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John Murray Press Rebecca Folland Rights Director - HHJQ Translation Rights List - Autumn 2019 rebecca.folland@.co.uk +44 (0) 20 3122 6288 NON-FICTION

General Non-Fiction 7 Joanna Kaliszewska Head of Rights - John Murray Press Current Affairs, History & Politics 8 Deputy Rights Director - HHJQ [email protected] Popular Science 18 +44 (0) 20 3122 6927 Popular/Commercial Non-Fiction 25 Hannah Geranio Senior Rights Executive - HHJQ Travel 27 [email protected] Recent Highlights 31

FICTION Nick Ash Literary Fiction Rights Assistant - HHJQ 37 [email protected] General Fiction 47

Crime & Thriller 48 Hena Bryan Rights Assistant - JMP & H&S Recent Highlights 52 [email protected] JOHN MURRAY PRESS

For nearly a quarter of a millennium, John Murray has been unashamedly populist, publishing the absorbing, SUBAGENTS provocative, commercial and exciting. Albania, Bulgaria & Macedonia Anthea Agency [email protected] Seven generations of John Murrays fostered genius and found readers in vast numbers, until in 2002 the firm be- Brazil Riff Agency [email protected] came a division of Hachette, under the umbrella of Hodder & Stoughton. China and Taiwan Peony Literary Agency marysia@peonyliterary agency.com IMPRINTS Czech Republic & Slovakia Kristin Olson Agency [email protected] At John Murray, we only publish books that take us by sur- prise. Classic authors of today who were mavericks of their Greece OA Literary Agency time – Austen, Darwin, Byron – were first published and [email protected] championed by John Murray. And that sensibility continues today. Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia Katai and Bolza Literary Agency [email protected] (Hungary) publish about 15 books a year, voice-driven [email protected] (Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia) fiction and non-fiction – all great stories told with heart and intelligence. Indonesia Maxima Creative Agency [email protected]

John Murray Learning - the home to books that provide Japan JMP - Tuttle-Mori Agency the route to personal and professional success in addition [email protected] to the world’s largest list of language courses. Nicholas Brealey - Japan Uni [email protected]

Nicholas Brealey - International in outlook, NB publishes Korea Eric Yang Agency enduring, forward thinking non-fiction books featuring big [email protected] ideas and practical wisdom. Romania Simona Kessler International [email protected] is one of the UK’s leading Christian publish- ers, with a list including the NIV Bible and a wide range of Thailand and Vietnam The Grayhawk Agency [email protected] Christian books. Turkey AnatoliaLit Agency Jessica Kingsley Publishers are well known for our long [email protected] established lists on the autism spectrum, social work, and arts therapies and is committed to publishing books that make a difference. General Non-Fiction REBEL IDEAS: The Power of Diverse Thinking Matthew Syed

No. 2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

An inspiring book about creative problem-solving from the No. 1 bestselling author of BOUNCE, BLACK BOX THINKING and YOU ARE AWESOME.

Success is no longer just about talent, or knowledge or skill. Today, it is also about freeing ourselves from the blinkers and blind spots that beset us all, and harnessing a critical new ingredient: cognitive diversity.

In this bold and inspiring new book, Matthew John Murray Syed offers a radical new approach to success and a route map to how we can tackle our most UK Pub: September 2019 complex challenges, such as obesity, terrorism and climate change. UK Editor: Nick Davies Rebel Ideas offers a radical blueprint for the future. NON-FICTION PDF Available /320pp It challenges hierarchies, encourages constructive dissent and forces us to think again about how Rights Sold: success really happens. Brazil (Alta Editora) China (Guomai Culture & About the Author: Media Co) Matthew Syed is the Sunday Times number one Russia (Azbooka-Atticus) bestselling author of Bounce, Black Box Thinking USA (Flatiron Books) and You Are Awesome. He writes an award- winning newspaper column in and is the co-host of the hugely successful BBC podcast, Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy. Matthew is the co-founder of Greenhouse, a charity that empowers youngsters through sport, a member of the FA’s Technical Advisory Board and an ambassador for the PiXL educational foundation. Matthew lives in London with his wife and two children.

7 Current Affairs, History & Politics Current Affairs, History & Politics THE EXISTENTIAL ECONOMY TWO AGAINST HITLER: The True Story Akshat Rathi of Two Courageous Sisters, a Rescue Mission in the Third Reich, and Opera It’s not too late to fix our future – The Existential Economy is the inspiring story of the Isabel Vincent extraordinary individuals and projects that are already successfully fighting climate change. An extraordinary account of two British sisters whose obsession with opera became a cover The global race away from fossil fuels and for their roles in helping Jewish refugees flee the towards zero emission energy sources is Nazis during World War II--a true story that is part underway and is beginning to shape our Schindler’s List, part The Sound of Music and all but lives. Akshat Rathi shows us a different and forgotten, until now. positive way to look at our future, introducing us to the key people, ideas and technologies that are saving the world right here and now. Born in the early 1900s in small-town , the The Western take on alternative energies is a Cook sisters--Ida, a budding Mills & Boon novelist, limited one, The Existential Economy offers a and Louise, a civil service typist-were single, like many in the Great War generation. They devoted John Murray compelling new global view full of uplifting John Murray surprises from the brilliant Chinese politician their free time to their passion for opera, making frequent pilgrimages in the 1930s to Germany and UK Pub: 2021 who is succeeding where Elon Musk failed with UK Pub: February 2021 electric cars; to Indian solar power farms; and Austria to see their favorite stars, many of them Jewish. UK Editor: Georgina Laycock Texan wind turbines. UK Editor: Joe Zigmond

Inspired by his award-winning weekly newsletter Along with the charismatic Austrian conductor ‘The Race to Zero Emissions’, every story and Clemens Krauss - a favorite artist of Hitler - the idea rigorously road-tested with his 12,000 Cooks helped form a cabal of opera world insiders expert subscribers (who include employees who worked in secrecy to deliver Jews from Nazi of all the world’s major oil companies, utility persecution, all as the threat of war descended. companies, investment firms, environmental NGOs, think tanks, consultancies and politicians Based on original research and packed with vivid across the globe) Rathi combines economics, details--many revealed here for the first time-- science and history in a vivid and unforgettable Isabel Vincent’s Two Against Hitler will join the ranks account of how these different forces are of Hidden Figures in shining the spotlight on the taking on the biggest challenge to the planet extraordinary contributions of women in wartime. since the Second World War. About the Author: About the Author: Isabel Vincent is a Canadian-born, New York- Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Quartz based investigative journalist for the New York Post in London. He has previously worked at the and the author of five books of history and memoir, Economist and The Conversation. His writing including Dinner with Edward. has appeared in Nature, and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

8 9 Current Affairs, History & Politics Current Affairs, History & Politics NOMADS THE OTTOMANS Anthony Sattin Marc David Baer

The remarkable story of how Nomads have fostered A dynasty that ruled for over six hundred years. and refreshed civilisation throughout our history. An empire emanating from Europe and the Middle East all the way to North , South Moving across millennia, Nomads explores the Asia, and Southeast Asia. transformative and often bloody relationship between settled and mobile societies. Often Exploring the Ottoman empire over this six- overlooked in history, the story of the umbilical hundred-year period, Marc David Baer’s connections between these two very different magisterial history upends Western concepts ways of living presents a radical new view of of the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, the human civilisation. From the Neolithic revolution to Reformation, and the meanings of sexuality, the 21st century via the rise and fall of the Roman orientalism and genocide. A grand, galloping Empire, the great nomadic empires of the Arabs account of Eurasia’s greatest dynasty, The and Mongols, the Mughals and the development Ottomans is history at terrific scale. With of the Silk Road, nomads have been a perpetual magnetic protagonists and radical new John Murray Press counterbalance to the empires created by the John Murray Press readings of ancient sources, The Ottomans power of human cities. is the definitive account of the empire, and UK Pub: February 2021 UK Pub: June 2021 the first to truly capture its cross-fertilisation Exploring the evolutionary biology and psychology between East and West. UK Editor: Joe Zigmond of restlessness that makes us human, Anthony UK Editor: Joe Zigmond Sattin’s sweeping history charts the power of Proposal Available nomadism from before the bible to its decline in Rights Sold: About the Author: the present day. Connecting us to mythology and Chinese Simplified (Shanghai Marc David Baer is Professor of International the records of antiquity, Nomads explains why we Dook Publishing) History at the London School of Economics leave home, and why we like to return again. This is Swedish (Bokforlaget Naturoch and Political Science and one of the world’s the history of civilisation as told through its outsiders. Kultur) foremost experts on the Ottoman Empire. US () About the Author: Anthony Sattin has been described as one of the key influences on travel writing today. His highly acclaimed books include A Winter on the Nile and Young Lawrence. His award-winning journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, FT, Daily Telegraph and publications around the world including Wall Street Journal, Al-Ahram and Al Jazeera. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, editorial advisor on Geographical Magazine and a contributing editor to Conde Nast Traveller.

