The Bookseller - 11.3.22

11.03.22 ISSN 0006-7539

At the heart of the book trade since 1858.

Five years of empowering stories

£5.95

11.03.22 ISSN 0006-7539

At the heart of the book trade since 1858.

Fight to publish

Author interview

Arabella Pike of William Collins takes us behind the scenes of the publisher’s recent legal battles with Russian businessmen

Reverend Richard Coles discusses how he came to write his first novel, set in 1980s England and featuring a vicar detective

The bestseller lists TCM Top Three

On the road The UK book trade gears up for the first major international event of the ‘new normal’ era, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair PP06–07, pullout

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11.03.22 ISSN 0006-7539

24

At the heart

of the book

trade since

1858. £5.95

Issue 5965

At the heart of the book trade since 1858

Five years of empower ing stories

cover.indd

46

07/03/2022

15:40

Editor's Letter

Treading carefully

T

he book business is an international one. Over the next few weeks the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the London Book Fair will help remind us why, even as Covid-19 and the Putin-led Russian invasion of Ukraine push us in the other direction.

For both Bologna and London it is now three years since they last ran physical events, and no doubt their executives will wonder how secure their space in the diary of international events really is, after such a prolonged absence.

They will note that rights trading and international business have continued, almost uninterrupted, while fears over book sales—because of a change in the types of books now being published as a result of the lack of face-to-face deal-making—have all but been allayed. They may even have heard how the flattening of these peak rights trading seasons has enabled agents and editors the time and space to make the kinds of decisions they did not make before.

No doubt, the world has changed since 2019. There is a more obvious cost to international travel and a wariness has crept into conversations around the trade fairs that may take some time to get over. But, as Welbeck’s If Putin’s children’s group publisher Jane Harris says (pp06, Bologna Preview), for all invasion of the socialising and unexpected was part of a encounters that mark out such events, warning shot it is really about getting hands on with to the west, the product—if not the people—where these shows add their most value. it may also The Russian invasion of Ukraine serve as an brings with it an immediate and awakening troubling additional context, with the likely absence of many Ukrainian

and all Russian publishers the sobering manifestation of the conflict taking place 1,000 miles to the east. As we noted last week, the international book community has responded with a unified voice over this, with companies such as Curtis Brown and Pan Macmillan this week joining others in pausing their Russian business, and many authors asking for their contracts with Russian publishers to be cancelled. “The question regarding publishing’s fate is not on the agenda at the moment,” wrote Kateryna Nosko of Ukrainian house ist Publishing on The Bookseller’s website this week. All publishing activity has ceased. Publishing teams, she added, are now engaged in refugee support rather than making books. “Force majeure circumstances from agreements came in to action—you know, those clauses that no-one ever pays attention to.”

The international book communities have long pursued a policy of engagement, even in areas where the incumbent governments are unpalatable or worse. But these past few days, for reasons all too obvious, the mood has changed, and I expect it will be part of a larger shift.

Just this week, more than 80 writers have published an open letter contesting the awarding of the 2023 World Science Fiction Convention to Chengdu, in China, in protest over that country’s treatment of the Uyghurs.

If Putin’s invasion was part of a warning shot to the west, it may also serve as an awakening. Our footprint in the world is important, but where we tread and what we leave behind matter too. ° In next week’s magazine Children’s Previews: June 2022

Philip Jones @philipdsjones Contents 11th March 2022

06

We must judge as we would wish to be judged and that’s with compassion

This Week

Book of the Month

The Lead Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . .06 Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .08 Bookshop Spotlight . . . . . . . . .10 News Review . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Data The bestseller charts . . . . . . 14 Books

Lead story Back to Bologna

Books Books Author Profile 20

TheBookseller.com

Jobs in Books Recruitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Bologna Preview Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .05 Profile: Welbeck . . . . . . . . . . . . 06 Profile: EmpathyLab . . . . . . . . 08 Black SFF Authors . . . . . . . . . . 10 Children’s Top Picks . . . . . . . . . 12 Agents’ Hotlists. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Author Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 New Titles: Non-Fiction. . . . 22

New Titles: Non-Fiction 22

01

THIS WEEK

The Lead Story Bologna Children’s Book Fair

UK publishers prepare to land in Bologna with hopes rights sales will take off At the first physical Bologna Children’s Book Fair in three years, a number of UK publishers are ‘really going for it’ in the hope of making up for lost time in terms of rights trading

Tom Tivnan & Caroline Carpenter

B

ritish publishers will have a considerable presence at this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) and those who are attending the first physical edition of the event since 2019 will be “really going for it”, with hopes of reigniting the international rights and co-edition market.

There are just over 1,000 companies taking stands at Bologna 2022, of which 102 are UK-based. That is level with the number of exhibitors from France, and only Italy (174) has more firms slated to attend than the UK. As would be expected, the total is down from the last physical fair, three years ago, which had 1,442 exhibitors (and 28,946 visitors). But it is something of a win for BCBF, as it said earlier this year it had been expecting between 900 and 950 exhibitors. Three of those exhibitors are from Ukraine, incidentally, one of which, Lviv-based Ukrainian Assembly Comix Publishing, has confirmed it will still attend the fair (see box).

It will not be the full UK contingent as there are some publishers not taking stands, notably Scholastic and Penguin Random House Children’s, though many staffers will be going as individual trade visitors. Not having a stand, says Scholastic’s corporate comms vice-president Anne Sparkman, was simply down to the decision to attend having to be made months ago, when the Omicron variant was surging. She adds: “We are very disappointed… but will work to connect with the [BCBF] community. We value Bologna and the many opportunities it presents, and we look forward to 2023 when we can all

06

11th March 2022

BOLOGNA LAST HOSTED AN IN-PERSON FAIR THREE YEARS AGO

Ruslana Koropetska UA Comix Publishing, editor-in-chief “Despite the war and all the horrors that are happening in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, we decided not to cancel our participation at Bologna, because part of our team is in [Western] Europe.

Besides, now is more than ever time to talk about Ukrainian culture and the publishing market. We are a publishing house of Ukrainian comics, which we have been developing since 2017, and we want Ukrainian comics to be known in the world. The war is being fought not only on the battlefield, not only in the occupied and destroyed cities, but also in the information space. While our soldiers protect us on the front line, we work in the rear.

Children’s books and comics are a language we can use to talk to children about difficult things. Now children’s publications are perhaps the most important, because reading them will grow a new generation that will rebuild our country.

The world community and publishers can help us by spreading true information about Ukraine. But more practically [they can assist by] buying licenses for our books and comics, and filling libraries with Ukrainian books.”

gather together again in person.”

Macmillan Children’s Books (MCB) will have 20 members of staff in Bologna and it will use its regular full stand and not the cheaper BCBF-provided basic stands, which many exhibitors with reduced staff have opted for. MCB m.d. Belinda Rasmussen says: “There was a bit of trepidation at first about attending, but we decided to really go for it.

We just thought we need to get back to normal and Bologna is such a big piece of the children’s world—you can really feel not having it in the last two years. We are busy, and obviously there will be a mix of real-life and virtual meetings. The fair as a whole probably won’t be as busy as usual, but I think it’s down to us to re-create some of that usual buzz.”

MCB is coming off a record year, not just in sales through the tills but in rights and co-edition revenue. However, Rasmussen suggests that the lack of physical fairs over the past couple of years has probably curtailed what the team could have achieved. She says: “Children’s has always been more of an international business [than adult] because we have always relied on international partners to make the economies of scale for full-colour books work. So in the past two years we

have used all the technology to reach out to those partners. But still, there is nothing that replaces the enthusiasm of that experience in person, when you show something new. Or that chance encounter when you meet someone in a corridor and say, ‘Come and look at what we have on our stand.’”

That is a point echoed by Simon & Schuster Children’s Books m.d. Rachel Denwood. She says: “Our rights team has done brilliantly.

We have upped the game on our worldwide acquisitions and they delivered in selling those books. But doing rights sales virtually is exhausting—a virtual fair isn’t a few days; it often becomes weeks of Zoom meetings. And while we have absolutely made that work, in a weird way it is going to be more efficient and effective to get people together over a table, in person, and to have that Bologna focal point.”

Meet and greet

One of the keys of pre-pandemic Bolognas was publishers bringing a number of authors to the fair for parties and meet-and-greets with international editors. There are few of those scheduled for BCBF 2022, though S&S is bucking that trend with an event for début author A F Steadman, whose muchanticipated middle-grade fantasy Skandar and the Unicorn Thief has been sold into 38 languages. Denwood says: “Well, we weren’t going to do it if it was just [S&S] out there but it got to a point when more and more of [Steadman’s] international publishers said they were going to be there, we thought, ‘Why shouldn’t we use this opportunity to get that excitement about the book going?’”

Nosy Crow is another publisher bringing a full complement of staff, and m.d. Kate Wilson notes that there was no doubt the children’s indie would attend Bologna, as it was one of the few UK companies exhibiting at last autumn’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

The international component has been key to Nosy Crow’s model and while things have gone well recently—over the pandemic it won the British Book Award for Export, a Rights Professional of the Year Nibbie (for its entire team) and the Independent Publishing Guild’s International Achievement Award—Wilson admits co-edition and rights sales have struggled without physical fairs. She explains: “While our series and backlist are storming, some of our new books have suffered: you have to see them in their gorgeous physical form to really appreciate them. And we think that, though in 2021 we did deals with 49 publishers who were new to us, we aren’t able to find new customers as easily. We also think that the fair provides editors with a focus and urgency that is harder to recreate virtually.”

TheBookseller.com

The data

Children’s trade heads to Bologna on the back of purple patch in sales Kiera O’Brien @kieraobrien

B

ritish publishers will go into this Bologna on a high—an all-time high— as the children’s category has had its best January and February since records began, selling 10 million units for £58m through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. While there are no numbers available for the start of 2021, as UK bookshops were shuttered due to lockdown, the 2022 figure is 20% up in both volume and value against the first eight weeks of 2020.

Across the TCM, five children’s categories have risen by more than £1m against their comparable 2020 sales, with Picture Books, Novelty & Activity, Children’s Fiction and Children’s General Non-Fiction all at all-time highs for the time of year, and Young Adult Fiction behind just Twilight-era 2009 and 2010.

The TikTok revolution boosted YA Fiction across 2021, which is carrying over to this year. Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End, which sold nearly 200,000 copies last year, is the current number one in the kids’ charts for the first two months of 2022. It’s sold 31,836 copies to date, with fellow YA titles Karen McManus’ One of Us is Lying—riding high thanks to its Netflix adaptation—and Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl in Pieces joining it in the top 20. However, Hey Duggee! The World Book Day Badge is nipping at They Both Die at the End’s heels, with just over 1,000 copies between them.

Leading Children’s Fiction is Jeff Kinney’s newest Wimpy Kid, Big Shot, just ahead of a book older than BookScan itself, J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Beloved cartoon dog Duggee leads both Pre-School and Early Learning with his World Book Day title, and the Novelty & Activity category with Animals, which has spent several weeks atop the Pre-School and Picture Book charts.

Mental health guides continue to fly high, with Poppy O’Neill’s titles You’re a Star and Don’t Worry, Be Happy featuring in the overall kids’ top 20, while Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Adam Hayes’ World Book Day title Think Like a Boss is also surging.

KATHLEEN GLASGOW

RASHMI SIRDESHPANDE

JEFF KINNEY

07

THIS WEEK

Opinion Defending writers

Arabella Pike William Collins’ publishing director reflects on a pair of landmark legal cases in which two of her authors were sued by super-wealthy Russian businessmen

Lawfare t 3 p.m. on Wednesday 2nd March 2022, HarperCollins’ long legal battle with assorted Russian and former Soviet Union oligarchs reached its finale. Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed the complaints of Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) against our author Tom Burgis, refused permission for ENRC to appeal and awarded an initial £50,000 on account in costs against them, with the likelihood of further costs to come. A resounding victory for Burgis and his bestselling book Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World.

We were hit by Burgis was joined at the centre of this maelstrom of an onslaught of oligarchical legal complaints by Catherine Belton, author legal attacks in of Putin’s People, which has been described in the Guardian what has been as “the essential book to understand the Russian presideemed ‘the dent”. These were matters of great public interest even defamation case before Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine. They are of the century’ now essential reading.

Putin’s People was first published in April 2020. In January 2021, Russia’s now jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny—recently recovered from a poison attack—issued a YouTube film revealing details of Vladimir Putin’s opulent $1bn Black Sea palace. During the film Navalny publicly endorsed Belton’s book. We believe this must have enraged the Kremlin. In the five weeks that followed we were hit by an onslaught of legal attacks in what has been deemed “the defamation case of the century”.

Defamation law in the UK has a 12-month statute of limitation. The proceedings against us were served in swift succession at the very limit of this period from lawyers acting for Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Alfa Bank’s Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, business magnate Alisher Usmanov and the state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, run by Putin loyalist Igor Sechin. It seemed to us to be a co-ordinated attack. The meanings complained of were exaggerated, often to an absurd degree, and the actions were roundly condemned by media campaigners as being Slapps (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation)—abusive lawsuits designed to intimidate

A

08

11th March 2022

ARABELLA PIKE AND TOM BURGIS CELEBRATE THE COURT RULING

are among the deepest in the world. Vast legal bills don’t bother them. They have the satisfaction of watching writers and publishers tied up in the knots and expense of legal dispute for months and months. They may get an apology or correction. They may not. But they have got in the way of publishing, exacted an emotional and economic toll on the defendants and demonstrated to others the dangers of investigating further. This is lawfare. It needs to stop.

Court success

and outspend journalists, writers and publishers into silence and/or censorship. All these oligarchs are now sanctioned.

The costs of defending such actions are vast. The Defamation Act of 2013 was designed to stop London being used as the “libel capital of the world”. It did not go far enough. On Belton, HarperCollins spent an estimated £1.5m in legal costs just getting to the preliminary “meaning hearings”. Abramovich chose to sue us in Australia too, although he has no business interests or reputation there. His purpose? To increase massively the cost/risk ratio for HarperCollins. No wonder so many publishers and newspaper editors actively choose to avoid publishing anything on Russia, its oligarchs and kleptocrats the world over. Had we lost at trial, it is likely that the costs could have exceeded £10m.

These litigious, obscenely rich men are represented by a well-paid niche of London’s professional class who have spent decades working on behalf of the oligarchs. Legal insights aside, such firms are masters of the baroque, prolix letter: Carter-Ruck’s for Rosneft ran to 17 pages.

Three out of four of their complaints against Putin’s People were subsequently dismissed outright by the judge, and the fourth was heavily caveated.

We all have a right to the law, but something is going very wrong with our system of justice when journalists fear to report on the business interests of the super-rich or feel bullied to print corrections to stories they believe to be true. For the oligarchs, it is win-win. Their pockets TheBookseller.com

It is time to stop writers and publishers being sued into silence, and to bring an end to this abuse of our courts

Arabella Pike is publishing director of William Collins

Sitting next to Tom Burgis in the high court last week, I was reminded of lawfare’s human cost. The complaint against his book was ludicrous and Burgis is himself no stranger to courtrooms, but he was visibly shaken by the experience. It came after months of wrangling with lawyers from Taylor Wessing, defending his choice of words, his evidence. ENRC had also issued subpoenas against HarperCollins US in a futile attempt to ferret out Burgis’ sources, again wasting tens of thousands of pounds. Writing the book had brought him hazards enough, with research trips to Kazakhstan to investigate a massacre, to Africa to gather evidence of suspicious deaths linked to corruption, to Moscow to meet the mafia. Once home, he discovered that he had been subjected to surveillance.

All the sweeter, then, to have emerged from both cases victorious. The Belton cases were settled with a small number of changes to the book that would be imperceptible to most readers and represent a massive climbdown by those who had complained. We paid a donation to a charity of our choosing to acknowledge one piece of misreporting over the initial ownership of Abramovich’s Sibneft oil producer. No costs or damages were paid, and the Burgis case was dismissed out of hand.

HarperCollins and News Corp have been robust throughout, backing these two authors to the hilt and placing our considerable legal resources at their disposal.

Fighting off the oligarchs would have been impossible without this. Practitioners of lawfare have, I suspect, become accustomed to writers and publishers quickly conceding. But at HarperCollins, news is part of our DNA. We will continue to find and publish investigative writing that probes the business interests of the rich and powerful.

Or anything else that we believe to be in the public interest.

What must happen next—and urgently—is a reform of the law. Justice secretary Dominic Raab has announced an intention to introduce measures to prevent those “close to Putin” coming to the UK “to bankrupt people who shine a light on his excesses”. MPs such as Liam Byrne, David Davis and Bob Seely have been campaigning for the same in the House of Commons. It is time to stop writers and publishers being sued into silence, and to bring an end to this abuse of our courts.

Tom Burgis’ Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World (9780008308384, £9.99) and Caroline Belton’s Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (9780007578818, £9.99) are published by William Collins.

09

THIS WEEK

Bookshop Spotlight Drake The Bookshop

RICHARD DRAKE LEFT WELCOMED PHILIP PULLMAN TO DRAKE THE BOOKSHOP IN 2018

Drake The Bookshop ? 27 Silver Street, Stockton-on-Tees TS18 1SX Readers’ reactions to an exciting new expansion for children’s books has been ‘the best bit’ in recent memory for bookshop owner Richard Drake

Ruth Comerford @ruth_comerford

10

11th March 2022

F

resh from World Book Day celebrations in the recently expanded children’s half of the bookshop, former teacher Richard Drake is reflecting on setting up shop in Stockton-on-Tees.

Following a family holiday in the Lake District in August 2014, the Drake family stumbled across the now-closed Wordsworth Café and Bookshop in Penrith, and were inspired by a chat with the owners. Richard Drake left his job in early 2015, and by September 2015, the family had secured a 12 sq m premises on Stockton High Street and opened for business.

Drake The Bookshop relocated to its current site, on Silver Street, in October 2016, and has recently expanded to take over the premises next door, opening a dedicated children’s bookshop, which connects to the original

through a hole in the wall. “[It’s] all bright and zingy, while the grown-ups can still peruse in the calmer, more sedate original shop,” Drake says. He recalls “the look of amazement and joy on [author] Sally Nicholls’ face when she came in with her mum and family over half term. She didn’t know about the new shop and her mum hadn’t said anything, so the reaction was genuine. In fact, that’s been the best bit since [opening it] last July—people’s reaction to the new shop.”

The shop prides itself on its children’s offering, and works closely with schools across Teesside. It also champions “quirky” indie publishers, local authors and local independent businesses, including Rounton’s Coffee Roasters, which supplies the shop’s café.

“We specialise in really good books and often receive praise for our eclectic range and the

quality of our Social Science section,” Drake adds.

The shop’s furniture and layout is set up to be “mobile”, so that events can be run frequently. Display units are fixed to castors, which can be moved to accommodate roughly 30 people, and the shop contains a projector and big screen for live Zoom events. “The space and the flexibility is fab,” Drake says.

Its customer base includes loyal locals and tourists from as far afield as South Africa and Tasmania. “From day one people have wanted to support us and are so thrilled that we are still here after what has been an ‘interesting’ two years for everyone,” Drake adds.

As the only independent bookseller in the town, the shop’s only competition is a few high-street chain bookshops. “We don’t really see it like that these days,” Drake says. “They do what they do and we can’t control that, and we do what we do and try and do it really, really well.”

Because the business has been heavily involved in school events recently, books

by Jenny Pearson, Helen Rutter and Anne Fine are flying off the shelves. Local author Lisette Auton’s début, The Secret of Haven Point (Puffin), is also selling well, while titles published by Hebden Bridge-based indie Bluemoose are “always popular and great to hand-sell”.

Drake is looking forward to putting recent releases of “fantastic” début fiction from women writers into the hands of customers, as well as a plethora of books coming into paperback in time for summer reading—Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winner The Promise (Chatto & Windus), Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room (Vintage) and Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice (Viking) among them.

Expected bestsellers Date with Betrayal Julia Chapman Pan, 31st March

Happytown Must be Destroyed James Harris Hachette Children’s, 14th April

Chemical Cocktail Fiona Erskine Point Blank, 2nd June

Firesong Vashti Hardy Scholastic, 5th May

TheBookseller.com

Independent Bookshop Top 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Title The Worst Class in the World...

Dinosaur Roar and Friends!

Hey Duggee: The World Book...

Grimwood The Wizard and Me Jemima the Pig... 127 Acorns My Very Very Very Very Very...

Boy, Missing Think Like a Boss Peak Peril Rocket Rules The Last Word Klara and the Sun And Now For The Good News...

Still Life The Promise The Magician Light Perpetual Open Water Mother’s Boy

Author Imprint J Nadin; R Parekh Bloomsbury...

Peter Curtis Macmillan...

BBC Children’s Nadia Shireen Simon & Schuster S Farnaby; C Powell Hodder Children’s Morpurgo; Parker-Rees HarperCollins Matt Lucas; Sarah Horne Farshore Sophie McKenzie Simon & Schuster R Sirdeshpande; A Hayes Wren & Rook Sharna Jackson Knights Of N Bryon; D Adeola Puffin Ben Bailey Smith Bloomsbury...

Kazuo Ishiguro Faber & Faber Ruby Wax Penguin Life Sarah Winman Fourth Estate Damon Galgut Vintage Colm Tóibín Penguin Francis Spufford Faber & Faber Caleb Azumah Nelson Viking Patrick Gale Tinder

ISBN (+978) 1526642738 1529074239 1405951630 1398509672 1444964479 0008522919 0008519834 1398509696 1526364401 1913311254 0241558881 1526646552 0571364909 0241400661 0008283391 1529113877 0241970584 0571336494 0241448786 1472257413

ASP £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £8.98 £9.97 £8.96 £8.98 £8.98 £8.93 £8.99 £19.96

Week ending 5th March 2022.

Unless otherwise stated, charts use data from Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market, representing print book sales through around 6,500 retailers. Any title discounted by more than 74.5% is ineligible for inclusion.

From the shop floor McNish and Coles sign up for BA’s IBW promotion Booksellers up and down the country are gearing up to celebrate Independent Bookshop Week this summer.

The Booksellers Association has announced around 700 bookshops will participate, and has confirmed poet Hollie McNish right will be penning a bespoke poem for the campaign, while crime writer Reverend Richard Coles will embark on an extensive tour, signing copies of his upcoming crime début Murder Before Evensong (Orion), which is out later this spring (see Author Profile, pp20–21). The promotion will take place from 18th–25th June in the UK and Ireland this year, and is sponsored by Hachette.

Amazon shelves bookshop plan as two UK stores go Amazon is closing all 68 of its physical bookshops and four-star shops, but will continue to pursue other its other high-street operations,

including Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go. The move affects 66 stores in the US and two located in the UK: those in Shepherds Bush’s Westfield shopping centre, London, and in Bluewater, Dartford.

11

THIS WEEK

News Review The headlines: in brief

© Shutterstock

Pan Macmillan halts business with Russia as agencies review policies

BUSINESSES ARE REVIEWING THEIR POLICIES ON DEALING WITH RUSSIA

Curtis Brown and Pan Macmillan have paused all dealings with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Andrew Nurnberg Associates and David Higham Associates are among agencies opting to negotiate licensing with Russian and Ukrainian publishers based on clients’ individual wishes.

The news comes after Simon & Schuster and Gardners halted trade with Russia last week, something Penguin Random House has also done, The Bookseller understands.

“We are devastated by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine,” Doug Wallace, m.d. of Andrew Nurnberg Associates said. “It is not helpful to reduce our position to a soundbite. Licensing to Russian publishers has already fallen sharply over the past weeks and we anticipate that it will remain this way, at very least, until the end of the year. We Rights deal

Stat of the Week

70% Boldwood Books has signed 10 more authors after reporting “impressive” financial results for 2021, with revenue up 70% to £2.7m from £1.6m. The new authors have all been contracted on multi-book deals and will be published in every format simultaneously in all English-language territories. “We are thrilled to be strengthening our author portfolio,” said Amanda Ridout pictured above, founder and c.e.o.

Rights deal

KATIE ELLIS-BROWN

12

11th March 2022

First Harvill Secker deal for Ellis-Brown In her first Harvill Secker acquisition, Katie Ellis-Brown, deputy publishing director for crime, thriller and crossover, has pre-empted Ela Lee’s début novel Jaded for six figures in a two-book deal.

