Barbara Erskine receives Outstanding Achievement Award from RNA

We are delighted to report that Barbara Erskine was presented with an Outstanding Achievement Award this week by the RNA (Romantic Novelists’ Association). This award follows HarperCollins’ publication last week of a special limited edition hardback of LADY OF HAY - Erskine’s beloved debut novel which was first released 30 years ago.

Her latest novel SLEEPER’S CASTLE is set to be published in paperback on 6th April, and returns to the setting of Hay. On its hardback publication last year, SLEEPER’S CASTLE spent many weeks in the Sunday Times bestsellers lists.

Members of the publishing world took to Twitter to offer their congratulations.

‘So well deserved!!’ said Hannah Gamon, Fiction Marketing Director at HarperCollins. ‘A wonderful author whose books have made the world an even more magical place’.

The RNA’s awards ceremony also took place on the same day that a memorial was held for Erskine’s former agent Carole Blake.

‘Carole would be so proud but also so busy saying 'long overdue'’ tweeted Lynne Drew, Publishing Director at HarperCollins.

Praise for Barbara Erskine and LADY OF HAY:

'The Queen of time-slip epics.' – The Bookseller

'Stephen King meets Ruth Rendell.' – Frank Delaney

‘Fascinating, absorbing, original – all such praise comes easily when describing Barbara Erskine’s Lady of Hay. But perhaps the most suitable world is hypnotic.’ -- SHE

 'The author's storytelling talent is undeniable. Barbara Erskine can make us feel the cold, smell the filth and experience some of the fear of the power of evil men.' – The Times

‘Unusual, intriguing, cleverly handled and gripping.’ – The Good Book Guide

‘A record breaker whichever way you look at it…a rattling good romance-cum-thriller.’ – MS London

 ‘A most intriguing novel … very cleverly handled, and gripping. I couldn’t put it down.’ – Maidenhead Advertiser

‘A fast-paced passionate historical romance with the tension of a modern thriller…fascinating and memorable. – Ealing Gazette

About Barbara Erskine

An historian by training, Barbara Erskine is the author of 14 bestselling novels, beginning with the much-loved classic, LADY OF HAY, which has sold over 3 million copies. She has also published three highly successful volumes of short stories. Her books, which have appeared in 24 languages, demonstrate her masterful storytelling abilities and her fascination with history and the supernatural. She lives with her family in an old police station in Hay-on-Wye.

Visit Barbara Erskine’s website

Follow Barbara on Twitter

Debut novel by Anbara Salam acquired by Fig Tree!

Juliet Annan, Publishing Director at Fig Tree (an imprint of Penguin General), has acquired at auction the UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to a début novel by Anbara Salam from Hattie Grünewald at Blake Friedmann.

Set on a small island in the South Pacific, and centred around two missionaries, Max and his wife Bea, who have come to live there, this stunning début novel evokes the enchantment of Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and the wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver’s THE POISONWOOD BIBLE.

Anbara Salam

Anbara Salam is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford with a PhD in Theology. She was named after her great-grandmother (Anbara Salam Khalidi), a feminist translator and writer, and the first Lebanese woman to remove her hijab in public. She’s half-Palestinian and half-Scottish, has lived in Lebanon for a year and travelled extensively around the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

Juliet Annan says “Anbara is a thrilling new talent. This is a gripping, dark but also very funny novel that brilliantly evokes the jungle landscape and a particular era, and it is beautifully written. It darkens and becomes grotesque – but it is always full of feeling and suspense.”

Anbara Salam says “I am delighted to be joining the team at Fig Tree, and I’m so grateful to Juliet Annan and to my agent Hattie Grünewald for their enthusiasm for the book. It’s a huge honour to be part of Fig Tree’s list.”

