South African Launch of RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER

Sally Andrew’s debut RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER: A TANNIE MARIA MYSTERY was launched last Wednesday at Kalk Bay Books in Cape Town, after being published in Australia by Text last month. It will be published in November in the US by Ecco Press, in Canada by HarperCollins and in the UK by Canongate – a wonderful handful of English language publishers around the world!

Alexander McCall Smith hailed the novel as ‘a triumph’ and this ‘culinary and linguistic treat’ (The Bookseller, Editor’s Choice) with ‘fascinating setting, engaging characters and a full complement of drool-worthy recipes’ (Library Journal, Starred Review) has also been described as ‘a delightful debut, tender and funny’ (Kirkus, Starred Review).

Kalk Bay Books is in a beautiful stone building between the mountain and the sea in Cape Town, South Africa. The bookshop was packed (‘no room for a flea’ as @LieslJobson said) and the evening was chock-full of laughter, love, and amazing cakes. Umuzi gave Sally a beautiful birthday cheesecake with the face of Tannie Maria on it and delicious cakes as featured in the book were baked for the event.

To make it extra-special, the launch took place on Sally’s birthday. She wore a debutante (or as she calls it, a ‘debut tannie’) red dress of silk and cotton velvet, and red veldskoene with a Karoo veld ‘polish’ of dust and scratches. Acclaimed South African actress Sandra Prinsloo, who narrates the audio edition of the novel, presented Sally with a birthday gift of oven gloves –  “because you are too hot to handle” and Sally put this to good use when signing copies afterwards.

The conversation was peppered with Sally’s thanks to all the people present who had contributed to the book, with particular praise for her parents, and added: "Thank you so much to BFLA, and to my publishers in South Africa and internationally for giving me the best birthday present of my life."

Some moments that had the audience laughing:

Sandra Prinsloo: “I see that, so far, Recipes for Love and Murder will be translated into thirteen languages: Polish, Estonian, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, Italian, Swedish, Hebrew, Dutch, German, Turkish and French. That’s amazing. I assume that you will be doing all these translations yourself?
Sally Andrew: “Yes, of course. The magic of a book is in the poetry of its words. It does mean that it will be some time before they are published, because it is a slow process to learn thirteen new languages simultaneously.”

Sandra asked Sally if it was difficult to achieve the right balance between serious and funny in the novel. Sally said that ‘serious’ was in her bones because of her history as an activist, but “the humour also came quite naturally. In fact I was christened ‘Silly’ at birth, and it was only after some bad experiences in Kindergarten that I changed my name to ‘Sally’.”

When asked for writerly advice, Sally said it was probably a little early in her career: “My life might go to pot,” she said, “and following my advice may lead you down some dangerous path.” She recommended that people rather listen to Sandra instead, but did advise, wisely: “Try and find that space in the Venn diagram where your greatest joy overlaps with the needs of the world.”

 You can see photographs of Sally reading and signing (with oven glove!) above.

Sally Andrew divides her time between the Cape Town coast and a nature reserve near Ladismith in the Klein Karoo, which she shares with her artist partner, a giant eland and a secretive leopard.  You can see her beautiful home landscape and share her pleasure in nature and food by looking at the photos and videos on her website: www.sallyandrew.co

Sue Moorcroft's Next Two Novels Sold at Auction, to Avon

Avon has acquired two new novels from successful author Sue Moorcroft, at auction. UK & Comm rights were bought from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann Agency. Avon will publish the first novel for Christmas 2016 with the second novel planned as a summer read in 2017.

Publishing Director Eleanor Dryden says ‘I am thrilled to welcome Sue Moorcroft to Avon. She is a wonderfully warm and witty writer with a great track record and masses of fans and she creates very special characters who stay with you. I fell for Ava in the first novel wholeheartedly on my first read. Christmas 2016 can’t come round fast enough!’

Sue Moorcroft says: I’m excited to be joining Avon, with their reputation for successfully publishing fiction to extensive audiences. Eleanor and her team impressed me with their enthusiasm and drive, their ideas and the welcome they offered to me in my new home.

Juliet Pickering says: Sue’s novels, with their smart, funny characters and very fresh, modern dilemmas, are perfectly matched with the energetic, ambitious team at Avon. We’re very excited to embark on this new relationship, and see Sue published at the level she thoroughly deserves. Roll on Christmas 2016!

Ava Bliss is making hats in Camden, focusing on her business and freshly broken-up from a brief, troubled relationship. She is not looking for a new romance. But then she meets Sam, her best friend’s boss, who definitely seems smitten with her, and who she keeps bumping into despite her efforts to remain detached. When Sam commissions her to make a very special hat for his seriously ill mother, and her ex begins sending Ava threatening messages, Sam and Ava must band together to get
through the best and the worst of times… ending with the best and worst of them all: Christmas. A contemporary tale, THE TRUTH ABOUT AVA is a stylish and warmly funny take on friendship, family and romance.

Sue Moorcroft is the award-winning author of nine commercial women’s novels, and several novellas. Her most recent novel is THE WEDDING PROPOSAL (Choc Lit, 2014), which was shortlisted for the Festival of Romantic Fiction Romantic Novel of the Year Award. She also teaches creative writing.

YOU ARE DEAD out in paperback today!

Peter James’ 11th novel in the best-selling Roy Grace series, YOU ARE DEAD, is published in paperback in the UK today by Macmillan. YOU ARE DEAD was recently awarded the Dr. Lector Award for Scariest Villain at Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate. It was published in the US in hardback earlier this month.  Peter has now achieved 9 Number One chart positions with his novels with Macmillan.