10 11 Current Affairs, History & Politics Current Affairs, History & Politics EMPIRE OF DEMOCRACY: The THE GOLDEN THREAD Remaking of the West since the Cold Kassia St Clair War 1971 – 2017 A new history of ingenuity from the author of The Simon Reid-Henry Secret Lives of Colour.

The first panoramic history of the Western world From the mummies of Ancient ; via the from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of silken dragon robes of Imperial China and the Democracy is the story for those asking how we woollen sails of Viking longboats to the Indian got to where we are. calicoes and chintzes that powered the Industrial Revolution (and sparked more than one war); Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War arriving finally at the lab-blended fibres that and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western John Murray Press have allowed astronauts to moonwalk – fabrics, democracies were forced to undergo a profound manmade and natural, have changed and transformation. Against what some saw as a full- shaped the world we live in. scale “crisis of democracy” – with race riots, anti- UK Pub: October 2018 Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent IRights Sold: China (Shanghai Insight), Germany sowing crisis from one nation to the next – a new UK Editor: Georgina Laycock John Murray Press (Hoffmann und Campe), Korea (Will Books), political-economic order was devised and the Netherlands (Meulenhoff Boekerij), Romania postwar social contract was torn up and written Page Extent: 350pp UK Pub: June 2019 (Baroque Books), Russia (Eksmo), Spain (Urano), anew. Taiwan (Motif), US (Livelight/Norton) UK Editor: Joe Zigmond In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows Page Extent: 880pp THE SECRET LIVES OF COLOUR how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the postwar Kassia St Clair Rights Sold: Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule Canada (Doubleday) were reinvented, a new generation of politicians In this book Kassia St Clair has turned her lifelong Netherlands (De Geus) emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. US (Simon & Schuster) obsession with colours and where they come The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw from into a unique study of human civilisation. carried the Western democracies triumphantly to Across fashion and politics, art and war, The victory in the Cold War and into the economic Secret Lives of Colour tells the vivid story of our boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the culture. fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times. Rights Sold: China (Shanghai Insight Media), Estonia (Varrak), John Murray Press About the Author: France (Editions du Chene), German (Hoffmann Simon Reid-Henry is a writer and prize-winning und Campe), Italy (DeA Planeta Libri), Korea UK Pub: September 2018 scholar. Presently a Philip Leverhulme Research (Will Books), Netherlands (Meulenhoff Boekerij), Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, he Romania (Baroque Books), Russia (Eksmo), Spain UK Editor: Georgina Laycock holds a joint position as a Senior Researcher at the (Urano), Taiwan (Motif), Thailand (openbooks), Peace Research Institute, Oslo. US (Tarcher Perigee) Page Extent: 336pp

12 13 Current Affairs, History & Politics Current Affairs, History & Politics RAG AND BONE THE GATHERING STORM: The Lisa Woollett Countdown to the Second World War Michael Jones A brilliantly written combination of family memoir, social history and nature writing. The thrilling account of the countdown to the outbreak of World War II. A family memoir structured as a series of fossick- ing/beachcombing/mudlarking walks. Each walk Summer, 1939. will be relevant to a part of the author’s family history - for instance, her great-grandfather was a The remarkable events that occurred between the scavenger on the Thames, while her grandfather Nazi – Soviet pact and the German army’s eventual was a dustman in Kent. Starting on the Thames, Lisa invasion of Poland on 1 September were neither Woollett follows the river out to the sea all the way foreseeable nor inevitable. Gathering Storm is the to the Cornish seaside, relating family and social riveting new account of this most precarious and histories along the way. John Murray Press fraught race against time. About the Author: UK Pub: May 2020 In a countdown covering the ten days from the John Murray Lisa Woollett is from a long line of scavengers. Her aftermath of the Nazi – Soviet pact on 24 August grandfather was from a South London family in the UK Editor: Joe Zigmond 1939 to the outbreak of war on 3 September, UK Pub: June 2020 ‘scavenging professions’ and she grew up on cliffs Mike Jones’ thrilling narrative uses a wide range on the Isle of Sheppey, spending much of her Proposal Available of source material – many completely new – UK Editor: Mark Richards childhood collecting and fossicking along the to provide a fresh, global retelling of events, shore. After a degree in psychology she studied Rights sold for previous title: anchored by the deteriorating relations between documentary photography and from 1993 worked China (Changsha Senxin) Britain and Germany. as a photographer - past clients include the Denmark (Turbine) Independent on Sunday, the Observer and Great Italy (Newton Compton) About the Author Ormond Street Hospital. Since 2004 she has lived Portugal (Bizancio) Michael Jones was awarded a history PhD by Bristol with her family on the south coast of Cornwall, in US (Penguin Random University, and subsequently taught at Glasgow a house shared with buckets and boxes of beach House) University and Winchester College. He is a fellow finds. Her first book,Sea and Shore Cornwall: of the Royal Historical Society and a member of Common and Curious findings, won a Holyer an the British Commission for Military History, and works Gof Publishers’ Award 2014. Current photographic now as a writer, media consultant and presenter. work sells through galleries and exhibitions. He has written books on the battles of Bosworth, Agincourt and Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad and the battle for Moscow, as well as Total War: From Stalingrad to Berlin. Most recently he has co- authored The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III.

14 15 Current Affairs, History & Politics Current Affairs, History & Politics CINDERELLA BOYS PACKING UP THE NATION Leo McKinstry Caroline Shenton

A powerful account of how RAF Coastal Command As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the proved the unsung heroes of World War II sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London’s museums, galleries and archives The triumph of Fighter Command in the Battle of formulated ingenious plans to send the nation’s Britain and the heroic stories of Bomber Command highest prized objects to safety. Using stately during WWII have passed into legend. But an homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, unheralded front of Britain’s war – fought by the stone quarries and even their own homes, a pilots and innovators in Coastal Command across dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the the perilous Atlantic gap – has for too long been nation’s greatest treasures and, in a race against overlooked. As scores of Maritime Naval vessels time, dispatched them throughout the country on were picked off by German U-boats the British Isles a series of top-secret wartime adventures. were being effectively sieged. Packing Up the Nation highlights a moment from This battle became in many ways a race against our history when an unlikely coalition of mild- technology as well as time – with advance and mannered civil servants, social oddballs and John Murray counter-advance on both sides. Leo McKinstry’s John Murray metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in thrilling history describes how, with pioneering the heritage war against Hitler. Caroline Shenton UK Pub: May 2021 technology, strategy and incredible daring, UK Pub: June 2021 shares the interwoven lives of ordinary people who Coastal Command played a pivotal role in kept calm and carried on in the most extraordinary UK Editor: Joe Zigmond rescuing these supply lines, and so turning the UK Editor: Joe Zigmond of circumstances in their efforts to save the Nation’s Battle of the Atlantic in the Allies’ favour. It is the historic identity. untold finest hour of Britain’s war. About the Author: About the Author: Dr Caroline Shenton was Director of the Leo McKinstry is a first-class historian of the Second Parliamentary Archives at Westminster, where she World War and author of bestselling Spitfire and worked for eighteen years. Prior to this she was a Hurricane. He writes regularly for the Daily Mail, senior archivist at the National Archives, and she is Sunday Telegraph and Spectator. Born in Belfast currently a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and he was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge the Royal Historical Society. Caroline has written for University. the Guardian, The London Review of Books, and reviewed books for The Spectator.

