena Kennedy QC said of it “Paul Gambaccini was tested almost beyond endurance by false allegations, and his account exposes the cruelty that is inflicted when the legal system is captured by populist sentiment. His account is a timely reminder that past wrongs are not made right by creating witch hunts.” And Stephen Fry has called it “An important and ultimately inspiring book that forces us to imagine how we might have responded in the face of such a nightmare”

You can find out more abut Love, Paul Gambaccini and order it here

Is there a way to write a guaranteed bestseller? Well Waterstone’s think they’ve cracked the magic formula – find out how on their blog post here!

Copies of 60 Degrees North by Malachy Tallack will be arriving in your shops this week, if they haven’t already; so fingers crossed that this beautiful book captures the imagination of the public in the same way that it has charmed the media. Just to remind you, it’s going to be a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week from 13th July and there will be reviews in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Scotsman, and the Times Literary Supplement. The Radio Times will highlight the book in their 11th July issue and Love Reading are running an online promotion for it to over 200,000 members in July and again in August, when it has been selected as a Non-Fiction Book of the Month.

Find out more about 60 Degrees North here

With all the publicity surrounding the film Amy, and BBC documentary about Amy Winehouse; don’t forget to stock Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game by Mick O'Shea (pb, 978 085965482 1) from Plexus, which is a fully illustrated (40 photos) biography telling her story in full, from childhood through to the pleasures and pains of superstardom, her blazing talent, the years she lost to her addictions, and the legacy of her raw and heartfelt music.

Compass is on Twitter! Follow us @CompassIPS. Here are some of our favourite tweets from last week...

Clapham Books ‏@claphambooks  

I'm #SingleBecause I prefer book characters to anyone in the real world.

Waterstones ‏@Waterstones  

"I cannot stay faithful to just one book. I'm always reading another. I am a book bigamist."

Enitharmon Press ‏@EnitharmonPress  

"And we are all there / together" - vibrant & rousing poetry at our #EdDorn launch last night. Thanks for coming!

Gallic Books ‏@gallicbooks  

Did you see Sagan, Paris 1954 in today's @StylistMagazine ? Yup, part of The Style List

Plexus Publishing ‏@plexusbooks  

My Magical Oasis spotted by @CompassIPS's Martin in @JarroldBooks @JarroldsNorwich #exciting #plexusbooks

Wild Things Books ‏@wildthingsbooks  

Ready to head to the beach? We reveal Britain’s most beautiful secret sea-side spots: http://bit.ly/1FtLjvF 

BackPage Press ‏@BackPagePress  

Get ready to go to war. DIEGO COSTA - The Art of War. New biog out soon. More here. #Chelsea

That’s all for now folks, more next week!

This blog is taken from a newsletter which 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 click here to go to the Compass New Titles Website or talk to your Compass Sales representative.

Compass Points 131

“The entrance to the emergency department soon fills with stretchers and running ambulance crews. The area begins to swarm with civilians, with and without visible injuries, policemen in blue camouflage uniforms pushing journalists and cameramen out of the way, while medical workers flock around the newly arrived patients. The air is a cacophony of shouts, screams and sharp commands from the senior surgeon in charge of sorting the casualties. Loudest and most piercing is the unbearable sound of children shrieking. Two young boys, one aged two or three and the other maybe seven, are lying on a stretcher. They have visible burn injuries and a large number of small, black wounds on their faces and necks, some of them bloody, like traces of shrapnel. Dr Atta al-Mzainy looks at me sharply. “We’ve got to take them to the intensive burn care unit. Straight away,” he shouts. “OK,” I answer; my heart pounding. Everything is collapsing around us now, I think to myself. The bombing throughout the night, the number of casualties; it all feels like a tidal wave of blood and screams. Insurmountable ….The Israeli drones buzz above us. Can nobody stop this nightmare?”

This is an extract from a piece in this week’s Guardian on Night in Gaza by Mads Gilbert. Strong stuff – the book is an eye-witness account by one of the European doctors who flew to Gaza to work at al-Shifa hospital, and help Palestinian medical staff deal with the results of aerial and ground attacks by Israel on Palestinian towns and refugee camps last summer. It has just been published, to coincide with the first anniversary of Israel’s seven-week war on Gaza. While Mads Gilbert was helping the wounded, he kept a camera in the pocket of his green operating scrubs and in this book, he tells the story in words and images of the days of bombing and human suffering that he witnessed. At the same time, this book is a tribute to the courage, endurance and almost inconceivably strong spirit of Palestinian health workers and volunteers, a spirit replicated throughout the severely tested society of Gaza, occupied Palestine. Night in Gaza by Mads Gilbert has colour and black and white photos throughout and is published by Skyscraper (pb, £18.99, 978 0993153365). This important book has been endorsed by Jon Snow, and is sure to get more publicity. You can find out more and order it here.

