Contents 3 Little, Brown 16 Abacus 21 Virago 34 Blackfriars 35 Sphere 74 Piatkus 102 Orbit 124 Atom 130 Little Brown Books for Young Readers Little, Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DY T +44 (0)20 7911 8071 F +44 (0)20 7911 8100 www.littlebrown.co.uk 2 3 The Spring of Kasper Meier About the author Ben Fergusson is a writer, editor Ben Fergusson and translator. Born in Southampton in 1980, he studied The launch of a brilliant new British talent, perfect for fans of English Literature at Warwick Restless by William Boyd and Dominion by C.J. Sansom. University and Modern Languages at Bristol University, and has The war is over, but Berlin is a desolate sea of rubble. There is a worked for ten years as an editor shortage of everything: food, clothing, tobacco. The local and publisher in the art world. population is scrabbling to get by. Kasper Meier is one of these Germans, and his solution is to trade on the black market to feed His short fiction has appeared in himself and his elderly father. He can find anything that people publications in both the UK and the need, for the right price. Even other people. US and has won and been shortlisted for a range of prizes, When a young woman, Eva, arrives at Kasper's door seeking the including the 2010 Bridport Prize. whereabouts of a British pilot, he feels a reluctant sympathy for From 2009-2010 he edited the her but won't interfere in military affairs. But Eva is prepared for literary journal Chroma and since this. Kasper has secrets, she knows them, and she'll use them to 2013 has been the editor of the get what she wants. As the threats against him mount, Kasper is short story magazine Oval Short drawn into a world of intrigue he could never have anticipated. Fiction. Why is Eva so insistent that he find the pilot? Who is the shadowy Frau Beckmann and what is her hold over Eva? Currently based in London, his first • The biggest fiction debut launch for novel, The Spring of Kasper Meier, Under constant surveillance, Kasper navigates the dangerous L,B/Abacus in 2014, from an extremely was written during a four-year streets and secrets of a city still reeling from the horrors of war talented and exciting new writer. period living and working in Berlin. and defeat. As a net of deceit, lies and betrayal falls around him, • Vividly evocative of post-WW2 Berlin, this is Kasper begins to understand that the seemingly random killings of a perfect read for fans of William Boyd's http://www.benfergusson.com/ members of the occupying forces are connected to his own Restless and Dominion by CJ Sansom - @BenFergusson situation. He must work out who is behind Eva's demands, and tightly plotted, emotionally gripping and a brilliant sense of place and period. why - while at the same time trying to save himself, his father and • A brilliant read for book clubs, combining a July Eva. compelling narrative drive with the retelling 9781408705049 of history from a 'forgotten' or lost Fiction perspective - a 52 year-old gay man living in Hardback post-WW2 Berlin, whose sexuality doesn't £14.99 define his experience, but informs his life 400pp and what happens to him 4 The Great Race The Race Between the English and the French to About the author Complete the Map of Australia During his remarkable career, David Hill has been chairman then David Hill managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, chairman The thrilling race between Frenchman Nicolas Baudin and of the Australian Football Englishman Matthew Flinders to chart the map of Australia. Association, chief executive and director of the State Rail Authority On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, NSW, chairman of Sydney Water two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Corporation and chairman of Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent CREATE, a national organisation by their governments on the same quest: to explore the responsible for representing the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the interests of young people and west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of children in institutional care. He is ©David Hill the same island. © David Hill David Hill the author of the bestsellers The Forgotten Children and 1788. He And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia. lives in Sydney. These men's journeys were the culmination of two hundred years of exploration of the region by the Dutch - most famously Abel Tasman - the Portuguese, the Spanish and by Englishmen such as the colourful pirate William Dampier and, of course, James Cook. The three-year voyages of Baudin and Flinders would see them endure terrible hardships in the spirit of discovery. They suffered scurvy and heat exhaustion, and Flinders was shipwrecked and imprisoned - always knowing he was competing with the French to produce the first map of this mysterious continent. Written from diaries and other first-hand accounts, this is the July thrilling story of men whose drawings recorded countless 9781408705735 previously unknown species and turned mythical creatures into Australasian History real ones, and whose skill and determination enabled Terra Trade Paperback Australis Incognita to become Australia. £14.99 400pp 5 California About the author Edan Lepucki Edan Lepucki is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a For fans of The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker staff writer for the influential blog and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, California is a gripping The Millions. Her work has already story of love at the end of the world. appeared in publications including McSweeny's, LA Times Magazine The sunshine state lies in darkness. and Best American Short Stories 2012. Los Angeles is in ruins, left to the angels now. http://italicsmine.tumblr.com/ And the world Cal and Frida have always known is gone. @EdanL Cal and Frida have left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by- side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's • PLAYS ON CONTEMPORARY FEARS: the pregnant. novel plays skilfully on contemporary anxieties and fears over the rise of global Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child super-viruses, climate change and the depletion of natural resources - California alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded has a strongly zeitgeist feel to it and and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can provides many talking points for book offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realise this community groups poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything • AN AWARD-WINNING WRITER: in 2009, and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must Lepucki won the James D. Phelan Award quickly decide whom to trust. and her story, 'Take Care of that Rage August Problem' is listed as a distinguished story in 9781408704714 A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, Best American Short Stories 2012 • A BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN, PLOT-DRIVEN General & Literary Fiction California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which Hardback clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible NOVEL from an exciting new American voice, Edan Lepucki will get a lot of £14.99 resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the attention on US publication 400pp ones we love. 6 Attrition Fighting the First World War About the author William Philpott Dr William Philpott has lectured in military history in the Department of War Studies, King's College The magnum opus of the First World War, from the outstanding London, since 2001. He is a historian at the King's College Department of War Studies. specialist in the history of the First World War, in particular British The First World War was too big to be grasped by its participants. strategy and the history of the In the retelling of their war in the competing memories of leaders French army. and commanders, and the anguished fiction of its combatants, any sense of order and purpose, effort and achievement, was missing. Drawing on the experience of front line soldiers, munitions workers, politicians and those managing the vast economy of industrialised warfare, War of Attrition explains for the first time why and how this new type of conflict born out of industrial society was fought as it was. It was the first mass war in which the resources of the fully-mobilised societies strained every sinew in a conflict over ideals - and the humblest and highest were all caught up in the national enterprise. In a stunning narrative, this brilliant and necessary reassessment • Published for the centenary of the First of the whole war cuts behind the myth-making to reveal the World War. determination, organisation and ambition on all sides. • By the author of Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme which received brilliant reviews • Philipott combines the very best academic credentials with an elegant and engaging writing style. August 9781408703557 History Hardback £30.00 416pp 7 If This Is A Woman The Untold Story of Heroism and Survival Inside About the author the Nazi's Women-only Concentration Camp Sarah Helm was a reporter on the Sunday Times and Diplomatic Editor Sarah Helm for the Independent before becoming Jerusalem and then The compelling story of the only concentration camp for women Brussels correspondent for the by the acclaimed author of A Life in Secrets.