White Lie Andrea Gillies
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The White Lie Andrea Gillies “Gillies excels in her portrait of a landscape that consumes the merely human, and has slowly over many generations created a family in its own image” Helen dunmore On a hot summer’s afternoon, Ursula Salter runs sobbing from the loch on her parents’ Scottish estate and confesses, distraught, that she has killed Michael, her 19-year-old nephew. But what really happened? No body can be found, and Ursula’s story is full of contradictions. In order to protect her, the Salters come up with another version of events, a decision that some of them will come to regret. Years later, at a family gathering, a witness speaks up and the web of deceit begins to unravel. What is the white lie? Only one person knows the whole truth. Narrating from beyond the grave, Michael takes us to key moments in the past, looping back and back until - finally - we see what he sees. “A wonderfully compelling portrait of a family ‘A really terrific read . Elegant, well written, genuinely gripping’ JoAnnE HArris haunted by secrets and lies… pitch perfect on the chilling, devastating consequences of guilt” Sally Brampton the “A really terrific read… Elegant, well written, White genuinely gripping” Joanne Harris AndreA Gillies “Gillies is a tantalising storyteller, dropping in lie clues, vertiginous surprises and unexpected revelations” Marie Claire Short Books 3A Exmouth House, PRICE £7.99 Andrea Gillies has had a diverse career encompassing writing, publicity work, the Pine Street, London EC1R 0JH EXTENT 576pp editorship of the Good Beer Guide, travel PUB DATE 5 July 2012 and reference book editing, and writing T: 020 7833 9429 FORMAT B format paperback a drinks column for Scotland on Sunday E: [email protected] ISBN 978-1-78072-090-6 newspaper. Her first book, Keeper, won the www.shortbooks.co.uk UK & COM ex CAN Short Books Orwell Prize and the Wellcome Trust Book Twitter:@shortbooksuk FOREIGN RIGHTS Greene & Heaton Prize. This is her first novel. The House on Paradise Street Mrs Stockwell’s Bra Sofka ZinOvieff & Other Recollections Miriam Gross The House on Paradise Street is an epic tale of love and loss, which takes readers from the war-torn streets of nazi-occupied Athens through the military junta years and on into the troubled city of recent times – and shows A sparklingly witty memoir, which takes us on a seductive journey from what happens when ideology threatens to subsume our sense of humanity. wartime Jerusalem to the heart of Fleet Street, providing a riveting outsider’s view of English cultural life. In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in Miriam Gross tells her story in a series of vivid vignettes – life as an only child prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. of ambitious parents in Jerusalem; her bohemian school days at the progressive Nikitas had been distressed in the days before his death and, curious to find Dartington Hall in Devon; coming of age at Oxford (where she had a brief romance out why, his English widow Maud starts to investigate his complicated past. In so with the young Kris Kristofferson); and then finding her place in British journalism, doing, she finds herself reigniting a bitter family feud, discovering a heartbreaking a pre-spellcheck world populated by chauvinists, scholars and bon-vivants who story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War and seemed rarely to miss a deadline despite spending more time at lunch than at their forced to make a terrible decision that would blight not only her life but that of future desks. generations... This is a story of remarkable characters, in which the author’s friendships with many of the key figures of 20th century intellectual life and her many infatuations, requited and unrequited, are recounted with the sort of self-deprecating candour “i can’t remember when i was so totally absorbed by a that makes this memoir a classic of its kind. book... Enthralling, moving and wise.” Cressida Connolly “At Hutchinson, where i finally got offered a job as a “... That rare thing: a beautifully written novel which is filing clerk, my immediate boss was a strident, thick- a great read. it is also a compelling guide to the last sixty skinned, middle-aged woman named Mrs Stockwell, years of Greek history at this very troubled time who, i was soon to learn, was widely disliked and feared. for Europe and for all of us.” vesna Goldsworthy, My very first assignment was to mend her bra. its strap had snapped on the way to work. Could i, she barked, author of Chernobyl Strawberries sew it