Assistant editor Dredhëza Maloku helped broker the deal for world all language rights from Hellie Ogden at Janklow & Nesbit. North American rights were also pre-empted in a six-figure, one-book deal by Carina Guiterman at Simon & Schuster US. The Vintage lead début will be published in spring 2024.

are speaking with each of our clients for Russia and Ukraine individually.”

David Higham Associates m.d. Lizzy Kremer said: “We are acting in accordance with the wishes of individual clients, some of whom have decided to cancel their contracts with Russian publishers. We don’t feel there is a need for a company-wide policy when our responsibility is to serve clients’ individual needs, but we are staying well-informed on every aspect of the situation so that we can offer advice where requested.”

Jonny Geller, c.e.o. of Curtis Brown, said the agency had paused “all dealings with Russian businesses while the current invasion of Ukraine continues”.

Elsewhere, agents including Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander say their policies are “under review”, while Pan Macmillan has halted Russian business “for the time being”.

Simon & Schuster picks up Dylan’s songwriting Simon & Schuster has snapped up a “brilliant” book on songwriting by Bob Dylan, his first book of new writing since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Jonathan Karp, president and c.e.o. at S&S US, and Sean Manning, executive editor, acquired world English rights, audio, and first serial rights for The Philosophy of Modern Song from Andrew Wylie at the Wylie Agency, which is handling translation rights.

It will be published in a “global publishing event” on 8th November 2022.

The Bookseller @thebookseller

This year’s @WomensPrize longlist has been revealed, featuring 16 stellar titles!

Find out more here: bit.ly/3tC1cgV

Poplak to take on responsibility for HCCB Cally Poplak above, executive publisher at Farshore, will take on additional responsibility for HarperCollins Children’s Books division following Ann-Janine Murtagh’s departure.

HarperCollins (HC) stressed the two divisions will continue to operate separately, and there is no intention to merge them.

Poplak joined HC as part of the acquisition of Egmont Books in 2020.

HC c.e.o. Charlie Redmayne said: “ I could not think of anyone better to take on HC Children’s Books, and to build on the success that the division has had over more than a decade.

Poplak added: “I look forward to growing HC Children’s business by making the most of the advantages that we have with two distinct children’s divisions, offering authors, illustrators and licensors the broadest range of publishing talent and taste, and catering to all readers and children’s book buyers.”

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PLR to cover e-books and audiobooks The Public audiobooks Lending Right (PLR) borrowed will from libraries be extended to cover from 1st e-book J

Waterstones ‘will preserve Blackwell’s brand and spirit’ The trade has largely welcomed Waterstones’ purchase of Blackwell’s but some have stressed they want the former familyowned chain to keep its unique identity.

Penguin Random House UK c.e.o. Tom Weldon described Waterstones’

© Francesco Giudicini

This week’s most read

Rights deal Sherwood’s ‘dazzling’ novel goes to Virago Virago has snapped up a “dazzling” historical novel

by Kim Sherwood.

Rose Tomaszewska, editorial director, bought UK and Commonwealth rights to A Wild & True Relation from Sue Armstrong at C&W, having published Sherwood’s first novel, Testament, at riverrun in 2018. It will publish in February 2023. A Wild & True Relation opens during the Great Storm of 1703, as smuggler Tom West confronts his lover Grace for betraying him to the Revenue.

TheBookseller.com

decision to acquire the business as “another boost of confidence in the sector”.

HarperCollins c.e.o. Charlie Redmayne said it was “a relief that the company has found the most obvious and appropriate buyer” while Hachette UK c.e.o. David Shelley said Waterstones

Pandemic and long hours prompt editors to turn to agenting

Orca Book Services issues remain unresolved

had already proven itself to be “thoughtful custodians of much-loved booksellers”.

Nicola Solomon, c.e.o. of the Society of Authors, urged Waterstones to ensure Blackwell’s “retains as much operational independence as possible within the group”. She said: “Blackwell’s cultivated a unique relationship both with authors and readers. It would be a shame to lose that to a merger.”

Kate Skipper, c.o.o. at Waterstones, told The Bookseller: “As with Foyles, Hatchards and Hodges Figgis, the Blackwell’s brand and spirit will remain distinct from Waterstones. We’ve had a very positive first week working with the Blackwell’s team as we start to understand their business and priorities. We look forward to beginning the range rebuild across the Blackwell’s shops as necessary.”

Publishers still ‘in absolute despair’ over Orca distribution problems

P

ublishers are still facing significant problems with Orca Book Services many months after first raising their concerns, with some in “absolute despair” about the situation.

Last July, it was announced Orca’s 66,000 sq ft distribution centre in Poole, Dorset, would close at the end of 2021, with the service moving to Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. Although publishers were assured there would be “little impact” on services, clients revealed major distribution problems ensued.

In October, Orca’s owner—United Independent Distributors—was bought by US-based Independent Publishers Group (IPG), with the organisation attempting to rectify the problems and the move to Biggleswade not completed.

In December, several indep-

Weekly TCM volume

4.27m µ

12.2%

WEEK ON WEEK

Rights deal O’Regan’s ‘haunting’ début goes to Granta Granta Books has pre-empted Though the Bodies Fall, a “haunting” début novel from new Irish fiction writer Noel O’Regan. Associate publishing director Laura Barber acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, including audio, from Euan Thorneycroft at A M Heath, for publication in autumn 2023. The novel centres on a man who returns to his childhood home, which is near a known suicide spot, and his compulsion to talk “visitors” down.

Virago snaps up ‘dazzling’ historical novel by Sherwood

Book of the Week

Supertato: The Great Eggscape!

Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet Simon & Schuster, 9781398511613, £6.99

Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet’s Supertato: Books Are Rubbish mashed the competition during World Book Day 2020, chipping right up into the overall top spot. Between them, the series as a whole has shifted nearly 900,000 units. Supertato: The Great Eggscape! rolled into Children’s top 20 last week, cracking into 14th place.

Data endent presses revealed months’ worth of stock was left undistributed at Orca’s warehouses with at least one client losing “tens of thousands” in revenue.

One publisher said payments are still late or incomplete now, they only have access to a “tiny” proportion of their inventories and functionality will not be restored until April or May. Another said: “It has ruined people’s lives. It is the worst thing that has happened in my career, but others have had it much worse.”

IPG c.e.o. Joe Matthews acknowledged problems but said things were improving “all the time”. He said: “The amount of inventory in stock improves by the day, however it will take another month or so to bring all of the stock into the new Biggleswade warehouse.”

The bestseller charts 14

13

DATA

The Bestseller Charts Analysis

The Official UK Top 50 Duggee dominates as WBD titles fly Title

1 2

µ TCM value

£31.5m +4.3%

WEEK ON WEEK

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

The World Book Day titles occupy the top 12 positions in the chart, and they have raised the wider children’s market to new heights

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Kiera O'Brien @kieraobrien

H

ey Duggee! was once again top dog in the Official UK Top 50 chart, with the TV character’s World Book Day title, The World Book Day Badge, selling 51,038 copies to secure a second week in the number one spot. The 2022 World Book Day line-up performed a clean sweep of the overall top 12, selling a combined 408,846 copies last week.

There are, of course, no comparable figures for World Book Day 2021, which took place during Lockdown 3.0, during which Nielsen was unable to report sales figures. But it is interesting to note that the combined World Book Day volume is significantly down on World Book Day 2020, which sold 472,018 units in total

14

11th March 2022

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Author; Illustrator µ Dinosaur Roar and Friends!

Peter Curtis µ The Worst Class in the World...

Nadin; Parekh µ Grimwood: Five Freakishly...

Nadia Shireen µ My... Silly Book of True or False Lucas; Horne µ The Wizard and Me Farnaby; Powell µ Jemima the Pig and the 127...

Morpurgo; Parker-Rees µ Rocket Rules Bryon; Adeola µ Peak Peril Sharna Jackson µ Boy, Missing Sophie McKenzie µ Think Like a Boss Sirdeshpande; Hayes µ The Last Word Ben Bailey Smith © Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro ¶ The Heron’s Cry Ann Cleeves ¶ It Ends With Us Colleen Hoover µ Harry... Philosopher’s Stone J K Rowling © The Atlas Six Olivie Blake © Supertato: The Great Eggscape! Hendra & Linnet ¶ Runaway Widow Dilly Court ¶ Mole’s Spectacles Donaldson; Scheffler µ The Love Hypothesis Ali Hazelwood © Suspects Lesley Pearse µ Why Has Nobody Told Me...

Dr Julie Smith © Still Life Sarah Winman ¶ The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman µ The Deep End Jeff Kinney ¶ I Have Something to Tell You Susan Lewis µ Code Name Bananas Walliams; Ross ¶ Ugly Love Colleen Hoover ¶ Pinch of Nom Comfort Food Kay & Kate Allinson © The Summer That Changed Us Cathy Bramley © The Catastrophic Friendship...

Katie Kirby © The Paris Apartment Lucy Foley ¶ Unholy Murder Lynda La Plante ¶ Again, Rachel Marian Keyes ¶ Verity Colleen Hoover ¶ The Seven Husbands of Evelyn... Taylor Jenkins Reid © Fitwaffle’s Baking It Easy Eloise Head © Galatea Madeline Miller ¶ 1979 Val McDermid µ Harry... Chamber of Secrets J K Rowling ¶ The Road Trip Beth O’Leary ¶ The Spanish Love Deception Elena Armas © Kleptopia Tom Burgis ¶ This is Going to Hurt Adam Kay ¶ The Midnight Library Matt Haig ¶ Neglected Cathy Glass ¶ The Push Ashley Audrain © The Promise Damon Galgut © The Woman in the Middle Milly Johnson

´ Hey Duggee: The World Book...

Imprint BBC Children’s Macmillan Bloomsbury S&S Farshore Hodder HarperCollins Puffin Knights Of S&S Wren & Rook Bloomsbury Faber & Faber Pan S&S Bloomsbury Tor S&S HarperCollins Macmillan Sphere Penguin Michael Joseph Fourth Estate Penguin Puffin HarperCollins HarperCollins S&S Bluebird Orion Puffin HarperCollins Zaffre Michael Joseph Sphere S&S Ebury Bloomsbury Sphere Bloomsbury Quercus S&S William Collins Picador Canongate HarperCollins Penguin Vintage S&S

ISBN TCM total 1405951630 81,771 1529074239 74,836 1526642738 65,930 1398509672 56,221 0008519834 54,770 1444964479 52,014 0008522919 46,061 0241558881 46,089 1913311254 37,809 1398509696 37,463 1526364401 35,712 1526646552 35,066 0571364909 12,391 1509889709 38,416 1471156267 299,096 1408855652 1,148,310 1529095234 8,884 1398511613 8,701 0008435578 42,901 1529034387 24,547 1408725764 85,381 1405944618 7,965 0241529713 73,059 0008283391 7,857 0241988268 882,590 0241396957 31,396 0008287023 23,052 0008471804 25,620 1471136726 104,156 1529035018 434,612 1409186823 7,241 0241460900 7,130 0008384982 6,348 1785765445 19,565 0241441121 32,493 1408726600 43,503 1398515697 96,106 1529148688 5,968 1526652065 6,158 0751583076 50,516 1408855669 811,953 1529409093 19,544 1398515628 50,031 0008308384 8,553 1529062335 23,127 1786892737 537,102 0008507503 24,094 1405945042 14,167 1529113877 4,861 1471199028 4,552

Week ending 5th March 2022. Key © New µ Up ´ Same ¶ Down Unless otherwise stated, charts use data from Nielsen BookScan Total Consumer Market, representing print book sales through around 6,500 retailers. Any title discounted by more than 74.5% is ineligible for inclusion.

Volume 51,038 44,531 43,910 37,381 36,942 34,825 31,967 28,709 26,380 26,016 23,979 23,168 12,212 11,609 10,887 10,851 8,882 8,660 8,655 8,338 8,334 7,913 7,820 7,594 7,583 7,556 7,511 7,398 7,371 7,361 7,224 7,000 6,321 6,245 6,187 6,144 6,066 5,947 5,897 5,863 5,804 5,611 5,604 5,350 5,214 5,190 4,750 4,741 4,717 4,507

11.2%

Exclusive

The Children’s category was up 11.2% in volume terms when compared against World Book Day week in 2020

Digital Bestseller Lists Retired Detective book hits top spot

Kiera O’Brien @kieraobrien

S This week’s top new entry

KAZUO ISHIGURO WAS THE TOP NEW ENTRY OVERALL WITH HIS LATEST NOVEL

in early March that year, just a couple of weeks ahead of the first lockdown, and lower than 2019’s tally of 443,052. Yet the Children’s category for last week was a staggering 11.2% up in volume on 2020’s World Book Day week, and 9.5% up in volume against 2019.

Overall, the luminously healthy print market thundered to its highest volume since Christmas, soaring 12.2% week on week to 4.27 million books sold.

Value, at £31.5m, hit its highest level since the first week of 2022.

Last week broke spring records, surpassing 2018’s post-Beast from the East 4.05 million books sold to record the highest weekly volume in March since 2010—and the highest weekly value in March ever (excluding lockdown weeks). The Children’s category represented 47% of the market’s total volume last week.

Joanna Nadin and Rikin Parekh’s The Worst Class in the World in Danger! notched up a third week as the Children’s & YA Fiction number one, as Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Adam Hayes’ Think Like a Boss scored a second week in the Children’s Non-fiction

teph Broadribb’s Death in the Sunshine, the first in the author’s The Retired Detective Club series, has lit up the Bookstat e-book number one. This is Broadribb’s first ever appearance in the Bookstat chart since The Bookseller began running it in January 2020. It was joined at the top by an author familiar to regular perusers of the Bookstat chart—L J Ross, whose self-published title Mania débuted in second place. Susan Lewis’ I Have Something to Tell You, Chad Zunker’s Family Money and Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds also entered the top five for the week ending 5th March. Lee Child’s Die Trying, the second title in the Jack Reacher series, pummelled into seventh place—perhaps fans of the Amazon Prime Video adaptation, which covers the events of the first book Killing Floor, are already getting a jump on season two.

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club returned to the Publisher E-Book Ranking number one for the week ending 26th February, as Marian

L J ROSS‘ MANIA MOVED INTO SECOND PLACE IN THE BOOKSTAT CHART Keyes’ originally 1997-published Rachel’s Holiday jumped up to join it in second place. Claire Douglas’ The Couple at No 9 beat Osman’s second title, The Man Who Died Twice, to third place.

Clarification Hachette has stated that Rabbit Hole sold 4,904 copies.

Bookstat E-Book Top 10 Title 1

© Death in the Sunshine

2

© Mania

3

© I Have Something to Tell You

4

© Family Money

5

© The Four Winds

6

¶ The Perfect Couple

7

© Die Trying

8

© 21st Birthday

9

© A Train to Moscow

10 © Rabbit Hole

Author Steph Broadribb L J Ross Susan Lewis Chad Zunker Kristin Hannah Jackie Kabler Lee Child James Patterson Elena Gorokhova Mark Billingham

Imprint Thomas & Mercer Dark Skies HarperCollins Thomas & Mercer Macmillan One More Chapter Transworld Cornerstone Lake Union Sphere

ISBN (+978) 1542029803 1912310548 0008287023 1542026161 1529054583 0008328429 0857500052 1529157277 1542033862 0751577280

Volume 17,736 14,870 10,515 9,262 8,400 8,031 7,359 1 © 6,671 8 µ 6,159 ' ¶ 5,598 6 ´

Data source Bookstat. Week ending 5th March 2022. Bookstat generates its charts by tracking the movement of e-books, print books and audio titles on online retailers’ websites and calibrating against publisher-supplied data; the volume and value figures are estimates. For more information, contact info@bookstat.com.

The Publisher E-Book Ranking Title 1

µ The Thursday Murder Club

2

µ Rachel’s Holiday

3

µ The Couple at No 9

4

µ The Man Who Died Twice

5

© Buried

6

µ This is Going to Hurt

7

µ House of Sky and Breath

8

µ Better Off Dead

9

© A Simple Wish

10 µ The Night She Disappeared

Author Richard Osman Marian Keyes Claire Douglas Richard Osman Lynda La Plante Adam Kay Sarah J Maas Lee and Andrew Child Rosie Goodwin Lisa Jewell

Imprint Penguin Penguin Penguin Penguin Zaffre Picador Bloomsbury Transworld Zaffre Cornerstone

ISBN (+978) 0241988275 0141909813 1405943413 0241988251 1838770334 1509858644 1408884430 1473579910 1838773557 1473583634

List price £5.99 £6.99 £2.99 £9.99 £5.99 £4.99 £11.89 £7.99 £5.99 £4.99

Week ending 26th February 2022. Key © New µ Up ´ Same ¶ Down. Titles with a selling price below £2 are excluded, as are titles priced £4.50 or below with any print versions priced above £17.99. Participating publishers: PRH UK, Hachette, HarperCollins, Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Simon & Schuster, Bonnier Zaffre, Canongate & Joffe Books.

Continues overleaf ´

15

DATA

The Bestseller Charts Analysis

top spot. Outside of World Book Day titles, Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet’s Supertato: The Great Eggscape! entered the Pre-school chart in fifth place, as Katie Kirby’s The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of Lottie Brooks made its début in the Children’s & YA Fiction top 20, charting 11th.

Tom Burgis’ Kleptopia soared 4,947% in volume in the week the High Court threw out a libel case against the author and publisher HarperCollins, brought by mining giant ENRC. Kleptopia knocked its HarperCollins stablemate, Cathy Glass’ Neglected, from the Paperback Non-fiction top spot, selling 5,350 copies.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have also prompted Tim Marshall’s titles to jump in sales, with The Power of Geography rising 8.5% in volume week on week and 2016’s Prisoners of Geography improving

Original Fiction Title 1

© The Atlas Six

2

© The Paris Apartment

3

¶ Again, Rachel

4

© Mammy Banter

5

¶ The Man Who Died Twice

6

© High Stakes

7

¶ House of Sky and Breath

8

¶ A Daughter’s Destiny

9

© Give Unto Others

10 © Moon Witch, Spider King 11 ¶ The Locked Room 12 © Crimson Reign 13 ¶ A Wedding in Provence 14 © Mother’s Boy 15 ¶ The Maid 16 ¶ Breathless 17 ¶ To Paradise 18 ¶ Dark Horse 19 ¶ The Twyford Code 20 © Twelve Secrets

Title

20

Author Kazuo Ishiguro ¶ The Heron’s Cry Ann Cleeves ´ It Ends With Us Colleen Hoover ¶ Runaway Widow Dilly Court µ The Love Hypothesis Ali Hazelwood © Suspects Lesley Pearse © Still Life Sarah Winman ¶ The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman ¶ I Have Something to Tell You Susan Lewis ¶ Ugly Love Colleen Hoover © The Summer That Changed Us Cathy Bramley ¶ Unholy Murder Lynda La Plante µ Verity Colleen Hoover ¶ The Seven Husbands of Evelyn... Taylor Jenkins Reid © Galatea Madeline Miller ¶ 1979 Val McDermid ¶ The Road Trip Beth O’Leary ¶ The Spanish Love Deception Elena Armas ¶ The Midnight Library Matt Haig ¶ The Push Ashley Audrain

1

© Greenwich Park

2

© The Four Winds

3

© Mammy Banter

4

¶ The Twins

5

© Give Unto Others

6

© Chainsaw Man, Vol. 8

7

¶ Light Perpetual

8

¶ The Funny Thing about Norm...

9

¶ The Dictionary of Lost Words

1 2 3 4 5

7 8 9

£10

10 11 12 13

£5

14 15 16

£0

17

£7.38

µ

n/a%

YEAR ON YEAR

18 19

Heatseekers Fiction The Heatseekers charts are compiled using titles by authors who have not appeared in The Official UK Top 50 since Nielsen BookScan records began.

As such, they reveal books that are selling well, but not well enough to make the overall list in a seven-day period. For more Heatseekers charts, visit thebookseller.com.

16

11th March 2022

Imprint Tor HarperCollins Michael Joseph HarperCollins Viking Macmillan Bloomsbury Zaffre Hutchinson Hei...

Hamish Hamilton Quercus HarperVoyager Century Tinder HarperCollins Michael Joseph Picador Michael Joseph Viper Sphere

ISBN (+978) 1529095234 0008384982 0241441121 0008512927 0241425428 1529022056 1408884423 1838773564 1529151602 0241314432 1529409659 0008327996 1780897608 1472257413 0008435721 0241534823 1529077476 0241402870 1788165310 0751582765

ASP £16.21 £9.81 £11.52 £8.18 £10.81 £10.35 £13.83 £7.61 £17.35 £18.03 £14.22 £14.94 £8.87 £18.19 £10.16 £8.06 £15.39 £8.81 £12.44 £8.69

Volume 8,882 6,321 6,187 2,968 2,934 2,525 2,134 1,565 1,439 1,425 1,383 1,326 1,320 1,196 1,194 1,073 1,041 996 982 843

Imprint Faber & Faber Pan S&S HarperCollins Sphere Penguin Fourth Estate Penguin HarperCollins S&S Orion Zaffre Sphere S&S Bloomsbury Sphere Quercus S&S Canongate Penguin

ISBN (+978) 0571364909 1509889709 1471156267 0008435578 1408725764 1405944618 0008283391 0241988268 0008287023 1471136726 1409186823 1785765445 1408726600 1398515697 1526652065 0751583076 1529409093 1398515628 1786892737 1405945042

ASP £5.84 £5.12 £5.89 £4.28 £4.31 £4.66 £6.92 £5.87 £4.88 £5.65 £4.73 £4.55 £5.98 £6.13 £6.55 £5.33 £5.32 £5.63 £5.62 £4.99

Volume 12,212 11,609 10,887 8,655 8,334 7,913 7,594 7,583 7,511 7,371 7,224 6,245 6,144 6,066 5,897 5,863 5,611 5,604 5,190 4,741

Imprint Raven Pan HarperCollins Welbeck Hutchinson Hei...

Viz Faber & Faber Penguin Vintage HarperVoyager

ISBN (+978) 1526626509 1529054583 0008512927 1787399174 1529151602 1974722785 0571336494 1529176681 1529113228 0008327996

ASP £6.92 £5.12 £8.18 £5.02 £17.35 £6.89 £8.01 £4.86 £6.76 £14.94

Volume 3,489 3,445 2,968 2,348 1,439 1,410 1,395 1,343 1,339 1,326

Mass-Market Fiction

6

TCM actual selling price Past 52 Nielsen weeks

Author Olivie Blake Lucy Foley Marian Keyes Serena Terry Richard Osman Danielle Steel Sarah J. Maas Rosie Goodwin Donna Leon Marlon James Elly Griffiths Amélie Wen Zhao Katie Fforde Patrick Gale Nita Prose Amy McCulloch Hanya Yanagihara Gregg Hurwitz Janice Hallett Robert Gold

© Klara and the Sun

Title

10 © Crimson Reign

Author Katherine Faulkner Kristin Hannah Serena Terry L V Matthews Donna Leon Tatsuki Fujimoto Francis Spufford Julietta Henderson Pip Williams Amélie Wen Zhao

Out next week

Hardback Non-fiction Title

ELOISE HEAD WAS THE TOP NEW ENTRY IN HARDBACK NON-FICTION

1

µ Why Has Nobody Told Me...

2

¶ Pinch of Nom Comfort Food

3

© Fitwaffle’s Baking it Easy

4

´ The Boy, the Mole, the Fox...

5

´ Slimming Eats

6

¶ Manifest

7

© Burning Questions

8

¶ Pinch of Nom Quick & Easy

9

© Healthy Living James

10 © Green Living Made Easy 11 µ Taste 12 ¶ Guinness World Records 2022

25%. Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People continued to rise, jumping a further 57% week on week after a 343% leap a week ago. The title climbed to eighth place in Paperback Non-fiction.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun was the highest new entry in the Top 50, with 12,212 copies sold in its first three days on sale. The hardback edition, despite being published a few weeks ahead of sales figures returning to the BookScan charts in spring 2021, is easily the Nobel Prize-winner’s biggest hardback seller in the Nielsen BookScan era, and the paperback looks to be following suit. It notched up Ishiguro’s highest launch-week sale since records began, with only the 2006 film tie-in edition of Never Let Me Go scoring bigger sales in a seven-day period. Incredibly, Klara and the Sun has given the

13 ¶ Big Panda and Tiny Dragon 14 © The Instant 15 ¶ Jane’s Patisserie 16 ¶ Crystals for Self-Care 17 µ The Green Roasting Tin 18 µ Air-fryer Cookbook 19 ¶ Otherlands 20 µ What I Love About You

Author Dr Julie Smith Kay & Kate Allinson Eloise Head Charlie Mackesy Siobhan Wightman Roxie Nafousi Margaret Atwood Kay & Kate Allinson James Wythe Nancy Birtwhistle Stanley Tucci James Norbury Amy Liptrot Jane Dunn Kirsty Gallagher Rukmini Iyer Jenny Tschiesche Thomas Halliday -

Imprint Michael Joseph Bluebird Ebury Ebury Yellow Kite Michael Joseph Chatto & Windus Bluebird Headline Home One Boat Fig Tree Guinness World...