16 17 Popular Science Popular Science STONES FROM THE SKY THIS BOOK COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE: Tim Gregory The Real Science of Living Longer Better “Tim Gregory gets it. Drawing on his deep technical education and boundless curiosity, New Scientist he brings a childlike wonder of discovery to everything he sees. He shows an uncanny A myth-busting, scientifically proven guide to ability to swiftly understand, to clearly explain, making you live longer and live healthier - without and to be joyful in the process. His scientific the faddy diets delight is contagious.” You are what you eat. Food and diet have an Chris Hadfield - Former Astronaut and enormous influence on your health and well-be- Commander of the International Space Station ing, but eating the right amount of the right things - and not too much of the wrong things - isn’t easy. Stones form the Sky is an exhilarating journey But, as in most walks of life, knowledge is power. into the past, present and future of our planet. This book will empower you to eat healthily, lose Originating in the Asteroid Belt between Mars weight, and sort the fads from science facts. and Jupiter, these rocky fragments offer clues John Murray John Murray not just to the earliest origins of the Solar System This is the New Scientist take on a ‘New Year New You’ book: an eye-opening and myth-busting but also to Earth’s very survival into the future. UK Pub: January 2020 UK Pub: February 2021 As Tim says, ‘It is an epic beyond compare.’ guide to everything from sugar to superfoods, from fasting to eating like a caveman and from vegan- UK Editor: Georgina Laycock UK Editor: Georgina Laycock Legendary tales of rocks falling out of the sky ism to your gut microbiome. have been told throughout human history. Tim Rights sold: brings to life some of the most significant falls in Forget faddy diet books or gimmicky exercise US (Basic Books) scintillating detail – for example the meteorite, programmes, this is what is scientifically proven to about the size of a large loaf of bread, that make you live longer and to be healthier and hap- slammed into the earth in the Yorkshire Wolds pier. in 1795, narrowly missing workers ploughing a field. It is only in the last 150 years thatthe About the Author: true significance of meteorites has been After a degree in biochemistry and a MSc in understood – they are a direct connection science communication, both from Imperial to Earth’s deepest past and have allowed College, Graham Lawton landed at New Scientist, scientists to measure the immense depth of where he has been for almost all the 21st century, geological time. first as features editor and now as executive editor. His writing and editing have won a number of About the Author: awards. Tim is currently based at the British Geological Survey in Nottingham, having recently com- pleted his PhD in cosmochemistry at Bristol University. He is an expert in dating meteorites and Stones from the Sky is his first book.

18 19 Popular Science Popular Science THIS BOOK COULD FIX YOUR LIFE WHY DO BOYS HAVE NIPPLES? New Scientist New Scientist

•How can you unlock your brain’s potential? The Horrible Histories but for science -- packed •What’s the best way to de-stress your mind? with all the gross and weird bits. •How do you form better habits, and break bad ones? Children make excellent scientists - they’re inquisitive, keen to learn and have open minds. Cutting through self-help fads and confusing And they especially love to learn about all the statistics, here is the truth about confidence, gross stuff and all the weird facts - this book is creativity, meditation, mindfulness, sleep, anxi- packed full of them. ety, IQ, addiction, productivity, success, intelli- gence, happiness and much, much more. Discover how to extract iron from your breakfast cereal; how fish communicate by farting; why boys Full of the latest research and ground-breaking have nipples; how to turn your fried eggs green evidence, and packed with useful takeaways, and why tigers have stripes, not spots. this book really could fix your life. John Murray Press Behind each surprising question and answer or John Murray wacky experiment is a scientific explanation that About the Author: UK Pub: August 2019 will teach children more about biology, chemistry UK Pub: January 2021 After a degree in biochemistry and a MSc in and physics. science communication, both from Imperial UK Editor: Kate Craigie UK Editor: Georgina Laycock College, Graham Lawton landed at New About the Author: Scientist, where he has been for almost all the Rights Sold: Since the first magazine was published in 1956, 21st century, first as features editor and now as Japan (Hyoronsha) New Scientist has established a world-beating executive editor. His writing and editing have reputation for exploring and uncovering the latest won a number of awards. developments and discoveries in science and technology, placing them in context and exploring what they mean for the future. Each week through a variety of different channels, including print, online, social media and more, New Scientist reaches over four million highly engaged readers - over a million readers for the print magazine alone.

20 21 Popular Science Popular Science HOW TO BE HUMAN SUPER SENSES New Scientist Emma Young

If you thought you knew who you were, THINK AGAIN. From childhood we are told that humans have five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. But Did you know that half your DNA isn’t human? That your school teachers were wrong. All of us have at somebody, somewhere has exactly the same face? Or least twenty-two senses – and our survival depends that most of your memories are fiction? on them.

What about the fact that you are as hairy as a chimpanzee, In Super Senses, award-winning science journalist various parts of your body don’t belong to you, or that you Emma Young explores our surprisingly rich sensory can read other people’s minds? Do you really know why lives. She discovers why the main function of our ears you blush, yawn and cry? Why 90 per cent of laughter has isn’t for hearing; how we can find taste receptors John Murray Press nothing to do with humour? Or what will happen to your in places other than our tongues; how improving mind after you die? your sense of smell might increase your enjoyment UK Pub: March 2019 John Murray Press of sex; why the semi-nomadic Himba people can’t You belong to a unique, fascinating and often distinguish between blue and green but Russians UK Editor: Georgina misunderstood species. How to be Human is your guide to UK Pub: January 2021 can see two shades of blue; and how touch can Laycock making the most of it. confuse the way your brain registers pain. She also UK Editor: Georgina Laycock delves into the ‘new’ senses – including balance Rights sold: China (Hachette Phoenix), Spain (Alianza) and internal-sensing – without which you’d be Proposal Available dead within minutes. And by exploring the lives of people with sensory over-sensitivity to those who THE ORIGIN OF (ALMOST) EVERYTHING Rights Sold: Brazil (Record) feel no emotion at all, Young shows that our senses New Scientist don’t simply inform us, they form us.

Traversing cutting-edge research and drawing on With an Introduction by Professor Stephen Hawking. the experiences at the extremes of the sensitivity spectrums, as well as stories from history and In The Origin of (almost) Everything, New Scientist explores anthropology, Super Senses takes readers on a the modern origin stories of everything from the Big Bang, journey that will make them see themselves, and meteorites and dark energy, to dinosaurs, civilisation, the world around them, through entirely fresh eyes. timekeeping, belly-button fluff and beyond. About the Author: From how complex life evolved on Earth, to the first written Emma Young is an award-winning science and language, to how humans conquered space, The Origin health journalist now based in Sheffield. She has of (almost) Everything offers a unique history of the past, a BSc (Hons) in psychology from the University of John Murray Press present and future of our universe. Durham and 20 years’ experience on titles including the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, and UK Pub: March 2018 Rights Sold: Bulgaria (Homo Futurus), Brazil (Pensamento New Scientist. She also writes for Mosaic, the new Cultrix), China (Hachette Phoenix), Hungary (Gabo), Wellcome Trust magazine. UK Editor: Georgina Laycock Italy (Dedalo), Japan (Discover 21), Korea (Freelec), Netherlands (Veen Media), Norway (Font), Poland (Insignis Media), Portugal (Marcador), Russia (Corpus Books), Spain (Alianza), Taiwan (Briefing Press), Turkey (Kultur Yayinlari)

22 23 Popular Science Popular/Commercial Non Fiction THE CHANGING MIND TALL TALES AND WEE STORIES Dr Joseph Jebelli Billy Connolly

