MUSIC, COMICS AND PEER PRESSURE: MINE BY SALLY PARTRIDGE PUBLISHED TODAY

The #MeToo movement has raised important questions about our attitudes to sexual relationships, the issues surrounding consent and how damaging those attitudes can be. In MINE, Sally Partridge adds her voice to the discussion.

Published in South Africa today by NB publishers, Sally’s fifth Young Adult novel explores what happens when a young girl’s vulnerability is taken advantage of by peers.

On stage, Fin is Thor. Angry and invincible. Yet for all his potential, people always leave him. Kayla is the only girl he's ever met who’s worth loving. The only one he's ever wanted to be worth something for. Kayla knows she's weird and unlovable. But she wants to believe there is no reason to be sad anymore. In each other Fin and Kayla find the only place they've ever belonged. Until the ghosts from the past come to break them apart.

In an interview with Books Live, Sally discussed the role of music in MINE and the importance of speaking about the pressures teenage girls face. She said, ‘This is important because it’s the type of topic we’re only starting to explore now that #MeToo is gaining momentum. Girls often find themselves in situations where they say ‘yes’ when they should be saying ‘no’ because they confuse persuasion and pressure with affection, or they think the repercussions will be different. We’re letting girls down by not talking about it.’

Cape Town novelist Sally Partridge is a three-time winner of the M. E. R. Prize for Best Youth Novel and has been honoured by IBBY International for her young adult fiction. In 2011, she was named one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans, awarded annually to notable South Africans under the age of 35. MINE is Partridge’s fifth novel for young adults.

Visit Sally’s website or follow her on Twitter

Praise for SHARP EDGES:

‘It’s a taut, smart thriller, beautifully and cleanly written. Partridge gets into her young characters’ heads and makes them three dimensional – for me, they rose off the pages and reminded me of people I knew, loved, loathed and admired from afar when I was a teenager.’ – Natasha Joseph, City Press

‘Partridge specialises in dark, and this one is dark indeed. But it is a compulsive read.’ – Pat Shwartz, Mail & Guardian

‘In her latest novel, Partridge delivers her signature brand of hard-hitting young adult fiction. A harrowing story of teenage tragedy, told from the perspective of six characters. Insightful, frightening and ultimately sad.’ – Cape Times

WINTER STORM: the final instalment in Andy Briggs' Inventory series published today

WINTER STORM, the fourth and final instalment in Andy Briggs’ THE INVENTORY series - perfect for lovers of Alex Ryder and Artemis Fowl - is published today in paperback by Scholastic. In the climactic young adult novel, the secrets that have kept readers hooked will finally be revealed as Dev and his friends battle against the deadly technology that threatens the world.

Having learned a troubling truth about himself in the Black Zone of the Inventory, Dev is called back into action to defend the world’s greatest store of futuristic tech, and he’ll need all the help he can get from his friends. Someone has stolen Winter Storm, a swarm of powerful biobots, and is using them to infect and control people! Who can be trusted now?

Although THE INVENTORY series is coming to a close, fans of Andy’s writing won’t have long to wait. His exciting new standalone novel DRONE RACER is coming soon.

Andy Briggs is a screenwriter & novelist who has worked on TV projects for Syfy, Netflix, ITV and Amazon and is working extensively between the UK, US and China. He collaborated with the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate to reboot Tarzan, creating an action-packed middle-grade trilogy based on the beloved character’s adventures. Andy is the author of a number of books for young readers including the HERO.COM and VILLAIN.NET series which reinvent the superhero genre for an audience growing up within a digital age. Andy has also written several comics and graphic novels for Markosia.

Visit Andy’s website or follow him on Twitter

Praise for Andy Briggs:

'Andy Briggs vision of a world with super-hero's and super-villain's is a very original one and has been very well realised. These books are superbly written, the story sets off at a high pace and never once slows down...I have been well and truly hooked on this novel from start to finish, it is so close to being a super-villain film in book form, I personally cannot wait till the next volume and highly recommend this book.' – Antony, ScienceFictionandfantasy.co.uk

‘Tweens and younger teens who have wished for super powers will be drawn to this interesting concept, and there will be plenty of action to keep them reading.’ –Booklist

‘Every now and again, as a writer, I come across a book that is so simple, yet powerful, in its concept, that I consider it to be genius…and the latest is the twin series of HERO.COM and VILLIAN.NET…Having now read the first in the Hero.com series, I’ll be picking up the first VILLIAN.NET book as soon as I can. I suggest you do the same.’ – Tommy Donavan

PETER JAMES AWARDED HONORARY PLATINUM PRIZE AT SPECSAVERS BESTSELLER AWARDS

Peter James received an Honorary Platinum Award last night at the Specsavers Bestseller Awards, powered by Nielsen Book. The event was held at the May Fair Hotel in London and presented by the BBC’s Mariella Frostrup. The awards celebrate the outstanding sales of books in the UK retail trade, based on the Nielsen data. As the best-selling author of the Roy Grace series, Peter’s honorary Platinum prize recognises his considerable achievements, selling over five million copies in the UK over ten years. He will also enter the Nielsen 21st Century Hall of Fame for bestselling authors.