And you can see a very interesting BBC interview with Dr Mads Gilbert following his return from Gaza  here.

Happy First Birthday to one of our wonderful publishers Urbane – who celebrated in style with a terrific party in London this week. One of the authors there was David Wethey – author of Mote: the Super Meeting: the Radical Way to Work Together for Positive Change. Now this is an interesting book – it shows how by reinventing their concept of what a meeting is, a company can completely transform their business. All of us spend far too long in meetings - even conservative estimates say that we spend more than a quarter of our working lives in one, and that over 50% of that meeting time is wasted. Yet meetings appear central to the way process works in the vast majority of organizations – and no-one seems to want to tell the truth about them. Can you embody leadership through meetings? Can you innovate effectively through meetings? Is creativity evolved in meetings? David Wethey tells us why Mote is a life-changing way forward. When you learn how to mote you open up the pathways to business success, empower people, inspire innovation, promote productivity, and mote your way to your business goals. This really sounds very interesting and its unique model has been tested in global companies like Google and McCann. David Wethey wrote the bestselling Decide and I think this book could do equally well. Moting for all! 

Here's  David explaining the concept to Compass MD Alan Jessop – who I’m afraid doesn’t seem to be quite getting it! Mote: The Super Meeting: The Radical Way to Work Together for Positive Change. (pb, £12.99, 978 1909273207) has just been published by Urbane, and you can  find out more and order Mote here

And if you’d like to find out a bit more about Moting – than go to the website www.motemeeting.com  here!

Welcome aboard to a brand new publisher on the good ship Compass – Omnibus Press  – the world's largest publisher of music related books including artist and band biographies, photo books and collectables. Well, you know how much we at Compass Points love a bit of music on a Friday – so this is truly great news, and I’m looking forward to telling you about lots of groovy new titles coming up this summer and autumn. If you’d like to find out a bit more about their back catalogue then take a look at their website www.omnibuspress.com

So first up from them is a biog that will have a big review in the Mail on Sunday on 5 July. Who’s a fan of Adam Faith? One of Britain's top three pop stars alongside Cliff Richard and Billy Fury, he had many chart hits including number one singles What Do You Want and Poor Me. He then went into music management during the 70s, managing, among others, Leo Sayer.  Also in the 70s he starred as the chirpy cockney, just out of prison, in the classic television series Budgie. Big Time: The Life of Adam Faith by David and Caroline Stafford includes interviews with Zoe Wanamaker, Laurence Marks, Terry O’Neill and Robert Elms. It follows Faith’s career from massively successful singer and actor, on to financial journalist – and disaster. He was behind the development of digital television's The Money Channel but the venture soon ran into difficulties, the channel closed down and Faith was declared bankrupt, reportedly losing £32m.  He had open heart surgery to treat seriously blocked arteries but died of a heart attack at age 62 in March 2003. A fascinating read, this hardback has eight pages of colour photos.  Big Time: The Life of Adam Faith (hb, 978 1783055524, £19.95) is published by Omnibus Press in July and you can find out more and order it here

And here is Adam from way back in 1960 when he’d already mastered his cute twinkly smile – but my goodness, weren’t pop songs short then – just one and a half minutes!

We do like a bit of Hogwarts trivia on a Friday, and I see from Twitter that Harry Potter is coming to the stage! Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will make its debut in 2016at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End. J.K. Rowling has collaborated with English television writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany (a Tony winner for Broadway’s Once) on the project, which Rowling said on Twitter was not a prequel.  “It will tell a new story,” Rowling wrote, but declined to provide more details. “I don’t want to say too much more; because I don’t want to spoil what I know will be a real treat for fans.” Ooh – can’t wait!