Michael Joseph Canongate Ebury Press Yellow Kite Square Peg Ryland Peters...

Allen Lane Studio Press

ISBN (+978) 0241529713 1529035018 1529148688 1529105100 1529377415 0241539590 1784744519 1529034981 1472289582 1529088380 0241500996 1913484118 0241529324 1838854263 1529109429 1529360233 1910931899 1788794244 0241405741 1787413726

ASP £8.16 £10.05 £15.04 £10.03 £10.28 £9.28 £18.34 £10.11 £15.11 £11.21 £13.98 £5.63 £7.91 £13.42 £10.41 £4.23 £11.33 £6.96 £18.06 £4.56

Volume 7,820 7,361 5,947 3,601 2,795 2,653 2,599 2,251 1,955 1,693 1,651 1,633 1,500 1,499 1,399 1,273 1,270 1,172 1,150 1,105

Author Tom Burgis Adam Kay Cathy Glass James Clear Dr Michael Mosley Tim Marshall Tim Marshall Catherine Belton Patrick Radden Keefe Vex King Daisy Upton Tim Spector Bruce Jones Kate Garraway Sarah Ockwell-Smith Carl Chinn Damien Lewis Bessel van der Kolk Julian Sancton Jordan B Peterson

Imprint William Collins Picador HarperCollins Random House Short Elliott & Thom...

Elliott & Thom...

William Collins Picador Hay House Penguin Vintage Welbeck Penguin Piatkus John Blake Quercus Penguin W H Allen Penguin

ISBN (+978) 0008308384 1529062335 0008507503 1847941831 1780725024 1783966028 1783962433 0007578818 1529063103 1788171823 0241485095 1529112733 1787399112 0552178372 0349431260 1789461725 1787475304 0141978611 0753553466 0141988511

ASP £8.49 £5.41 £4.58 £11.81 £7.00 £6.98 £8.67 £9.66 £8.86 £7.17 £10.84 £7.76 £6.82 £5.18 £11.98 £4.41 £5.66 £10.63 £7.18 £5.62

Volume 5,350 5,214 4,750 3,501 3,469 3,292 3,188 3,157 3,080 2,908 2,644 2,047 1,937 1,889 1,854 1,700 1,653 1,617 1,595 1,591

Author Kathleen Glasgow Tim Marshall Tim Marshall Vex King L V Matthews Bruce Jones Jamie Smart Rosie Greening Guinness World Records David McKee

Imprint Oneworld Elliott & Thom...

Elliott & Thom...

Hay House Welbeck Welbeck David Fickling Make Believe...

Guinness World...

Andersen

ISBN (+978) 1780749457 1783966028 1783962433 1788171823 1787399174 1787399112 1788452434 1803374536 1913484118 1842707319

ASP £6.39 £6.98 £8.67 £7.17 £5.02 £6.82 £7.19 £3.95 £5.63 £4.56

Volume 3,720 3,292 3,188 2,908 2,348 1,937 1,885 1,657 1,633 1,583

Paperback Non-fiction Title 1

© Kleptopia

2

´ This is Going to Hurt

3

¶ Neglected

4

´ Atomic Habits

5

¶ Fast 800 Keto

6

¶ The Power of Geography

7

µ Prisoners of Geography

8

µ Putin’s People

9

© Empire of Pain

10 ¶ Good Vibes, Good Life 11 © Five Minute Mum: On the Go 12 © Spoon-Fed 13 ¶ Formula One 2022 14 ¶ The Power Of Hope 15 © How to Be a Calm Parent 16 µ Peaky Blinders: The Real Story 17 µ SAS Great Escapes 18 µ The Body Keeps the Score 19 ¶ Madhouse at the End of the...

20 ¶ 12 Rules for Life

Continues overleaf ´

Small Publishers The Small Publishers chart is compiled using only titles issued by publishers that had sales of less than £5m in the previous calendar year through Nielsen’s TCM. Unlike the Heatseekers chart, which is divided each week by genre (into Fiction, Non-Fiction and Children’s), the Small Publishers chart encompasses all titles.

TheBookseller.com

Title 1

´ Girl in Pieces

2

´ The Power of Geography

3

µ Prisoners of Geography

4

¶ Good Vibes, Good Life

5

µ The Twins

6

¶ Formula One 2022

7

µ Bunny vs Monkey and the...

8

µ Never Touch a Zebra!

9

µ Guinness World Records 2022

10 µ Elmer

17

DATA

The Bestseller Charts Analysis

author his first Mass-Market Fiction number one since BookScan began reporting figures, matching its Original Fiction pole in hardback.

Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six made its début in Original Fiction. The fantasy title is the third of its genre to claim the category chart pole in the past five weeks. It was joined by Lucy Foley’s The Paris Apartment in second place, while Serena

Publisher revenues Penguin

£2.22m

HarperCollins

£1.39m

Pan Macmillan

£1.22m

S&S

£637k

Bloomsbury

£572k

Scholastic

£430k

Little, Brown

£405k

Ebury

£366k

Hodder

£348k

Vintage

£327k

Terry’s Mammy Banter charted fourth.

Dr Julie Smith’s Why Did Nobody Tell Me This Before? brought the nine-week streak of Kay and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Comfort Food in the Hardback Non-fiction number one to an end, beating it to the top by 459 copies. Baking blogger Eloise “Fitwaffle” Head’s Baking it Easy sold like hot cakes, débuting ° in third place.

Children’s: Pre-school Title

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Author; Illustrator ´ Dinosaur Roar and Friends!

Peter Curtis ´ My... Silly Book of True or False Matt Lucas; Sarah Horne ´ Rocket Rules Nathan Bryon; Dapo Adeola © Supertato: The Great Eggscape! Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet ¶ Mole’s Spectacles Julia Donaldson; Axel Scheffler © Peppa Pig: Where’s George’s... ´ Hey Duggee: Animals µ Superworm Julia Donaldson; Axel Scheffler ¶ Marmalade David Walliams; Tony Ross ¶ PRINCESS: Colouring Book ¶ The Tiger Who Came to Tea Judith Kerr µ Where’s Spidey? µ My Bum is SO CHEEKY! Dawn McMillan; Ross Kinnaird µ Where’s Wally?

Martin Handford µ Marvel Avengers: Colouring Bookµ There’s a Unicorn in Your Book Tom Fletcher; Greg Abbott µ The Very Hungry Caterpillar Eric Carle ¶ Cat’s Cookbook David Walliams; Tony Ross µ Zog David Walliams; Tony Ross ´ Hey Duggee

Imprint BBC Children’s Macmillan Farshore Puffin S&S Macmillan Ladybird BBC Children’s Alison Green HarperCollins Autumn HarperCollins Studio Press Scholastic Walker Autumn Puffin Puffin Macmillan Alison Green

ISBN (+978) 1405951630 1529074239 0008519834 0241558881 1398511613 1529034387 0241543542 1405950688 1407170725 0008305758 1788102216 0007215997 1800783010 0702313783 1406305890 1789058420 0241466605 0241003008 1529034363 1407170763

ASP £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £3.86 £4.27 £4.16 £4.10 £4.29 £6.93 £1.20 £4.48 £3.12 £4.10 £5.12 £1.21 £4.22 £5.02 £3.99 £4.40

Volume 51,038 44,531 36,942 28,709 8,660 8,338 4,468 4,145 4,081 4,045 3,764 3,497 3,171 3,104 2,977 2,892 2,846 2,814 2,783 3,143

Imprint Bloomsbury S&S Hodder Children’s HarperCollins Knights Of S&S Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Puffin HarperCollins Puffin Bloomsbury HarperCollins Walker Penguin S&S Puffin Puffin Scholastic HarperCollins

ISBN (+978) 1526642738 1398509672 1444964479 0008522919 1913311254 1398509696 1526646552 1408855652 0241396957 0008471804 0241460900 1408855669 0007371464 1406399752 0141375632 1471166204 0241407462 0241396650 0702313493 0008262204

ASP £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £1.00 £4.45 £4.37 £4.29 £6.37 £4.26 £4.34 £5.71 £5.90 £5.01 £4.42 £7.46 £5.47 £7.88

Volume 43,910 37,381 34,825 31,967 26,380 26,016 23,168 10,851 7,556 7,398 7,000 5,804 4,113 4,016 3,919 3,919 3,855 3,821 3,796 3,757

Children’s & YA Fiction Title

Author; Illustrator Joanna Nadin; Rikin Parekh 2 ´ Grimwood Nadia Shireen 3 ´ The Wizard and Me Simon Farnaby; Claire Powell 4 ´ Jemima the Pig and the 127...

Morpurgo; Parker-Rees 5 ´ Peak Peril Sharna Jackson 6 ´ Boy, Missing Sophie McKenzie 7 ´ The Last Word...

Ben Bailey Smith 8 ´ Harry... Philosopher’s Stone J K Rowling 9 µ The Deep End Jeff Kinney 10 ¶ Code Name Bananas David Walliams; Tony Ross 11 © The Catastrophic Friendship...

Katie Kirby 12 µ Harry... Chamber of Secrets J K Rowling 13 µ Gangsta Granny David Walliams; Tony Ross 14 ¶ Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to...

Louie Stowell 15= ¶ One Of Us Is Lying Karen M. McManus 15= ¶ They Both Die at the End Adam Silvera 17 µ The Danger Gang Tom Fletcher; Shane Devries 18 µ Big Shot Jeff Kinney 19 ¶ Dog Man 10: Mothering Heights Dav Pilkey 20 ¶ Gangsta Granny Strikes Again! David Walliams; Tony Ross 1

18

´ The Worst Class in the World...

11th March 2022

BILLY CONNOLLY WAS TOPPLED FROM THE SUMMIT

TikTok sensation Julie Smith, who secured a book deal on the back of her social media fame, toppled Billy Connolly to lead the Audible ranking in January Kiera O’Brien @kieraobrien

D

r Julie Smith’s Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? has surged straight to the top of the Audible chart for the first month of 2022, making its début in the digital download number one in the same month that its hardback edition shifted a whisker under 33,000 copies and notched up several weeks in the Hardback Non-fiction top three.

Smith, a psychologist with 3.1 million followers on TikTok, narrates her self-help book, making January 2022 the fourth consecutive month that the number one title has been narrated by its author, following several autobiography hits across last autumn and in the run-up to Christmas.

We have often discussed the effect the BookTok boom is having on the print charts. Most noticeably, the Young Adult Fiction and Romance & Sagas categories have seen soaring sales from backlist titles, from Adam Silvera’s They

7 All seven ‘original’ Harry Potter books hit the Audible chart

Audible Audio Download Chart Nobody does it better as Smith flies Both Die at the End to Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, both of which have topped their respective category charts through the TCM. But Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? is possibly the first bestseller to be commissioned and published because of its author’s TikTok fame, rather than going viral several years after publication. Knowing publishing, it undoubtedly won’t be the last.

Though January is traditionally “New Year, new you” January is territory, 2021’s the fourth Christmas buys consecutive are enduring in month that the Audible charts, the number with memoirs such as Billy Connolly’s one title Windswept & has been Interesting, Will narrated by Smith and Mark its author Manson’s Will and Miriam Margolyes’ This Much is True still lining up in the top 10. The celebrity autobiography seems to have found a new lease of life recently, particularly in audio. Bob Mortimer’s And 1 Away..., which has sold nearly 350,000 copies in hardback, 2 charted 11th.

3 However, the audio market 4 does have its January evergreens— 5 James Clear’s Atomic Habits and 6 former US marine David Goggins’ 7 Can’t Hurt Me bounced back into 8 the Audible chart. Of course, the standard diet books and healthy 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

JOHANN HARI WAS THE CHART’S SOLE NEW ENTRY, IN 17TH

TheBookseller.com

DR JULIE SMITH TOPS THE AUDIBLE CHART FOR JANUARY

Title © Why Has Nobody Told Me This... ¶ Windswept & Interesting µ Atomic Habits µ Harry... Philosopher’s Stone µ Harry... Chamber of Secrets ´ The Thursday Murder Club ¶ Will ¶ This Much Is True ¶ The Man Who Died Twice µ Harry... Prisoner of Azkaban ¶ And Away... µ Harry... Goblet of Fire µ Harry... Order of the Phoenix µ The Fellowship of the Ring µ Harry... Half-Blood Prince µ Project Hail Mary © Stolen Focus µ Harry... Deathly Hallows µ Can’t Hurt Me µ A Life on Our Planet

Author Dr Julie Smith Billy Connolly James Clear J K Rowling J K Rowling Richard Osman W Smith, M Manson Miriam Margolyes Richard Osman J K Rowling Bob Mortimer J K Rowling J K Rowling J R R Tolkien J K Rowling Andy Weir Johann Hari J K Rowling David Goggins David Attenborough

cookbooks of the “New Year, new you” trend aren’t going to sell the bulk of their copies in audio, but the market seems to have carved out its own version of the selfimprovement trend.

The Harry Potter series hasn’t fully left the monthly Audible chart since its release in November 2015, but it’s rare nowadays for the entire original seven to feature in the top 20. However, festive nostalgia seems to boost the biggest-selling book series of all time back into the chart every December, and with the 20th anniversary of the first film’s release celebrated over the New Year’s Day bank holiday, fans have placed ° the titles back in the chart.

Narrator/s Dr Julie Smith Billy Connolly James Clear Stephen Fry Stephen Fry Lesley Manville Will Smith Miriam Margolyes Lesley Manville Stephen Fry Bob Mortimer Stephen Fry Stephen Fry Andy Serkis Stephen Fry Ray Porter Johann Hari Stephen Fry D Goggins, A Skolnick David Attenborough

Audible Audio Download Chart Date Range 1st-31st January 2022 Source Audible Physical Audio Top 5 Date Range 1st-31st January 2022 Source Nielsen Key © New µ Up ´ Same ¶ Down

Imprint Penguin Two Roads Penguin Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Penguin Penguin Audio John Murray Penguin Bloomsbury S&S Bloomsbury Bloomsbury HarperCollins Bloomsbury Cornerstone Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Lioncrest Penguin Audio

Exclusive

Physical Audio Top 5

01 421 units Children’s Top 100 Favourite...

CRS

02 371 units The Wheels on the Bus BBC Audiobooks

03 232 units It’s Never Too Late to Play Piano Faber Music

04 227 units London, 1965 Paul Magrs BBC Physical Audio

05 157 units Time and the Rani Pip & Jane Baker BBC Physical Audio

19

BOOKS

Author Interview Reverend Richard Coles

With the release of his 1980s-set murder mystery novel on the horizon, Reverend Richard Coles talks crime, compassion and his plans for the series

Charlotte Eyre @charlotteleyre

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11th March 2022

© NMP Live Ltd

T

here is an “enormous” appetite right now for crime fiction, says the Reverend Richard Coles from his parish in Northamptonshire, where he is speaking via Zoom about the first book in his new series (and his first fiction publication), Murder Before Evensong. “It offers some kind of reassurance,” he muses. “It gives you familiarity in a world that grows unpredictably strange, and resolutions. We most often find out what happens in the end.”

Murder Before Evensong is about Canon Daniel Clement, Rector of Champton, who lives at the Rectory with his widowed mother and two dachshunds. The year is 1989, and the novel starts with Daniel telling his congregation that he wants to install a loo in the church, which doesn’t go down well with everyone. And when one of his flock is found dead at the back of the church, stabbed in the neck with a pair of secateurs, Daniel suddenly has more to solve than arguments about lavatory arrangements.

All of the characters readers would want to see in an English pastoral novel are here: the local landowner, his archivist cousin, the county councillor, the head teacher of the primary school… and of course the choir singers, flower arrangers, organist and PCC (parochial church council) members who keep the church running. In terms of influences, Coles mentions G K Chesterton and

Metadata

Imprint W&N Publication 09.06.22 Format HB ISBN 9781474612630 Rights sold Six territories to date Editor Federico Andornino Agent Tim Bates

Book Extract TheBookseller.com

Marjorie Allingham. I saw something of Barbara Pym in there too.

He stresses that he is not Daniel, despite also being a vicar who owns dachshunds. “He’s much steadier than me, and he’s more heroic. He’s quietly heroic and I’m not even that. He’s also much fussier than I am.” People who know Coles might see one or two resemblances between his mother and Audrey, Daniel’s clever and opinionated mother, he says, but mostly the inspiration for his characters came from watching the community around him.

A line in the press release says: “NB: No parishioners were harmed in the writing of this novel.”

“If you are a vicar, you get used to being part of the community, and reading the community in a particular way, which is why I think vicars make good detectives,” Coles says. “We are nosy people by nature and our job is to kind of look at things, and look at people, and try to match what appears on the surface with what happens underneath.”

Vicars meet and speak to people from all parts of society (“you can spend the morning in a prison and the evening with a duke”, he quips) and are witness You get used to to problems and arguments that being part of come with that. “One of the interthe community, esting things you see in church and reading the life all the time, especially in rural community in a church life, is all sorts of tensions particular way, play out. At the moment, what we which is why I are seeing in rural churches are think vicars Brexit tensions playing out. We make good are a diverse community and we detectives have very different views. That fascinates me. On a good day, we model how you might live together in disagreement. On a bad day, we model how you don’t live together with disagreement.”

Coles is equally good at the big stuff as well as the daily life of being part of a church community, and the squabbles the latter provokes. He is—unsurprisingly—excellent at portraying a certain kind of English churchgoer. The ladies who do the flowers are described as having become “flowery to the exclusion of everything else”, wearing “related—if not quite matching—floral-print Sunday dresses, bought at cost from Mrs Harper’s shop.”

His portrayal is affectionate, but not without satire, and it feels like there is a lot of compassion from Daniel and his creator for these people. The reader is left with the understanding that Daniel, like Coles, is leaving condemnation and judgement to the Lord. We see and understand why people act the way they do, and I felt almost sorry for the murderer when the denouement is revealed, because

Canon Daniel Clement AKC, Rector of Champton St Mary, stood in his pulpit, looking down on his parishioners.

His text was taken from the Book of Numbers, the story of the Israelites turning against Moses for leading them not into the Promised Land but into a wilderness. A resonant story, not only

of what happened in their past. Coles says: “I’ve worked with prisoners who were coming to the end of sentences for terrible crimes. The kind of crimes for which there is no forgiveness, I think, but when you get to know people and you walk alongside people with that kind of history, you don’t have to go far back to see they were victims too before they were aggressors. Once you get that sort of picture of people it’s hard not to feel compassion… We must judge as we would wish to be judged, and that is with compassion.” Crime novels also express a reality—that life is all light and shade, he adds.

Turning point

Why set the book in the late 1980s? It was a “hinge” moment in British history, he says. There were a lot of people at that time who had been through the Second World War and were traumatised by their experience of it, and at the same time things we take for granted today, such as LGBTQ+ rights, were just beginning to happen.

And in terms of the church, that period was when the old model of having one vicar in the parish as a settled and steady presence was also starting to fall away, and at the end of the book Daniel is told he needs to take on additional parishes as well as his own. That does, of course, set up book two nicely, but it also shows a system that had been in place for centuries was starting to be dismantled.

Murder Before Evensong will be published in June, just after Coles retires from his parish. His husband David died two years ago (as detailed in his 2021 memoir The Madness of Grief, W&N) and Coles realised he needed to move away and start a new kind of life. He is moving to the South Coast, to a village “rich in potential for murder mystery”, where he will continue writing the Canon Clement Mystery series. He jokes that he might write 40 books but has so far signed up to do three, a “nice Trinitarian number”.

In the second novel, which is already written, Daniel has to oversee new parishes up the road and deal with a new arrival who comes from a different church tradition.

And book three might take place on a film set, with the big house being used as a backdrop. Daniel is currently an Agatha Christie-type detective who doesn’t seem to have any interest in forming romantic attachments, but will that change? On that question Coles remains tight-lipped.

In writing these books he is having a wonderful time.

“I find that between 5,000 and 10,000 words it starts to write itself... It has an energy and dynamic of its own. It’s an extraordinary feat of organisation, writing fiction. I’ve got friends who are fiction writers and I marvel at their capacity to keep the architecture and the detail together in their heads. It’s been a real challenge to try and do it myself, but I have really enjoyed it.”

for him but, he felt sure, for all 58 of his predecessors. Moses averts mutiny by striking a rock, and a cataract of water miraculously pours forth, so his thirsty and restive people may drink; a resourceful tactic that suited Daniel’s purposes too.

“Like Moses and the footsore of Israel,”

he preached, “we too must learn to live in hope, to look to the future, and to find in our present circumstances the resources to meet its challenge. As Moses struck the rock of Meribah and lo, a crystal stream poured forth, we too must allow new waters to flow, or rather to flush: my dear people, we need to install a lavatory.”

21

BOOKS

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

New Titles: Non-fiction June 2022 Celebrity memoirs abound in June alongside captivating tales of extraordinary ordinary lives, offering a glimmer of hope in troubling times how her love of birds fuels her work as an environmental activist and campaigner for equal access to nature for all.

Caroline Sanderson rson n @carosanderson

M

idway through the publishing year already, and June brings a crop of all-age celebrity memoirs; from 22-year-old Molly-Mae Hague’s Becoming Molly-Mae to 89-year-old Sheila Hancock’s Old Rage, which sounds wonderfully cantankerous. And in the month of her Platinum Jubilee celebrations, arguably the nation’s premier celebrity, HM Queen Elizabeth II, gets the Andrew Morton treatment.

Away from the media spotlight, and at a time when we need doses of hope, humanity and humour more than ever, it is the telling of ordinary but extraordinary life stories which has captured my imagination this month; from Black Sheep, Sabrina Pace-Humphrey’s account of forging an identity in the face of rural racism, to Mya-Rose Craig’s Birdgirl, a passionate account of Submissions should be sent to Caroline at St Ives, Frome Park Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 3LF. Hard copies preferred (covering letter & AI essential), email submissions welcome.

See thebookseller.com/publishing calendar for submission deadlines.

Next week

22

Arguably the nation’s premier celebrity, HM Queen Elizabeth II, gets the Andrew Morton treatment

There are also three outstanding “professional confessionals”—or “vocational voices” if you prefer—Polly Morland’s A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story; writer and English teacher Jeffrey Boakye’s I Heard What You Said; and my Book of the Month, Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder by (you heard it here first) Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC. Covering the three societal pillars of health, education and law, all three bring wisdom on how we might improve the lives of the many, not just the few.

BookScan ratings accompanying titles are based on TCM sales (excludes e-book, export, direct, library and other sales) of the author’s most recent original 50,000+ 44444 work in a similar format with 25,000+ 4444 at least six months’ sales 10,000+ 444 through Nielsen BookScan, 5,000+ 44 using the notation left.

3,000+ 4

The next edition of The Bookseller (18th March) will feature Children's Previews covering titles released in June.

11th March 2022

Book of the Month

Former judge’s revelatory début enthrals “Every unlawful death tells a story.

Every trial involves characters to be Her Honour understood, motives to be unravelled, Wendy Joseph QC plans and methodology to be exposed”.

Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: There are only 12 murder trial judges Trials at the Old Bailey in the UK, and Her Honour Wendy Doubleday, 9th, HB, £20, Joseph QC was, until her retirement this 9780857528438 week, one of them. When appointed to the Old Bailey in 2012 she was the only woman among 16 judges, and only the third woman ever to hold a permanent position there.

From the Bench at the Central Criminal Court, she has presided over many high-profile murder cases, and as she shows in her exceptional first book, we all have a vested interest in how such trials are conducted. Bringing the reader right into the courtroom, Joseph tells the amalgamated stories of six murder trials; from three young men accused of stabbing another; to a couple accused of killing their daughter. We watch as the crime, and its cast of characters, unfolds and bear witness to their struggles and suffering, as Joseph dispassionately considers how best to ensure justice is done.

Unlawful Killings is also a galvanising plea for us to carefully consider our purpose in punishing wrongdoing. It all adds up to a riveting and revelatory work that, although categorised here as True Crime, is so much more besides.

