Dedalus Books Catalogue
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Dedalus Books Catalogue 1983 - 2013 THE DEDALUS HALL OF FAME o celebrate thirty years Tof publishing Dedalus has created its own Hall of Fame for books which have a special place in the Dedalus story. emoirs of a Gnostic MDwarf, Pfitz and The Book of Nights will be published on 30th November 2013 followed by Bad to the Bone by James Waddington on 5th July 2014. 2 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION The Secret Knowledge by Andrew Crumey ‘One of the most interesting books I’ve read this year.’ John Self in Asylum ‘A mystery tale that leaps between a washed-up pianist in London and assorted European intellectual heavyweights, with a pioneering socialist and a clandestine head of esoteric initiates in its background, Andrew Crumey’s seventh novel finds the author up to his old tricks. Crumey begins his story in Paris in 1913, a date perhaps chosen for its significance both to modern music (the premiere of The Rite of Spring) and quantum theory (the Bohr model of the atom). A young composer at a peak moment – out at a fair with his fiancée on his arm and his first major work locked away back home– suddenly vanishes, only to pop up again six years later as a political agitator in Scotland. As Crumey’s readers will immediately recognize, we have entered one of his mirrored boxes of many worlds. Pierre Klauer, a Schrödinger’s cat writ large, is simultaneously dead in Paris and alive on Clydeside.’ Paul Griffiths in The Times Literary Supplement ndrew Crumey combines teaching creative writing at Northumbria AUniversity with his writing. He lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His first novelMusic, in a Foreign Language (1994) was awarded The Saltire Best First Book Prize. His second novel Pfitz(1995) was one of the books of the year for The Observer and The New York Times. D’Alembert’s Principle was published to great acclaim in 1996, followed by Mr Mee (2000), Mobius Dick (2004) and Sputnik Caledonia (2008). His novels have been translated into 13 languages. £9.99 ISBN 978 1 909232 45 7 234p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 3 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Also by Andrew Crumey Mr Mee Elderly Scottish bookworm Mr Mee searches the internet for a legendary enclyclopedia outlining an 18th c quantum theory. Instead he enters a strange new world of cyber-hoaxers and online pornography. Meanwhile a university lecturer describes research on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and an infatuation with one of his students. And in the third strand of this unique comedy of ideas, set in the spring of 1761, Rousseau’s neighbours hold the key to the writer’s madness, the lost encyclopedia, and Mr Mee himself. ‘The book is fabulous stuff: erudite but not patronising, elegantly and simply written, jumping ambitiously across the centuries with a good dash of down-to-earth entertainment.’ The Times £9.99 12 July 2014 ISBN 978 1 909232 94 5 344p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights Mobius Dick Mobius Dick is a dazzlingly inventive story that blends techno-thriller, historical fantasy, philosophy and farce, with a cast of characters that includes composers, scientists, geniuses and madmen. Beneath its gripping plot Mobius Dick traces the history of an idea. Just how real is reality? ‘...as fiction it is solid plutonium, and unflaggingly enjoyable’ The Sunday Times ‘...the most rewarding book I have read all year.’ The Independent on Sunday £9.99 12 July 2014 ISBN 978 1 909232 93 8 312p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 4 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Time of the Beast by Geoff Smith n the Dark Ages, Athwold, a young monk, leaves his Imonastery in disgrace, to seek spiritual redemption by becoming a hermit in the wild expanse of the dismal Fenlands. Here he experiences love, desire and also horror, leading him to join the warrior-monk Cadroc in his quest to hunt down a brutal and mysterious killer – supposedly a demon which stalks the remotest reaches of the marshes, but whose true nature remains ominously unknown. It is a journey which takes Athwold deep into a world of pagan superstition and terror, on a blood- cursed trail of rage, revenge and madness; and to his final confrontation with darkness – both his own and the world’s. Time of the Beast is a dark and atmospheric novel combining history and fantasy. eoff Smith was born in London and educated in GSurrey. He worked in travel, then wrote and performed for theatre, television and radio before starting his own business. He is also a qualified psychotherapist, although he does not practice, since he considers dealing with his own neuroses to be quite sufficient. Time of the Beast is the result of his longstanding interest in Anglo-Saxon history and literature, along