What with David Cameron deciding what we will or won’t contribute to Europe – and Greece’s future also hanging in the balance, there has never been a more relevant time to debate what countries can or can’t afford in the way of welfare for their citizens. The Welfare of Nations by James Bartholomew (978 1849548304, hb, £20.00) has just been published by Biteback, and James was on BBC Radio Leeds this week and also writing in the Telegraph promoting it. In this extraordinary sequel to his bestselling The Welfare State We’re In, James travels to eleven countries around the world, from Australia in the east and San Francisco in the west, to look at how “welfare states” are changing it. In America he meets New Yorkers who pay bribes to get social housing in Harlem. In Singapore a welfare official explains the treatment received by single mothers asking for money. He takes a tour of the massive social housing blocks of Marseilles where his guide points out the gang members who control the estates. He discovers why divorce is seen as a positive thing by some in Sweden and visits the hospital in Spain where a new model of healthcare was born. James Bartholomew shows how other countries with welfare states have often gone through similar experiences to Britain, including high unemployment, but with major differences. Some welfare states have done more good and less harm than others. Which ones have got it right and how have they done it? This is an important book for those seeking to understand the changing nature of our liberal nation states.  The Welfare State We’re In had mega good reviews with Milton Friedman calling it “A splendid book … A devastating critique of the welfare state.” and I think this new title will also attract much praise.

You can find out more and order it here

The one thing we all need less of in our lives (apart from meetings) is stress. And The De-Stress Effect: Rebalance Your Body's Systems for Vibrant Health and Happiness by Charlotte Watts promises to show us how to achieve just that. The TV and radio presenter Emma Forbes said of it “Charlotte's book is my kind of read. I defy anyone to read this book and not relate it to their own life, see where there is room for improvement and, more importantly, use it to help get rid of that dreaded 'stress' that enters all our lives! Great advice, tips and help on how to really de-stress, and keep healthy and balanced in life. More importantly it just makes sense. Good sense. I'm all for it!” and the book and author recently featured in Stella magazine and on telegraph.co.uk (circ. 4.1 million), Mail Online (210 million unique monthly browsers) and in the August issues of Women’s Fitness, Women’s Health and Slimming World – so this is a title that gazillions of readers will have heard of!  The De-Stress Effect is a truly holistic system, offering a wealth of tools such as mindfulness and nutrition to help reduce cravings and stress-related symptoms like mood issues, insomnia, IBS and many more. Charlotte is passionate about helping people find good health and happiness by acknowledging the particular demands of the 21st century and navigating a rewarding path through them to find resilience and grace under pressure. The De-Stress Effect by Charlotte Watts (pb, £12.99, 978 1781804858) is published by Hay House and is available now.

With Sepp Blatter now saying that he did NOT resign as FIFA president, there really is never a day that so called “professional” football is out of the headlines. However, in terms of actual participation (rather than sitting on your bottom ranting to Radio Five Live) five-a-side footie is of course a much bigger sport in the UK than professional football is – with 1.5 million people playing regularly. So I am 100% certain that The Five-a-Side Bible: Inside the World of Tasty Tackles and Terrible Touches by Chris Bruce will be a mega hit this autumn and for Christmas. Five-a-side footie is a massive special-interest participation sport which is crying out for books about it and this is a funny, practical and hugely entertaining exploration of the highs and lows of this great game from British Sports Book of the Year winners Back Page Press and Freight Books. This definitive and wry guide is written in a magazine style and is full of the humour, anecdotes and practical information that made Back Page Press’s Football Manager Stole My Life a bestseller. It covers sports science, tactics, nutrition, fitness warm-ups and warm-downs, but with the emphasis on fun; covering everything from the crazy team names – The Neville Wears Prada, Murder on Zidane’s Floor – to wacky stories of ill-discipline and injuries, outlandish excuses for not playing, kit disasters, and tips from pros like former England international Matt Le Tissier and current Everton winger Aiden McGeady. Fully illustrated in colour, The Five-a-side Bible profiles the best five-a-side players in the UK and provide a bucket list – including a pitch on top of a skyscraper in Shanghai and one on Copacabana beach – for those who want to take their fives obsession to the next level. The Five-a-Side Bible (hb, 978 1910449288, £14.99) by Chris Bruce is published in September and you can find out more and order it here

Chris Bruce is a lawyer and proprietor of www.5-a-side.com   – have a look here – it’s the biggest website dedicated to five-a-side in the world with 50,000 monthly users – and it’s already promoting the book!

And here are Princes William and Harry getting in on the five-a-side footie action at a match in Glasgow!

I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you’re probably not raving away at Glasto. But hey, maybe we can all pretend we are, by just reading books about music instead? I love this piece in the Guardian today where musicians and writers (including Brian Eno, Beck, Lavinia Greenlaw and James Wood) select their favourite reads about rock, pop, jazz and classical! Elvis as a young man, the size of Mick Jagger’s genitalia, Kristin Hersh’s miracle year, Berlioz in love; it’s all here!