True crime

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

Editor’s Choice

Current affairs & politics

Jeffrey Boakye I Heard What You Said Picador, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9781529063745

I’ve been an admirer of Jeffrey Boakye’s writing since learning my white socks off with his book Black, Listed. Now his talents as a teacher are centre stage in this riveting account of his experiences as a Black student, and then a Black teacher of English in a majority white education system (over 86% of teachers are white and British), teaching set texts that are freighted with prejudice. Rich with entertaining anecdotes about the kids he clearly loves teaching, he also has a magnificent talent for opening enquiring minds to injustice, and to an embrace of anti-racism.

Editor’s Choice

History

Editor’s Choice

Food & drink

06

Editor’s Choice

Biography & memoirs

Felicity Cloake Red Sauce, Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey

Mya-Rose Craig Birdgirl: A Young Environmentalist Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future

Mudlark, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9780008413651

Chatto, HB, £16.99, 9781787333208

“For all our cakes and buns and comforting stews, our pies and potatoes and mad fixation with putting everything and anything on toast, Britain is a country that runs on breakfast.” So declares one of my favourite food writers as she sets off on an epic bike ride around Breakfast Britain, charmingly rating fry-ups on the crispness of the bacon, and taking in such regional specialities as Lancashire hotpot, Welsh cakes, halwa putis, Polish rye breads, and a pease pudding stottie cake from the original Greggs in Gosforth.

Interspersed are recipes for Sinus-Clearing Mustard, Soda Farls, a Sourdough Marmite and more.

“Bird-watching has never felt like a hobby… but a thread running through the pattern of my life.” Nineteen-year-old force of nature Craig—a.k.a. Birdgirl—has had a passion for birds since she was a child growing up in a British Bangladeshi family; a passion which has fuelled her work as an environmental activist and as a campaigner for equal access to nature for all, founding Black2Nature when she was 14. This is her story, and a paean of love for the creatures she reveres. It is beautifully illustrated with images of birds by Mick Manning.

Editor’s Choice

History

Editor’s Choice

Biography & memoirs

Lindsey Fitzharris The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

Jonathan Freedland The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

Polly Morland A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story

John Murray Press, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529369045

Picador, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9781529071139

Allen Lane, 7th, HB, £20, 9780241389379

It’s remarkable just how many extraordinary stories are emerging from the Second World War, and this is one of the most extraordinary, especially when so compellingly told by journalist and novelist Freedland. It tells of Rudolf Vrba, who in 1944, while still a teenager, escaped from Auschwitz and subsequently produced from memory a report of more than 30 pages revealing the true nature and scale of the slaughter there—it subsequently found its way to Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope, and eventually saved more than 200,000 Jewish lives.

Clearing her late mother’s house, Morland found a copy of A Fortunate Man, John Berger’s 1960s book about the life of a country GP. Looking at its photos, she realised that it was set in the same remote valley where she herself lives, and this serendipity led her to write this stunning companion work of illustrated reportage—which documents the work of the female GP who serves the same valley community today.

Beautifully and tenderly written, it also serves as a topical reminder of what is possible with continuity of care.

I was an admirer of Fitzharris’ award-winning first book, The Butchering Art, about Joseph Lister. This is her absorbing account of another surgeon: Harold Gillies, who established one of the world’s first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. Through rebuilding the faces of First World War soldiers disfigured in battle, he ushered in our modern era of plastic surgery.

Fitzharris hopes that her book will shed light on the “terrible consequences of trench warfare”.

TheBookseller.com

23

BOOKS

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

Top sellers Kate Allinson, Kay Featherstone & Laura Davis Pinch of Nom Family Meal Planner

Editor’s Choice

Bluebird, 23rd, HB, £10.99, 9781529079463

Editor’s Choice Biography & memoirs

Sabrina Pace-Humphreys Black Sheep Quercus, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9781529418552

I’ve known Sabrina since our sons were at primary school together. But until I read this inspirational memoir, I was ignorant of the rural racism she had endured since moving to our town at the age of two, where no one looked like her. Exploring trauma, identity and mental health, she vividly relates her lived experience; from teenage mother determined to break that stereotype, and battling alcoholism; to taking up running; completing the Marathon des Sables, the toughest foot race on earth; and founding Black Trail Runners. A tale of triumph, and of hope over despair.

I’m proud to know her.

Editor’s Choice

Art & illustrated

The School of Life Art Against Despair: Pictures to Battle Sorrow and Restore Hope The School of Life, HB, £25, 9781912891900

“Our societies sometimes struggle with the question of what art might be for. Here the answer is simple: art is a weapon against despair.” Containing works by Edgar Degas, Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois, Georgia O’Keeffe, Hiroshi Yoshida, Nan Goldin and many more, this is a gorgeous collection of 100 consoling and uplifting artworks curated by The School of Life.

Each image is accompanied by a short essay offering comfort and inspiration in the face of a range of life challenges, including a broken heart, family issues, or maybe simply the state of the world.

Editor’s Choice

With 26 exclusive Nom recipes, this planner aims to give you everything you need to cook delicious family favourites, plan your weekly meals, and reach your personal goals.

Paul Hollywood Bake: My Best Ever Recipes for the Classics Bloomsbury, 9th, HB, £26, 9781526647160

This first book in five years from the “Great British Bake Off” judge is a collection of his best-ever recipes for 100 classic bakes, from biscuits and cakes to breads, pastries, pies and puddings.

Art, photography & illustrated Brian Barrett LEGO: The Art of the Minifigure Chronicle, 23rd, HB, £26, 9781452182261

Through interviews, essays, photography and infographics, this visual celebration of the LEGO mini-figure explores the 40-year history, design and cultural impact of these small yellow people.

Lily LeBrun Looking to Sea: Britain Through the Eyes of Its Artists

Biography & memoirs

Christie Watson Quilt on Fire: The Messy Magic of Mid-Life Chatto, 16th, HB, £16.99, 9781784744045

In her twenties, Watson thought she had found her soulmate in a glowing flash of light; which was actually a tealight setting her quilt on fire. Twenty years later, her bed began to burn again, this time with perimenopausal heat. In this bold and beautiful memoir, the author of The Language of Kindness turns her gift for writing to the nub of things, to the emotional chaos of midlife; the terror at the changes it wreaks, but also its strange power to deliver clarity.

Having weathered this turbulence myself, I think it’s the truest account of perimenopause I have yet read.

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11th March 2022

Natural history & pets

Ed Yong An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Bodley Head, 30th, HB, £20,

Pulitzer-winning writer Yong’s terrific début, I Contain Multitudes, opened our minds to the extraordinary, teeming world of microbes.

His second book gets as close as is humanly possible to explaining how a wealth of different animals—from squid and crocodiles to scallops and songbirds—see, smell, touch, hear, feel pain and more. A cornucopia of experience that we, as mere humans, can barely imagine, is revealed. But as well as a sensory marvel, this is also a book about treating animals and the natural world as equals in an era of planetary crisis.

Sceptre, 23rd, HB, £25, 9781529309218

Forming an alternative history of Britain in the 20th century, this “exquisite” work of cultural, artistic and philosophical history views our nation through the prism of 10 celebrated artworks of the sea, one for each decade; from the modernist “Studland Beach” by Vanessa Bell, to Paul Nash’s work which bears the scars of his experiences in the trenches, and Martin Parr’s photos of seaside resorts in the 1980s. The early chapters won the RSL’s Giles St Aubyn Award. To be beautifully produced and illustrated.

Mary Savig with Nora Atkinson & Anya Montiel This Present Moment:

Crafting a Better World Giles, PB, £39.95, 9781913875268

This richly illustrated survey is inspired by the way that craft artists have united during the Covid pandemic and engaged in urgent conversations about race, gender and inclusivity through their work.

Bob Willoughby Bob Willoughby Chronicle, 23rd, HB, £35, 9781797217024

This large-format monograph is the first comprehensive survey of Willoughby’s photos of film and television stars from the 1950s to the 1970s, featuring the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra and James Dean.

Biography & memoirs Ronnie Archer-Morgan with Janet Gleeson Would It Surprise You to Know…?

Century, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781529135879

With “rich warmth”, the BBC Antiques Roadshow expert tells his rags to riches story, from his birth in the 1950s to a Sierra Leonean mother battling mental health problems, and a childhood in and out of care, to working as a celebrity hairdresser, and his 30 years in the antiques trade. It’s a story of “adventure and success against the odds—with stories of the incredible objects that shaped the way”.

Marcus Berkmann How to Be a Writer: Baths, Biscuits and Endless Cups of Tea Little Brown, 7th, HB, £16.99, 9781408713839

The author of Rain Men, Fatherhood: The Truth et al with a comprehensive guide to becoming a full-time writer (“though he highly advises you do not”), taking in the triumphs, the heartbreaks, the biscuits, and much staring out of the window,

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

wondering what to say next.

Phyllis Bottome The Life Line Muswell Press, 23rd, PB, £8.99, 9781739879402

Bottome was a prolific author in the mid 20th century and the woman who taught Ian Fleming to write after he was thrown out of Eton. Originally published seven years before Casino Royale and available for the first time in 30 years, this is the story of 36-year-old Mark Chalmers, who is darkhaired, keen on skiing, speaks fluent French and German, has a taste for wine, food and women, and agrees to take on a hazardous mission for British intelligence in 1938.

Sound familiar?

Will Brooker The Truth About Lisa Jewell Century, 9th, PB, £14.99, 9781529136029

Brooker is professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University and the author of Why Bowie Matters for which he immersed himself in the life and work of David Bowie for a year. Now he has collaborated with novelist Lisa Jewell in this book about her writing process, and what it takes to become a bestselling writer; as well as analysing what her style shares with other authors, from James Joyce to Martin Amis. Published a month ahead of Jewell’s latest novel, The Family Remains.

a book about “the pull between life and death, desire and despair, presence and absence, fight and flight”.

Barbara Charone Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music and Culture White Rabbit, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781474622257

Born in Chicago, Charone —“one of the bestconnected people in the music industry”—moved to London after graduating and spent the first half of her career as a music journalist. Then in 2000, she co-founded her toprated music PR agency, MBCPR, with Moira Bellas.

This heady and absorbing memoir looks back on a career working with a roster of stars, including Madonna, Elvis Costello.

Keith Richards, Robert Plant and Mark Ronson.

Greystone, PB, £12.99, 9781771649971

After leaving Egypt for Australia when she was only six years old, the author charts a childhood during which she learns to navigate the social dynamics of her new home, and comes to understand that her parents—though loving— don’t always know what is best for her. For readers of Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, says Greystone.

Robert Crawford Eliot: After The Wasteland

Suzanne Fagence Cooper How We Might Live: At Home With Jane and William Morris

Cape, 2nd, HB, £25, 9780224093897

Quercus, 9th, HB, £25, 9781529409482

This second and final volume of Crawford’s biography of T S Eliot—the first full-scale life to make use of Eliot’s surviving correspondence and other new sources—completes the story he began in the first volume, Young Eliot, telling the story of the mature poet, his years as a world-renowned writer and intellectual, and his troubled interior life.

Focusing on the personal and creative partnership between Jane and William Morris, this alluring sounding joint biography explores their lives and legacies, finally giving Jane’s work the attention it deserves as it takes us inside two lives of “unparalleled creative artistry”.

Chrissy Handy Seduced by a Sociopath HarperElement, 23rd, PB, £8.99, 9780008522278

Emmanuel Carrère Yoga

Hopwood DePree Downton Shabby: One American’s Ultimate DIY Adventure Restoring His Family’s English Castle

Cape, 2nd, HHB, £16.99, 9781787333215

William Morrow, 9th, HB, £20, 9780063080850

The renowned novelist, journalist, screenwriter and film director charts his diagnosis with bipolar disorder in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, his subsequent sectioning to a psychiatric hospital, and his search for truth and healing through the discipline of yoga. A huge French bestseller, it is

Hollywood producer DePree follows up on rumours that a 1700s ancestor had left an English castle to come to America, and discovers Hopwood Hall, a manor in 5,000 acres in Greater Manchester that has fallen into rack and ruin. He embarks on a mission to save it in this “ready for TV” story.

TheBookseller.com

Sara El Sayed Muddy People: A Muslim Coming of Age

This “devastating true story of love, betrayal and deceit” tells of how the author was taken in by 44-year-old Alex, who claimed to be an international financier, and the illegitimate son of Edmund de Rothschild. The reality of his identity proved to be far darker than she ever could have imagined.

Mark Hume Reading the Water: Fly Fishing, Fatherhood and Finding Strength in Nature Greystone, HB, £18.99, 9781771645690

Fishing has been the author’s passion since a young boy, a passion he knew he wanted to pass on to his own daughters.

This “unique and radiant” memoir of fatherhood, mortality, fly fishing and

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nature is a positive story about a father raising daughters, and a meditation on finding faith in a deep connection with the natural world.

Rosie Kinchen The Ballast Seed: A Story of Motherhood, of Growing Up and Growing Plants Weidenfeld, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9781474618175

The surprise of a second pregnancy, so soon after the birth of her first son, plunged Kinchen—associate editor and main interviewer at the Sunday Times News Review—into despair and then deep depression. Instinctively drawn to the green spaces close to her home in south-east London, she found a kind of therapy in tending plants in a local community garden, and inspiration in the life of a 19th-century female botanist, Marianne North.

An alluring and uplifting read.

Teresa Lim The Interpreter’s Daughter Michael Joseph, 23rd, HB, £20, 9780241544402

A cherished family photo, taken in Hong Kong in 1935, sets Lim on a journey to uncover the history of her Singapore family and the secrets which defined its story. Lim’s detective work leads her to the compelling character of her great-aunt Fanny.

“Meticulously researched and vividly told,” MJ believes it is a classic in the making that will appeal to readers of Wild Swans by Jung Chang and The Hare With Amber Eyes

by Edmund de Waal.

Robin Bruce Lockhart Reilly Ace of Spies Muswell Press, 23rd, PB, £9.99, 9781739966089

The first in a new Muswell Classic Espionage series (see also The Life Line by Phyllis Bottome above), this tells the true story of Sidney Reilly, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic spies of the 20th century, and one

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BOOKS of the models for James Bond. Originally published in 1967, it became a BAFTA-winning TV series in the early 1980s, starring Sam Neill, as the book is now available for the first time in 10 years. Essential 2022 summer reading, says Muswell Press.

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

story told in reverse by cult journalist Lord, who is also Vogue’s dating columnist, vividly charts the aftermath of the break up of a five-year relationship; honestly documenting disastrous rebound sex, being ghosted, stalking his new girlfriend on Instagram and more. Will have particularly strong appeal for Millennial readers of Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, and Natasha Lunn’s Conversations on Love.

Pope Lonergan I’ll Die After Bingo: The Unlikely Story of My Decade as a Care Home Assistant

Annie Lord Notes on Heartbreak Trapeze, 23rd, HB, £14.99, 9781398705487

“I know I’m not going to spend the rest of my life with you, but I am going to spend more of my life with the lessons we learned together, the person you made me into.” This intimate love

Fleet, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9780349726830

Christina Lupton Love and the Novel: Life After Reading Profile, 2nd, £16, 9781788166478

A literature professor accustomed to examining love stories with a critical eye finds herself falling in love and leaving her marriage for another woman. A familiar enough tale, but when her new partner suffers a stroke, she begins to reflect on the important sorts of love that novels rarely capture, those that don’t race to a narrative end point.

I’m very taken with what I’ve read of this intriguing memoir so far.

How do you remain positive when you have only 14 months to live? Morris received a life-shattering diagnosis of an aggressive brain tumour in her early 50s. This memoir charts her determined search for effective treatment, and her launch of a campaign to get proper data and funding research into her condition. For readers of Paul Kalanithi and Atul Gawande, says Fleet.

Biteback, 2nd, HB, £20, 9781785907524

Sean O’Driscoll Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Rose Dugdale

Marcia Williams—later Lady Falkender—was the

Penguin Sandycove, 16th, HB, £18.99, 9781844885558

Linda McDougall Marcia: The Life of Lady Falkender

True crime

Jamie Bartlett The Missing Cryptoqueen

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An English heiress presented to the Queen as a débutante in 1958, Rose Dugdale went on to become a committed terrorist, who ended up at the heart of the IRA’s bomb-making operation during its final years in the 1990s. Telling her extraordinary story, this is also a “ground-breaking” account of the inner workings of a terrorist organisation.

Jessica Morris All in My Head

Ebury, 16th, HB, £16.99, 9781529109337

Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one doubleamputee Alzheimer’s patient, the stand-up comedian author gives us a “tough yet hilarious, intelligent and honest” account of the nine and a half years he spent working in a care home.

He challenges us all to think differently about the value of our elderly, and the carers who look after them, I’m told.

first ever female advisor to an English prime minister, and was said to have a powerful influence on her boss, Harold Wilson.

This first biography of Williams paints a portrait of a woman “getting in the way of the boys and doing a tough political job successfully”.

One to Watch

Gavin Plumley A Home for All Seasons Atlantic, 2nd, HB, £18.99, 9781838954789

This delightfully absorbing blend of history, art, memoir and landscape charts the ensuing discoveries when the cultural historian author—hitherto a distinctly urban being— and his rural husband acquire Stepps House, an old Herefordshire building.

As he traces the house’s history through its owners and eras, a picture of the past emerges which resonates powerfully with our present.

Claire Ratinon Unearthed: On Race and

Roots, and How the Soil Taught Me I Belong Chatto, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9781784744472

Ratinon is an organic food grower who has supplied vegetables to Ottolenghi restaurant Rovi. This blend of nature-writing and memoir tells the story of how, as a woman of colour, she overcame her troubled relationship with the land of her birth, and found belonging by falling in love with growing plants. And through growing the food of Mauritius, she also records her parents’ stories and strengthens her own heritage.

Samantha Renke You Are the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: How to Live Boldly and Love Your Fabulous Self Ebury Spotlight, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781529149289

“Sassy and sincere” memoir by the actress, broadcaster and influential disability activist in which she takes a no holds barred look at life, and offers advice to inspire you to live boldly and follow your dreams.

Norwell Roberts I Am Norwell Roberts: The Story of the Met’s First Black Police Officer Two Roads, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9781399800884

From the day he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1967 as the Met’s first Black police officer, Roberts’s face became a symbol of acceptance, of a diverse police force and of a changing Britain, but as this memoir recounts, his day-to-day reality was anything but. Greeted

Biography & memoirs

Baroness Floella Benjamin What Are You Doing Here? My Autobiography

with prejudice, ridicule and rejection, he refused to quit.

Baek Se-Hee & Anton Hur (translator) I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki Bloomsbury, 23rd, PB, £12.99, 9781526650863

Part memoir, part self-help book, this “phenomenal Korean bestseller” charts the author’s dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period as she disentangles the harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of selfabuse. “A book to keep close and to reach for in time of darkness.”

David Sedaris Happy-Go-Lucky Little Brown, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 97814008714119

A new collection of pieces by the peerless Mr Sedaris.

He will be visiting the UK in July—I know this because I have tickets for his show at the Royal Festival Hall.

Danny White Adele: To 30 and Beyond: The Unauthorised Biography Michael O’Mara, 23rd, HB, £14.99, 9781789294361

Published to tie in with Adele’s 2022 tour, this “compelling” biography takes us behind the scenes of her highs and lows to examine the

One to Watch

W H Allen, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9780753559581

Macmillan, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529071054

“The Missing Cryptoqueen” podcast, telling the inside story of the world’s biggest crypto currency con, was one of 2019’s most critically acclaimed podcasts. Rights have now been sold to a major TV production company for a documentary and drama series following a fierce bidding war. This tells the story of Dr Ruja Ignatova, who promised her OneCoin followers a revolution, styling herself the Cryptoqueen. But then after $4bn had been invested in OneCoin, Ignatova disappeared and it soon became clear that she had enacted the biggest business scam of the 21st century.

Born in Trinidad, Dame Floella Benjamin came to England in 1960 as part of the “Windrush” generation. In her first memoir for adults, she describes her realisation that in order to survive, she would have to learn to live in two cultures, and soon embarked on a long career in entertainment, from “Play School” to pantomime and TV documentaries. She has also dedicated herself to many charitable causes, advocated for more representation across the media, run 10 marathons for Barnardos, and since 2010 has sat in the House of Lords as the Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham.

11th March 2022

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

real Adele: a “shrewd and ambitious star who approaches her career with a blend of tradition and innovation”.

Business, economics & technology

pioneering entrepreneur author offers an “insightful and practical” guide that aims to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools and inside knowledge to start up their own company, regardless of educational, ethnic and economic background.

Alex Holt Outpacer: The Blueprint for Breakthrough Success in the Digital Era Ebury Edge, 2nd, HB, £20, 9781529146134

Chris Blackhurst Too Big to Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican Drug Cartels and the Greatest Banking Scandal of the Century Macmillan, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529065039

How HSBC— which styles itself as “the world’s local bank”—found itself enabling Mexico’s leading drugs cartel, and the biggest drugs trafficking organisation in the world, to launder cash through the bank’s branch network and systems. “An extraordinary story, brilliantly told.”

Holt—head of global telecoms and media at KPMG—distils his years of research, client conversations and interviews with industry leaders into nine vital steps for individual and organisational success. “This is NOT business as usual.”

Penguin Business, 23rd, PB, £14.99, 9780241582619

The venture capitalist and

Currency, 14th, HB, £22.50, 9780593239599

Dan McCrum Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, a Fight for the Truth Bantam Press, 16th, HB, £20, 9781787635043

The “stranger-thanfiction” story of Wirecard, once a $30bn hot, new tech company challenging Silicon Valley greats, and now a smouldering wreck revealed as a house of cards. The author, a member of the FT’s investigations team named Journalist of the Year in 2020, exposes a multimillion dollar fraud in which he himself became implicated.

Billed as the “first true insider’s account of private equity”, this reveals how the world’s most aggressive and successful financial “animals” spot opportunities and win deals, and profiles the mindset it takes to thrive in this highstakes field.

Matthew Ingle Kitchens, or Sink: The Story Behind the Building of the UK’s No 1 Trade Kitchen Company

Ingle is the man behind Howdens, a kitchen and joinery company he founded in 1995, after leaving school with four O-Levels. With the aid of illustrations and mind maps, he describes how he turned it into a worldwide company with sales of £2bn and a FTSE listing.

Mind, body & spirit

Caggie Dunlop Saturn Returns

Amanda Nimon-Peters Working With Influence: Nine Scientific Principles for Improving and Accelerating Your Career Bloomsbury Business, 9th, PB, £16.99, 9781472988737

Sets out 10 principles, based on robust behavioural science, for honing your professional communication skills in order to better influence people and outcomes, both in physical and digital contexts.

One One to to Watch Watch

crime” which tracks the trail of money deception and devastation which allowed North Korea to grow into a global cybersuperpower, introduces the Lazarus Group, a shadowy cabal of hackers accused of working on behalf of the North Korean stage.

Current affairs & politics

of Big Pharma and Big Food, we are being dragged down a dietary road that will have severe repercussions for our health and wellbeing and that of our children and the climate for decades to come. Neither anti-plant nor anti-vegan, rather “a call for us to take an honest look at the facts about human diets and their effect on the environment”. Moves from January.

How Politics Works: The Facts Visually Explained Jonathan Trevor Re:Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance Bloomsbury Business, 9th, PB, £16.99, 9781399400596

Head of Zeus, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781803283685

Kathryn Finney Build the Damn Thing: How to Start a Successful Business if You’re Not a Rich White Guy

Khajuria Sachin Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win

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Why do some businesses thrive while other struggle? A leading reason is the failure of many leaders to realign all the moving parts of the enterprise, including business strategy, says the author of this practical toolkit which aims to show leaders how they can turn adversity into advantage.

Geoff White The Lazarus Heist: From Hollywood to High Finance: Inside North Korea’s Global Cyber War Penguin Business, 9th, HB, £20, 9780241554258

This “sweeping international tale of modern

DK, 2nd, HB, £18.99, 9780241515761

Jargon-free and highly visual guide to the political history and the inner workings of governments around the world, covering everything from the theories of key political philosophers to movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Jayne Buxton The Great Plant-Based Con: Why Easting a Plants-Only Diet Won’t Improve Your Health or Save the Planet Piatkus, 9th, HB, £20, 9781408717448

Providing “a muchneeded counterweight” to the prevailing argument that we should reduce our consumption of meat and dairy and move to a vegan lifestyle, Buxton argues that, manipulated by the vested interests

Rory Cormac How to Stage a Coup: And Ten Other Lessons From the World of Secret Statecraft Atlantic, 2nd, HB, £20, 9781838955618

From poisonings to electoral interference, disinformation to cyber sabotage, this shows how states increasingly operate in the shadows, with social media creating new avenues for disinformation on a mass scale.