The Changing Mind shows how human evolution Outrageously funny story-telling from the nation’s is the result of major changes in our brains: and favourite comedian. how by understanding where, consciousness and memory come from, how they work and In December 2018, after 50-years of belly-laughs, what they mean – we can properly understand energy, outrage and enjoyment, Billy Connolly our own story for the first time. announced his retirement from stand-up comedy. It had been an extraordinary career. Cutting-edge science vividly explained interweaves with riveting human experiments When he first started out in the late Sixties, Billy and experiences. The really fascinating thing is played the banjo in the folk clubs of Glasgow. that this is far more than scientific history – our Between songs, he would improvise a bit, telling brains are still evolving and changing – and John Murray Press anecdotes from the Clyde shipyard where he Jebelli wants to help us think about what the worked. In the process, he made all kinds of future might bring. Cheeringly, he is as optimistic UK Pub: January 2021 discoveries about what audiences found funny, about that future - as he is about the finding of from his own exaggerated body movements to a cure for Alzheimer’s in Pursuit of Memory – so Two Roads UK Editor: Georgina Laycock the power of speaking explicitly about sex. He this is really interesting (and -– that rare thing for began to understand the craft of great storytelling popular science – empowering) study of our UK Pub: October 2019 Proposal Available too. Soon the songs became shorter and the capabilities. monologues longer, and Billy quickly became UK Editor: Nick Davies Rights Sold in Previous Title: recognised as one of the most exciting comedians Praise for In Pursuit of Memory: Brazil (Planeta Do) of his generation. ‘Joseph Jebelli’s wonderfully clear, vividly China (China Science and readable and comprehensive survey of the Technology Press) Tall Tales and Wee Stories brings together the search for a cure . . . The world is closing in on Israel (Modan) very best of Billy’s storytelling for the first time and Alzheimer’s. There is nowhere left for it to hide’ Italy (Mondadori) includes his most famous routines including, The The Times Korea (So Woo Joo) Last Supper, Jojoba Shampoo, Incontinence Pants Netherlands (Balans) and Shouting at Wildebeest. With an introduction ‘A riveting debut . . . the very human story of Portugal (Editora 2020) and original illustrations by Billy throughout, it is an the disease that is now an epidemic’ Bookseller Romania (Lifestyle) inspirational, energetic and riotously funny read, Science Book of the Month Russia (Azbooka-Atticus) and a fitting celebration of our greatest ever Spain (Intervencion Cultural) comedian. About the Author: Taiwan (Gusa) Joseph Jebelli is a thirty-year-old British US (HBG) About the Author: neuroscientist and writer. He began to work Sir William Connolly, CBE is a much-loved Scottish on the disease - specifically, using the body’s comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is immune system to halt its progress – while the recipient of a BAFTA Lifetime Achievement studying for his PhD in neurobiology at UCL. He Award and is regularly voted the nation’s favour- has written for the Guardian and the Wellcome ite stand-up comedian. Billy was born and raised in Trust. This is his second book. Glasgow and now lives in America. He announced his retirement from live performance in December 2018.

24 25 Popular/Commercial Non Fiction Travel FOR THE LOVE OF NIGEL: the dogs in BADLANDS: Walks in Europe’s Unlikely my life Landscapes Nick Hunt

Further adventures of Nigel and Nell as Monty Don, Europe is said to be the world’s only desert-free the UK’s favourite gardener and Sunday Times continent. This is untrue. Spain has 100 square bestselling author of Nigel, looks at the relationships miles of desert that resemble the Sahara so closely between dogs and humans and the incredible that Lawrence of Arabia was filmed there. Partial support dogs can provide for human health. deserts exist in Poland, Romania and Serbia; there is even one on the coast of Kent. Other unlikely Dogs have always been central to Monty Don’s landscapes are scattered across the continent, life, and in For the Love of Nigel, Monty Don looks the kinds of exotic-seeming wildernesses more more closely at this special relationship that we commonly associated with Africa, Asia or North have with our dogs and how they have played America, from tangled jungle to open steppe. such a crucial role in his own life. Companions, They make the continent larger, stranger, and healers, friends, offering no judgement — just love infinitely more thrilling. Two Roads and loyalty. In this heart-warming memoir Monty John Murray celebrates that love and the enormous support Badlands takes Nick Hunt to five landscapes Nigel and friends have given him. that should not really be there: a plateau of UK Pub: September 2020 UK Pub: May 2021 Arctic tundra stranded in the east of Scotland; a fragment of the Sahara in Spain; untouched UK Editor: Lisa Highton Praise for the Sunday Times bestseller Nigel UK Editor: Nick Davies ‘You would need a heart of stone not to love primeval jungle in Poland; vast steppe grasslands Monty Don’s Nigel’ Guardian in Hungary; hostile Badlands at the extremity of Option publishers: Italy. The existence of these places challenges the ‘A charming, affecting and often beautiful read’ France (Editions Hoe- India Knight perception of Europe as a part of the world from becke/Gallimard) which outlandishness has been banished. A blend ‘Humane, engaging and eloquent’ Times Literary Germany (btb) Supplement: of travel writing, nature writing, history and random Italy (Neri Pozza) encounters, Badlands offers tantalising glimpses Netherlands (De Bezige beyond human history – portals to the ancient About the Author: Bij) Monty Don is a well-known gardening writer and origins of continental Europe. broadcaster. He lives with his family, garden and dogs in Herefordshire. His previous books include About the Author: the Sunday Times bestseller Nigel, The Jewel Gar- Nick Hunt has walked and written across much of Europe. His articles have appeared in the Econ- den and Paradise Gardens. omist, the Guardian and other publications, and he also works as a storyteller and co-editor for the Dark Mountain Project.

His first bookWalking the Woods and the Water (Nicholas Brealey, 2014) was a finalist for the Stan- ford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. He currently lives in Bristol.

26 27 Travel Travel

A LENGTH OF ROAD HOMING: On Pigeons, Dwellings and Robert Hamberger Why We Return Jon Day A memoir about love and loss, fatherhood and masculinity, class and belonging. A feral history of home, and our relationship with that most unloved bird. In 1841 the ‘peasant poet’ John Clare escapes from an asylum in Epping Forest, where he had Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. been kept for four years, and walks over eighty miles home to Northamptonshire. Suffering from As a boy, Jon Day was fascinated by pigeons, poor mental health, Clare was attempting to which he used to rescue from the streets of London. return to his idealized first love, Mary, unaware that Twenty years later he moved away from the city she had died three years earlier. centre to the suburbs to start a family. But in moving house, he began to lose a sense of what it meant In 1995, with his life in crisis and his own mental to feel at home. health fragile, Robert decides to retrace Clare’s route along the Great North Road over a punishing Returning to his childhood obsession with the birds, JM Originals four-day walk. As he walks he reflects on the he built a coop in his garden and joined a local John Murray changing landscape and on the evolving shape pigeon racing club. Over the next few years, as he UK Pub: July 2020 of his own family, on fatherhood and masculinity, made a home with his young family in Leyton, he UK Pub: June 2019 and on the meaning of home. learned to train and race his pigeons, hoping that UK Editor: Kate Craigie they might teach him to feel homed. Part memoir, part travel-writing, part literary UK Editor: Joe Zigmond criticism, A Length of Road is a deeply profound Having lived closely with humans for tens of and poetic exploration of class, gender, grief and thousands of years, pigeons have become powerful sexuality through the author’s own experiences symbols of peace and domesticity. But they are and through the autobiographical writing of Clare. also much-maligned, and nowadays most people think of these birds, if they do so at all, as vermin. About the Author: Robert Hamberger is a published poet of six pam- A book about the overlooked beauty of this phlets and three collections, who works have been species, and about what it means to dwell, Homing broadcast on Radio 4 and published in the Observ- delves into the curious world of pigeon fancying, er, New Statesman, The Spectator, Poetry Review explores the scientific mysteries of animal homing, and Gay Times. This is his first non-fiction book. and traces the cultural, political and philosophical meanings of home. It is a book about the making of home and making for home: a book about why we return.

About the Author: Jon Day is a lecturer in English at King’s College London. He has written for the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, the Financial Times, and others. His first book, Cyclogeography, was published in 2015. He lives with his family in London.