That’s all for now folks, more next week!

This blog is taken from a newsletter which 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 click here to go to the Compass New Titles Website or talk to your Compass Sales representative.

Compass Points 130

Excellent news that the superb Chris Riddell is to be the new Children’s Laureate. I love his drawing of all the previous Laureates as superheroes! He’s on a mission to get everyone doodling and drawing as well as reading and writing. 

Some of us may need a little help with that - so a good time for Arcturus to publish Drawing Made Easy by expert Barrington Barber - one of the most successful creators of practical drawing books currently available. His book Fundamentals of Drawing has sold over one million copies worldwide. Drawing Made Easy is a set that includes a full colour 80-page book with step-by-step instruction in techniques and how to tackle a broad range of subject matter. There is also a tear-off sketchpad, to practise the exercises covered in the book and improve skills and a DVD featuring Barrington Barber demonstrating essential drawing techniques and imparting his inspirational artistic philosophy. Drawing Made Easy (978 1784046378, £14.99, pb and DVD) is published in September.

Your can order Drawing Made Easy here

And here’s a brilliant YouTube video of Chris Riddell drawing one of his amazing characters - The Nameless One. Somehow I think even careful perusal of Drawing Made Easy isn’t going to turn me into such a talented artist as Chris.

There is a lot of publicity coming up for World’s Apart: A Muslim Girl in the SAS by Azi Ahmed (hb, £16.99, 978 1849547796) which is published next week by Biteback. The Daily Mail is just about to begin a serialisation of it and there will be an interview with Azi Ahmed in the Times, next week and also a big piece in the Manchester Evening News. The author will be on BBC Breakfast on 15 June and there will be interviews on all the BBC local radio station next week. You will remember this is the remarkable book about a clash between very different worlds: the British Army and Britain’s Muslim community. It follows Azi Ahmed’s extraordinary journey from working in the family kebab shop in Manchester to a London barracks where the Colonel of 21 SAS unit is putting women through selection training with the men. Deep-rooted ethnic and gender prejudices need overcoming and she is faced with trying to defend her religion and culture within a regimented and hostile environment, a situation that is not helped by the events of 9/11. At home, Azi hears her community’s anger over the British intervention in the Middle East. Back at the barracks she supports her soldier comrades preparing for the War on Terror.

Find out more and order Worlds Apart here

Today is National Kindness Day: one day every year that asks people to perform a random act of kindness – whether that’s to friends, family, school mates or strangers! But who are the kindest literary characters? Have a look here to see if you agree with this Guardian list of the top ten tenderest and sweetest people in literature!

America’s Dreyfus: The Case Nixon Rigged by Joan Brady is an extraordinary re-investigation of one of America’s most notorious spy trials overturns a verdict that has stood for 60 years and reveals the part it played in Richard Nixon’s rise to prominence. The author of this book, Joan Brady met Alger Hiss, when she was a young dancer of 18, and he had been recently released from jail after a perjury trial which had made headlines for months in the US. Over the following 35 years of friendship she had no basis for questioning the verdict, but her growing knowledge of Hiss himself, and the puzzles raised by his own reactions to his trial and imprisonment led her, after Hiss’s death, to delve back into the transcripts of the hearings and into FBI files about the case. The story Brady tells in this book overturns the received view that Hiss was a spy and a former communist who lied in court. But more surprising still is her analysis of how Richard Nixon’s rise to fame, culminating in the US presidency, was based on the Hiss case, which Nixon instigated and conducted to create anti-communist hysteria and aid him in his election campaigns. Through false accusations, a flaky key witness, rigged paperwork and forged evidence, Nixon and other anticommunist politicians rigged a verdict which destroyed the life of Hiss, and ushered in an era of anticommunist hysteria which included the notorious hearings organised by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Joan Brady was the first woman to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, now the Costa, for her novel, Theory of War. She went on to write several more highly successful novels and thrillers and her talent as a prizewinning thriller writer produces a fast-paced story full of twists and turns, with the additional ingredient of her own personal part in the unfolding narrative. She shows how the Hiss case makes it all too clear that the purpose of political bogeymen – Communism then, terrorism now – is not to protect populations but to curb civil liberties and give secret services leave to override constitutions and courts. America’s Dreyfus: The Case Nixon Rigged  by Joan Brady (£20.00, hb, 978 0993153327) is certain to attract much media attention when it is published by Skyscraper in September and you can find out more and order it here.