In a heartfelt speech, Peter thanked the significant people in his life, his publisher Pan MacMillan, and the Awards. He also spoke about the importance of engaging a wider audience with reading and encouraging new readership. 

Published in paperback in October 2017 NEED YOU DEAD, the thirteenth instalment in the Roy Grace crime series, reached #1 in The Sunday Times and topped the ebook bestseller chart. The newest addition to the tantalising series, DEAD IF YOU DON’T will be published by Pan Macmillan this May. Roy Grace’s latest case is set to be the most difficult of his career after a teenage boy is kidnapped from a football stadium on match day. His father receives a ransom demand but as a covert police operation to find his son unfolds, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace starts to realize that not all is what it seems . . . Peter has talked about DEAD IF YOU DON’T with a number of papers and radio shows, including interviews with The Argus and BBC Radio Sussex & Surrey.

In October 2018 Peter’s stunning new standalone ABSOLUTE PROOF will hit the shelves in the UK, with rights already being snapped up around the world, so watch this space and Peter’s website for more news!

On 8 February, the Theatre Royal in Brighton will host “An Evening with Peter James”, where Peter will talk about his career, his inspiration and his bestselling novels. He will also be discussing his writing career at The Dead Good Evening event at the Sir Robert Woodard Academy in Lancing on 15 February in aid of Care for Veterans.

Peter James is an international bestselling thriller writer. He is a New York Times bestseller, as well achieving multiple Sunday Times No 1s, and his work is published in 37 languages. He has won numerous awards, most recently the coveted 2016 CWA Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence, and he was publicly voted by WH Smith – Britain's biggest bookselling chain – The Best Crime Author of All Time. In 2017 Orion launched a programme to re-issue all his backlist chillers, starting with the 20th anniversary edition of THE TRUTH, with a new foreword by the author, and audio editions for the first time.

Visit Peter’s website

Follow Peter on Twitter

Praise for Peter James:

‘Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business’ – Lee Child

‘One of the most consistently readable crime writers.’ – Daily Mail

‘A master plotter.’ – The Bookseller

 Praise for NEED YOU DEAD:

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

‘Peter James has the knack of ensnaring readers with his fully imagined characters and original plots. He writes in a way that makes his stories seem not just interesting but also realistic. His plots and characters are based on detailed and scrupulous research, which means that a good deal of fact underpins his fiction.’ — Literary Review

‘James has never forgotten how to make the pages fly. If a supercharged procedural is what you crave, fasten your seat belt.’ — Kirkus Reviews

‘With Peter James there’s always another layer of mystery to peel away.’ —Dayton Daily News

A STUNNING STORY SPANNING CENTURIES: THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY BY GREGORY NORMINTON IS PUBLISHED TODAY

Gregory Norminton’s THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY, a novel deeply rooted in place, is published today by Fourth Estate in hardback, ebook and audiobook. Gregory read an extract from the dazzling novel at a packed launch at Daunt Books’ in Holland Park last night. The paperback will follow in September 2018.

In December, Robert Macfarlane selected THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY as his book of the year for Resurgence magazine, calling it ‘a powerful meditation on the damages – and the good – we have wrought, and will wreak, on the living world.’ George Monbiot also commented on its importance in addressing environmental issues, saying, ‘it's brilliant. The best treatment of climate change in fiction I've come across. A powerful, essential novel.’

This weekend The Guardian’s M. John Harrison praised the novel for being ‘satisfyingly Alan Garnereseque…. …. reminiscent of Will Self’s THE BOOK OF DAVE or Russell Hoban’s RIDDLEY WALKER’, and in the TLS Jay Griffiths describes it as ‘profound and powerful, its prose moving to poetry. Gregory Norminton writes in language scraped down to its bleached bones – but how exquisitely he makes those bones sing.’

Set on one Roman road in three time periods over three thousand years, THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions about civilisation.

An ancient British boy, discovering a terrorist plot, must betray his brother to save his tribe. In the twenty-first century, two people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the use and meaning of a landscape. In the distant future, a gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a broken world. Their stories are linked by one ancient road, the ‘Devil’s Highway’ in the heart of England: the site of human struggles that resemble one another more than they differ.

In March, Gregory will be speaking alongside Rachel Lichtenstein about place in writing at a special event hosted by The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Visit Gregory’s website here.

Follow Gregory on Twitter here.

Gregory Norminton is a novelist, actor, playwright, and environmental activist, born in 1976. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School. He has published five novels including SERIOUS THINGS and THE SHIP FOOLS, and two short story collections. Several short stories and dramatisations have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His most recent collection, THE GHOST WHO BLED was released by Comma Press last year.