28 29 Travel Recent Highlights EPIC CONTINENT THE HUMAN TIDE: How Population Nicholas Jubber Shaped the Modern World Paul Morland Award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber journeys across Europe exploring Europe’s epic A dazzling new history of the modern world, as poems and their impact on European identity in told through the remarkable story of population these turbulent times. change.

Reaching back to the era remembered as Every phase since the advent of the industrial ‘the Age of Migration’, Jubber explores how revolution – from the fate of the British Empire, attitudes to population movement, borders, kin to the global challenges from Germany, Japan relations, sex, class and political structures are and Russia, to America’s emergence as a sole dramatised in the ancient and medieval epics. superpower, to the Arab Spring, to the long-term From Homer’s Odyssey, through the devastating decline of economic growth that started with conflict of the French Song of Roland and the Japan and has now spread to Europe, to China’s German Nibelungenlied, to the great Viking meteoric economy, to Brexit and the presidency sagas such as Beowulf and the Icelandic Njal’s of Donald Trump – can be explained better when John Murray Press Saga, these are timeless tales about human John Murray Press we appreciate the meaning of demographic nature; but also windows into other societies, with change across the world. The Human Tide is the first UK Pub: May 2019 different emphases on matters of honour, kinship, UK Pub: January 2019 popular history book to redress the underestimated fundamentalism and fate. influence of population as a crucial factor in UK Editor: Joe Zigmond UK Editor: Joe Zigmond almost all of the major global shifts and events of Both a thrilling look at the stories sung by medieval the last two centuries – revealing how such events bards, and a journey across a continent struggling Rights Sold: are connected by the invisible mutually catalysing Rights Sold: with its identity, Epic Continent examines the Brazil (Zahar) forces of population. China (Beijing Zhengqing) impact on what it means to be ‘European’ today. China (Citic) Italy (Bompiani) Germany (Benevento) This highly original history offers a brilliant and simple Germany (DuMont About the Author: Japan (Bungei Shunju) unifying theory for our understanding the last two Reiseverlag) Nicholas Jubber moved to Jerusalem after Korea (Miraebook) hundred years: the power of sheer numbers. An graduating from Oxford University. He’d been Netherlands (Atlas ambitious, original, magisterial history of modernity, working two weeks when the intifada broke out Contact) it taps into prominent preoccupations of our day and he started travelling the Middle East and East Romania (Trei) and will transform our perception of history for Africa. He has written three previous books, The US (Public Affairs) many years to come. Timbuktu School for Nomads, The Prester Quest (winner of the Dolman Prize) and Drinking Arak Off About the Author: an Ayatollah’s Beard (shortlisted for the Dolman Dr Paul Morland is associate research fellow at Prize). He has written for the Guardian, Observer, Birkbeck College, University of London and a and the Globe and Daily Mail. renowned authority on demography. A French speaker with dual German and British citizenship, Paul was educated at Oxford University, and was awarded his PhD from the University of London.

30 31 Recent Highlights Recent Highlights

BLACK BOX THINKING JOURNEYS TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE Matthew Syed WORLD David Attenborough Black Box Thinking is a new approach to high performance, a means of finding an edge in a complex Following the success of the original Zoo Quest and fast-changing world. Matthew Syed tells the inside expeditions, in the late 1950s onwards the young story of how success really happens – and how we David Attenborough embarked on further travels in cannot grow unless we are prepared to learn from our a very different part of the world. From Madagascar mistakes. and New Guinea to the Pacific Islands and the Northern Territory of Australia, he and his cameraman Rights Sold: Brazil (Editora Objetiva), China (Ginkgo), companion were aiming to record not just the wildlife, Croatia (Mozaik), Czech Republic (Albatros Media), but the way of life of some of the indigenous people Denmark (Turbine), Estonia (Kirjastus Pegasus), Germany Two Roads of these regions, whose traditions had never been John Murray Press (Deutscher Taschenbuch), Israel (Matar), Italy (Newton encountered by most of the British public before. Compton), Japan (Discover 21), Korea (RH Korea), UK Pub: September 2018 UK Pub: April 2016 Lithuania (Alma Littera), Netherlands (Kosmos), Poland (Insignis Media), Portugal (Bertrand Editora), Romania UK Editor: Kate Hewson Rights Sold: China (Yilin Press), Estonia (Tanapaev), UK Editor: Nick Davies (SC Publica), Russia (Azbooka-Atticus), Serbia (Publik Hungary (Park Kiado), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Praktikum), Slovenia (UMco), Spain (Urano), Taiwan Unieboek), Poland (Proszynski Media),Russia (Azbooka (Business Weekly), Thailand (WeLearn), Turkey (Pegasus Atticus), Spain (Ediciones del Viento), Taiwan (Marco Yayincilik), Ukraine (KM Books), Vietnam (1980 Books), Polo Press) US (Penguin Random House)

THE GREATEST Matthew Syed ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG NATURALIST David Attenborough Matthew Syed, the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author of Black Box Thinking, returns with a collection of IIn 1954, a young television presenter named David award-winning writing on the science and psychology Attenborough was offered the opportunity of a of sport. lifetime – to travel the world finding rare and elusive animals for London Zoo’s collection, and to film the What can Roger Federer teach us about the secret expeditions for the BBC. of longevity? What do the All Blacks have in common with improvised jazz musicians? What can cognitive Rights Sold: China (Yilin Press), Estonia (Tanapaev), neuroscientists tell us about what happens to the brains Germany (Benevento/Red Bull), Hungary (Park Kiado), of sportspeople when they perform?And why did Johan Italy (Neri Pozza), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Unieboek), Cruyff believe that beauty was more important than Poland (Proszynski Media), Portugal (Bertrand Editora), John Murray Press Romania (SC Publica), Russia (Azbooka Atticus), Spain winning? How do we become the best that we can Two Roads be, as individuals, teams and as organisations? Sport, (Ediciones del Viento), Taiwan (Marco Polo Press), UK Pub: February 2017 Turkey (Cali Adam Yayinlari), US ( US) with its innate sense of drama, its competitive edge, UK Pub: March 2018 its psychological pressures, its sense of morality and its UK Editor: Nick Davies illusive quest for perfection, provides the answers. UK Editor: Kate Hewson

Rights Sold: Romania (SC Publica), Russia (Azbooka- Atticus)

32 33 Recent Highlights Recent Highlights JUST F*CKING DO IT: Stop Playing THE ATLAS OF HAPPINESS Small. Transform Your Life. Helen Russell Noor Hibbert From the bestselling author of The Year of Living Stop thinking small. Just put yourself out there, aim Danishly, an illustrated, full-colour round-the-world for the sky, and JFDI. discovery of the global secrets of happiness.