back on, but first run out and buy needle and thread? luckily i had picked up the rudiments of sewing from one of my parents’ housekeepers, so i was able to perform this task. Her bra, i remember, was beige.” Miriam Gross has worked on the Observer, Paperback Fiction as deputy literary editor and then as woman’s PRICE £7.99 editor; on the daily Telegraph and Sunday EXTENT 336pp PRICE £12.99 Telegraph as arts and literary editor; and as Sofka Zinovieff has published two acclaimed senior editor on Standpoint magazine. She PUB DATE 2 August 2012 EXTENT 256pp works of non-fiction, Eurydice St: A Place in is the editor of two collections of essays, The PUB DATE 6 September 2012 FORMAT B format paperback Athens and The red Princess, a biography of World of George Orwell and The World of ISBN 978-1-78072-091-3 her paternal grandmother. This is her first FORMAT B format hardback raymond Chandler and the author of So Why WORLD ENGLISH Short Books novel. She lives, with her husband and two ISBN 978-1-78072-099-9 Can’t they read?, a pamphlet on literacy in FOREIGN RIGHTS United Agents daughters, in Greece. WORLD RIGHTS Short Books London’s state schools. Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets Jessica FOx Jessica Fox – 26 years old, living in Hollywood, high-flying careerist at nASA – is working late one night, dreaming of another life, when she’s seized by a moment of madness. She taps “second hand bookshop Scotland” into Google, and clicks on the first link she sees. A month later, and Jessica is 2,000 miles across the Atlantic in Wigtown, the bookshop capital of Scotland. When she knocks on the door of the bookshop she will be working in for the month, she is greeted not by the 80-year-old recluse she was expecting, but by a handsome young bachelor called Euan… A book for everyone The rollercoaster journey that ensues – which takes in Scottish Hanukah, bringing yoga to the West Coast, and a waxing that she will never forget – will ultimately both break and mend her heart. who has ever thought “what if” “The first thing you should know about a rocket launch is that if you sit too close, you¹ll be killed by the sound. “The second thing you should know is that although the sound waves could kill, ironically the first A true story about impression of a launch is total silence. grabbing life by the horns, “The third thing you should know about a rocket launch is that it is not new but old, ancient even. Watching these bold pioneers defy gravity in their and taking the plunge... small vessel is something truly mythic to behold, like seeing fact and metaphor come alive at the same time; it resonates past our logic into our primal subconscious, touching on the essence of what it means to be human, of our bold, insatiable curiosity and of leaving home for the unknown...” Jessica Fox is a writer and film director. She has consulted for Harper Collins and PRICE £12.99 was a resident storyteller and film director EXTENT 288pp at nASA. Jessica’s films have been PUB DATE 4 October 2012 shown at both US and International film FORMAT Demy hardback festivals. She heads Mythic Image Studios ISBN 978-1-78072-036-4 and divides her time between the US and WORLD RIGHTS Short Books the UK. This her first book. Bess of Hardwick An Insomniac’s Guide A Story of Ambition and Excess in to the Small Hours Elizabethan England ysendA maxtonE-Graham Kate Hubbard illustrATiOnS By Kath WAlker With the spirit of an adventuress and the heart of a shopkeeper, Bess set out to 1.30am leave her mark on 16th-century England.... lying on your back, like a knight on his tomb. Hands by your side. Perhaps you A Derbyshire squire’s daughter, she rose, via four well-chosen husbands, to should put them in the praying position like the knight. Please God grant me sleep. become the second richest woman in the country after Queen Elizabeth I. This is you look dead. if only you hadn’t had that pasta last night, heaped with tomato sauce a story about mergers and acquisitions. It is also the story of one woman’s quest – and Parmesan, followed by the six After Eights. Washed down with the dregs of the emerging triumphant from the wreckage of her first marriage – to build the most Chilean white. Pasta, cheese, chocolate and wine: all conducive to migraine – not beautiful house in the country. good for sleep... In this gripping biography, Kate Hubbard weaves the construction of Hardwick Hall into the tale of Bess’s life, revealing it to be not just a work of architectural If you have ever spent a night tossing and turning, worrying about life’s worst genius, but the expression of a towering, intractable personality.