The Oxford Dictionary announced that the 2014 word of the year was Vape (the 2013 word was Selfie, and the 2012 word was Omnishambles if you’re interested!). But a strong contender must have been the word Mindful – something that many of us struggle daily to be. We often spend so much time looking forward, rushing on to the next thing, or looking backwards, stressing and worrying about our perceived mistakes, that we rarely still ourselves and our minds enough to be truly in the present moment.  One Minute Mindfulness: How to Live in the Moment by Daily Mail columnist Simon Parke has just been published by Hay House. In it, Simon Parke uses stories and simple thoughts to help us see through clear eyes how we can return to the present moment and remain there. Both inspiring and practical, this book is for anyone who wants to come home to themselves. This is a new edition of this title, which features 15 more essays from Simon, as well as an appealing new package that fits closely with the mindfulness trend. The book and author will feature in a future issue of The Best You magazine and the June issue of Om Yoga. The book will also feature in the June issue of Psychic News , Woman and Home, Soul & Spirit as well as Kindred Spirit, soulandspiritmagazine.com, and healthista.com. You can find out more and order One Minute Mindfulness: How to Live in the Moment by Simon Parke (pb, 978 1781804964, £8.99) here.

We are delighted to announce that the Carcanet poet Karen McCarthy Woolf has been shortlisted for the award for Best First Collection in the prestigious Forward Prize for her book An Aviary of Small Birds (978 1906188146, £9.95, pb). The winners will be decided on 28 September. An Aviary of Small Birds is both Karen McCarthy Woolf’s elegy to a stillborn son and testament to the redemptive qualities of poetry as a transformative art. Ultimately, it is a closely felt connection with nature that allows the author to transcend the experience and honour the spirit of her son.  Michael Symmons Roberts said it was “an entrancing and heartbreaking debut. At times she takes your breath away.” The cover is beautiful.

Myrmidon’s lead literary fiction title for 2015 is The Anatomist’s Dream by Clio Gray. This dreamscape novel is a fantastical journey through an imagined 1840s Germany beset both by revolutionary ferment and repression as seen through the eyes of a small boy, Philbert, who has been borne with a ‘taupe’, a disfiguring inflammation of the skull. Abandoned by his parents, Philbert finds refuge and companionship with an assortment of eccentrics in an itinerant band of artists, magicians and entertainers as they journey in a travelling carnival across an increasingly threatening landscape. Myrmidon’s publishing director, Ed Handyside, says that he was drawn to the scale and colour of the novel as well as to its fable-like qualities. “It’s an apt title, to be sure,” he said. “There is a dream-like quality to Philbert’s world that lingers long after reading.” This is something to be savoured by fans of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus or Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. The author, Clio Gray was born and grew up North Yorkshire but has lived in Easter Ross in Scotland for the past twenty years, where she works as a librarian. Best known for the ‘Stroop’ series of Napoleonic crime novels published by Headline, she is also a consummate writer of short stories and won the Orange Short Story Award in 2004. The Anatomist’s Dream (978 1910183205, hb, £18.99) is published  in July and you can order it and find out more here

The Miner is the most daringly experimental and least well-known novel of the great Meiji writer Natsume Sōseki. An absurdist tale about the indeterminate nature of human personality, written in 1908, it was in many ways a precursor to the work of Joyce and Beckett. Translated by Jay Rubin, and with an introduction from Haruki Murakami, this is bound to appeal to fans of Japanese literature. The narrative unfolds within the mind of an unnamed protagonist-narrator, a young man caught in a love triangle who flees Tokyo, is picked up by a procurer of cheap labour for a copper mine, then travels toward and inside the depths of the mine, in search of oblivion. As he delves, the young man reflects at length on nearly every thought and perception he experiences along the way. His conclusion? That there is no such thing as human character. The result is a novel that is both absurd and comical, and a true modernist classic. There has been huge interest in this title from the literary press there are several offers to serialise the introduction. Its translator Jay Rubin will be over in the UK to promote the book and is available for events. The Miner by Natsume Sōseki (pb, 978 1910709023, £9.99) is published by Aardvark Bureau in September and you can find out more and order it here

Well, it’s a challenge, but to finish, can we come up with a top five songs about miners? Yes, I think we can! Firstly, let’s start fairly traditional with The Coal Miners Song by Jimmy Joe Lee, then it probably has to be Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean. And how about this classic; Sixteen Tons from Tenessee Ernie Ford in 1955. A little bit more “out there” is probably Together We Work the Black Seam by Sting – but I think number one, and certainly my top of the pops are these lovable little chaps from Snow White!

That’s all for now folks, more next week!

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