Deon Meyer’s bestselling FEVER spreads to many shores

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Deon Meyer’s stunning standalone post-apocalyptic thriller, FEVER, has raced to No. 1 on the South African (Jonathan Ball, 2017) bestseller lists, having already been No. 1 there in its Afrikaans edition, KOORS (Tafelberg, 2016), for some time last year. The Dutch edition (A.W. Bruna, 2017) has also shot into the Top 20 in the Netherlands, where Deon was selected as the Crime and Thriller Week’s Author and commissioned to write a special novella – DE VROUW IN DE BLAUWE MANTEL (THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CLOAK), which features his beloved police detective Benny Griessel and will in due course appear in Afrikaans, English and other languages. His long-time UK publisher, Hodder, will publish FEVER on Thursday 15 June. 

Deon was the second highest best-selling author in South Africa last year, among all the international competition, second only to J.K. Rowling. Meyer-fever is spreading to other countries too, with Grove Atlantic set to publish in the US in September 2017. Joining them for the first time is Deon’s new Canadian publisher, House of Anansi, who will also publish FEVER in September. 

As his editor Douglas Richmond says: ‘House of Anansi is thrilled to be Deon Meyer’s new Canadian publisher. Deon is a tremendously gifted writer with an uncanny talent for storytelling and world-building. In FEVER, he has created a new masterpiece of dystopian fiction, which promises to be one of the most talked about books of the fall.’

And the talking has begun … FEVER has already been hailed by thriller master Stephen King as ‘reminiscent of THE STAND and THE PASSAGE. Great stuff.’

Deon Meyer kicked off UK launch week with The Post-Apocalyptic Book Club at Waterstones Piccadilly on Monday, with Brighton Crime Wave on Tuesday 13 June, a launch at Hatchards Piccadilly on Wednesday 14 June, and publication day on Thursday 15 June. In addition to his events in the UK and Holland this June, Deon is also visiting Spain where his previous novel ICARUS, also featuring Benny Griessel, has just been published. He’ll be touring Germany and France for the publication of FEVER later in the year too. 
See more on Deon’s website, including news of events.

Follow Deon on Twitter.

Deon Meyer is the international acclaimed, bestselling and prizewinning author of crime thrillers, both series and standalone. He won the Deutsche Krimi Preis 2009 for BLOOD SAFARI, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière 2003 for DEAD BEFORE DYING and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique 2004 for DEAD AT DAYBREAK, which was adapted for an Afrikaans M-Net TV series (SA). THIRTEEN HOURS was the winner of the Barry Award in the Best Thriller category 2011 and was shortlisted for the Macavity Best Mystery Novel Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger three times. Rights in his titles are sold in 30 territories and 28 languages and many of his books have been optioned for film. DEAD BEFORE DYING was filmed for a 6-part TV series, titled CAPE TOWN, featuring his character Mat Joubert.

Praise for FEVER: 
'UK readers, you have a nice surprise coming. No, not Brexit, FEVER, by Deon Meyer. Reminiscent of THE STAND and THE PASSAGE. Great stuff' — Stephen King

‘FEVER bears comparison with landmarks in the genre such as THE STAND ...The novel explores humanity at its best and worst; the crushing loss of civilisation with everything that means for the structure of society...This great book asks us to reflect on our own hidden natures - how would we react if the world we knew came to an end tomorrow?’ — Vaseem Khan, author of The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra

‘FEVER is one of the best books of the year. Deon Meyer is a masterful writer and has created a stunning epic that brims with emotion. The mystery, thrills, and action kept me riveted to every page. Highly recommended.’ — Adam Hamdy, author of Pendulum

Praise for Deon Meyer:
‘Deon Meyer is not just South Africa’s greatest crime writer, he’s up there with the best in the world.’ — Marcel Berlins, The Times

‘Deon Meyer's name on the cover is a guarantee of crime writing at its best.’ — Tess Gerritsen

'Deon Meyer is one of the giants of crime fiction.' — El Mundo

‘Deon Meyer is a top notch plotter and has created one of the best ensemble (and multi-racial) casts of any modern police procedural series.’ — Shots magazine

‘Crime fiction with real texture and intelligence.’ — Independent

Follow Christopher Nicholson's Highland Journey Among the Summer Snows

Christopher Nicholson’s new non-fiction book AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS is published today in hardback by September Publishing.

AMONG THE SUMMER SNOW is an account of a summer's journey through the Highlands of Scotland in search of the snow patches that remain. Interwoven are meditations on the science of snow, the art of observation, the legacy of other walkers such as Boswell and Johnson and the lure of the mountains themselves.