Follow Anbara Salam on Twitter

St. Martin's pre-empts de Courcy's THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

Charles Spicer of St. Martin's has pre-empted US rights in THE HUSBAND HUNTERS: Social Climbing in London and New York, by bestselling biographer and historian Anne de Courcy. Described as ‘the real Downton Abbey story’, Anne de Courcy’s latest work tells of the wealthy American heiresses who came to England to marry impoverished aristocrats, so they could gain titles, and the titled could boost their dwindling coffers and save their threatened estates. Charlie Spicer snapped up THE HUSBAND HUNTERS from de Courcy’s agent, Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann, and will publish in 2018. Alan Samson of Weidenfeld will publish in the UK in June 2017.

Charles Spicer of St. Martin's says: ‘The minute I read Anne de Courcy's brilliantly researched and witty THE HUSBAND HUNTERS which brings to vivid life the world of Downton Abbey on both sides of the Atlantic, I knew I had to bring it to an American market.’

Anne de Courcy says: ‘I had great fun writing THE HUSBAND HUNTERS, which led me into all sorts of unexplored byways – the most fascinating of which, perhaps, was the realisation that while British nineteenth century society was patriarchal, in that the needs of the male came first every time, contemporary American high society was the opposite – run by women, for women. The care and dedication with which Weidenfeld & Nicolson treat books are rare and important qualities, and I’m thrilled that they are now joined by Charlie Spicer and St. Martin's, who will bring it to a wider US readership. I’m happy that THE HUSBAND HUNTERS is safe in such good transatlantic hands.’

Isobel Dixon says: ‘Anne de Courcy’s meticulous first-hand research and sparkling storytelling make for a richly entertaining group biography that will win her many more fans both sides of the Atlantic. Charlie Spicer has long been an admirer of Anne’s work and I’m delighted that St Martins are joining Weidenfeld & Nicolson in publishing THE HUSBAND HUNTERS now.’

 Anne de Courcy is a best-selling biographer, acclaimed for her first-hand research and engaging books which not only tell the stories of her subjects’ lives, but vividly depict the social history of the period. Her biographies, all of which have been serialised, include THE VICEROY’S DAUGHTERS, DIANA MOSLEY, DEBS AT WAR and SNOWDON. THE FISHING FLEET spent many weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her most recent book, MARGOT AT WAR: LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN DOWNING STREET, 1912-1916 was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Book of the Year Award.

See more on Anne’s website here.

Praise for Anne de Courcy:

 ‘Anne de Courcy combines the perseverance of a social historian with the panache of the novelist’ – The Times

Praise for THE FISHING FLEET:

‘…rich and exhilarating …’ – Lady Antonia Fraser, Mail on Sunday Critics’ Choice, Books of the Year 2012

‘A spirited, highly entertaining book... a sparkling collage of stories and quotations in which we hear the authentic voices of the women and girls she portrays, most of them natural, unaffected writers with sharp eyes, a gift for description and a sense of humour.... brilliantly researched, skilfully constructed and full of delights.’ – Anne Chisholm, The Daily Telegraph

 ‘Fascinating and evocatively told history’ – Financial Times

SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILIlAND paperback out today!

Edward Wilson Lee’s much-acclaimed SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet is out in paperback from Williams Collins today. First published by William Collins (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) in 2016, the year of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, it was one of The Bookseller’s Top 6 Shakespeare picks of 2016, and was highlighted in previews of ‘the most significant Shakespeare books’ in The Times, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. It will be published in German by btb in 2018.

Investigating the literary culture of the early interaction between European countries and East Africa, Edward Wilson-Lee uncovers an extraordinary sequence of stories in which explorers, railway labourers, decadent émigrés, freedom fighters, and pioneering African leaders made Shakespeare their own in this alien land.

This radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND explores Shakespeare’s global legacy like no other book before it. In these pages explorers stagger through Africa's interior accompanied by Shakespeare; eccentrics live out their dreams on the African Savannah with Shakespeare by their side; decadent emigres, railway labourers, Indian settler communities, African intellectuals and rebels all turned to Shakespeare and adapted his plays to fit their needs. The book examines how Shakespeare influenced the first African leaders of independent nations, Cold War intrigues and even Che Guevara.

With its incredible series of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeare's legacy as a poet of the world.