Cormac, a leading expert on covert action, argues that understanding how states wield these dark arts has never been more important.

Adam Dant Adam Dant’s Political Maps Batsford, 30th, HB, £30, 9781849946919

Dant was the official artist of the 2015 UK general election. From Johnson’s

Language, literature & essays

Geoff Dyer The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings

One to Watch

Orion Spring, 9th, HB, £12.99, 9781398704190

Canongate, 9th, HB, £20, 9781838855741

“Believe me when I say, it’s not personal, and it isn’t just happening to you.” Formerly of “Made on Chelsea”, and now the host of the “Saturn Returns” podcast, Dunlop (much followed on social media) unpacks the significance of your cosmic coming of age, when Saturn returns to the sign in which you were born, as it does every 27 to 29 years. “If you are approaching your late 20s, or in the midst of them, this is the book you have been looking for.” I might start something for those of us in the Saturnine age-range, 54 to 58.

In his first long-form publication in over a decade, Dyer sets his own experience of late middle age against the last days and achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who’ve mattered to him throughout his life. In a stimulating book of criss-crossing short vignettes, he takes in Friedrich Nietzche’s breakdown, Bob Dylan’s reinvention of old songs, Beethoven’s final quartets, Jean Rhys’ final return from the dead (while still alive) and much more. Oh, and Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Boris Becker too, as you’d expect from a writer who says playing tennis is “a big part of my happiness”.

NB this title has been moved to 2023.

TheBookseller.com

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BOOKS London (notorious places associated with the Prime Minister, including all the houses he has lived in), to Quitting Europe (the sadness of Brexit encapsulated in exotic European cigarette packets from the artist’s youth), I love the look of this large-format collection of witty and whimsical political maps.

Andrew Doyle The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

undermined our democratic principles. “If living in a liberal society means anything at all, we need to fight for what’s ours,” he argues.

Laura Harvey, Sarah Leaney & Danny Noble Class: A Graphic Guide Icon, 2nd, PB, £13.99, 9781785786914

This latest addition to Icon’s Graphic Guides series interrogates what we mean by social class in the 21st century, asking what it can tell us about gentrification, work, the role of élites in society, access to education and more. Noble won a Comedy Women in Print award for her comic, Was it… Too Much For You?.

Constable 2nd, HB, £20, 9780349135328

By analysing social justice in terms of a religious cult, this exploration of our current cultural climate, including “cancel culture”, examines how the “new puritanism has risen to dominate all major political, culture and corporate institutions”, and argues for a return to a truly liberal society.

Sam Fowles Overruled: Our Vanishing Democracy in 8 Cases Oneworld, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9780861542475

The barrister author has worked on many prominent cases, including the prorogation of parliament, the Post Office scandal and policing on Clapham Common.

Here he gives an insider’s view of how our government has repeatedly

Matthew Lawrence & Adrienne Buller Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis Verso, HB, £11.99, 9781839765803

From two leading campaigners for the Green Economy, a bold manifesto for alternative forms of ownership in the post-pandemic world which calls for systemic change in terms of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich.

Sung-Yoon Lee The Sister: The Extraordinary Story

Biography & memoirs

Molly-Mae Hague Becoming Molly-Mae

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of Kim Yo Jong, the Most Powerful Woman in North Korea Macmillan, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529073539

“She’s pretty, she seems demure, she is cold, and she’s incredibly dangerous.” This first book on Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister, tipped to be his successor in North Korea, is a “readable, jawdropping insight into a secretive and murderous dynasty”.

Roger Mosey 20 Things That Would Make the News Better Biteback, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9781785907548

The former editor of BBC Radio 4’s “Today” presents 20 ways in which the news can be made better at a time of existential threat from fake news, clickbait, rogue voices on social media, dwindling viewers and external threats from government.

Polly Pallister-Wilkins Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives Verso, PB, £16.99, 9781839765995

Interrogating the politics of humanitarian responses to border violence and unequal mobility, this argues that such responses mark underlying injustices.

Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan & Andrea Vetter The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism Verso, PB, £16.99, 9781839765841

Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot

One to Watch

be made to work, says this guide to breaking free from the capitalist economy.

at Wilton’s Music Hall in London.

Bill German Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy From Brooklyn Got Mixed Up With the Rolling Stones and Lived to Tell About It

detailed story of the US rock band Cheap Trick’s formative years in the Midwest, and how rural roads carried them to multi-platinum success.

Backbeat, 15th, PB, £22.95, 9781493065080

Ben Tarnoff Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future Verso, HB, £12.99, 9781839762024

“Why is the internet broken, and what could ever possibly fix it?” It’s broken, argues the tech writer author, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. This is his engaging manifesto which explains how we can democratise the internet again, and break up the “walled gardens” of Google, Facebook and the other giants which dominate our digital lives.

Film, TV & music Kristian Brodie and Adam Shakinovsky OneTrackMinds: True Stories About Life-Changing Songs

The author tells of how, as a 17-year-old aspiring journalist, he met the Rolling Stones on the streets of New York, and was soon travelling the globe with them and finding out more than he ever needed to know about their world.

Lesley-Ann Jones The Stone Age John Blake, 9th, HB, £20, 9781789465464

The biographer of Freddie Mercury and author of Who Killed John Lennon? returns to examine how the ultimate anti-establishment misfits, the Rolling Stones, became the global brand we know today. She has skin in the game as a friend of bassist Bill Wyman during the 1980s, I’m told.

Eaglemoss, 7th, HB, £28, 9781801260527

First in a new illustrated Star Trek book series which will delve into every episode of “Star Trek The Next Generation”, all 178 instalments, season by season.

Andrew Mellor The Northern Silence: Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture

Unbound, 23rd, PB, £12.99, 9781800181007

Featuring contributions from an eclectic cast of contributors, including Peter Tatchell, Inua Ellams, Cash Carraway, Rhik Samadder, Ingrid Oliver, Patrick Gale and Joe Dunthorne, a collection of pieces about life-changing songs, based on the series of live storytelling events

Matt McAllister Creating Star Trek The Next Generation.

A Season By Season Guide: Season 1 1987-1988

Yale, HB, £18.99, 9780300254402

Brian J Kramp This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick Jawbone, 21st, PB, £14.95, 9781911036876

Based on extensive original interviews, the

Biography & memoirs

Sheila Hancock Old Rage

From Reykjavik to Rovaniemi in Finland, Mellor journeys to the heart of the Nordic cultural psyche as he examines the success of composers and performers past and present, from Sibelius and Grieg to progressive pop artists such as Björk.

One to Watch

Ebury Spotlight, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529148770

Bloomsbury, 9th, HB, £18.99, 9781526647443

Social media influencer and former “Love Island” star Hague has more than eight million followers across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. This is her “revealing and honest first book in which she unravels herself completely for the first time”. She tells of how she overcame heartbreaks, took ownership of her body image, battled self-doubt, and learned to manifest the things she wants from life. She also shares the moments, relationships, people and life lessons that have made her who she is today.

In this “gloriously irreverent memoir from the frontlines of old age”, much-loved actor Dame Sheila explains why, at 84, having passed many previous milestones without a qualm, she suddenly found herself feeling furious, due to shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement, even before being home alone and classed as “extremely vulnerable” through lockdown. Funny, feisty, and honest, she looks back from her ninth decade and a world so different from that of her wartime childhood, on her life as actor, daughter, sister, mother, widow and friend. And yet—despite age, despite rage—she finds there are always reasons for joy.

11th March 2022

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

Food & drink

Good Food: Quick & Healthy BBC, 16th, PB, £5.99, 9781785947889

Keep your family fed with these quick and healthy midweek recipes for traybakes, stir-fries, one-pot meals and more.

Also out this month in this budget series from the well-known cookery brand, Good Food: Best Biscuits (1785947865) and Good Food: Best Breads (1785947872).

Gelf Alderson River Cottage: Big Salads Bloomsbury, 23rd, HB, £18.99, 9781526639103

The executive head chef at River Cottage shares his recipes for show-stopping salads which make use of clever techniques, imaginative flavour pairings and vibrant dressings to bring out the best in simple ingredients.

The only female finalist in “MasterChef: The Professionals” 2020 offers the ultimate guide to mastering Asian flavours. Splitting the palate into six personalities, she shows how flavours can interact with each other to create a balanced dish for that personality or mood.

Meliz Berg Meliz’s Kitchen: Simple Turkish-Cypriot Comfort Food and Fresh Family Feasts

Ed Dallimore The Vineyards of Britain: Cellar Door Adventures With the Best of Britain’s Wines Fairlight Books, 23rd, PB, £19.99, 9781914148118

“Britain is fast becoming one of the world’s most exciting wine regions,” says the publisher of this excellent-looking guide to the best vineyards, wineries and wines in our nation, accompanied by lavish photography.

Marina Filippelli Foolproof Picnic: 60 Delightful Dishes to Enjoy Outdoors

Philli Armitage-Martin Taste Kitchen: Asia: Six Flavours to Suit Every Taste Robinson, 23rd, HB, £26, 9781472147271

From Katsu Burgers with Wasabi Mayo to BBQ Patatas Bravas, 70 simple and summery vegan recipes to cook on the barbecue, along with ideas for sides, dips and snacks.

Popular science

Anne-Marie Imafidon She’s in CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech

The authors behind award-winning blog “Green Kitchen Stories” with a collection of more than 100 vegetarian recipes that combine quick and simple recipes for weeknights with loweffort but high-impact dishes and slower meals for the weekend cook.

Simple, Seasonal Recipes and Memories From My Home Hardie Grant, 9th, HB, £27, 9781784884475

Chetna Makan Chetna’s Easy Baking With a Twist of Spice Hamlyn, 9th, HB, £20, 9780600637394

This new collection from the “Great British Bake Off” semi-finalist contains more than 80 tempting recipes for sweet and savoury bakes that have easy-to-find ingredients and simple-to-follow methods, along with a special flavour twist to make your bakes “sing and shine”.

Quadrille, 9th, HB, £12.99, 9781787137936

From sandwiches and savoury snacks and dips, to portable pies, tarts and frittatas, summer salads, sweet things and drinks, everything you need to make the perfect picnic spread.

Jenny Linford (ed) The Kew Gardens Cookbook: A Celebration of Plants in the Kitchen Kew, HB, £18, 9781842467459

Katy Beskow Vegan BBQ: 70 Delicious Plant-Based Recipes to Cook Quadrille, 9th, HB, £16.99, 9781787138605

David Frenkiel & Luise Vindahl Green Kitchen: Quick and Slow: Joyful Vegetarian Recipes for Quick Weeknight Fixes and Slow Weekend Meals Hardie Granta, 9th, HB, £27, 9781784884901

Ebury, 16th, HB, £25, 978152910954

“Made in Cyprus, cooked in Essex” is the billing for this début cookbook from home cook and recipe developer @MelizBooks (98,000 followers on Instagram) who majors on no-faff family cooking and traditional Cypriot dishes, from One-pot Halloumi and Tomato Pasta to Creamy Moussaka.

which aim to show you how to cook 10 essential veg—aubergine, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, courgette, leek, mushrooms and potatoes—like never before.

David & Stephen Flynn The Veg Box: 10 Vegetables, 10 Ways Penguin Life, 9th, HB, £20, 9780241535240

This vibrant sixth book from vegan chef pairing The Happy Pear contains more than 100 recipes

One to Watch

Containing more than 60 vegetarian recipes from celebrity cooks, chefs and food writers, this sumptuous-looking cookbook is a celebration of the huge array of plants and fungi that have the potential to broaden our palates, prevent biodiversity loss and make us think differently about our food.

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Monya Kilian Palmer Budget Keto Kitchen: Easy Recipes That Are Big on Taste, Low on Carbs and Light on the Wallet Kyle, 23rd, PB, £14.99, 9781914239106

From clever use of leftovers to clever ways with different cuts of meat, this follow-up to the author’s Keto Kitchen and Lazy Keto Kitchen shows how to enjoy the energy-boosting and weight-losing benefits of a low-carb keto lifestyle without breaking the bank.

José Pizarro Spanish Home Kitchen:

Sustainability & the climate crisis

Bella Lack The Children of the Anthropocene

London-based Spanish chef and restaurateur takes inspiration from his mother’s cooking in his native village in Extremadura for this cookbook which contains both his nostalgic childhood favourites, and more modern recipes with a Spanish twist.

Cynthia Shanmugalingam Rambutan: Fresh Sri Lankan Recipes From an Immigrant Family Bloomsbury, 23rd, HB, £26, 9781526646576

Sri Lankan food combines Javanese, Malay, Indian, Arab, Portuguese, Dutch and British influences while remaining proudly unique.

Named after a fruit specific to that country, this début cookbook contains 80 recipes, accompanied by the author’s stories of family and travel in Sri Lanka.

Shanmugalingam is shortly to open a London restaurant of the same name.

Divya Sharma Doctor Bowl Kyle, 21st, HB, £18.99, 9781914239090

From Quick Breakfasts and Weekend Brunch to Summer Salads and Winter Warmers, the doctor author suggests easy and nutritious vegetarian recipes in a bowl for different times of day, season and mood.

One to Watch

Bantam Press, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781787635029

Penguin Life, 30th, PB, £9.99, 9780241501085

Mathematician and current presenter of “Countdown” on Channel 4, Imafidon is also a dynamic advocate for women in STEM, and founder of award-winning social enterprise Stemettes, aimed at inspiring the next generation of women into science, technology, engineering and maths. Drawing on her own experience, and the stories of other pioneers and innovators who have transformed technology, this is her inspiring narrative about how women must play a part in an evenly distributed technological future.

“This is your chance to hear the urgent stories of an endangered species too often overlooked: the children of the Anthropocene.” From Ecuador to the Himalayas, and from South Madagascar to North America, this urgent anthology profiles the stories of young people whose lives hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the climate crisis. Organised by topic and edited by 18-year-old conservationist and environmental activist Lack, it provides a practical manifesto for the protection of both people and planet, and has a foreword by Greta Thunberg.

NB Moved to September 2022.

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BOOKS Claire Thomson Tomato: 80 Recipes Celebrating the Extraordinary Tomato

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

also nourish, inspire and amplify it, too. Moves from March.

Quadrille, 23rd, HB, £22, 9781787137851

Quercus, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529417210

Accompanied by photography of more than 25 varieties and location shots of tomato farms, a collection of 80 “creative and delicious” recipes using different kinds of tomato.

Part one of this nutrition and lifestyle guide for anyone wanting to become pregnant contains advice on stress, movement, sleep and social connection, while part two helps readers put it into practice with more than 60 recipes to help promote fertility.

TikTok The TikTok Cookbook: Cloud Bread, Whipped Coffee, Feta Pasta and More from All of Your Favourite TikTok Creators!

Ebury, 16th, HB, £14.99, 9781529148619

The first official TikTokbranded cookbook contains 70 recipes from 45 global influencers, from the gooiest #mugcakes to the the most delicious #fetapasta to the best #bakedoats.

Gina Awad & Tony Husband (illustrator) United: Caring for Our Loved Ones Living With Dementia

Bodé Aboderin Fatherhood by Papa B: A Game-Changing Guide for Parents, Father Figures and Fathers-to-be DK, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9780241531440

This relatable and practical guide that “shakes up the narrative on what it means to be a present-day father”, is by the husband of Candice Brathwaite, who as Papa B is also a motivational speaker and influencer.

He is on a mission to show how Black fatherhood is not only compatible with ambition but can

the US, South Africa and beyond. This is a guide to positive, life-affirming and joyful Black fatherhood from its founder Harrison, with contributions from the likes of Tinie Tempah, Mark Mcinver, Kwame Poku and more, all of whom share their experiences.

From the impact of receiving a diagnosis to the worry and guilt around long-distance caring, this illustrated book captures the real-life stories of people with dementia, and those of the loved ones and professional carers who support them.

One World, 14th, HB, £20, 9780593242537

Stephen Hussey Understanding the Heart: Surprising Insights Into the Evolutionary Origins of Heart Disease and Why it Matters Mark Harper Chill: The Cold Water Swim Cure.

A Transformative Guide to Renew Your Body and Mind Chronicle, 23rd, HB, £21.99, 9781797213767

Hannah Barrett Yoga Anywhere: 50 Simple Movements, Postures and Meditations for Any Place, Any Time Quadrille, 23rd, HB, £15, 9781787138445

This innovative, handbagsized card pack features 50 short, easy yoga movements and techniques which you can mix and match to create your own flows, or use one of the guided sequences provided.

Biography & memoirs

James Patterson James Patterson: The Stories of My Life

own journey as a young Black mother after two traumatic births, and coping with postnatal depression and anxiety (levels are 13% higher in women of colour).

She demands that Black women are better listened to, believed and understood. “A searing indictment of maternal health for Black women in the UK.” Ibram X Kendi How to Raise an Antiracist

Robinson, 2nd, PB, £9.99, 9781472146519

Health, diet & parenting

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Charlotte Grand The Fertility Kitchen: The Essential Guide to Supporting Your Fertility

Combining the latest neuroscience with case studies, the anaesthetist and doctor author provides evidence that cold-water swimming can achieve powerful, tangible health benefits, and alleviate such conditions as chronic pain, dementia, anxiety, depression, PTSD, migraines and more.

Marvyn Harrison Dope Black Dads: Life Lessons and Learnings on Black Fatherhood Square Peg, 2nd, PB, £14.99, 9781529110470

Dope Black Dads is a community of more than 40,000 fathers in the UK,

One to Watch

Chelsea Green, 2nd, PB, £18.99, 9781645021308

Despite what we might surmise from our world of Covid, cancer, famine and obesity, heart disease remains the number one killer in the world. Himself a sufferer, Hussey—a chiropractor and functional health practitioner—explains the strategies he has used to recover, based on a deep understanding of how the heart operates within our bodies.

Sandra Igwe My Black Motherhood: Maternal Mental Health, Stigma, Culture and Racism Jessica Kingsley, 21st, PB, £12.99, 9781839970085

The founder of The Motherhood Group, a platform which supports the Black motherhood experience, shares her

The author of How to Be an Antiracist—who has since had a child himself—combines his own vital research with a compelling personal narrative of his own journey as a parent. The result is this book which doesn’t just help parents raise antiracists, but also advises on how to create an antiracist world for them to grow into.

Dr Tom Little The Colour-Fit Method: The Secret Nutrition Plan Used by Elite Athletes That Will Transform Your Body Shape, Energy Levels and Health Piatkus, 9th, £18.99, 9780349428789

The Colour-Fit nutrition plan which uses a traffic light system is used by many UK professional football clubs including Arsenal, Rangers and Manchester City; as well as British Judo, Welsh Rugby Union and many more. Now its founder makes it available to the rest of us too in this

Sport & adventure

Kate Rew The Outdoor Swimmer’s Handbook

book containing more than 70 recipes and multiple tailored fitness plans to suit a range of goals, whether you’re an Olympic swimmer or a champion couch potato.

Doctor Emeka Okorocha Your Health in Your Hands Yellow Kite, 23rd, PB, £16.99, 9781529372533

Dr Okorocha is an NHS A&E doctor who appears regularly on “This Morning” and dispenses healthcare advice and support via TikTok. From stress busters and sleep tips to nutrition advice, this is his preventative medicine handbook of simple lifestyle hacks and advice for the health of mind and body, which can be harnessed in the short term for long-term benefits. Moves from March where it was a One to Watch.

Jordan Syatt & Michael Vacanti Eat It! The Most Sustainable Diet and Workout Ever Made: Burn Fat, Get Strong and Enjoy Your Favourite Foods Guilt Free Thorsons, 9th, PB, £14.99, 9780008543044

First book from a fitness trainer who has more than 800,000 Instagram followers and a host of celebrity clients.

Including the science

One to Watch

Century, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529136876

Rider, 9th, HB, £25, 9781846047282

“How did a kid whose dad lived in the poorhouse become one of the most successful storytellers in the world?” In this “official” autobiography, Patterson tells stories from his storytelling life; from nearly dying on the morning of his birth, and adopting his grandmother’s motto, “Hungry dogs run faster”, to toiling in advertising hell, having his first novel turned down 31 times, playing golf with three US presidents, and hearing “Happy Birthday” sung down the phone to him by Dolly Parton.

Featuring photographs and illustrations in a “stunning” package, this companion guide by the founder of The Outdoor Swimming Society brings the art, sport and science of being an al fresco swimmer whether in the sea, in rivers or lakes, together with vivid stories from devotees. From cold acclimatisation and localised weather to treating the “screaming barflies”, it promises to take you to the shore and launch you into the water, equipped with all the information you need to enjoy your aquatic adventures.

11th March 2022

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

behind good nutrition and weight loss, he shows how to achieve your goals through simple steps and lifestyle changes, building your own nutrition plan, and undertaking strength training.

Shlomo Ben-Ami Prophets Without Honour: The Untold Story of the 2000 Camp David Summit and the Making of Today’s Middle East OUP, 1st, HB, £22.99, 9780190060473

Drawing on the author’s first-hand experience as a high-level participant in the 2000 Camp David summit, this aims to place the Israel-Palestine peace talks in an international context, explaining why successive attempts have all failed.

Tom Watson Lose Weight 4 Life: Motivation, Movement, Measurement, Maintenance Kyle, 22nd, PB, £18.99, 9781914239212

The former MP and Labour Deputy Leader turned weight loss guru with a new guide to losing weight—and keeping it off—as well as improving health. He aims to demonstrate that it is never too late to turn things around, even if you are someone who has failed umpteen times before.

Jeremy Black A Brief History of the Atlantic

Ivan Francheschini & Christian Sorace Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour Verso, PB, £35, 9781839766336

A collection of essays on the history of labour in China from the early 20th century to the present day, charting a century of complex relations between Communists and workers.

Robinson, 2nd, PB, £9.99, 9781472145918

Billed as the first book to tell the story of the Atlantic Ocean and its crucial transport and trade routes; from the beginnings of slavery, through the struggle for control of empires in the 1600s, steamships, telegraph cables, the Falklands War and the Cold War to the present day.

History The World War II Book: Big Ideas, Simply Explained DK, 9th, HB, £19.99, 9780241347119

The latest addition to this established series is an accessible guide to the key events and turning points of the Second World War, along with information on all the theatres of conflict, quotes from military leaders and much more.

account of the country’s turbulent years from 1915 to 1945 and beyond. It’s a “dark tale of violence, ideals and a country at war”.

John Foot Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism Bloomsbury, 9th, HB, £25, 9781408897942

The seeds of fascism in Italy were sown in the aftermath of the First World War shows this

Simon Jenkins The Celts: A Sceptical History Profile, 30th, HB, £16.99, 9781788168809

The Celts are often seen as “fragmented adjuncts” to English history. Not so, says Jenkins as he mounts a compelling counterargument in which he examines the Celtic impact on what we know as the UK today. “What Simon Jenkins does best: short, informative, entertaining and brilliantly written,” says Profile.

Oskar Jensen Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth Century London Duckworth, HB, £20, 9780725654392

Health, fitness & parenting

Louis Weinstock How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About It: A Field Guide to Raising Empowered Children and Growing a More Beautiful World

One to One to Watch Watch

Vermilion, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9781785043796

Child psychotherapist Weinstock helped Philippa Perry write The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read. Blending selfhelp with literary memoir, he argues that the epidemic rates of ADHD, depression, self-harm and suicide in young people are a direct result of the world we are bringing them up in.

Highlighting the key role of parents and carers in shaping how children see the world, he explains how to build their confidence, courage and authentic hope about the future. Billed as the first book to tackle climate anxiety in children, it could sadly now have a much wider application.

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“Rising star British historian” with an illuminating history of 19th-century London told through portraits of the city’s poor, from beggars to thieves, musicians to missionaries, to porters, hawkers, sex workers and street criers.

What emerges is a “buzzing, cosmopolitan” world.

9781803131641

By a Registered Blue Badge guide, this comprehensive guide to what remains of the Anglo-Saxon world in present-day England couples a history of events with a place-by-place exploration of sites.