As Christopher Nicholson says: 'The summer snow patches of the Scottish Highlands are magical things. They're beautiful, thought-provoking and enigmatic, not least because of their strange survival. They ought to have melted, but they're still here, like icebergs that have floated and settled high in the mountains.'

Christopher will also be appearing at Wigtown Festival in September, and at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Wednesday 16th August 2017, alongside the nature writer Jim Crumley, for a talk entitled 'Men For All Seasons'. More information can be found  here.

Read the opening paragraph of the AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS here.

See more on Christopher’s website here.

Praise for AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS:

‘This is the kind of beautiful writing that transcends form – in this case nature writing - to arrive somewhere improbable and compelling.’ – Paul Evans, nature writer, Guardian Country Diary and more. 

‘A beautiful book about love and loss, fragility and chance, the wide world and the near world . . . full of intense light and colour, extraordinary glimpses, moving insights and subtle humour.' - Richard Kerridge, author of COLD BLOOD

'This ravishingly lovely book is about thought-snow, summer snow, flight, falling, stillness, memory, loss, mountains, Time, death, survival and everything in between. It is an intense scrutiny of minute worlds, a roaming gaze into the vastness of space, intimate, introspective and questioning.' - Keggie Carew, author of DADLAND

‘It’s a long while since I read a book that made me laugh and cry within just a few pages … A wrong-footing marvel of a book … touching both death’s void, and love, and the beauty of the natural world at one and the same time and in a way that is all the more powerful for its restraint.’ – Books from Scotland

Christopher Nicholson is the author of three novels, including THE ELEPHANT KEEPER, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Encore Prize. His third novel WINTER, about the late life of Thomas Hardy, has been adapted for radio as TESS IN WINTER, and sold in Spain and France. He lives in the countryside on the border between Wiltshire and Dorset.

FEVER CITY, TIM BAKER'S EXHILARATING DEBUT THRILLER NOMINATED FOR 2017 SHAMUS AWARD.

Critically acclaimed debut novel, FEVER CITY, by Tim Baker (UK, Faber & Faber; US, Europa) has been shortlisted for the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) 2017 Shamus Awards, in the ‘Best First Private Eye Novel’ category to be announced in September.

An extract of FEVER CITY was previously shortlisted, and ‘highly commended’ for the CWA Debut Dagger, and the published novel (UK, Faber 2016) was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey dagger.The novel has also been published in Italy (Mondadori), and in Japan (Shogakukan).

FEVER CITY is a searing counter-factual conspiracy thriller with three intertwining narratives. Nick Alston, a Los Angeles private investigator, is hired to find the kidnapped son of America's richest and most hated man; Hastings, a gun-for-hire in search of redemption, is also linked to the case. But both men soon become ensnared by a sinister cabal that spreads from the White House all the way to Dealey Plaza and the assassination on JFK. Decades later in Dallas, Alston's son stumbles across evidence that might link his father to the shot heard round the world.

Faber will publish Tim’s next novel, CITY WITHOUT STARS, in January 2018

Praise for FEVER CITY:

‘[A] remarkable first novel …inspired writing, memorable characters and an exhilarating, all but overpowering story.’ – Patrick Anderson, Washington Post

‘Ambitious debut… a bare knuckle take… a noirish storm of corruption, violence and depravity…’ —The New York Times, USA

An inventive take on the great American conspiracy theory...’ —The Sunday Times, Crime Club Newsletter January Picks 2016

‘Sprawling, ambitious and atmospheric…this debut author is the natural successor to such hallowed crime writers as Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy.’—Stylist UK

'Tim Baker paints a lurid, sinister portrait of mid-century America, skilfully layering fact and fiction in a way that will forever change the way you think about the Kennedy assassination. An impressive debut.' – Peter Swanson

‘Another mighty impressive debut by a British author...Baker has the audacity to revisit the web of conspiracies surrounding the JFK assassination and despite the sterling previous contributions to the fictional subject by James Ellroy, Don De Lillo and even Stephen King, comes up trumps.’ – Maxim Jakubowski, LoveReading.com

‘Phenomenal. It's a brilliantly conceived and executed thriller that deftly combines smack-you-in-the-mouth intensity with imagery and prose to die for. It's beautifully stark, brutal when it needs to be, and thoroughly engrossing. There have been some truly great books written about the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination, and Fever City can stand with any of them.’ – Rob Reynolds, author of THE DARK INSIDE

Zakes Mda’s LITTLE SUNS shortlisted for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize 2017

LITTLE SUNS by Zakes Mda, has been shortlisted for South Africa’s Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize 2017 which seeks to showcase “writing of rare style and imagination, stories that chose the personal over the political, and themes that are fresh and provocative.” The chair of the judges, Rehana Rossouw, describes the books as having ‘words that strike at the reader’s heart.’

