HANNAH LOWE’S MEMOIR LONG TIME NO SEE TO BE BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK!

Hannah Lowe’s LONG TIME NO SEE, published in the UK by Periscope, will be BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week next week. The first episode will be broadcast at 09.45 a.m. on Monday 27 July and the last episode will go out on Friday. An accomplished poet and performer, Hannah Lowe will be reading her own work. 

Hannah’s memoir was listed for Guardian Hottest Caribbean Reads and picked as an Observer Holiday Read 2015. Poet Malika Booker called it ‘heartbreakingly tender, poignant and honest’ and Kerry Young, author of PAO and GLORIA said the following: ‘Sometimes we don’t cherish what we have until it’s gone. Such is the case with Hannah Lowe’s beautifully woven tale of father and daughter – a half-remembered, half-imagined reminder that our stories begin long before we are born, and never end.’

Hannah was chosen for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets List 2014. Her debut poetry collection, CHICK (Bloodaxe, 2013), also about her father, was called ‘outstanding, unputdownable’ by John Glenday, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, The Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry 2014 and most recently the Michael Murphy Award. Penelope Shuttle described her as ‘as a poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic’ – a voice that comes through in her moving memoir too.

Hannah’s father, Chick, a half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican immigrant, worked long hours at night to support his family – except Chick was no ordinary working man. A legendary gambler, he would vanish into the shadows of East London to win at cards or dice, returning during the daylight hours to greet the daughter whose love and respect he courted.

In this memoir, Hannah calls forth the unstable world of card sharps, confidence men and small-time criminals that eventually took its toll on Chick. She evokes her father’s Jamaica, where he learned his formidable skills, and her own coming of age in a changing Britain. LONG TIME NO SEE speaks eloquently of love and its absence, regret and compassion, and the struggle to know oneself.

Visit Hannah’s blog and follow her on Twitter. 

THE OTHER IDA LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE

Amy Mason’s THE OTHER IDA has been longlisted for The Polari First Book Prize, awarded to a writer whose first book explores the LGBT experience in poetry, prose, fiction or nonfiction. The longlist was announced at the Polari Literary Salon in London’s Southbank Centre on 20 July.

THE OTHER IDA, published by Cargo, won the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize in October 2014. It has received fantastic reviews from fellow authors including Emma Jane Unsworth calling it, ‘a brilliant debut,’ and Kerry Hudson saying it is ‘a rare and special book full of compelling stories.’

The winner will be revealed at the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre in October.

Visit Amy’s website.

Follow her on Twitter.

Praise for THE OTHER IDA

‘Mason’s evocation of the tension, claustrophobia and melancholy of a dysfunctional family amid grief is well realised.’ – Claire Hazelton, The Guardian

‘A raw and powerful read with a rich seam of black humour.’ – Sunday Mirror

‘Funny, bright, bold and exciting, this debut novel sparkles with originality and insight.’ – Viv Groskop

PETER JAMES’ YOU ARE DEAD AWARDED DR. LECTOR AWARD FOR SCARIEST VILLAIN

Peter James’ YOU ARE DEAD was awarded the Dr. Lector Award for Scariest Villain, the award for the writers who keep us awake at night, at Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate on Friday 17 July. The winners were decided by public vote.

The other shortlisted candidates were Chris Carter for AN EVIL MIND, Stieg Larsson for THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, Elizabeth Heynes for INTO THE DARKEST CORNER, Lauren Beukes for THE SHINING GIRLS and Stephen King for THE STAND.

Peter James’ 11th Roy Grace novel, YOU ARE DEAD, was published on 21 May 2015, and went straight to number one in the hardback Bestseller chart. The Roy Grace novels are translated into more than three dozen languages. View more on Peter’s website.

His new standalone novel, THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, will be published in November. Peter James is at his scariest best delivering a ghost story to chill your bones.

Follow Peter on Twitter.

Like him on Facebook.

Follow him on Instagram.

Praise for YOU ARE DEAD

‘James writes meticulously researched police procedurals, so informed that you can smell the canteen coffee and the squeak of the linoleum in the Major Incident Room.’ – DailyMail

‘Another really solid read once again from the main man!’ – Best Crime Books

‘Assembled all the best of James’s attributes and emerged as his most frightening and gripping tale yet.’ – The Times

KERRY HUDSON’S THIRST PUBLISHED IN PAPERPACK BY VINTAGE

Kerry Hudson’s THIRST is published today in paperback by Vintage, with a stunning new cover. THIRST has already gained spectacular recognition, making it onto Red’s 10 Best Summer Reads for August 2014 which called it ‘funny, inventive, delightful’ and from the Guardian, “THIRST explores the lives of people not generally considered fit for literature and does so with wit and a shrewdness that makes Hudson's subjects zing from the page... This is Love on the Dole 21st‑century style, featuring complex working-class characters faced with moral dilemmas.'

Alena and Dave are both on the run from disaster and meet during a London heatwave to begin a love affair as dark, joyful and frenetic as the city itself. Dave, who has built a carefully controlled world of self-denial and isolation, is drawn to Alena's passion for life, while Alena discovers that sex can be more than a transaction and that love and safety are priceless commodities.

