Clare Best’s THE MISSING LIST is a finalist for the Mslexia Memoir Prize

Clare Best’s brilliant and moving memoir THE MISSING LIST has been selected as one of three finalists for the 2015 Mslexia Memoir Prize. The prize is worth £5,000 and is for previously unpublished women memoirists. The prize was judged by Julie Myerson (memoirist, novelist), Jenny Brown (literary agent) and Jane Martinson (Women's Editor, Guardian). The winners were announced in the March issue of Mslexia.

Andrew O'Hagan describes the memoir as ‘A tapestry of time – brightly coloured, beautifully orchestrated, emotionally pure.’

Clare Best has worked as a bookbinder, a bookseller, an editor and a Creative Writing teacher. She is currently Writer in Residence at the University of Brighton. Clare is a prize-winning poet and the author of three poetry publications – TREASURE GROUND (HappenStance 2009), BREASTLESS (Pighog 2011) and EXCISIONS (Waterloo 2011) which was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize 2012.

Praise for Clare Best:

‘Clare Best writes of the things of the world, and of the moments in our lives, as if they bear within them secrets of mortality that words will never quite have the power to reveal. She writes with scruple and clarity, listening always for the unsaid and the unsayable, watching for the passage of flame into darkness.’ – Michael Hulse

 ‘Clare Best’s poetry dazzles with the clarity of its chiseled phrases and its measured form. Perhaps the confessional narrative it tells, of encounters with mortality through the loss of her parents and her own preventive double mastectomy, warrants a desire for such poetic control.’ - Eva C. Karpinski, Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme

ORION SIGNS NEW DEAL WITH LIZ FENWICK

The Orion Publishing Group is delighted to announce the acquisition of two new novels by author Liz Fenwick. Kate Mills, Publishing Director at Orion Fiction bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Carole Blake for a good five-figure advance. THE RETURNING TIDE plus one untitled novel, will be published in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Kate said: ‘Liz Fenwick’s novels capture all the mystery and romance of Cornwall and I’m delighted that we will publish THE RETURNING TIDE next summer, and a further novel after that. She is building a loyal, eager readership and we look forward to growing it further with what promises to be a very exciting novel.’

Liz Fenwick said: ‘The team at Orion have been fantastic to work with and I'm thrilled this will continue for the next two books.’

Carole Blake said: ‘Liz and Orion have been a terrific team for the 3 books published so far. She’s recently delivered her strongest novel to date, UNDER A CORNISH SKY, so this is a great time to be renewing our contract with Orion, and the agency is looking forward to adding to the 11 languages she is sold to so far.’

Growing up in Boston, Liz discovered early on that her best friends could be books. While waiting on a place on a Masters degree, she moved to London to see if life looked different from the other side of the Atlantic. It did and she soon fell in love with an Englishman. Now happily married with three children, she spends as much time as possible at her home in Cornwall.

Liz’s new novel, UNDER A CORNISH SKY is published in June this year.

 

For more information please contact :

Gaby Young at Orion: gaby.young@orionbooks.co.uk

Carole Blake, at Blake Friedmann: carole@blakefriedmann.co.uk

Paperback Publication day for Barbara Erskine and Sheila O’Flanagan

Two fabulous books by Blake Friedmann authors are out in paperback today.

The paperback for THE DARKEST HOUR by Barbara Erskine is released today by HarperCollins with a stunning new look for the cover and including a picture section at the back containing photographs of Barbara’s father, a Spitfire pilot, whose wartime exploits she based the historical part of the novel upon . An epic tale of love and heartbreak set in World War II and the present, Lucy’s husband is killed in a bizarre car accident and a painting he was to have restored leads Lucy back to the life of the artist, Evie. Finding a painted-over figure of a WWII pilot behind Evie’s self-portrait, Lucy unravels the mystery of the two men in Evie’s life, and their relevance to Lucy’s own. Barbara Erskine is the author of 13 novels and 3 volumes of short stories.  Her first and bestselling novel LADY OF HAY, has been continuously in print for 30 years next year and is sold in 26 languages.

IF YOU WERE ME by Sheila O’Flanagan is published in paperback today by Headline. Stressful presentations are part of a day’s work for Carlotta, but this one was in 2 languages. Missing her plane home wasn’t part of the plan, and missing her future mother-in-law’s birthday party is just the first of a sequence of events that turns her emotional and work life upside down.  Headline have sold more than 6 million books by Sheila, and her next novel, MY MOTHER’S SECRET, is published in July.  It will be Sheila’s 21st novel. She has also published 3 volumes of short stories

HOUSE OF ASHES longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize 2015

Monique Roffey’s haunting novel HOUSE OF ASHES has been longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2015, in the fiction category. The winners in each category will be announced on 1 April, and the Prize will be presented on Saturday 2 May, during the fifth annual NGC Bocas Lit fest in Port of Spain. The overall winner will receive a US$10,000 award with smaller awards for the other winners. Also nominated in the fiction category are Marlon James and Tiphanie Yanique.

Monique Roffey previously won the prize for her novel ARCHIPELAGO. HOUSE OF ASHES was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Book Awards in the Novel category.

HOUSE OF ASHES is Roffey’s third Caribbean-set novel, again adeptly exploring the personal and political against the troubled backdrop of a fictional island ‘paradise’. Inspired by real events, it is haunting story of Ashes and Breeze, two disaffected young men who follow the charismatic Leader into a disastrous coup. Set over the period of the siege of the House of Power, where captors and their hostages see each other’s most brutal but also most vulnerable sides, HOUSE OF ASHES is about fathers and sons, about failures of leadership – but also about how we confront our shadow sides, and about coming through wreckage committed to peace.

Roffey’s THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE was shortlisted for the Orange (now Baileys) Women’s Prize for Fiction. ARCHIPELAGO was also shortlisted for the 2014 Orion Prize.

Visit Monique's website here.

Praise for HOUSE OF ASHES:

‘Deploying the deep, humane wisdom that has become [Roffey’s] hallmark… the novel delivers its final, bittersweet coup with a fearlessness and grace that richly satisfies.’ – Liz Jensen, The Guardian

‘Grimly absorbing... Roffey’s knuckle-whitening novel goes to the heart of questions of political temptation and folly; it grips from beginning to end.’ – Ian Thompson, Telegraph

‘[a] laudable piece of literary work.’ – Raoul Pantin, Trinidad Express

‘Monique Roffey’s tragicomic take on this almost forgotten episode, strips revolution of any pretence of glamour… as funny as it is unsettling.’ – David Shaftel, Financial Times