with a fondness for classic horror stories. £9.99 8 November 2013 ISBN 978 1 909232 36 5 236p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 5 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Codename Xenophon by Leo Kanaris t the heart of Codename Xenophon is the Greek A nation: its history, culture and current predicament. We see a dysfunctional society through the eyes of George Zafiris, an Athens-based private investigator. A thoughtful loner, he is forced to probe the heart of a failing society as he investigates a series of crimes the police show no interest in solving. A distinguished professor of ancient history is shot dead. Then a politician dies in mysterious circumstances and a journalist is murdered. George Zafiris has to find out if these deaths are connected. A gang of Georgians thugs may know the answer. Leo Kanaris has written a thoughtful crime mystery and has created a private investigator the Greek nation can be proud of. eo Kantaris is a school teacher in southern Greece. He is from an Anglo- LGreek family. Codename Xenophon is his first novel. £9.99 10 January 2014 ISBN 978 1 909232 83 9 234p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 6 ORIGINAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE FICTION Fontoon by John Schoneboom ontoon is an archetypal Dedalus novel: absurdly Ffunny, erudite, grotesquely surreal, and totally unique. At the edge of the city, Admiral Fontoon tends the lighthouse at Wossafocken Point and dreams of being a famous poet. His odds are poor, as he spends far more time lost in thoughts about exactly how big Jupiter must be than writing actual poetry. He is also constantly undermined by the Fontoon Wrecking Company – a secret organisation dedicated entirely to his personal humiliation. Nevertheless his dream comes true when a top spotter of poetic dispositions helps him to become an enormously influential media person. Fontoon’s inspiring words begin to solve the world’s biggest problems, until his weirdest and most disgusting personal idiosyncrasy is publicly exposed. ohn Schoneboom is a New Yorker who now lives in JNewcastle-upon-Tyne. He has studied international affairs, played the funky bass guitar, sold ice cream from a van, sneaked into numerous venues, and foiled a purse snatching. His play Dreams of Jimmy Bannon won the Artists Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Fontoon is his first novel. £9.99 4 April 2014 ISBN 978 1 909232 89 1 234p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 7 THE DARK MASTERS The Man who was Norris: The Life of Gerald Hamilton by Tom Cullen edited with an introduction by Phil Baker mmortalised in Christopher Isherwood’s classic novel Mr INorris Changes Trains, Gerald Hamilton was the real-life model for the seedy but beguiling Mr Norris. Tom Cullen’s biography is a literary curiosity, written in the 1970s but never published. Isherwood put Gerald Hamilton on the literary map but he was on other maps already, including those of police forces across Europe, and he was interned in Brixton prison during both world wars as a threat to national security. A Communist agent in the Thirties, Hamilton later drifted to the right and put his faith in the “sacred cause” of absolute monarchy. Despite his somewhat grotesque appearance he had a fruity charm, and he knew everyone from the last tsar and Guy Burgess to Sir Oswald Mosley and Aleister Crowley, who kept tabs on him for the Special Branch when they shared a flat in Weimar Berlin. Hamilton never lost his impeccable Edwardian manners or his love of wine and food, whatever life threw at him in the way of personal and global crises. “We live in stirring times,” he liked to say, “tea-stirring times.” Phil Baker, author of The Dedalus Book of Absinthe and biographies of Dennis Wheatley and Austin Osman Spare, tracked the manuscript down in the United States and has provided an introduction. om Cullen was born in Oklahoma in 1913 and was a Tmilitary reporter in WW11. In the 1950s he came back to Europe and settled in Britain. Owing to his Communist sympathies he had his US passport revoked and so was stateless. He was the author of several high profile biographies. His biography of Gerard Hamilton was thought to have been lost. He died in 2001 aged 88. £9.99 6 December 2013 ISBN 978 1 909232 43 3 288p B. Format Rights: Dedalus World Rights 8 DEDALUS CONCEPT BOOKS The Dedalus Book of the Occult: A Dark Muse by Gary Lachman Anew edition of a seminal work on the history of the occult. The Dedalus Book of the Occult celebrates the influence of occult thought and sensibility on some of the central poets and writers of the last two centuries, beginning with the Enlightenment obsession with occult politics, through the Romantic explosion, the paradoxically decadent and futuristic occultism of the fin de siècle, and the deep occult roots of the modernist movement.