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. 

DEON MEYER’S ICARUS – US PUBLICATION, INTERNATIONAL DEALS

In the week of the US publication of ICARUS by Grove Atlantic, we’re celebrating a plethora of new deals for international bestselling author Deon Meyer, with translation rights sold to Le Seuil in France, Aufbau in Germany, Bruna in Holland, Edizioni E/O in Italy and Tiden Norsk in Norway.  ICARUS has already been published in SA, by NB books (where it earned widespread recognition by holding on to the top spot of charts for several weeks and selling over 40,000 copies) and Hodder in the UK, with amazing reviews including those listed below.  

Deon Meyer will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair before embarking on a 10-city European tour throughout Germany (where several events have already sold out) and then on to Prague, Cracow and Warsaw. He was also in Italy at the Salerno Crime Festival this summer, where he was warmly received. You can check details of Deon’s events on his website. 

This novel witnesses the return of Benny Griessel, struggling to stay sober, and bruised by a policeman friend’s terrible suicide. Yet the discovery of a body buried beneath the sand dunes north of Cape Town will test his willpower even further. Why was notorious Ernst Richter, MD of a new tech startup, Alibi targeted? How exactly is a service that creates false appointments, documents and phone calls to enable people to cheat on their partners, linked to this high profile murder? With all eyes on Benny’s pursuit to uncover the truth, he will battle not just to track down the killer, but against the siren call of the whiskey bottle as well.

Deon Meyer lives in Cape Town. His books are published in 27 countries, and have been awarded many prizes around the world: the Deutsche Krimi Prize in Germany, the ATKV Prize in South Africa, and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. His novel THIRTEEN HOURS was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger, and HEART OF THE HUNTER, was longlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Prize and selected as one of Chicago Tribune's '10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004'. Most recently, COBRA was shortlisted for the 2015 CWA International Dagger.

 Praise for ICARUS:

‘Deon Meyer, who writes in Afrikaans, has long been hailed as South Africa's greatest crime writer. ICARUS places him firmly in the top international league. It's the fifth, and best, of the Benny Griessel series... One of Meyer's strengths is his ability to portray lesser characters with as much attention as he pays to central ones... Meyer scores also in his sensitive portrayals of the social and racial elements of a South Africa still struggling to find its equilibrium.’ – Marcel Berlins, The Times

‘Deon Meyer’s South Africa is laid bare in ICARUS […] it is as glittering and hard as the diamonds his country is famous for. […] Meyer utilises the crime fiction genre as an apparatus to create a multifaceted, unsparing picture of his country.’ – The Independent

‘Excellent … The richness of the characters, especially the multifaceted Benny, elevates this above most contemporary police procedurals.’ – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Visit Deon's website here.

Follow Deon on Twitter.

Peter James’ standalone novel THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL published in hardback today

They said the dead can’t hurt you… They were wrong…

Peter James spine-chilling new ghost story, THE HOUSE OF COLD HILL, is published in hardback by Macmillan today. This new standalone novel is Peter James at his scary best, and sure to be loved by fans of the bestselling Roy Grace series and new readers alike.

Moving from the heart of the city of Brighton and Hove to the Sussex countryside is a big undertaking for the Harcourts. But when they view Cold Hill House they are filled with excitement.  Within days of moving in, it soon becomes apparent that the Harcourt family aren't the only residents in the house though. At first it is only a friend of Jade, talking to her on Facetime, who sees a spectral woman standing behind her. Then there are more sightings of her, as well as increasingly disturbing occurrences in the house. Two weeks after moving in, Caro, out in the garden, is startled to see faces staring out of an upstairs window of the house. The window of a room which holds the secret to the house's dark history... a room which does not appear to exist...

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. It is out in paperback on 22 October. The Roy Grace novels are translated into more than three dozen languages. Polish rights to THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL are sold to Albatros. View more on Peter’s website.

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