‘Zakes Mda is on song with this book,” said one judge, “it brings people from our past gorgeously to life.’

It is 1903. A lame and frail Malangana – 'Little Suns' – searches for his beloved Mthwakazi after many lonely years spent in exile. Mthwakazi was the young woman he had fallen in love with twenty years earlier, before the assassination of Magistrate Hamilton Hope began a war that ripped the two of them apart.

Intertwined with Malangana's story is the account of Hope – a colonial magistrate who, in the late nineteenth century, was undermining the local kingdoms of the Eastern Cape in order to bring them under the control of the British. It was he who wanted to coerce Malangana’s king and his people, the amaMpondomise, into joining his battle – a scheme Malangana’s conscience could not allow. Based on real historical events – after these frontier wars were quelled, Zakes Mda’s own ancestors were exiled to Lesotho – Mda has drawn on published accounts and the oral stories of family members and local praise poets, woven together with his uniquely vigorous prose, historical insight and humour.

Umuzi published in Southern Africa, and Jacaranda Books will publish on their Global Classics list in 2018.


The Barry Ronge Fiction Prize is awarded as part of the Sunday Times Literary Awards and along with its twin prize, the Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, is one of South Africa’s most prestigious prizes. The winner goes home with R100,000. The full shortlist can be found here.

Zakes Mda is one of South Africa’s pre-eminent writers, and many of his era-defining plays and novels are hailed as classics of the literary canon. He divides his time between South Africa and the U.S., working as a professor of Creative Writing at Ohio University, director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, and dramaturge at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. He is a patron of the Etisalat Prize.

Praise for Zakes Mda:

‘The great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.’ The Philadelphia Inquirer

 ‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration’ – New York Times

‘It’s a different kind of South African literature, a South African magical realism …I can’t wait to read more’. Barbara Kingsolver on WAYS OF DYING

‘In novel after novel, Zakes Mda seems to have cultivated a mode of writing in which the realistic and the magical co-exist with unruffled ease.’ – Harry Garuba, Independent

'Zakes Mda is among the most acclaimed exponents of a new artistic freedom. His fiction has a beguiling lyricism and humour.' – Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

Follow Zakes Mda on Twitter @ZakesMda

No 1. Ebook bestseller NEED YOU DEAD out in US bookstores today!

In the first part week of publication, and after a splendid Brighton launch, NEED YOU DEAD by Peter James raced to Number 2 on the UK bestseller lists – and now his 13th Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novel has topped the e-Book bestseller charts at Number 1. NEED YOU DEAD is published today, 6 June, in the US by Macmillan and Peter James begins his American tour in Los Angeles.

The Bookseller says: "Peter James has capsized Paula Hawkins' two weeks of smooth sailing in the Weekly E-Book Ranking number one spot, as NEED YOU DEAD blasted straight to the chart's summit in its first week on sale... Peter James seems to benefit from stratospheric e-book sales alongside strong hardbook volumes... his Roy Grace titles still sell in excess of 100,000 paperbacks."

Peter James is touring the US this month. Tomorrow he will be at the Landmark Theatre in Los Angeles with Michael Connelly in an invitation-only BAFTA event. On 10 June he is in conversation with Brenda Novak at the Brea Library in Los Angeles, and on 11 June fans can catch him with T. Jefferson Parker at Book Carnival in Orange, California. He will then be attending Thrillerfest in New York City from the 11 to 15 July. See more details on all his events here.

In NEED YOU DEAD, Lorna Belling, desperate to escape the marriage from hell, falls for the charms of another man who promises her the earth. But, as Lorna finds, life seldom follows the plans you’ve made. A chance photograph on a client’s mobile phone changes everything for her.

When the body of a woman is found in a bath in Brighton, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called to the scene. At first it looks an open-and-shut case with a clear prime suspect. Then other scenarios begin to present themselves, each of them tantalizingly plausible, until, in a sudden turn of events, and to his utter disbelief, the case turns more sinister than Grace could ever have imagined.

The Roy Grace series has been translated into 37 languages, with 18 million copies of Peter James’ books sold worldwide.

See much, much more on Peter’s website.

Do also check out the array of excellent crime writer interviews and information on Peter James TV.

Follow Peter on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Praise for Roy Grace:

‘James’s superior 13th novel … This skilful twister shows why James was awarded the 2016 CWA Diamond Dagger.’ — Publishers Weekly Starred Review

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

‘Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business’ – Karin Slaughter

‘Probably the closest we’ll get to a British Stephen King’ – The Financial Times

‘Peter James is one of the most fiendishly clever crime fiction plotters’ – The Daily Mail