Peter’s standalone THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL was published in hardback on 8th October (the date on which more books were published in the UK than any other date in the calendar) and went straight to number 9 on the bestseller chart.

The last words Nick hears from his fiancée Logan, are in a terrified mobile phone call from her. She has driven into the underground car park beneath their apartment and seen a man acting strangely.  She screams, the phone goes dead.  The police are on the scene within minutes, but Logan has vanished, leaving behind her neatly parked car and telephone.  This is the beginning of what becomes a tortuous case for Roy Grace and his team, leading to the discovery of bodies of young women, and a terrifying chase to find the murderer, and Logan, dead or alive.  Surprising twists and chilling discoveries deliver a breath-taking read.

Peter James has been twice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and has won many literary awards: as popular internationally as in the UK, he won the US Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel in 2012.  This year, 2015, he was voted by WH Smith readers as The Best Crime Author Of All Time. He is published in more than 3 dozen languages.

Praise for Peter James:

'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business.' – Karin Slaughter

'Exceptional, knock-your-socks-off.' – Washington Post

‘Sinister and riveting… Peter James is one of the best British crime writers, and therefore one of the best in the world.’ – Lee Child

Find out more about Peter James at Blake Friedmann's, Pan Macmillan's and Peter’s websites and follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

ICON BOOKS ACQUIRES THE TALE OF A REAL-LIFE ROBINSON CRUSOE

Tom Webber, commissioning editor at Icon Books, has bought UK & Commonwealth rights (ex. Canada) rights to THE OTHER EXILE, THE REMARKABLE STORY OF FERNÃO LOPES, THE ISLAND OF ST HELENA AND A PARADISE LOST by Abdul Rahman Azzam from Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann. Appealing to readers of Jon Krakauer’s INTO THE WILD or even Cheryl Strayed’s WILD, THE OTHER EXILE is a historical adventure story, a tale of a real-life Robinson Crusoe and his total retreat from human society.

 Abdul Rahman Azzam, who gained his Dphil in History at Oxford and now lives between Cambridge and Qatar, presents through an expertly-paced narrative the largely untold story of 16th Century Portuguese nobleman Fernao Lopes. A Muslim convert who jumped ship en route from Goa to his native Portugal, Lopes made the newly-discovered island of St Helena his home in almost total isolation for 30 years. 

Based on entirely new research, the book is at once a historical narrative, a meditation on solitude, remoteness and the soul’s inward journey, and a short history-cum-travelogue of the fascinating island of St Helena. 

Webber says ‘The extraordinary story of Fernao Lopes immediately captures the imagination, and Abdul Rahman Azzams’s careful and lyrical narrative voice is perfectly suited to telling it. Lopes lived a life of amazing contrasts, and his remarkable journey from adventurer to desert-island dwelling hermit is a fascinatingly resonant one of a longing for peace and self-knowledge that has instant appeal.’

Azzam says ‘This book is a labour of love and I’m delighted that it will be brought to market by Icon Books, who I know will publish it with verve and enthusiasm. I’m already enjoying working with Tom and I’m very much looking forward to doing the same with the rest of the team there.’

 Icon will publish as a £20 Royal hardback, and as an ebook, in June 2017.

THE LAST PILOT BY BENJAMIN JOHNCOCK SHORTLISTED FOR THE EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2015

THE LAST PILOT by Benjamin Johncock has been shortlisted for the 2015 Jarrolds/EDP East Anglian Book Awards, the showcase for the region’s best creative talent. The awards are now in their eighth year and are staged in partnership between the EDP, Jarrold, Writer’s Centre Norwich and UEA. The other shortlisted titles for Fiction are MR MAC AND ME by Esther Freud and WALLFLOWER by Eliza Robertson - the winners will be announced on November 4th.

Vesna Goldsworthy, the judge in the Fiction category, felt THE LAST PILOT to be of an exceptionally high standard, and noted that "it is richly researched and written in clear, precise, beautiful prose. In one of its many endorsements, Jon McGregor describes the novel’s dialogue as ‘desert-dry' and that description sums up the book for me.”

 THE LAST PILOT was published in July both in the UK (Myriad Books) and in the US (Picador), assembling 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.

Benjamin Johncock was born in England in 1978. His short stories have been published by TheFiction 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.

Praise for THE LAST PILOT

‘The dense layering of real events, seriously technical language and sustained US vernacular makes for a big, muscular novel, but this is tenderly undercut by the quite different theme of a marriage and a family under unbearable stress... A cowboy in a silver suit he may be, but Jim Harrison’s descent into hell is convincing and moving.’ – Jane Housham, Guardian

‘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 has written one of the most American novels of the year … With remarkable accuracy, capturing the emotional weight of a time in history … The story is well paced and chock full of an array of inspirational characters … exuberant life beaming from the gorgeous prose. Johncock follows in the footsteps of the impressive list of writers that have been capable of creating lifelike dialogue by eliminating quotation marks and a large amount of tags in what is often pages of back forth between its characters. … reminiscent of the great Cormac McCarthy … The exposition is packed with detail, word choices and sentence structures that add up to equal a distinct and unique new voice in fiction … shows the careful and precise guidance of the authorial voice that can be trusted fully and wholeheartedly. Johncock writes paragraphs that are often only seen by master craftsman with many books already to their name … This debut novel is undoubtedly one of the most authentic pieces of fiction set in America in years.’ – Steven Petite, The Huffington Post

Visit Benjamin’s website and follow him on Twitter.

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