William Collins, 9th, HB, £20, 9780008487546

Michael Livingston Crécy: Battle of Five Kings Osprey, 9th, HB, £20, 9781472847058

This new narrative account of the Battle of Crécy in 1346 reveals how modern scholars have used both traditional fieldwork and satellite technologies to help unlock the exact location of the now quiet fields where so many died.

Geoff Marshall England’s AngloSaxon Heritage Matador, 28th, PB, £19.99,

of Saigon in 1975. Miller is a former British Army Intelligence Corps Officer.

Giles Orpen-Smellie Jigsaw Puzzles: Tactical Intelligence in the Falklands Campaign Amberley, HB, £20, 9781398111745

Published for the 40th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War, insights into how battlefield and tactical intelligence was collected and assessed to give a picture of the Argentine defenders.

Christina Lamb The Prince Rupert Hotel for the Homeless

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the government launched its “Everyone In” programme, aiming to house the homeless through lockdown. Published for the two-year anniversary of the first lockdown, this is an account by the always brilliant Lamb of how The Prince Rupert, a four-star hotel in Shrewsbury with suits of armour and four-poster beds, hosted 33 rough sleepers. It is a story that “encapsulates Britain”. Moves from March.

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Simon Matthews House in the Country: Where Our Suburbs and Garden Cities Came From and Why It’s Time to Leave Them Behind Oldcastle, 30th, PB, £16.99, 9780857304957

For the past 150 years or more, living in a house in the country has been an aspiration for many of us.

This history of the garden city movement shows how this idea was imported from the US by Ebenezer Howard, and examines its impact on how we live in the UK. It also argues that it’s time to move on from this approach, both on cost and on environmental grounds.

Sergio Miller No Wider War: A History of the Vietnam War, Volume 2 1965-75 Osprey, 9th, PB, £16.99, 9781472838520

Second part of a highly detailed yet accessible two-volume history of America’s involvement in Vietnam, from the end of the Second World War through to the Fall

Estelle Paranque Blood, Fire and Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici Ebury, 30th, HB, £20, 9781529109221

Much has been written about both Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici.

But this joint biography which draws on their letters focuses on their much less-discussed relationship: 30 years of friendship, competition and conflict which changed the face of Europe, but also shaped both women.

Catherine Pepinster Defenders of the Faith Hodder Faith, 9th, HB, £21.99, 9781399800068

What part will religion play in the reign of Charles III? This explores the powerful connection

Current affairs & politics

Jamie Susskind The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century

One to Watch

Bloomsbury, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781526625489

The time has come to deal with the unaccountable power of digital technology. So says the barrister author of this “ground-breaking” blueprint which takes a global outlook as it argues for a new system of ideas and governance in the digital world—a “digital republic”— that offers a vision of a world that is freer and fairer than our own. Inspired by great political essays of the past, including Rousseau’s The Social Contract and Mill’s On Liberty, it is, says Bloomsbury, “a landmark work that will challenge us as we look towards the future”.

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BOOKS between the British monarchy and religion, from its earliest times to the Reformation, the Civil War, and the reign of Victoria and her successors.

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a sense of their own destiny.

Victoria Shepherd A History of Delusions: The Glass King, a Substitute Husband, and a Walking Corpse Oneworld, HB, £16.99, 9780861540914

John Henry Phillips The Search: The True Story of a D-Day Survivor, an Unlikely Friendship, and a Lost Shipwreck off Normandy Robinson, 2nd, HB, £20, 9781472146182

The moving story of the unlikely friendship between the archaeologist author and D-Day survivor Patrick Thomas, forged when they unexpectedly had to share a room during a trip with D-Day veterans back to Normandy. It led to a search for the wreck of the latter’s landing-craft command vessel off the coast of France, and the resting place of at least 35 of his shipmates. Sounds compelling.

Levi Roach Empires of the Normans: Makers of Europe, Conquerors of Asia John Murray, 23rd, HB, £25, 9781529398465

Billed as the first global history of the Normans, who beyond the conquest of England in 1066 came to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, combining military might and

“Who cannot sympathise with the man who believes he is already dead when all his comrades died in battle?” Shepherd is producer of BBC Radio 4 series “A History of Delusions”, also now the subject of her engaging first book in which she explores delusions from ancient times to the present day, including the epidemic of Napoleons in France’s asylums following Waterloo, and the King of France who thought he was made of glass. Along the way, she urges us to identify reason in apparent madness.

Victor Stater Hoax: The Catholic Plot That Never Was Yale, HB, £20, 9780300123807

New account of the Popish Plot of 1678, when a handful of perjurers claimed that the Catholics of England planned to assassinate the king. The author argues that it led to the birth of two-party politics in England.

Elena Stevens 40 Ways to Diversify the History Curriculum: A Practical Handbook Crown House, PB, £16.99, 9781785836305

Highlighting the lived experiences of women, the working class, people

Biography & memoirs

Andrew Morton The Queen

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of colour and the LGBTQ+ community, this draws on a wide range of personal stories to shed light on historical topics that have traditionally been taught through narrower lenses.

Provides resources from Key Stages 2-3 through to A-Level and beyond.

Bravo.

Anthony Tucker-Jones Hitler’s Winter: The German Battle of the Bulge

fashion psychologist, who aims to show that how you dress can affect your mood, how you feel about yourself, and how others perceive you. So it’s time we tapped into the relationship between attire and attitude, she says; from channelling fashion psychology to power dress your way through your career, to using mindfulness to curate a wardrobe that lasts.

Osprey, 9th, HB, £20, 9781472847393

Based on new research, this tells the story of the Battle of the Bulge—the last major German offensive in the West—from the German perspective.

Dalena Wright Diplomacy Ends at Midnight: The Long Return of Hong Kong to China Allen Lane, 30th, HB, £25, 9780241340424

Based on detailed archival research to piece together the British and American diplomatic picture, the compelling story of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, published for the 25th anniversary. Publishing as the historical companion to Chris Patten’s The Hong Kong Diaries, I’m told.

Homes, interiors, craft & fashion Shakaila Forbes-Bell Big Dress Energy: How Fashion Psychology Can Transform Your Wardrobe and Your Confidence Piatkus, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9780349431840

From Forbes-Bell, a

One to Watch

Eloise Moran The Lady Di Look Book: What Diana Was Trying to Tell Us Through Her Clothes Mitchell Beazley, 21st, HB, £25, 9781784728038

LA-based fashion writer @ladydirevengelooks argues that behind each of Princess Diana’s outfits lay a carefully crafted strategy; from the pink gingham pants of a sacrificial lamb to the cycling shorts of a free woman.

Bex Partridge Flowers Forever: Celebrate the Beauty of Dried Flowers With Stunning Floral Art Hardie Grant, 9th, HB, £20, 9781784884345

From an Autumn Bounty Fireplace to a breath-taking Tablescape, a guide to creating floral displays with longlasting dried flowers, which also includes information on the process of growing, drying and

working with dried flowers.

Emily Powell & Sarah Moore Start Painting Now: Discover Your Artistic Potential Bluebird, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529084931

Instagram artist Powell and her doctor sister Moore encourage us to unleash our creative spirits while caring for our minds, with this practical and joyful painting handbook. It pairs work from a range of female artists with the authors’ own work to get you started.

Natalie Walton Style: The Art of Creating a Beautiful Home Hardie Grant, 23rd, HB, £30, 9781743797976

Demystifying the creative process of styling, this shows you how to transform your living space using what you already own and love.

Humour & gift Kelly Knox Star Wars: Be More Obi-Wan. Navigate Your World With Wit and Wisdom DK, 2nd, HB, £7.99, 9780241544068

Glide elegantly through anything life throws at you with these pearls of wisdom from Obi-Wan and his fellow sages.

Learn how to face your fears and perfect your witty comebacks.

Christina Scotch I Feel That: Uplifting Quotes and Inspiring

Biography & memoirs

Chris Patten The Hong Kong Diaries

Pocket Wisdom for Every Mood Pop Press, 9th, HB, £10.99, 9781529149753

The creator of @QuotesByChristie Instagram (one millionplus followers) with an inspiring and colourful quotes collection to accompany all your ups and downs.

Language, literature & essays

Banned Books DK, 2nd, HB, £12.99, 9780241536391

This gifty anthology collects the stories behind books once deemed too controversial for the public to read, from All Quiet on the Western Front and Lady Chatterley’s Lover to On the Origin of Species.

Elias Jahshan (ed) This Arab is Queer: Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers Saqi, PB, £12.99, 9780863564789

From a military base in Saudi Arabia and a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, to making it happen as a drag queen in exile, this stand-out anthology celebrates the many colours of a rich and vibrant Arab queer experience. Among the 18 contributors are

One to Watch

Michael O’Mara, 7th, HB, £20, 9781789294484

Allen Lane, 2nd, HB, £30, 9780241560495

The author of Diana: Her True Story and Elizabeth and Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters with a “definitive” biography of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Morton writes of a woman who longed to be spared her destiny as the future Queen, yet has done her duty and become the longest reigning and most travelled monarch in history. This despite a private life (and you knew this was coming) moulded by an “irascible husband, an extravagant mother, a querulous eldest son”, a war between two of her grandsons, and two American divorcées, Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle.

Published for the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong back to China, these are the diaries kept by the last British governor from 1992 to 1999.

They describe in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony, and what happened as handover approached, giving unprecedented insights into negotiations with the Chinese, and how Patten tried to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue.

He concludes with a powerful assessment of recent events, along with his reflections on how to deal with China, then and now.

11th March 2022

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

Mona Eltahawy, Saleem Haddad, Amrou Al-Kadhi and Amuna Ali. Declan Kiberd, Enrico Terrinoni, Catherine Wilsdon (eds) The Book About Everything Head of Zeus, 16th, HB, £20, 9781801104388

In celebration of Bloomsday, and the centenary of the publication of Ulysses by James Joyce, a collection of essays by 18 artists, writers and thinkers—including Joseph O’Connor, Mario Vargas Llosa and Jhumpa Lahiri—each of whom respond to a different episode in the text.

spells, incantations, potions, rituals and recipes for every situation, a richly illustrated guide to spellcraft, bringing the ancient wisdom of witches into the modern world.

Anthony Peake Cheating the Ferryman Arcturus, PB, £9.99, 9781398810877

The author of Is There Life After Death?, who specialises in altered states of consciousness, argues in this “mind-expanding” book that death is not the end of human consciousness, marshalling new evidence to support his theory that personal death is a scientific impossibility. Precognition, déja vu and out-of-body experiences are all cited.

Alice Tarbuck & Claire Askew The Modern Craft: Powerful Voices on Witchcraft Ethics

Janet Malcolm Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview and Other Conversations Melville House, 9th, PB, £12.99, 9781612199689

Provocative collection of interviews with the journalist, biographer and New Yorker staff writer, and author of The Journalist and the Murderer.

Savala Nolan Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body

Watkin, 14th, PB, £14.99, 9781786786449

The “first book of its kind to address what witchcraft and magic can truly do”, and an eclectic and radical collection of essays on contemporary witchcraft, and the ethics of magic. “A must-read for anyone engaged with the occult, witchcraft or magic of any kind.”

Natural history & pets

Indigo, 30th, HB, £12.99, 9781911648437

Under such titles as “On Dating White Guys While Me” and “Fat in Ways White Girls Don’t Understand”, this bracing and distinctive collection of personal essays offers incisive reflections on living between society’s most polarised and politicised spaces: Black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat. The work of rising star Nolan counts Roxane Gay, Nadia Owusu and Layla F Saad among its admirers.

Mind, body, spirit Ella Harrison The Book of Spells: 150 Magical Ways to Achieve Your Heart’s Desire DK, 2nd, HB, £19.99, 9780241548653

Including step-by-step

TheBookseller.com

Where to Go Wild in the British Isles: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Best Nature Experiences DK, 2nd, HB, £25, 9780241573303

From where to find an adder, or spot a seal, or hear booming bitterns, a richly illustrated photographic guide to flora and fauna through the year and around the British Isles from remote beaches to forests and fens. There are tips on what to take and on wildlife spotting.

Karen Armstrong Sacred Nature: How We Can Recover Our Bond With the Natural World

Bodley Head, 30th, HB, £14.99, 9781847926883

The leading religious affairs commentator with a book that is both urgent manifesto and practical guide to rekindling a spiritual bond with nature, drawing on the wisdom of the world’s religious traditions. If we want to avert environmental catastrophe, we need to learn to think and feel differently about the natural world, she argues.

Leif Bersweden Where the Wildflowers Grow: My Botanical Journey Through Britain and Ireland Hodder, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529349535

When was the last time you stopped and noticed a wild plant? The botanist author journeys around the UK and Ireland to highlight plant species and the threats that face them. Along the way he extols the joy and positivity that can be found through understanding nature, and why it is so important to protect our native wildflowers.

Steve Brusatte The Rise and Reign of the Mammals

Farmer and nature conservationist Gow has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England. Here he tells the story of his rewilding journey and his work to save many more species by transforming his Devon farm into a wildlife breeding centre.

Millie Jacobs The Pet Loss Guide Orion Spring, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9781409195924

In this 31-day guide to grieving a beloved pet, the author channels her own personal experience and grief counselling expertise to guide readers through a month’s worth of exercises and support to help you process your loss. There is very little similar available.

Karen Lloyd (ed) North Country Saraband, 10th, HB, £14.99, 9781913393403

Edited by an awardwinning writer and environmental activist, an anthology of writing on the landscapes and nature of the North of England, from both new voices and classic authors alike.

Picador, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529034219

From mammoths to sabre-toothed tigers, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs returns to chart the story of the mammals; from their earliest development and their co-existence with the great lizards to their emergence from the shadows to dominate the recent history of our planet.

Lars Chittka The Mind of a Bee Princeton UP, HB, £25, 9780691180472

In this “rich and surprising” exploration of bee intelligence, the author takes us deep into bees’ sensory world to show how their brains are unparalleled in the animal kingdom in terms of density of sophisticated material in their tiny nervous systems.

After a humpback whale breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him, award-winning filmmaker Mustil becomes obsessed with trying to find out what the whale had been thinking. The result is this “thrilling” investigation into whale science and animal communication, which examines how science may change our relationship with animals for ever.

Ollie Olanipekun & Nadeem Perera Flock Together: Outsiders Gaia, 2nd, HB, £14.99, 9781856754781

Founded by the authors in summer 2020, Flock Together is the UK’s first birdwatching collective for people of colour.

Part memoir and part manifesto, this sets out the collective’s mission; from promoting the benefits of nature both in rural and urban locations, to assessing the mental health benefits and challenging preconceptions and stereotypes around people of colour.

Sophie Pavelle Forget Me Not: Finding the Forgotten Species of Climate-Change Britain

£22, 9780691228556

Richly illustrated exploration of the world’s seaweeds and algae, in all their many shapes and sizes.

Mike Unwin & Ryuto Miyake (illustrator) Around the World in 80 Birds Laurence King, 23rd, HB, £20, 9780857828958

From the Sociable Weaver Bird in Namibia to the Bar-headed Goose of China, this beautifully illustrated gift book tells the stories of 80 birds around the world, celebrating their astounding variety, beauty and resilience.

Mo Wilde The Wilderness Cure Simon & Schuster, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781398508637

Overwhelmed by Black Friday consumerism in 2020, the forager author made a radical pledge to eat only wild and foraged food for an entire year.

This is her diary of that experience, and a “timely and important love letter to the natural world”.

Personal development & self-help

Bloomsbury Wildlife, 9th, PB, £14.99, 978147298214

Roger Morgan-Grenville Taking Stock: A Journey Among Cows Icon, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9781785788413

In this part memoir, partnature writing, part “cri de coeur”, the author—who has been fascinated by cows all his life—signs on as a part-time labourer on a beef cattle farm. His experiences lead him to urge us to think carefully about what we eat, and about letting nature back into food production.

Derek Gow Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm Into an Ark for Lost Species Chelsea Green, 16th, HB, £20, 9781645021339

William Collins, 9th, HB, £20, 9780008363383

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Tom Mustil How to Speak Whale

“I have written this book because I’m worried that we’ll forget what we’re losing.” From Bodmin Moor to Orkney, the wry and witty Pavelle—a writer and ambassador for the Wildlife Trust— takes an evocative lowcarbon journey around Britain in search of 10 animal and plant species threatened by climate change in the 21st century; including the marsh fritillary, the harbour porpoise, dung beetles, the merlin and the bilberry bumblebee.

Julie A Phillips The Lives of Seaweeds: A Natural History of Our Planet’s Seaweeds and Other Algae Princeton UP, 28th, HB,

Ben Aldridge How to Control the Uncontrollable: 10 Game-Changing Ideas to Help You Think Like a Stoic and Build a Resilient Life Welbeck, 9th, PB, £12.99, 9781801290425

The author of How to Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable returns to explore how we can use the principles of stoicism as a modern day “operating system” to help enhance mental resilience and help us better cope with life’s challenges.

Includes exercises and directed challenges, and an anti-bucket list.

Eric Barker Plays Well With Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships

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BOOKS is (Mostly) Wrong HarperOne, 9th, HB, £20, 9780063050945

Drawing on his storytelling skills, Barker—a former Hollywood screenwriter— dispenses his advice on overcoming emotional distance and loneliness, building better friendships, reigniting love and getting closer to others.

Sasha Bates Yoga Saved My Life Yellow Kite, 9th, HB, £16.99, 97815293566878

Why do you feel so much better after a yoga class?

The psychotherapist and yoga teacher author explores the links between her two disciplines, using personal stories from members of the Fierce Calm yoga community to show how each can be transformational.

Jessica Baum Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love Cornerstone, 16th, PB, £14.99, 978152990008

From safe-guarding your sense of self to developing a secure sense of self-worth, a roadmap for building strong and secure relationships for those who struggle with anxiety in their romantic connections.

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

Vermilion, 2nd, PB, £14.99, 9781785044106

“Do the work to heal yourself and find a path through trauma.” Such is the billing for this lifeaffirming guide which invites you to empower yourself against trauma, own your life experiences and learn to thrive, not just survive. Lady Gaga, who has written the foreword, credits Conti with treating her successfully after a psychotic breakdown.

Green Tree, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9781472980762

Billed as the first UK published handbook for parents of adult children, this aims to cover the many stages of a relationship that continues to evolve after children fly the nest, including when they have children of their own.

Lynne Dorling Ageing Rewired: How to Flourish in Later Life Matador, 28th, HB, £12.99, 9781803131962

The positive psychology coach tackles the emotional and psychological challenges of later life by highlighting eight positive character traits which “super agers” have in common.

Bantam Press, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781787635630

What does modern friendship between women mean? Featuring interviews from a range of women, including Jilly Cooper, Poorna Bell, Dolly Alderton, Emma Barnett and Jilly Cooper, Cohen, the Telegraph columnist author, argues that unlike romantic relationships, friendship is much harder to pin down and quantify, which in itself shows how often our friendships are taken for granted.

Dr Paul Conti Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It

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11th March 2022

Vermilion, 21st, PB, £9.99, 9781785043673

Are you overshadowed by the narcissists in your life; their constant demands for attention and their determination to do what they want, come what may? The author of Surrounded by Idiots returns to help you understand what makes narcissists tick, and how to handle them without wearing yourself out in the process.

Grant Golliher Think Like a Horse: Lessons in Life, Leadership and Empathy From an Unconventional Cowboy Yellow Kite, 9th, HB, £12.99, 9781399707077

The author is a veteran horse whisperer, rancher

Before Picture HQ, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9780008507565

Light has a substantial following (40O,000+) on Instagram for her honest and perceptive posts surrounding body confidence, and also has a toprating podcast, “Should I Delete That?”. This is her “urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and making peace with our bodies”.

Moya Sarner When I Grow Up Scribe, HB, £16.99, 9781913348007

When do you become an adult? The journalist and psychotherapist-intraining author investigates what it means to grow up, and how we do it again and again throughout our lives.

Felicity Hayward Does My Butt Look Big in This? A Body Positivity Manifesto Greenfinch, 1st, HB, £16.99, 9781529417333

The author is a plus-size model and founder of online movement #SelfLoveBringsBeauty.

From dispelling harmful body myths to finding your own unique style, tips for mental self-care and navigating toxic social media, she shares her own highs and lows and dispenses advice on how to achieve true body confidence.

Simon Lancaster Connect!

Bonnier, 9th, PB, £14.99, 9781788706438

In 11 chapters which blend neuroscience with ancient rhetoric and examples from popular culture, the speechwriter author explains that the secret of brilliant communication rests in connection with your audience.

Natalie Lee Feeling Myself: How I Shed My Shame to Find Sexual Freedom and You Can Too Vermilion, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9781785043864

In an honest and revealing memoir, the influencer author digs into her relationship with sex to expose the shame that many of us feel. From traumatic beginnings to marriage, motherhood and sexual freedom after divorce, it’s an “empowering story of learning to be your true self in a society that doesn’t prioritise your pleasure”.

Alex Light You Are Not a

Green Tree, 9th, PB, £12.99, 9781472986610

Matthews is a life coach and owner of The Happy Me Project coaching business. She shares her own stories of triumph over adversity (including losing her husband at a very young age) in 60 short and powerful chapters of pithy self-help advice.

Jasreen Mayal Khanna Seva: Sikh Wisdom for Living Well By Doing Good Souvenir, 2nd, HB, £10.99, 9781800810075

Blending science-based studies, interviews with Sikhs and a look at history and fables, this lifestyle guide in the vein of The Little Book of Hygge unlocks seven Sikhinspired principles, to help anyone become kinder, happier and lead a more meaningful life.

Katie Pownell & May Sarsam An Introduction to Coping With Paranoid Thoughts Robinson, 2nd, PB, £5.99, 9781472147202

This new addition to the CBT-based “Coping With” series gives clear advice on understanding and coping with paranoia.

Eliza Smith & Haley Swanson (eds) Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Update Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic for a New Era HarperPerennial, 9th, PB, £10.99, 9780063071339

This feminist anthology reimagines Helen Gurley Brown’s seminal Sex and the Single Girl in time for its 60th anniversary, with contributions from Kristen Arnett, Morgan Parker, Evette Dionne and Melissa Febos.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data Instead of Instinct to Make Better Choices Bloomsbury, 9th, HB, £20, 9781526605115

From happiness to dating, money to sex, health to spirituality, the author of Everybody Lies argues that big data can help us find answers to some of the most important questions we face—and that these answers can radically improve our lives in the process. “Self-help as we’ve never seen it before.”

Fariha Roisin Who Is Wellness For? Notes on Radical Self Care

Philosophy, religion & spirituality Philip Ball The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, From Animals to AI to Aliens

In a book that “brilliantly illuminates how many different ways there are to think and engage with the world; and how unique our own minds are”, the award-winning science writer explores the diversity of thinking minds, from our human ones to those of mammals, insects, computers and plants.

Bart D Ehrman Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Church Yale, HB, £25, 9780300257007

How the social experiences of early Christian communities shaped the conceptions of the afterlife, and how these became accepted doctrines of heaven, hell and purgatory.

Yohanan Friedmann Messianic Ideas and Movements in Sunni Islam Oneworld, HB, £45, 9780961543113

In-depth exploration of the messianic idea in Sunni Islam through four significant movements from different times and places.

Dr Stacie C C Graham Yoga as Resistance: Equity and Inclusion On and Off the Mat Watkins, 14th, PB, £15.99, 9781786786401

Orion Spring, 2nd, PB, £16.99, 9781398705395

The multi-disciplinary artist author explores the “commodification and appropriation of wellness” through a social justice lens, and provides resources on how to participate in self-care, regardless of your race, identity or socio-economic status.

concern with image, and self-promotion, he demonstrates how this underrated trait has the power to change the way we live, think and act.

Picador, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781529069143

Holly Matthews The Happy Me Project: The No-Nonsense Guide to Self-Development

Celia Dodd All Grown Up: Nurturing Relationships With Adult Children

Thomas Erikson Surrounded by Narcissists: Or, How to Stop Other People’s Egos Ruining Your Life Claire Cohen BFF? The Truth About Female Friendship

and renowned public speaker. Now he applies his “hard-won” horse sense to dispense valuable lessons about communication, boundaries, fairness, trust and respect that anyone can use to live a fuller, more successful life. “All you need to do is think like a horse.”

Daryl R Van Tongeren Humble: The Quiet Power of an Ancient Virtue Welbeck Balance, 23rd, HB, £14.99, 9781801290951

The psychology professor author has been researching humility for over 10 years. Against a backdrop of rising narcissism,

“Practical and empowering” social justice manifesto which draws on the traditional roots of yoga to advocate for a yoga community which is truly equal and inclusive, both on the mat and elsewhere.