JUST F*CKING DO IT will take you on a mind- From Australia to Wales, via Bhutan, Ireland, Finland, altering journey of self discovery and personal Turkey, Syria, Japan, and many more besides, The transformation using an approach which combines Atlas of Happiness uncovers the global secrets to psychological rigour with spiritual power – helping happiness, and how they can change our lives. you to become the best version of yourself and create a life of happiness and abundance. Feeling terrified of that upcoming job interview? Take inspiration from the Icelanders and get True personal development can be achieved some Þetta reddast, the unwavering belief that only through changing how we think and the way everything will work out in the end. we interact with the world around us. This book John Murray Learning will demonstrate that alongside purposeful and Two Roads Lost your way in life? Make like the Chinese and practical steps to improve our life, we have the find your xing fu, or the thing that gives you real UK Pub: June 2019 power to multiply our success and happiness ten UK Pub: November 2018 purpose. times over by accessing the universal energy force UK Editor: Jonathan Shipley that is available to each and every one of us. UK Editor: Kate Hewson Too much on your plate? The Italians can help you learn the fine art of dolce far niente, aka the Rights Sold: JUST F*CKING DO IT describes a system that works Rights Sold: sweetness of doing nothing at all. Germany (Ariston/PRH) and shines a light on a path to results which are Arabic (Arab Scientific) Netherlands (HarperCollins) phenomenal. Whatever obstacles are in your Bulgaria (ERA) Overwhelmed by busyness and disconnected Russia (JSC) path, this book will show you how to stop thinking Czech Republic (Jota) from nature? The Swedish have a solution – just find Taiwan (Acme) small, make those positive changes and live the China (Yilin Press) your smultronställe, or ‘wild strawberry patch’, your Turkey (Flamingo) life you deserve. Germany (Rowohlt) perfect escape from the rest of the world. France (JC Lattes) About the Author: Israel (Yedioth Books) About the Author: Noor Hibbert is an International Business, Executive Italy (Sperling & Kupfer) Helen Russell is a journalist and the bestselling & Strategic Intervention Coach, serial entrepreneur Lithuania (Vaga) author of The Year of Living Danishly and Leap and mother. She has a degree in Psychology, a Netherlands (Podium) Year. postgraduate qualification in Business Coaching, is Poland (Insignis Media) a Certified Strategic Intervention coach with Tony Russia (Eksmo) Formerly editor of MarieClaire.co.uk, she now Robbin’s international training Institute, Robbins- Spain (Planeta) lives in Denmark and works as a Scandinavia Madanes Training, and is currently completing her Taiwan (Pcuser) correspondent for the Guardian, as well as writing Masters in Coaching. She has also been accepted Turkey (Dogan Kitap) a column on Denmark for the Telegraph and on the elite Forbes Coaches Council. US () features for The Times, The Observer, Grazia, The Wall Street Journal and . She has created two 6-figure businesses in just two years, whilst raising two small children and embarking on a spiritual journey which has accelerated her success.

34 35 Literary Fiction

BIG GIRL, SMALL TOWN Michelle Gallen

A keenly-observed, darkly-comic story about a girl stuck in a very small town

Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn’t like gossip and she isn’t interested in knowing her neighbours’ business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers.

Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, she has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother. She works in the local chip shop (Monday- Saturday, Sundays off), wears the same clothes John Murray every day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, nuked in the microwave) UK Pub: February 2020 and binge watches Dallas (the best show ever aired on TV) from the safety of her single bed. She has no UK Editor: Becky Walsh friends and no boyfriend and Majella thinks things FICTION are better that way. Rights sold: US (Workman/Algonquin) But Majella’s safe and predictable existence is Hebrew (Lesa Press) shattered when her grandmother dies and as much as she wants things to go back to normal, Majella comes to realise that maybe there is more to life. And it might just be that from tragedy comes Majella’s one chance at escape.

About the Author: Michelle Gallen was born in Tyrone in the 1970s and grew up during the Troubles a few miles from the border. She studied English Literature at Trinity Col- lege Dublin and Publishing at Stirling University. She has had work published in the Stinging Fly, Mslex- ia and others and won the Orange/NW Short Story Award.

37 Literary Fiction Literary Fiction

HASHIM & FAMILY THE GROUP Shahnaz Ahsan Lara Feigel

John Murray’s lead fiction debut for 2020 An engrossing portrait of contemporary female life and friendship Introducing Hashim, Munira, Rofikul and Helen. The Group, an honest and fiercely intelligent novel It is New Year’s Eve, 1959, and Hashim has left about a group of female friends turning forty, behind his homeland and his new wife, Munira, some of whom have children, some of whom to seek his fortune in England. His cousin and don’t; about the difficulties in their marriages only friend, Rofikul, introduces Hashim to life in and in the relations between the sexes more Manchester – including Rofikul’s girlfriend, Helen. generally; about whether they’ve managed When Munira arrives, the group must learn what to fulfil their earlier promise and what they think it is to be a family. about it, either way.

Ten years later, war breaks out in East Pakistan. Taking its cue from Mary McCarthy’s frank, The struggle for liberation and the emergence absorbing novel about a group of female of Bangladesh as an independent nation John Murray graduates, while channelling the spirit of ‘real life’ John Murray affects the family in ways they could never have that animates the recent work of Rachel Cusk, this foreseen. UK Pub: May 2020 is an engrossing portrait of contemporary female UK Pub: April 2020 life and friendship, and a thrillingly intimate and Spanning twenty years and two countries, UK Editor: Mark Richards acute take on female character in an age that UK Editor: Mark Richards Hashim & Family is the story of migration and may or may not have been changed by feminism belonging, of the notion of home and the bond in its different strands. of kinship. In the vein of Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half About the Author: of a Yellow Sun, it is the debut of a superb new A literary critic and cultural historian teaching talent. in the English department at King’s College London, Lara Feigel is the author of The Love- ‘I loved Hashim & Family and found it immediately Charm of Bombs, The Bitter Taste of Victory and, engaging, possessing both freshness and most recently, Free Woman, a book where Lara warmth. It is one of those books that made me examines her own life alongside Doris Lessing’s sad when it ended and I had to say goodbye to to explore what freedom (sexual, psychological, the wonderfully vivid family that Shahnaz Ahsan political) might be and whether it’s attainable has created’ Catherine O’Flynn or desirable. She reviews for a number of publi- cations, most frequently the Guardian and the About the Author: Observer. Shahnaz Ahsan is an award winning writer of short stories. She has also written a screenplay, Laila, a feature length film set in her hometown of Keighley. She was the recipient of a Thouron Award and a Fulbright Award. Born and raised in West Yorkshire, she has lived in Oxford, Phila- delphia, and currently resides in London.

38 39 Literary Fiction Literary Fiction WE GERMANS THE ELECTRIC Alexander Starritt Edward Hogan

A truly original novel about the Second World War A grandmother, a mother, a son, bound together by told from the point of view of a German soldier on love, tragedy, and the one place they can escape the Eastern front to - The Electric

We Germans takes the form of a letter written by Brighton, 1950s. When Daisy got married, she knew the now 90-year-old soldier to his grandson, telling nothing of a police wife’s struggles - the way him of his experiences in the war, and his grappling secrecy and violence seep into the home. But over with the extent to which he feels guilt and shame the years she finds ways to exist. She builds a fierce about his own behaviour, and the behaviour of bond with her daughter, Linda, and together they Germany. The novel is interrupted at various points escape reality and enter the twilit fantasy of the by the grandson, who offers his own perspective on movies whenever they can. his grandfather.

(C) Ella Webber Brighton, 1998. Linda is lost and still reeling from the Starritt delicately and deftly explores the moral horror of her mother’s death a decade before. JM Originals considerations of a young soldier in that position, JM Originals While clearing out the family home, she finds three what he or anyone else would/should do, and letters to Daisy, from a man she’d never once UK Pub: June 2020 whether a life of loving and sacrificing for your UK Pub: August 2020 mentioned. family post-war could make up for inhumane acts. UK Editor: Mark Richards UK Editor: Mark Richards Meanwhile Lucas, her deaf teenage son, is The storytelling is excellent, and totally gripping. obsessed with his support worker, and relearning Rights Sold: It’s also very human; there are horrors, generally the sign language he shared with his Nanna. As Netherlands (Ambo Anthos) unseen but occasionally seen, and the events take the language comes back, so do memories of his USA(Little, Brown)) place against this backdrop, but it’s more about early childhood. Will his remembering what really the everyday experiences of soldiers, and among happened ten years ago save his family . . . or the horror and confusion there are moments of destroy it? humour and life, as well as acts of great bravery and selflessness. A grandmother, a mother, a son, bound together by love, tragedy, and the one place they can About the Author: escape to - The Electric. Alexander Starritt was born half-Scots, half-German in 1985, and grew up in the Scottish north-east. About the Author: Educated in Edinburgh and at Oxford, he trans- Edward Hogan was born in Derby in 1980 and now lates fiction, poetry and academia from German, lives in Brighton. He is a graduate of the MA crea- including Stefan Zweig’s A Chess Story. He has tive writing course at UEA and a recipient of the Da- reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, The vid Higham Award. His first novel, Blackmoor, was Spectator and the Mail on Sunday, and his shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the short fiction has been shortlisted for the Paris Liter- Year Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize and won the ary Prize. His first novel,The Beast, was published in Desmond Elliott Prize. He is also the author of two 2017 by Head of Zeus. novels for young adults, Daylight Saving and The Messengers.