Wilson-Lee explained that his book 'aims to find the holy grail of literary studies – an answer to why Shakespeare should be so universally adored – in the most unlikely of places; along the way it is a travelogue, a memoir, a satire, an ode to Shakespeare, and a potted history of a region which combines breathtaking beauty and cultural riches with the heartache of injustice, poverty, and amnesia.'

Praise for SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND:

‘Edward Wilson-Lee goes in search of Shakespeare in Africa and finds him entwined in every twist and turn of the drama of colonization and decolonization of the continent from the 17th century to the present. The result is a masterly literary detective adventure. A compelling read.’ – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o,

'There will be many books published to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Few will be bolder than Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet, in which Edward Wilson-Lee gets out of the seminar room and treks through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan to discover how Shakespeare has been constantly reinvented in Africa.' – Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education

'Wilson-Lee’s account of his East African Shakespeare-hunt is vivid and full of insights. What we learn about colonial power relationships and historical currents is as convincing as any general explanations of Shakespeare’s universalism, but that, perhaps, is partly the point: it’s the very fact that Shakespeare is so read and performed, with these multiple interactions each revealing something, that demonstrates his boundless potential.' - Daniel Hahn, The Independent

‘SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND is an attempt to understand whether the great playwright’s work speaks across cultural boundaries to a shared humanity. … It has successfully told a lesser-known story of Africa, and it is a story worth knowing.’ – The Economist

‘This book evinces a remarkable familiarity with Africa, filtered through the lens of that most-English poet and playwright… Wilson-Lee shows the Bard to be a man for all continents.’ – Critic’s Choice, The New Criterion

 ‘Compelling and affecting" – Tim Black, Spiked!

'✭✭✭✭' - Michael Kerr, Telegraph Travel

‘I thought nothing could surprise me about the impact of England’s greatest cultural figure, but this fascinating, readable book about his influence in East Africa certainly did.’ – The Lady

‘A glorious melange of travel, biography, history and satire’ – The Times, South Africa

Follow Edward Wilson-Lee on Twitter.

Visit Edward Wilson-Lee's website.

Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between. Edward is currently writing his second book, THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS, for publication by William Collins in 2018.

Faber snaps up Tim Baker’s stunning new thriller, CITY WITHOUT STARS

Ahead of the London Book Fair, Angus Cargill at Faber has acquired UK&BC ex. Can rights in Tim Baker’s epic crime thriller set in Mexico, CITY WITHOUT STARS. Faber also published his debut last year, the neo-noir conspiracy thriller, FEVER CITY.

Tim Baker. (photo credit Julie Curtis)

Sharing the same landscape as THE CARTEL, 2666 and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, CITY WITHOUT STARS is a mesmerising crime thriller that combines the nightmarish violence of the War on Drugs with an occult world of dark powers and conspiracy. Across a fast, short-fuse narrative, Baker maneuvers different voices and perspectives as the action accelerates towards its shocking conclusions. The novel is brutal, and unflinching, but the most despairing acts are counterpoised with a rich humanity, dark swathes of humour and an unstinting faith in the redemptive power of human courage and decency.

Angus Cargill says : 'CITY WITHOUT STARS is a powerful, atmospheric, and artfully written Cartel novel about an epidemic of missing women in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Real. Set over five days, at the turn of the century, it is painfully relevant to today and confirms Tim as one of the most thoughtful and exciting new voices in international thriller writing.'

Tim Baker says: ‘I am thrilled to be continuing the adventure with Angus and his superb and supportive team at Faber, who have done everything possible to make me feel at home. Faber remain a reference for excellence and a perfect launch pad for such an ambitious book.’

Tom Witcomb says: ‘Tim is an absolute stylist and Faber is the perfect home for this epic work.  CITY WITHOUT STARS is an audacious, fast moving thriller and its themes of social injustice and the vulnerability of women are incredibly timely.’

FEVER CITY, Faber, 2016

Faber will publish in early Spring 2018.

Follow Tim on Twitter

Born in Sydney, Australia, Baker lived in Spain before moving to the South of France. His debut novel, FEVER CITY, was Highly Commended for the CWA Debut Dagger and Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.