But a relationship founded on secrets is easily shattered, and when Alena's ex-lover arrives, threatening to expose her, Alena flees. By the time Dave overcomes his mistrust about Alena and her past and follows her into the bitter Russian winter, he can only hope he's not too late to convince her that just as spring will come, second and even third chances can always be found. THIRST is a heartbreaking romance of almost unbearable fragility based in contemporary East London and rural Russia.

With Harper's Bazaar listing it as a Best British Read and calling it, ‘Fresh and original ... an unsentimental love story,’ THIRST changes the style of traditional love stories, and at its bruised heart lies a tender and tentative relationship like no other.

Born in Aberdeen, Kerry grew up in a succession of council estates, B&Bs and caravan parks which provided her with a keen eye for idiosyncratic behaviour, material for life and a love of travel. Kerry is strongly supported by both the British Council and Arts Council England, who awarded a grant for her to go to Russia for two months and research for THIRST, and who took her to Korea for a month to appear at several literary festivals. She was chosen as one of the Bookseller’s Rising Stars of 2014 for her work founding the Womentoring Project. Recently, Kerry has written an important and much-lauded provocation on diversity in the publishing industry, the full text for which you can read here.

Kerry’s profile was featured by the Observer where she talked about her career path, her travels and the journey to writing THIRST.

Visit Kerry's website and follow her on Twitter.

Praise for THIRST

‘Well-written and engaging.’ – Daily Mail

'Hudson excels at depicting twilight lives... tremendously affecting.. impressively unostentatious in its instinct for a common story within a city of millions that rarely gets heard.' - Claire Allfree, The Metro

'A quirky love story that I found both funny and touching … Hudson's debut was highly praised and this is a terrific follow up.' - Women and Home

‘She's a master at creating strong, authentic voices, and this book fizzes with the thronging sounds of east London in the summer and the bustling streets of an unknown Siberian town.’ – list.co.uk

BENJAMIN JOHNCOCK’S THE LAST PILOT PUBLISHED IN UK AND US

Benjamin Johncock’s THE LAST PILOT is published today in paperback by Myriad Editions in the UK, and was published in hardback by Picador in the US on Tuesday.

THE LAST PILOT has already assembled an enthusiastic following with a rave review in The Washington Post, who say "the effect is supercharged Hemingway at 70,000 feet", People magazine call it, ‘ingeniously plotted, deftly written and engrossing,’ and Jane Ciabattari from BBC Culture says, ‘Johncock is superb at crafting suspenseful scenes.’ Mail on Sunday also praised THE LAST PILOT, "a remarkably accomplished debut'. It has been selected as Amazon’s Best Book of July 2015, Barnes & Noble’s 2015 Discover Great New Writers Pick and one of SJ Watson’s Best Summer Reads for The Independent. There's a full list of his many and incredible reviews on Ben's blog.

Early October, 1947, Jim Harrison is a test pilot in the United States Air Force, flying flimsy aircraft high above the Mojave desert. When a terrible tragedy befalls his young family, Harrison's life grinds to a halt - so when he's offered a ticket to the moon, he takes it, and joins NASA's new training programme. Set against the backdrop of one of the most emotionally-charged periods in modern history, THE LAST PILOT is a mesmerising story of loss and finding courage in the face of it.

New York Times best seller, Kim Edwards, said ‘THE LAST PILOT reminds us in powerful ways that the real unknown frontier still lies within the mysteries of the human heart.’

Benjamin Johncock was born in England in 1978. His short stories have been published by The Fiction Desk and The Junket. He is the recipient of an Arts Council England grant and the American Literary Merit Award, and is a winner of Comma Press's National Short Story Day competition. He also writes for the Guardian. He lives in Norwich, England, with his wife, his daughter, and his son.

Visit Benjamin’s website and follow him on Twitter.

View the animated video of the cover for THE LAST PILOT, click here. 

Praise for THE LAST PILOT

“Benjamin Johncock is a writer of great craft and integrity. His dialogue is desert-dry, and his sentences crackle with the energy of things unsaid. With The Last Pilot he has done something remarkable: in a novel about the achievements of the space-race, he has shown us that true heroism lies in doing the right thing behind the closed doors of home. Wonderful stuff." - Jon McGregor

‘Jim’s story is fascinating, and the author writes with a strong ear for dialogue, which rattles the pages with intensity. A marvellous, emotionally powerful novel.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘Benjamin Johncock, the British author of an especially evocative and poignant new paean to the aura of astronauts and Atlas boosters … That’s all the more reason to regard THE LAST PILOT a first novel that takes the approach of adding a fictional person to real historical events, as a remarkable achievement … Johncock weaves a beguiling story, set to the soundtrack of Camelot … This account inevitably will be compared to THE RIGHT STUFF, and THE LAST PILOT is indeed indelibly marked by Tom Wolfe’s 1979 novel … Johncock acknowledges the debt but generally goes his own way … This is a book that hooks the reader from the very first sentence … The blazing beauty of a new literary star.’ – David Shribman, The Boston Globe