40 41 Literary Fiction Literary Fiction TOTO AND THE MURDERERS THE AUNT WHO WOULDN’T DIE Sally J Morgan Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay

An atmospheric debut novel set in 1970s Leeds ‘A chaotic, furious, extraordinary Bengali confection and Sheffield when attacks on women punctuat- ... Irresistible’ Philip Hensher, The Spectator Books of ed the news the Year

Talented but chaotic Sheffield art graduate Jude At eighteen, Somlata married into the Mitras: a - known to her friends as Toto, after Dorothy’s little once noble Bengali household whose descendants dog - moves into a house in a run-down area have taken to pawning off the family gold to keep of Leeds. Her restless spirit takes her on regular up appearances. When Pishima, the embittered hitchhiking jaunts, compelling her to break through matriarch, dies, Somlata is the first to discover her her fears. The anchor in her life is her best friend aunt-in-law’s body - and her sharp-tongued ghost. Nel, whose own secret experience of violence is at the hands of her boyfriend. First demanding that Somlata hide her gold from the family’s prying hands, Pishima’s ghost continues As stories of attacks on women punctuate the to wreak havoc on the Mitras. Secrets spilt, cooking JM Originals news, Jude finds an unlikely friendship with a John Murray spoilt, Somlata finds herself at the centre of the prostitute living over the road. Suffocated by an chaos. And as the family teeter on the brink of UK Pub: November 2020 affair with one half of a bohemian couple bringing UK Pub: July 2019 bankruptcy, it looks like it’s up to her to fix it. a middle-class suburban twist to free love, she UK Editor: Becky Walsh strikes out once again - this time drawn inexorably UK Editor: Mark Richards The Aunt Who Wouldn’t Die is a frenetic, funny towards an encounter darker than anything she’d and fresh novel about three generations of Mitra imagined. Rights Sold: women, a jewellery box, and the rickety family they France (Calmann-Levy) hold together. Russia (Eksmo) About the Author: Sweden (Piratförlaget) About the Author: Sally J Morgan was a community artist in the north USA and Canada(Harper- Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay was born in 1935 in of England and inner London, before becoming an Collins) present-day Bangladesh. He earned a Master’s academic. Her art has been exhibited worldwide. degree from Calcutta University and worked for She lives in Wellington, New Zealand and this is her some time as a schoolteacher before becoming a first book. journalist and author. The Aunt Who Wouldn’t Die is a much-loved contemporary classic in Bengali, and was adapted into the film Goynar Baksho in 2013. The first English translation was published in India in 2017.

Translated by Arunava Sinha into English.

42 43 Literary Fiction Literary Fiction NOBBER STARVE ACRE Oisín Fagan Andrew Michael Hurley

A wildly inventive and audacious debut novel from “The latest novel from ‘the new master of the author of Hostages menace” Sunday Times

An ambitious noble and his three serving men travel Everything is buried for a reason. Richard and through the Irish countryside in the stifling summer Juliette Willoughby live in an old farmhouse in of 1348, using the advantage of the plague which North Yorkshire. The place has been called has collapsed society to buy up large swathes Starve Acre since anyone can remember. of property and land. They come upon Nobber, Nothing grows there. a tiny town, whose only living habitants seem to be an egotistical bureaucrat, his volatile wife, a There are tales of something interred in the field naked blacksmith, and a beautiful Gaelic hostage. behind the house. The villagers disagree on what Meanwhile, a band of marauding Gaels are is buried there, but they all know one thing: what roaming around, using the confusion of the sickness was put in the ground should stay in the ground. to pillage and reclaim lands that once belonged to John Murray JM Originals them. Historian Richard decides that he is going to UK Pub: October 2019 unearth the local mystery for his next book, but UK Pub: July 2019 As these groups converge upon the town, the he digs up something that only the past can habitants, who up until this point have been under UK Editor: Mark Richards understand. When he brings it into his home, UK Editor: Becky Walsh strict curfew, begin to stir from their dwellings, terrible mistakes will have to be relived. demanding answers from the intruders. A deadly Rights Sold: stand-off emerges from which no one will escape Brazil (Editora Intrinseca) Praise for Andrew Michael Hurley: unscathed. Finland (WSOY) ‘Hurley is a superb storyteller’ The Times Italy (Bompiani/Giunti) Praise for Nobber: ‘An amazing piece of fiction’Stephen King “A bloody and brilliant first novel… Oisín Fagan’s first novel is a dark and bloody tale, well leavened with ‘An extraordinarily haunted and haunting novel’ bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that Daily Telegraph has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy.” the Guardian About the Author: Andrew Michael Hurley’s first novel, The Loney, “Nobber is a true grotesque: hideous and went on to sell in twenty languages and won the magnificent… there is a much needed seam of Costa Best First Novel Award and Book of the raven-dark comedy running through this bubonic Year at the British Book Industry Awards in 2016, book.” TLS and is in development as a feature film. Devil’s Day, his second novel, won the Encore Award About the Author: for second novels. Oisín Fagan has had short fiction published in the Stinging Fly and the anthology Young Irelanders, with work featured in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Hostages, his first collection, was published in 2016. He is a recipient of the 2016 and the 2018 Liter- ature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.

44 45 Literary Fiction General Fiction ASGHAR AND ZAHRA THE NINTH CHILD Sameer Rahim Sally Magnusson

Asghar and Zahra follows an unlikely couple 1856, the Scottish Highlands. A spellbinding novel of through the first year of their tumultuous a young doctor’s wife, Isabel Aird, struggling to make marriage her childless life meaningful, unaware that the sinister Robert Kirke is watching her every move when she Asghar and Zahra are young British Muslims becomes pregnant again. From the Sunday Times born in the same close-knit community in west bestselling author of Where Memories Go and The London. They are both trying to accommodate Sealwoman’s Gift. their home culture with the world around them. But the superficial similarities between them do Isabel Aird, denied the motherhood role society expects not tell the whole story. Their families are rivals of her by a succession of miscarriages, is comforted by involved in running two different mosques: a place where she can feel the presence of her lost Asghar’s is more traditional, while Zahra’s is children and begin to work out what her life is for. more liberal. Asghar struggles with integrating: he is a shy, closed personality. Zahra is an New life is quickening within her again. While her JM Originals ambitious and intelligent woman who can’t Two Roads husband is engaged with the medical emergencies of wait to leave her community behind. the construction site, Isabel can only wait. But someone UK Pub: June 2019 UK Pub: March 2020 else is waiting too. The man in the dark coat, watching Their marriage was not arranged; in fact, the for the right moment with a huntsman’s eye . . . UK Editor: Mark Richards unlikely couple had to appeal for the approval UK Editor: Lisa Highton of their rivalrous parents. Asghar sees in Zahra About the Author: an opening to a world he has never mastered; Broadcaster and journalist Sally Magnusson has written Zahra sees in Asghar the embodiment of the 10 books, most famously, her Sunday Times bestseller, community she has guiltily abandoned. Each Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother’s is attracted to what they imagine the other to dementia. be – and each discovers, to their cost, that their projections do not match reality. Her debut novel, The Sealwoman’s Gift, was a Radio 2 Book Club and Zoe Ball Book Club selection, and was About the Author: shortlisted for several prizes. Sameer Rahim has worked in literary journalism for ten years, and is now managing editor of Prospect Magazine, having been formerly THE SEALWOMAN’S GIFT arts and books editor. In 2013, his essay In the Shadow of the Scroll: reconstructing Islam’s Sally Magnusson origins won a William Hazlitt essay prize. Uplifting, moving, and witty, The Sealwoman’s Gift speaks across centuries and oceans about loss, love, resilience and redemption.

Rights Sold: Iceland (Tindur), Italy (Neri Pozza Editore), Serbia (Vulkan)

46 47 Crime and Thriller Crime and Thriller A SINGLE SOURCE A DYING BREED Peter Hanington Peter Hanington

‘Topical, authoritative and gripping’ Charles A gripping political thriller split between war-torn Cumming Kabul and the shadowy of Whitehall and starring maverick journalist William Carver. ‘Tight, pacy, and strong on atmosphere’ Michael Palin A Sunday Times Thriller of the Month.