Praise for THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY

‘Satisfyingly Alan Garnereseque…. …. reminiscent of Will Self’s THE BOOK OF DAVE or Russell Hoban’s RIDDLEY WALKER’ – M. John Harrison, The Guardian

 ‘It's brilliant. The best treatment of climate change in fiction I've come across. A powerful, essential novel.’ – George Monbiot

'A big, ambitious, beautifully written book that examines, with immense sympathy and generosity, one of the greatest of all themes, place, and our complex, fraught relationship with it.' – Neel Mukherjee

‘Norminton's novel is intriguing, a cautionary examination of man's capacity for violence and the effect on the world around him.’ – SciFi Now Magazine

‘It’s a brilliant deep-time meditation on how landscapes hold – and conceal – meanings. The novel’s stories are set across three points in time, but always in the same place (a Roman road – the highway of the title – crossing southern England). It’s a powerful meditation on the damages – and the good – we have wrought, and will wreak, on the living world.’ – Robert Macfarlane, Resurgence & Ecologist, Books of the Year

 ‘THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is held together by place, by the persistence and frailty of the natural world, and by the havoc wreaked on it by its human inhabitants. Spanning three civilisations and their conflictual relationship with the world in which they live, the novel is also a deeply human examination of the cruelties people inflict on one another, through war and need, and of the eventual possibility of love, the only defence against the destructive force of fire.’ – Charles Lambert author of Two Dark Tales

‘This is a work of staggering imagination, of unflinching acuity, powerful, poetic and profound. Telling the story of climate breakdown through language breakdown, it magnifies the meaning of loss, portraying a devastated culture without history or literature, whose language is down to its bleached bones and yet – how those bones sing.’ – Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey

‘Impressively binds three compelling tales of different times, to one piece of land, with sinews of poetry, history and a viscerally energetic imagination’ – Laline Paull, author of The Bees

‘A striking and dazzlingly poetic meditation on the resonance of place, conflict and kinship. . . . Norminton's skilfully-wrought novel is a memorable and thought-provoking read’ – Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture

CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON’S CAPTIVATING AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2017

Christopher Nicholson’s AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS, a contemplative journey to discover the last snows in the Scottish Highlands, has been longlisted for the 2017 Highland Book Prize. AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS, published by September Publishing in 2017, was also one of six books shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature last year. The judging panel described the book as ‘lyrical and elegaic’.

The Highland Book Prize is an annual prize established in 2017 to promote high quality published works that recognise the Highlands for its strong cultural heritage and its magnificent landscape. Presented by the Highland Society of London and facilitated by Moniack Mhor Writers’ Centre, the prize aims to bring recognition to literature created in or about the Highlands, and is open to fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

The shortlist will be announced in April. The winner will be revealed in May at the Ullapool Book Festival and will receive £1000 and a writing retreat at Moniack Mhor.

As the summer draws to a close, a few snow beds – some as big as icebergs – survive in the Scottish Highlands. Christopher Nicholson's AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS is both a celebration of these great, icy relics and an intensely personal meditation on their significance. A book to delight all those interested in mountains and snow, full of vivid description and anecdote, it explores the meanings of nature, beauty and mortality in the twenty-first century. Chris Townsend of Outdoors Magazine describes it as ‘Superb’ and ‘Destined to be come a classic of mountain literature.’

Christopher Nicholson is the author of three novels, including THE ELEPHANT KEEPER (Fourth Estate, 2009), shortlisted for the Costa Prize in 2009. In 2011 the novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and shortlisted for the Encore Award. His novel WINTER, about Thomas Hardy’s later life and the young actress who became his last muse, was published in 2014 by Fourth Estate and dramatized for BBC Radio as TESS IN WINTER. He has lived near Shaftesbury in Dorset for the past thirty years.

AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS was selected by The Telegraph as one of the best Christmas books for armchair travellers in December.

Visit Christopher’s website or follow him on Twitter.

Praise for AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS:

‘Destined to become a classic of mountain literature. Superb.’ – Chris Townsend, Outdoors

‘Lyrical and elegaic, this debut is a tender account of an unusual fascination with the remaining snows of the Scottish Highlands. Nicholson offers us a wry, self-aware take on the relationship between humans and the changed (and changing) natural world.’ – Boardman Tasker

‘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

‘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 is a startlingly beautiful book… There’s a sense of quiet resilience and hope throughout, the renewal of life even in the blinding awareness of one’s own fragility…AMONG THE SUMMER SNOWS is at once haunting, moving, silent, and profoundly beautiful. An essential read for chionophiles and lovers of good landscape and nature writing.’ – Alex Roddie, The Great Outdoors

‘A glorious little book, beautifully produced’ – Michael Kerr, The Telegraph, The best Christmas books for armchair travellers