Lars Muhl The Light Within a Human Heart: The Book of Asaph Watkins, 14th, HB, £16.99, 9781786786166

This preview highlights titles to be published in June

This practical guide to attaining your true Divine Identity from Denmark’s leading spiritual teacher aims to help you access your inner light and power, and so attain your highest possible potential.

Thich Nhat Hanh How to Focus Rider, 2nd, PB, £5, 9781846046575

The pithiest of pocket titles from the Vietnamese monk and worldrenowned spiritual leader who died in January.

Alan Watts This Is It: Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience Rider, 30th, PB, £9.99, 9781846046889

“The spiritual is not to be separated from the material, nor the wonderful from the ordinary.” Six “revolutionary” essays on spiritual experience from the pioneering philosopher and Zen scholar whose fans include Deepak Chopra and Oliver Burkeman.

Celebrating Powerful Black Men

Annie Rouse Ox-Eye

HarperDesign, 9th, HB, £12.99, 9780063135567

Bloodaxe, 23rd, PB, £10.99, 9781780376080

The poet and founder of music collective Flowers for the Living honours the Black men he most admires, including Billy Porter, LeBron James and John Legend, in a collection of illustrated poems that celebrate their achievements.

Fifth collection from the US poet who has lived in the UK for the past 30 years. She is a “keenly observant writer of spiky and satirical portraits, and shapely lyrics of the ordinary and the bizarre”.

Tony Hoagland Turn Up the Ocean

Barbican Press, 27th, PB, £10, 9781909954519

Bloodaxe, 23rd, PB, £10.99, 9781780376318

From an Ethiopian lake to an English beach, these poems track one man through significant encounters with the natural world, around the globe. Thornton is a Zen priest who was named by the New Statesman as one of 10 people who could change the world.

This final collection from the US poet who died in 2018 was assembled from poems he was writing in the year before his death and conveys the reality of living and dying in a time and culture which “conspires to erase our inner lives”.

James Thornton Waymarks

handbook for tobacco, oil and pharmaceutical executives, exposes the extraordinary lengths to which corporations will go in order to deny the scientific facts around climate change, public health risks and worker safety when they don’t suit their agendas.

Jordi Camí & Luis M Martínext The Illusionist Brain: The Neuroscience of Magic Princeton UP, 7th, HB, £22, 9780691208442

New retrospective from the US poet who used to be a funeral director and is renowned for his thought-provoking poems on life, faith, doubt and death.

Andrew McMillan & Mary Jean Chan (eds) 100 Queer Poems

Brenna Hassett Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood

Vintage, 2nd, HB, £12.99, 9781529115321

Bloomsbury Sigma, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781472975751

This “luminous” anthology celebrates the power and diversity of queer poetry, exploring coming out, wild love, family, LGBTQ+ history, gender and politics. Among the poets included are Langston Hughes, Charlotte Mew, Carol Ann Duffy, Kei Miller, Kae Tempest, Ocean Vuong and Jay Bernard.

Bringing together both biology and archaeology from our ancestors to the present day, this is billed as the first book to examine the evolution of childhood; from the fact that we give birth to large-headed, helpless, high-fat babies, to what teeth, skulls and bones have to tell us.

Thomas Lynch Bone Rosary: New & Selected Poems Bloodaxe, 23rd, PB, £14.99, 9781780376189

Justin Welby The Power of Reconciliation Bloomsbury Continuum, 9th, HB, £17.99, 9781399402972

Billed as the most important book yet from the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he argues that moves towards tolerance and reconciliation are more important than ever, whether in the context of families or in the church itself.

Poetry Victoria Adukwei Bulley Quiet Faber, 2nd, PB, £10.99, 9780571370337

This début collection circles around “ideas of Black interiority, intimacy and selfhood, playing at the tensions between the impulse to guard one’s inner life, and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, ‘your silence will not protect you’”.

Harold Green III Black Oak: Odes

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André Naffis-Sahely High Desert Bloodaxe, 23rd, PB, £10.99, 9781780376202

This second collection from the poet, editor and translator is a “psychedelic journal of end times and an ode to the American south-west”.

Jennifer Jacquet The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World Allen Lane, 2nd, HB, £16.99, 9780241241677

This bracing-sounding “biting satire of corporate science denial”, written in the form of a corporate

Robinson, 9th, HB, £20, 9781472145154

Profile, HB, £20, 9781788166836

Amid all the talk about intelligence machines taking over, we humans shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet. So says the author of this fascinating sounding exploration of a crucial advantage that we have over our incoming robot masters: we’re even better at maths.

Antonio Padilla Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them Allen Lane, 30th, HB, £25, 9780241445372

Leading theoretical physicist and YouTuber Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics; including Graham’s number, which is so large it has the potential to “collapse your head into a singularity”, and TREE (3), whose finite value could never be reached before the universe resets itself.

Rachael Pells Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare Penguin, 23rd, PB, £8.99, 9781847943408

“9/11 Truthers” and more, the author of You Are Not So Smart explores how our most deeply held opinions and beliefs can be changed, over time, or even in the course of a single conversation.

Michael Slepian The Secret Life of Secrets: How They Shape Our Relationships, Our Wellbeing and Who We Are

Junaid Mubeen Mathematical Intelligence: What We Have That Machines Don’t

Popular science

How do magicians make us see the impossible?

Using magic as a lens for understanding the unconscious and automatic functioning of our brains, this takes us through the inner workings of the human mind to reveal how magicians achieve their spectacular and seemingly impossible effects by hacking our cognitive processes.

gene to the asylum seekers who need to prove their bisexuality in a court of law, a “provocative and eye-opening” look at the science and history of bisexuality. Shaw hosts the hit BBC podcast “Bad People”.

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Paola Totaro & Robert Wainwright On the Scent: Unlocking the Mysteries of Smell, and How Its Loss Can Change Your World Elliott & Thompson, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781783966424

Born out of Totaro’s own frightening and disorientating experience of losing her own sense of smell owing to Covid, an engaging exploration of how we have historically viewed our “fifth sense”, how it works, how it shapes our everyday experience in ways we often don’t even notice and what happens to us when we lose it.

James Vincent Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement Faber, 2nd, HB, £18.99, 9780571354214

Spanning huntergatherer societies, ancient Egyptians, the French revolution and the “relentless quantification of the 21st-century self”, an engaging, eye-opening history of the ways in which we have measured the world around us. Full of mavericks and visionaries, it shows that measurement has “not only made the world we live in, but it has made us too”.

Psychology

Revealing that on average we keep as many as 13 secrets at any given time, the behavioural scientist author provides an eye-opening look at why we keep secrets, and when (and how) we should bring them to light.

Dmitris Xygalatas Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living Profile, 9th, HB, £20, 9781788161022

The author is a pioneering anthropologist who is an expert on rituals.

From handshakes to parades, birthdays and graduations, he shows how ceremonies and our subtle human dramas bind us together, drawing on the latest cutting-edge research.

Sport & adventure Matt Dickson Emma Raducanu: When Tennis Came Home Hodder, 9th, HB, £20, 9781399705554

The tennis correspondent for the Daily Mail profiles the new superstar of British tennis, from her early days falling in love with the game as a young girl in Bromley and the years of hard work and dedication that followed, to lifting the trophy at the US Open last year.

This latest addition to the WIRED guides series explains what genome sequencing is, and how it works, as well as what the future holds in areas as diverse as medicine and environmental science.

Dr Julia Shaw Bi: The Hidden Culture, History and Science of Bisexuality

David McRaney How Minds Change: The Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion

Canongate, 2nd, £16.99, 9781786898760

Oneworld, 23rd, HB, £18.99, 9781786071644

From the hunt for a bi

Taking in Flat Earthers,

Alex Duff Le Fric: Family, Power and Money. The Business of the Tour de France Constable, 9th, HB, £20, 9781408716694

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BOOKS Drawing on numerous interviews with insiders, the hitherto untold story of the Tour De France’s ever-changing relationship with money and power—and the enigmatic Amaury family which owns the race.

Previews New Titles: Non-fiction

9781785787577

The co-host of the “Standard Issue” podcast describes how it all went wrong for Charlton Athletic after they were promoted to the Championship in May 2019. Not just for Charlton fans, this is a “love letter to football, even when there is no football to actually watch”.

Sophie Smith Pain and Privilege: Inside Le Tour Hardie Grant, 23rd, PB, £9.99, 9781761150722

Laura Einzig Women Making Waves: Trailblazing Surfers In and Out of the Water Ten Speed Press, 28th, HB, £27.50, 9781984859792

Photographic celebration of the sisterhood of surfers, featuring candid interviews with 26 inspiring female surfers from around the globe who are “living with purpose”.

Insight into the stories behind the scenes of the Tour de France, showcasing the sacrifice, despair, strategy and chaos that accompanies the race.

With contributions from the likes of Chis Froome, Geraint Thomas, Mark Cavendish and David Brailsford.

Jenny Tough Solo Aster, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9781783254705

Zlatan Ibrahimovic Adrenaline: My Untold Stories Penguin, 9th, PB, £9.99, 9780241996089

This “outrageous” followup to the charismatic footballer’s memoir I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic is “bursting” with personal confessions and revealing anecdotes about the world’s best players and managers, including his “hilarious” run-ins with the French media, “and with the French in general, really”.

The appositely named Tough is an endurance athlete who set herself the challenge of running solo and unsupported across mountain ranges on six continents. In the process she learned lessons in selfesteem, resilience, bravery and more.

David Walsh & Pippa York The Escape Mudlark, 9th, HB, £20, 9780008510602

From her early life in working-class Glasgow to her ups and down as a competitor and eventual gender transition, this engrossing celebration of a life in cycling profiles Pippa York who rode in the Tour de France 11 times as Robert Millar.

Auke Kok Johan Cruyff: Always on the Attack

Jen Offord The Year of the Robin Icon, 8th, PB, £9.99,

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11th March 2022

Sustainability & the climate crisis

to a Sustainable Future Umbria Press, PB, £9.99, 9781910074435

Sooner or later, every one of us will experience the consequences of a warming planet at which time we will all be obliged to take appropriate action.

So says the author of this book in which he aims to show that a “post-carbon world is not necessarily the misfortune so many fear”.

Charles Clover Rewilding the Sea: How to Save Our Oceans Witness Books, 9th, HB, £20, 9781529144031

The co-founder of the Blue Marine Foundation with a “landmark and inspiring” book that argues that the best way to protect our seas is to stand back and let nature repair the damage, whether it be the overfishing of bluefin tuna across the Atlantic, or the destruction of coral gardens by dredgers in Lyme Bay. “We need to fish in different ways, where we fish at all,” he says.

Jake Fiennes Land Healer BBC, 23rd, HB, £20, 9781785947308

The maverick conservation manager at the Holkham Estate in Norfolk, one of the country’s largest historic country estates, offers a “revolutionary” manifesto for a new relationship with the land. Arguing that there is no “wild” in Britain anymore, he explains how farming can save the British countryside.

Annie Proulx Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

Thalia Verkade Movement Scribe, HB, £12.99, 9781911344971

Reflecting on the apparent successes in Dutch cities, this asks radical questions about how we approach our dependence on cars and reclaim our streets, so as to make our communities safer, cleaner and greener.

Mark Williams & Jan Zalasiewicz The Cosmic Oasis OUP, 23rd, HB, £20, 978198845874

This exploration of how life on Earth has evolved its remarkable complexity also offers a warning about the ways in which we are degrading the planet and its biodiversity, and explores suggestions for a more sustainable future.

Travel & transport

Suzanne Wrack A Woman’s Game: The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Women’s Football Guardian Faber, 16th, PB, £14.99, 9781783352159

Exploring the history of women’s’ football, from the Victorian era and players in high-heeled

The wonderful novelist, best known for The Shipping News, is a lifelong environmentalist who infuses her work with a love for and knowledge of the natural world. Here she profiles the vital role that fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries play in preserving the environment, and the consequences that result from destroying such wetlands.

John Reed Climate Change: The Path

Mary Considine The Island House: A New Life on a Tiny Cornish Isle Monoray, 9th, HB, £14.99, 9781800960145

A couple flee the city after a traumatic year, and carve out a life for themselves on the rugged Cornish St George’s island where Considine spent halcyon childhood summers. When an opportunity arises to become tenants if they renovate the old Island House, they seize the opportunity. Dreamy stuff, which Monoray is pitching to readers of Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, and The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

Ben Fogle Islands: A Love Letter to Their Solitude and Beauty William Collins, 9th, HB, £20, 9780008374082

Ever since he was a young boy Fogle has been captivated by the romance and intimacy of island life, and has since journeyed to islands across the world.

But it is the more than 6,000 islands of Britain that really capture his imagination, and this “book of hope and happiness” charts his journey to explore and discover islands old and new.

These delightful vignettes chart the poet and broadcaster’s memories of trips to the British seaside, taking in fish and chips, cricket on the beach, tea and cake, buckets of shells, and his mother-in-law’s favourite haunt of Cleethorpes. Among the memories are sonnets, celebrating the seasons and the points of the compass.

Jody Rosen Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle Bodley Head, 2nd, HB, £25, 9781847923073

A “panoramic, revisionist” portrait of the bicycle’s past and present and future: all the things it has stood for over the years and how the invention, though “remarkably unchanged has changed the world”.

Christian Wolmar British Rail Michael Joseph, 9th, HB, £25, 9780241456200

The acknowledged railway expert looks back with nostalgia on the rise and fall of the state-owned British Rail; from stale sandwiches, inefficiency and violent yellow carriages to the fact that it transformed our transport system and for a time provided one of the fastest, most regular rail services in the world during its 50-year history.

True crime Jonathan Franklin & Michael Smith Cabin Fever: Trapped Onboard a Cruise Ship When the Pandemic Hit Endeavour, 21st, HB, £16.99, 9781913068738

Fourth Estate, 23rd, HB, £16.99, 9780008534394

Simon & Schuster, 9th, HB, £20, 9781398501652

This new biography of the revered Dutch footballer reads like a Boy’s Own story, claiming to reveal the true Cruyff; how he shaped his influence as a “total footballer” and acquired a reputation as an innovator, a know-it-all and a brawler.

boots, through the incredible teams which at their height in 1920 drew 53,000 spectators to Goodison, to its 50-year ban in the UK, and the current glory days. “Both a history of football as played by women, and a manifesto for a better game.”

Meg Abbott The Lake District: Where to Eat, Sleep and Explore Quadrille, 9th, PB, £15, 9781787138469

“Thoughtfully curated” guide to England’s biggest National Park, including places to eat and sleep, suggested itineraries, scenic road trips, a rainy day guide, great pub walks and local bookshops (hurrah).

Told as a “narrative thriller”, the harrowing story of the “Zaandam” cruise ship which set sail with a deadly and little understood stowaway called Covid-19, days before the world shut down in March 2020.

There are moments of peril, perseverance and kindness in the stories of crew and passengers.

Ian McMillan My Sand Life, My Pebble Life: A Memoir of a Childhood and the Sea Adlard Coles, 9th, HB, £10.99, 9781472982940

Paul Gambino Killer Collections: Dark Artefacts from True Crime Laurence King, 23rd, HB, £25, 9780857829146

From an 18th-century hangman’s noose to Charles Manson’s cremation ashes and a circular saw confiscated from outside the home of the Kansas City Butcher, a gruesome illustrated collection of artefacts and ephemera relating to some of the world’s most famous criminals and criminal acts.

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Senior Marketing Manager, Adult Trade Bloomsbury

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Editorial Assistant/Assistant Editor Head of Zeus £24,000–£27,000pa Award-winning publisher London Head of Zeus is looking for a new member to join their non-fiction team. This busy, fast-paced role would suit someone enthusiastic and organised, with a love for non-fiction and some experience working in trade publishing. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/headofzeus/editorial-assistant-assistant-editor

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Publishing Strategy Lead—Impact Frontiers Publishing We are seeking an experienced London publishing professional with extensive journals development knowledge, strong business acumen and robust analytical skills for a Publishing Strategy Lead—Impact position. Significant experience in journals development and robust understanding of factors driving journal impact performance is required. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/frontiers/publishing-strategy-lead-impact

We are looking for a dynamic, adaptable and experienced marketer to work primarily on Bloomsbury’s cookery, illustrated and wellbeing lists. It’s an exciting opportunity to be the driving force behind creative and impactful title marketing campaigns, as well as long-term strategies, for some of Bloomsbury’s biggest brand authors and household names. You will also spearhead marketing and community growth strategies for these lists, and be a key marketing voice in wider publishing decisions, including the upcoming launch of a brand new list.

You’ll join a collaborative and friendly marketing team that works across Fiction, Non-Fiction and Cookery, reporting into the Marketing Director. You will build strategies for brands, imprints, communities and channels, and grow the business through your targeted, creative, consumer-focused campaigns.

Knowledge, skills and experience: • Strong marketing experience—ideally within trade publishing and/or a lifestyle/wellbeing/cookery space • Creative vision, with excellent negotiation and persuasion skills to see that vision through and bring everyone on the journey • Superb visual and copywriting skills, with an impeccable eye for detail jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bloomsbury/ senior-marketing-manager-adult London

Journal Manager—Biological Sciences and Sustainability Frontiers Publishing We are seeking a driven and target-oriented professional for the London role of Journal Manager to join our Biological Sciences and Sustainability program. The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate experience in an academic publishing house, and/or strong project management experience. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/frontiers/journal-manager

Sales Executive—Display The Stage £28,000–£32,000pa Are you an London experienced sales executive with an affinity for theatre? We have the job for you! To initiate, manage discussion and sell Display advertising solutions across all channels to potential clients and agencies in line with the company’s advertising strategy. Excellent demonstrable sales ability is required. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/thestage/sales-executive-display

37

JOBS

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Jobs in Books Recruitment & Classified

Client Integration Specialist Ingram Content Group Responsible for the integration Milton Keynes of publishers and coordinating integration activities for CoreSource clients. The successful candidate will understand publisher’s connectivity and integrate assigned clients, ensuring publishers understand CoreSource system requirements. Bachelor’s degree or 1 year of industry experience & 2 years of customer service experience required. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/ingramcontent/client-integration-specialist

Key Account Sales Manager Ingram Content Group Working closely with the content London acquisition team the Key Account Sales Manager will concentrate on maximising new customer acquisition and set up of new print on-demand titles from publishers across publishing segments. In this role, 3-5 years’ experience in sales OR book industry & College / University degree is preferred. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/ingramcontrent/key-account-sales-manager

Content Manager Ingram Content Group In this role the successful London candidate will maintain profitable vendor relations to secure applicable Ingram content and recommend service offerings. A Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent B2B Management experience in either publishing, wholesale, or retail bookselling, and minimum 3 years’ progressive experience is required. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/ingramcontent/content-manager

Open Access Manager, Academic & Professional Bloomsbury This is a rare opportunity to work in an open access books role at a London leading independent arts, humanities, and social sciences publisher.

Reporting directly to the Global Director, Research and Open Access within our Academic and Professional division, you’ll join a nascent team and help to shape open access at Bloomsbury. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bloomsbury/open-access-manager

Senior Commissioning Editor, Education Bloomsbury This is an exciting opportunity for an London enthusiastic Senior Commissioning Editor with relevant publishing experience to join the dynamic Education team working across a range of secondary, primary and early years materials that include professional development titles, early years and primary teacher resources, and home learning workbooks. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bloomsbury/senior-commissioning-editor-education

Games Assistant, Osprey Games Bloomsbury £21,000pa The successful applicant Oxford will report to the Head of Osprey Games and will work across our growing range of well-known and award-winning gaming titles, which includes board and card games, wargames, and roleplaying games. This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic and ambitious individual to join our friendly team based in Oxford, UK, and to dive into the world of tabletop gaming. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bloomsbury/games-assistant-osprey-games-22

Publications Coordinator A N TO N Y G O R M L E Y ST U D I O Antony Gormley Studio £40,000pa, pro rata Antony Gormley London Studio is made up of a lively and wide-ranging group of individuals with a common aim of extending the language of sculpture and making it available to a wider world. The Publications Coordinator plays a key role in developing many exciting and wide-ranging publications, seeing each unique project through from concept to delivery. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/antonygormleystudio/publications-coordinator

Publicity and Marketing Manager Icon Books £35,000pa Icon Books, an expanding and London admired independent publisher of non-fiction, seeks an experienced publicist—ideally also with marketing experience—for a critical new role in the company. The ideal candidate will have around five years’ experience of managing publicity for titles at least of a profile akin to those published by Icon. Closing date Monday 14th March. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/iconbooks/publicity-and-marketing-manager

Publicity Manager—Literary Imprints (12-month FTC) Little, Brown £33,000–£38,000pa The position offers the London opportunity to work across the literary imprints (Little, Brown/Virago/Fleet/Corsair/Abacus). We’re looking for a creative, organised, confident and enthusiastic publicist, with experience of leading on literary non-fiction and fiction campaigns. With excellent contacts across the media, you will create strategic and imaginative publicity campaigns. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/hacheete/publicity-manager-literary-imprints

Inventory Executive Hachette UK £25,000–£28,000pa We’re looking for London an organised, proactive and highly numerate candidate with excellent attention to detail; someone who is process-driven and methodical, with good communication and relationship-building skills. You should be able to work under guidance and independently. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/hachette/inventory-executive

Children’s Book Marketing Lead (2 days a week) Little Bright Labs We are a kids media company on a mission to London prepare all kids for the 21st century. Agent Asha is an 11-year-old coder and secret agent for the Children’s Spy Agency. We’re looking for an experienced Marketing Lead to help launch the second book in the Agent Asha series, published by Walker Book this summer. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/brightlittlelabs/childrens-book-marketing-lead

Account Executive/Senior Account Executive Midas £21,000–£27,000pa Midas is looking for a creative London and dynamic Account Executive or Senior Account Executive to join our books and culture team, working on a wide range of authors including business books, and children’s books. This is an exciting opportunity for a talented junior PR with approximately one or twoyears’ experience in an agency. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/midas/account-executive-senior-account-executive

11th March 2022

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Publishing Assistant Bodleian Library Publishing £22,847–£26,341pa We are looking for an enthusiastic, Oxford highly-organized Publishing Assistant with a strong eye for detail and an ability to juggle multiple priorities while supporting colleagues in editorial and images, production, marketing and sales. This is a rare and exciting opportunity to join a dynamic publishing team working with Oxford’s world-class library collections, nested in the historic heart of the University. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bodleianlibrarypublishing/publishing-assistant

Production Controller Bonnier Books You will be responsible for reprints and London co-editions across a wide range of products, as well as providing essential support to the team. You must be a great communicator and strong team player who is able to work independently. The ability to stay calm and focused under pressure is a must! The ideal candidate will either already be working as a production controller or looking for a step up. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bonnierbooks/production-controller

Foreign Rights Assistant/Foreign Rights Executive The Quarto Group £25,000–£30,000pa The Quarto Foreign Rights London department is looking to appoint an ambitious, dynamic, positive, commercial person who is ready to take the next step in their career by joining a leading Rights Team as Foreign Rights Assistant or Foreign Rights Executive. Fluency in French language; both written and conversational is required. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/quarto/foreign-rights-assistant-executive

Online Key Account Manager (Vintage) Penguin Random House £34,000pa An exciting opportunity has arisen London for an Online Key Account Manager to join the Vintage Sales team. In this role you will manage our print, eBook and audio relationships with fast-growing retailers such as Amazon, Apple and Audible. Your success in this role will depend on you being able to build great relationships, make data-led decisions, and work well within a team. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/penguin/online-key-account-manager-vintage

Project Editor BPP Learning Media Working closely with academic writers and London production staff, you will have an important role to play in ensuring that files are supplied on time and to specification. From being involved in project management to carrying out critical editorial checks, you will use your strong communication skills to work closely with stakeholders throughout the process. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bpp/project-editor-22

Digital Marketing Executive Joffe Books offe Books is looking for a Digital Marketing London Executive to join our team. We’re seeking a highly organized and creative individual with experience working in a similar role, and a passion for crime/genre fiction. The ideal candidate will have excellent copywriting and visual skills, along with the ability to work under pressure and manage multiple projects simultaneously. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/joffebooks/digital-marketing-executive

Contracts Executive Bonnier Books Bonnier Books UK are currently recruiting a London forward-thinking individual on a part-time (3 days per week) basis to assist in the development and running of the Contracts function within our fast-moving business. The successful candidate will be highly and demonstrably experienced to an excellent standard in drafting and negotiating contracts from templates and free-form drafting. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/bonnierbooks/contracts-executive-2022

Senior Production Controller Phaidon Press Phaidon is seeking a multi-talented London Senior Production Controller to join their award-winning global production team. Based in our London office and working closely with the London and New York bookmaking teams, the successful candidate will be responsible for the complete production process of a range of highly production-focussed front-list titles. jobs.thebookseller.com/job/phaidon/senior-production-controller

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SPECIAL

Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2022

Wel on track Jane Harris on developing the children’s list at Welbeck Fresh fantasy Black authors share their experiences of writing SFF Hot stuff Literary agencies reveal the titles they are backing

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INTRODUCTION

Bologna Preview Introduction

Bologna Children’s Book Fair Back to Bologna The number of people attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair this year may not quite be at pre-pandemic levels, but hopes are high that the fair will feel like a return to normal

Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan

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t long last, it feels like book fairs are truly back. After tentative steps at last autumn’s Frankfurt, publishers and agents are returning to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) and if they won’t be there completely en masse—as they were in the pre-pandemic years—there will be enough of a critical mass to make it feel somewhat like a Bologna of old.