Veteran BBC reporter William Carver is back. This Kabul, Afghanistan. time, he’s in Cairo, bang in the middle of the Arab Spring. ‘The only story in the world’ according to In a brilliantly plotted contemporary thriller with his editor. But it isn’t. There’s another story, more echoes of Graham Greene and John le Carré, significant and potentially more dangerous, and if William Carver, a veteran but unpredictable BBC no one else is willing to tell it ... then Carver will, hack, is thrown into the unknown when a bomb whatever the consequences. goes off killing a local official. Warned off the story from every direction, Carver won’t give in until he Two Roads A Single Source tells two stories, which over a Two Roads finds the truth. few tumultuous months come together to prove UK Pub: May 2019 inextricably linked. There are the dramatic, world- UK Pub: April 2016 Patrick, a young producer, is sent out on his first changing events across North Africa and the foreign assignment to control the wayward Carver, UK Editor: Lisa Highton Middle East, as protests led by a new generation of UK Editor: Lisa Highton but as the story unravels it looks like the real story tech-savvy youngsters challenge the established lies between the shadowy corridors of the BBC, the order. And then there are two Eritrean brothers, perilous streets of Kabul and the dark chambers of desperately trying to make their way up from the Whitehall. Horn of Africa across the continent to a better life in Europe. Set in a shadowy world of dubious morality and political treachery, A Dying Breed is a gripping The world is watching, but its attention span is novel about journalism in a time of war, about the increasingly short. Carver knows the story is a struggle to tell the stories that need to be told - complex one and, in the age of Facebook, Twitter even if it is much easier not to. and rolling news, difficult stories are getting harder to tell. If everyone is a reporter, then who do you ‘TREMENDOUS’ William Boyd believe? ‘ENTHRALLING’ Michael Palin ‘AMAZINGLY GRIPPING’ Melvyn Bragg About the Author: ‘A BELTING GOOD READ’ A.L. Kennedy Peter Hanington is the author of A Dying Breed and ‘I LOVED EVERY MINUTE IN THIS BOOK’S COMPANY’ A Single Source. He has worked as a journalist for Fi Glover over twenty-five years, including fourteen years at the Today Programme and more recently The About the Author: World Tonight and Newshour on the BBC World Peter Hanington has worked as a journalist for over Service. He lives in London with his wife and has twenty-five years. His highly-acclaimed debut, two grown-up children. A Dying Breed, has been optioned by Company Pictures.

48 49 Crime and Thriller Crime and Thriller JOE COUNTRY Mick Herron

The latest instalment in the multi-award winning Jackson Lamb series.

‘We’re spies,’ said Lamb. ‘All kinds of outlandish shit goes on.’

Like the ringing of a dead man’s phone, or an unwelcome guest at a funeral . . .

In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined John Murray Press to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process. UK Pub: June 2019 Meanwhile, in Regent’s Park, Diana Taverner’s UK Editor: Mark Richards tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she’s going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might Rights sold in the series: have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . . Denmark (Forlaget Olga) And with winter taking its grip Jackson Lamb would Estonia (Varrak) sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he France (Actes Sud) can’t ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So Germany(Diogenes when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Verlag) Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score. About the Author: Hungary (General Press Mick Herron’s first Jackson Lamb novel, Slow Horses, was shortlisted for the Kiado) This time, they’re heading into joe country. CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and picked as one of the best twenty spy Italy (Feltrinelli Editore) novels of all time by . The second, Dead Lions, won the Japan (Hayakawa) And they’re not all coming home. 2013 CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger. The third, Real Tigers, was shortlisted Netherlands for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and both the CWA (Prometheus) Goldsboro Gold Dagger and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. The fourth, Norway (H Aschehoug) Spook Street, was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger and Theakston Old Peculier Spain (Salamandra) and won the Steel Dagger. The fifth,London Rules, was shortlisted for the CWA US (Soho Press) Gold Dagger and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. Joe Country is the sixth novel in the Jackson Lamb series.

Mick Herron was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.

50 51 Recent Highlights Recent Highlights SIGHT ELMET Jessie Greengrass Fiona Mozley JM Originals SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

LONGLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2019 An atmospheric and thrilling debut set in Yorkshire - perfect for fans of The Loney and The Essex Serpent ‘A stunning debut’ Guardian Rights Sold: Arabic (Hamed Bin Khalifa), China (Zhejiang In Jessie Greengrass’ superb debut novel, our un- Literature & Art), Czech Republic (Euromedia), France named narrator recounts her progress to moth- (Editions Joelle Losfeld), Germany (btb Verlag), Italy (Fazi erhood, while remembering the death of her Editore), Korea (Munhakdongne), Netherlands (Hollands own mother ten years before, and the childhood Diep), Poland (Foksal) Portugal (Clube do Autor), Russia summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grand- (Azbooka Atticus) Slovakia (Ikar), Turkey (Cinar), US mother. (Workman)

John Murray Woven among these personal recollections are significant events in medical history: Wilhelm Rönt- THE BLOOD MIRACLES UK Pub: February 2018 gen’s discovery of the X-ray; Sigmund Freud’s de- Lisa McInerney velopment of psychoanalysis and the work that John Murray Press UK Editor: Mark Richards he did with his daughter, Anna; and the origins of modern surgery and the anatomy of pregnant Rights sold: bodies. The second novel from the author of the Baileys Prize- China (Beijing Fonghong Media) winning The Glorious Heresies Germany Kiepenheuer & Witsch) Sight is a novel about being a parent and a child: Italy (Bompiani) what it is like to bring a person in to the world, Rights Sold: Czech Republic (Argo Spol), Denmark (Jensen Turkey (Timas Basim Ticaret) and what it is to let one go. Exquisitely written and & Dalgaard), France (Editions Joelle Losfeld), Germany USA and Canada(Crown/PRH) fiercely intelligent, it is an incisive exploration of (Liebskind), Italy (Bompiani/Giunti), Spain (Alianza Editorial) how we see others, and how we might know our- selves.

About the Author: DEVIL’S DAY Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied Andrew Michael Hurley philosophy in Cambridge and London. An Ac- John Murray Press count of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It won the Edge Hill Short Story The second novel from the author of the award-winning Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award, and was bestseller The Loney shortlisted for the PFD/Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Sight is her first novel and it was short- Rights Sold: Brazil (Editora Intrinseca), Finland (WSOY), listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. France (Editions Denoel), Germany (Ullstein Buchverlage), Italy (Bompiani Giunti), Netherlands (Uitgeverij Prometheus), Russia (RIPOL), Spain (Editorial Bernice), US (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

52 53 Recent Highlights THE FRANK BUSINESS Olivia Glazebrook

A novel about family, love and other battlefields

After Frank drops down dead in Heathrow Arrivals on Christmas Eve, his estranged daughter Jem is called in to identify the body and is left wondering why he was travelling to London in the first place, the day before Christmas, with no bags or belongings – just his wallet, passport and car key.

But as Jem impulsively travels back to Frank’s house in France – a house she hasn’t been in since she was a child - she puts together the same realisation that Frank had, shortly before his death. Frank has a son, too, who he had never known about. Jem has a brother. John Murray Press Frank has died of a congenital heart defect. A UK Pub: March 2019 defect he may have passed onto his daughter - or onto his son. She must tell him, and she wants to UK Editor: Mark Richards meet her brother, but in attaining her own family, she will rip apart another. PDF Available / 288pp Praise for Olvia Glazebrook: ‘A talented, witty writer with a sharp eye for social observation’ Daily Mail

About the Author: Olivia Glazebrook was born in 1976 and brought up in Dorset. She studied English literature at University College London and has written as a journalist, screenwriter, film critic and book critic. Her previous novels include The Trouble With Alice and Never Mind Miss Fox. The Frank Business is her third novel. She lives in London.

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