Still, there is a sense that this is a crucial fair for Bologna (and, in a few weeks, the London Book Fair). Rights trading has proceeded apace over Zoom and Teams in the past two years, so much so that several big UK entities—including Scholastic and Penguin Random House Children’s—did not commit to stands at this year’s BCBF (though, of course, staffers will be going as trade visitors). Has the pandemic altered the rights trading regime so much that even when there is a fuller return in, say, 2023, publishers will take smaller stands and send fewer people?

It is a question that is probably weighing heavily on every international book fair director’s mind at the moment.

But Welbeck’s new children’s boss Jane Harris (see profile, pp06–07) makes some salient points about the manner of rights trading during Covid, and why getting back to “IRL” will benefit the kids’ side in particular.

One, that though deal-making has held up

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One of the clearest trends is books that either manifestly or obliquely help kids deal with anxiety and varying levels of trauma

numbers-wise, the risk-averse nature of the pandemic market probably has benefitted the bigger brands somewhat, to the detriment of emerging authors. And there is the physicality of children’s titles—the colours, the pop-ups, the gatefolds, the flow of illustrations—that probably can only fully be appreciated when the books are held in one’s hands.

Judging by the books that agencies are flagging up for Bologna, those emerging writers might be having a pretty good time of it this year, as around a third of the hotlists (see pp16–18) are débutants or second-title authors. And across the hotlists, one of the clearest trends is books that either manifestly or obliquely help kids deal with anxiety and varying levels of trauma. Harris notes that part of what drew her to move to into children’s books was the genuine good you can do for kids. They have certainly needed reassurance these past couple of years, and it is nice to see that publishing has responded in kind (pun intended).

05

INTERVIEW

Bologna Preview Jane Harris, Welbeck Publishing Group

Harris hits the ground running, leading Welbeck’s kids’ offer Jane Harris moved to lead Welbeck’s children’s list in the teeth of the pandemic, and has established four distinct imprints at the business with the aim of laying a solid foundation for growth in the years to come

Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan

06

11th March 2022

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ewind a couple of years and Jane Harris above was having a pretty good time of it heading Bonnier’s children’s trade division. She had been brought in by her old boss at Quercus, Mark Smith, and had expanded the list and loved its spread, from Hot Key’s groundbreaking Young Adult titles to Piccadilly Press’ younger readers focus and Templar’s picture books.

But in 2020, Smith came calling again. A year before that, he and Marcus Leaver had bought Carlton Books, renaming it Welbeck Publishing Group, and as part of their expansion plans they wanted Harris to join as children’s group publisher in order to ramp up the kids’ division. She jumped at the chance. “It’s really rare that a big, new independent comes into this arena,” Harris explains. “And the idea was to have scope and autonomy to develop a really curated, creative children’s list. I thought, ‘How often is an offer going to come along where you get an almost clean sheet of paper to do whatever you want to do?’”

There are a few strands to what she says, with a selfdeferential laugh, is “the grand vision. Not to sound too worthy, but those of us who work in children’s publishing have a drive to make a difference: to encourage new readers, to grow generations of readers. That’s not just individual children, but helping whole families to explore the world—both the real one and imagined ones—so that

they develop this fantastic lifelong love of books.

“On a more practical level, we want to have a publishing programme that attracts global recognition, wins awards, sells in multiple territories and showcases the creativity of our authors and illustrators; one that will inspire, entertain and educate readers all over the world. So yes, we have big ambitions.”

It is still relatively early days, but things are on the up.

In Harris’ first full year at the helm (2021), Welbeck’s children’s business shifted a little under £800,000 through Nielsen BookScan (and that is missing 10 weeks of lockdown-deprived data), nearly twice the revenue Carlton’s kids’ division had in 2018, its last full year before the acquisition. It is not just that sales are rising; previously, Carlton’s children’s heartland was primarily in licensed products and working with packagers. For example, in 2018 its top 10 titles were dominated by FIFA World Cup and “Jurassic World” tie-ins. Harris’ Welbeck has not completely left that space, as in 2022 it is doing several FIFA titles and has video games titles featuring Minecraft, Roblox and Nintendo Switch.

But, Harris says: “We are really focusing on creatively expanding the scope of the children’s list to appeal more to the trade and to international partners. What we really want to try and do is make books relevant and make them resonate, with readers of today and future generations.

Backlist and longevity are really the keys to children’s books, you need titles that go on and on. The best compliment you can have as a children’s publisher is producing a book for which kids say, ‘Read it again’. Although, I realise that’s probably a nightmare for the parents.”

To move into this new direction Harris has arranged the division into four imprints: Welbeck Editions, which publishes into the more high-spec, gifting end of the market; Welbeck Children’s, a broader list which encompasses much of its non-fiction; Mortimer (Welbeck’s offices are on Mortimer Street, central London), the “child purchase-led” gaming and activity side; and Welbeck Flame, the fiction arm that also includes a classics strand with the now star property Robert Ingpen’s backlist, which Harris acquired from Palazzo Editions last summer.

Probably the biggest push is Flame: upcoming highlights include YA star M A Bennett’s move into middle-grade with the time-travel adventures series The Butterfly Club, and Hedgewitch, the first in a magical middle-grade series by début author Skye McKenna. Then there is Ingpen, the only Australian illustrator to win the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The 84-year-old has a new edition of Aesop’s Fables out this October (written by Caroline Lawrence) and 14 of his backlist titles are due to be released over the course of the year. Harris says: “He has been an amazing illustrator on the children’s stage for 60 years and he is still excited about new projects for us. We have Aesop’s Fables but there are more projects coming.”

Part of the strategy is signing up authors to multi-book deals: Bennett for four titles, McKenna for five, newcomer Leah Mohammed for her Luma and the Pet Dragon trilogy.

Harris says: “When we like an author, we go all in. But also, we need to build a backlist. And of course, in the pandemic one of the things that became incredibly obvious was that backlist really dominated.”

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Welbeck’s up and comers Cindy Forde; Bethany Lord (illus) Bright New World Welbeck Editions, 21st July, £16.99, hb, 9781913519490

“Solarpunk” vision for sustainability and ecological regeneration from environmental educator Forde.

Simon Mugford; Dan Green (illus) Bronze Rules Welbeck Children’s, 23rd June, £3.99, pb, 9781783126378

England right-back Lucy Bronze joins Mugford and Green’s hit Football Superstars series.

Moria Butterfield; Gwen Millward (illus) Sometimes I’m a Baby Bear, Sometimes I’m a Snail Welbeck Editions, 1st July, £12.99, hb, 9781803380254

A picture book which aims to give nurseryage children the tools to express feelings.

Skye McKenna Hedgewitch Welbeck Flame, 14th April, £12.99, hb, 9781801300087

McKenna’s (below) début follows Cassie’s search for her missing mother—and the discovery she may be a witch.

Andy Riley Action Dude Welbeck Flame, 9th June, £6.99, pb, 9781801300148

Opens a graphic novel trilogy about Charlie Mulderdrew, who “eats danger with fries and a shake shake”... ... but is afraid of spiders.

Ah, yes, the pandemic. Harris joined Welbeck in the teeth of it and she admits it was “quite a challenge” not being able to meet her team in real life for some time, although that was ameliorated somewhat by the continuity with Smith and the fact that she knew a lot of the Welbeck sales team, whom Smith had also lured from Bonnier.

Welbeck will have a stand at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Harris is champing at the bit to get back to “the Fat City”, although is cognisant that there will be fewer fairgoers than pre-pandemic. “It’s important to have a physical presence there. Rights and co-edition sales have been somewhat static over the pandemic, at least in terms of newer authors, as I think there was a lot of going back to the tried and true. But international markets are opening up again. Plus, being there is so much more important on the children’s side as our books are about the physical: they can have gatefolds, pop-ups, can be interactive. Zoom and Teams are great, but to really appreciate what kids’ books can offer, you need to see them in real life.”

Peering into her crystal ball for trends at this Bologna, she thinks “inclusivity will continue to be something a lot of publishers are looking at. It is a big part of what we do, and I’m not just talking racial, class and cultural inclusivity, but on disability and accessibility too. Graphic novels are really taking off, and perhaps that’s about accessibility, as they can be a great way in for reluctant readers. Books on emotional wellbeing and mental health are big. We aren’t really publishing YA—unless someone sends us something amazing—but that’s coming back in a major way.”

Gear change

Harris is what we at The Bookseller sometimes term an “industry veteran”. She hails from Malvern, Worcestershire, and her love-of-books origin story features childhood memories of her dad taking her to the local library on weekends. That love led to a career starting off at Unwin Hyman—“you can tell you’ve been around a long time by the number of companies you worked at that don’t exist anymore”—with her key responsibility looking after the J R R Tolkien fan club. That led to a sales job at Weidenfeld, then a move to HarperCollins, where she became group sales director.

Although she had some children’s responsibilities as part of her HC remit, most of her career was in adult publishing.

She changed tack when Walker Books offered her a sales and marketing director post in 2005. Harris says: “It was a bit left field but I had been at HC for 13 years and I thought I needed change. I was quickly seduced by the creative opportunities that children’s books can offer, working with amazing illustrators and authors and putting books together that could have this massive impact on children.”

What she eventually wants at Welbeck is to see the division step up several gears: “We are ambitious and I would love it if Welbeck became a leading independent children’s publisher. We’ve got to do it commercially, as we need to generate a successful business to enable us to buy new talent and invest in their future. But we want to get to a point where we are always in that conversation when people—readers, agents, retailers, international publishers—think about children’s books; where they think of Welbeck because we have a brilliant list.”

07

IN DEPTH

Bologna Preview EmpathyLab

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EmpathyLab founder McKearney discusses changing the agenda EmpathyLab is at the forefront of research which shows that reading helps us build our real-life understanding of other people—and it has big plans afoot...

Caroline Carpenter @carolinec1988

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11th March 2022

hen Miranda McKearney OBE left her role as co-founder and c.e.o. of charity The Reading Agency, she planned to retire. But instead, she started exploring an emerging body of scientific research showing the empathy-building impact of reading, along with some peers who were equally interested.

This group—which includes Craig Hill, a consultant for digital agencies for children and family audiences; Ruth Harrison, director of writer development agency Spread the Word; Sarah Mears, programme manager for Libraries Connected; and teacher Caroline Scott—consequently founded EmpathyLab in 2014, an organisation set up to build children’s empathy through literature.

Working closely with academics, it has based its strategy on two key areas of scientific research: that empathy is a skill that can be learned; and that research shows that identifying with the feelings of book characters helps build our real-life understanding of other people. Since then, it has experimented with approaches that use stories to develop young people’s understanding and practice of empathy. In 2017, EmpathyLab became a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. Its work now falls into four key areas: an annual Read For Empathy collection of 60 books for children and teenagers that encourage empathy, selected by experts from schools and libraries; a schools’ programme, sharing education schemes designed to improve pupils’ empathy and literacy skills; Empathy Day, a national day of online events and home-based activities to help children read, connect and act using empathy, supported by the book trade and schools; and partnering with authors and illustrators.

Since 2019, EmpathyLab’s work has been supported by a group of nine publishers, the “Empathy Circle”: Andersen Press, Bloomsbury, Bonnier Books, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin Random House Children’s, Nosy Crow, Usborne and Walker Books. They have taken part in pilot schemes including Author Masterclasses (training authors and illustrators to create festival and school events that promote empathy) and an Empathy Hour workplace activity for Empathy Day to involve publishing house staff.

In autumn 2021, they launched an Empathy Manifesto, with pledges which will form the basis of a three-year plan to embed empathy in all aspects of a publishing drive. This original group of nine will now become the strategy group for the organisation’s new Empathy Builders scheme.

The scheme sees an alliance of 40 children’s publishers commit to a three-year drive to amplify the reach and impact of Empathy Day. Through this work, it aims to reach a million children annually in five years’ time. Those involved include huge players such as HarperCollins Children’s Books and Simon & Schuster, as well as independents Knights Of and Lantana Publishing.

Participating publishers will support Empathy Day by sharing content and branded assets on social media, publishing related content on their websites, encouraging authors and illustrators to get involved with Empathy Day events, promoting the scheme to its networks and schools, and involving staff in empathy-building activities.

McKearney says of the new development: “The scheme comes when the need is great— with the pandemic having denied so many children the chance to develop their social

skills and having affected their wellbeing so badly—and at a time of great opportunity, when the scientific evidence that books build real-life empathy skills is growing.

Empathy Day is developing into a practical focal point for a nationwide empathy movement.” She adds: “If ever there was a time to be gathering together to work on spreading empathy, it’s now, isn’t it? We hear so much in our discussions about empathy’s pivotal role in understanding the pressures our children have been under.”

Empathy Builders Alliance Andersen Press B Small

Commercial benefits

In terms of how the pandemic has affected the need for stories that promote empathy, McKearney reports: “We’re noticing an increased focus on helping children deal with, understand and share emotions and work through big experiences—especially in picture books, which are so powerful for helping and healing.” EmpathyLab believes a sharper focus on empathy will bring commercial benefits to participating publishers as well as readers, taking their books and authors to new audiences, and into spaces where social and emotional skills are recognised as vital.

Francesca Dow, m.d. of PRH Children’s, is “thrilled” the company has joined the scheme, commenting: “We believe empathy is an essential part of helping children and families to grow and develop, so we want to share opportunities to take part in empathy practices and training with colleagues and authors across our organisation.” Knights Of m.d. Aimée Felone adds: “We’re so proud to be joining the Empathy Builders alliance. It helps us, as publishers, run towards our responsibility to take steps to build a more empathetic world through our books, and by working together we can make Empathy Day a massive force for change.”

This year’s Empathy Day will be held on 9th June and the Empathy Day Live! festival will see authors and illustrators lead creative empathy activities in videos that are to be streamed online. This year’s theme is “Empathy, our human superpower” and the extensive line-up includes Waterstones children’s laureate Cressida Cowell, and authors Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Alex Wheatle and Rob Biddulph.

For McKearney, an “evolving range of partnerships” is at the heart of EmpathyLab’s future. It is currently working with the Books Council of Wales to launch its first bilingual collection of books. It has also formed a

AIMÉE FELONE

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Barrington Stoke Bloomsbury Children’s Books

CRESSIDA COWELL

Chicken House Child’s Play

partnership with children’s audiobook streaming app Cloudaloud, which will give all children access to more than 50 free audiobooks throughout June, featuring titles from previous Read For Empathy collections. It is in talks with the Booksellers Association about how to work more closely with independent booksellers.

In addition, it is the key impact partner of a new threeyear research project, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, “Reading Feelings: Does Reading Fiction Improve Children’s Empathy and Pro-social skills?”, based in the University of Sussex’s School of Psychology. McKearney believes this will “deepen our understanding of how empathy develops in children, and the role that reading plays”. EmpathyLab will support the dissemination of the research and its translation into practices in schools.

Partnerships with schools

Having successfully trialled its empathy education programme in Wales, in 2022 EmpathyLab is working with 74 primary and secondary schools in the country, and it aims to embed this work more across England, too.

McKearney says of the trial programmes in schools based in deprived areas of Swansea and Pembroke Dock: “It’s all worked really well, despite huge Covid challenges.

Teachers say it is transformational, affecting school ethos and culture, and building pupils’ empathy skills while simultaneously improving reading for pleasure and social activism.” She adds that teachers involved in the programme have reported that it has “made them braver about choosing hard-hitting books and topics they might have previously shied away from, and which they felt have really opened up an honest dialogue with children and resulted in stronger relationships all round”.

Ultimately EmpathyLab’s mission is “to raise an empathy-educated generation”, so everything it does centres on “reaching more children and young people and strengthening the ability of those who live and work with them to help them build their empathy skills—with books as a key tool”. Confident that the Empathy Builders scheme will help her team get closer to achieving this mission, McKearney reflects: “Empathy is obviously a vital social and emotional skill and, since we started, we have seen a heartening growth in recognition of how key these life skills are for children—and indeed society—to thrive.”

David Fickling Books Double Rainbow Publishing Farshore Faber Children’s Firefly Flying Eye (Nobrow) Guppy Books Hachette Childrens’ Group HarperCollins Children’s Books HopeRoad Knights Of Lantana Publishing Little Tiger New Frontier Publishing Nosy Crow Old Barn Books Otter-Barry Oxford University Press Pan Macmillan Penguin Random House Children’s Quarto Scallywag Press Scholastic The School of Life Simon & Schuster The Emma Press Tiny Owl UCLan Publishing Usborne Books Wacky Bee Walker Books Welbeck Publishing Group Zephyr

09

IN DEPTH

Bologna Preview Black SFF writers

FEMI FADUGBA SAYS HE WROTE THE BOOK HIS TEENAGE SELF WOULD HAVE WANTED TO READ

Why have Black writers been missing from children’s sci-fi and fantasy for so long?

Publishers and industry gatekeepers must put in the work to keep open the portal to this fresh dimension of Black-authored sci-fi and fantasy, as recent successes have demonstrated

W Mayo Agard-Olubo

10

11th March 2022

hen writers set out to create new stories, new characters and new worlds, they draw inspiration from many different places, but one of the biggest sources will always be the books they have read as children. The stories that are available to us have a massive impact on our lives. They help shape how we see the world and how we see ourselves, but for many Black writers, finding stories that they could relate to as children proved to be virtually impossible.

“There were none,” author Patrice Lawrence tells me when asked about finding books with characters she could relate to growing up in the 1970s. “There were, though, plenty of racist depictions.” When Black people did appear in books it was often in the form of anti-Black caricatures or offensive stereotypes.

This is representative of how the publishing industry has traditionally treated stories with Black people in them.

In the past, they have either been told through a onedimensional, stereotypical lens or ignored completely, and while authentic Black stories did emerge, they were still limited in terms of the genres Black characters were seemingly allowed to inhabit. This led to an environment where many Black writers believed their stories would never be accepted by traditional publishers.

For example, in his author’s note at the end of the middle grade fantasy Amari and the Night Brothers, B B Alston states that when he began writing the novel, Amari wasn’t in it. He had decided not to write his main character as he had originally envisioned her, “with brown skin and a curly afro”, because growing up he had never seen a Black main character in fantasy. He felt that if he wrote this type of story about a Black girl, in his own words, “no one would want to read it. And certainly no one would want to publish it”. So he tried to write the story with a white lead because he felt this had a better chance of success.

These fears were in no way unfounded. Even established and successful authors, such as former children’s laureate

Malorie Blackman, have in the past felt restricted by the types of stories that publishers will accept. In June 2020, she shared on Twitter that she once pitched a fantasy story about Black magical siblings, however, “no publisher was interested as it ‘wasn’t believable’”.

Science fiction author Clare Weze had a similar experience early in her career. She told me that when submitting to magazines and prizes, “the response to my short fiction containing characters of colour was just a standard, polite rejection”. She went on to say: “I would start the whole process again and submit the same stories, but with white characters, and my success rate was much higher.”

The publishing industry has held these types of attitudes for a long time, so it’s no surprise that Alston, when writing his début novel, came to the heartbreaking conclusion that “there are some adventures people like me don’t get to have”. Being excluded from or limited by the stories we consume as children can foster this incredibly damaging belief in all of us and become a huge obstacle in later life, especially for those us who grow up to become storytellers ourselves. But this obstacle is not insurmountable. Alston found that the inauthentic version of the story that he was trying to write kept stalling. It didn’t flow until he was true to himself and told Amari’s story, centred around the young Black girl he had originally envisioned but hadn’t felt confident enough to write.

More and more Black writers are finding this confidence, to write the characters and adventures that they truly want to write, and it seems the publishing industry is finally taking notice. In recent years several high-profile successes have proved that Black authors can thrive in any genre—especially in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction that they have been locked out of for so long.

Upcoming authors

PATRICE LAWRENCE The Unmorrow Curse Jasmine Richards UCLan Publishing, 5th May, 9781912979882

Two friends awaken a world of myth and magic in this epic middle grade fantasy.

Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun Tolá Okogwu S&S, 9th June, 9781398505087

Recent successes

A British-Nigerian girl learns that her Afro hair has psychokinetic powers.

Tomi Adeyemi’s 2018 book Children of Blood and Bone was one of the largest book deals in history and its success seems to have blown open the doors for many books to follow. In the US, fantasy novels such as Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones, Ayana Gray’s Beasts of Prey and Alston’s own Amari and the Night Brothers have all been hugely successful and are set to be turned into Hollywood films.

In the UK, Tolá Okogwu’s fantasy novel Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun and Femi Fadugba’s mind-bending time-travel novel The Upper World have had similar

Mia and the Lightcasters Janelle McCurdy, Ana Latese (illus) Faber & Faber, 4th August, 9780571368433

B B ALSTON

TheBookseller.com

© Joshua Aaron Photography

The first volume in a new middle grade fantasy series from début writer and FAB Prize winner McCurdy.

The Elemental Detectives Patrice Lawrence Scholastic, 1st September, 9780702315626

Lawrence turns her hand to upper middlegrade fantasy in this new series, which sees London lit up by Elemental spirits.

success—both also due to be turned into movies by Netflix—while Weze’s The Lightning Catcher was nominated for the 2022 CILIP Carnegie medal.

I think the current shift in the industry is typified by the experiences of Lawrence. Her début thriller Orangeboy was rejected by all but one publisher. She felt at the time that there was a possibility that “many publishers might not know how to market a book where the main protagonist is a Black teenage boy”, and adds: “I suppose that many editors would not have found the story relatable.” In contrast, her new upper middle-grade fantasy adventure series, The Elemental Detectives, was “hard fought over by a number of leading publishers”, according to her agent Caroline Sheldon. It helps that Lawrence is now an established and award-winning author, of course, but she also states: “Timing was on my side. Publishers were looking for ‘diverse books’.”

Lasting change

This hunt for inclusive books, far from being a box-ticking gesture, is an acknowledgement that certain brilliant stories have been overlooked for too long. As Fadugba put it when I spoke to him: “I wrote my book for my 15- to 16-year-old self. I wanted the kind of book that I didn’t have and that I felt still wasn’t out there.” The question remains, though: will diversity in books be treated like a trend and eventually disappear? The publishing industry still lacks diversity in many areas. Lawrence tells me: “There are very few Black decision-makers in children’s publishing, but also a reluctance for publishers to audit themselves in a way that really builds their knowledge.”

The publishing world must overcome this reluctance and commit to ensuring its current push of books by Black creators marks a permanent shift in the industry, as well as to continue improving its levels of diversity, both among its output and the make-up of its staff. Why is it so important that Black children can have stories that reflect them in fantasy, sci-fi and every other genre, without limits?

When I put that question to Fadugba, he answers: “Every kid deserves to explore all the different corners of their mind. I think there is a lot of our mind that doesn’t get explored and the more books we have that can do that... that can have an incredible impact.”

If that impact is that children grow up never questioning whether they belong at the heart of a story, then that is a future we should all be aiming for.

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BOOKS

Bologna Preview Children’s Top Picks

The class of 2022 Julia Donaldson; Axel Scheffler (illus) The Baddies

as an attack of military chickens, at the primary school. Both authors sell around the world and have been shortlisted for multiple prizes—Pearson was recently shortlisted for the Costa.

Alison Green, 1st September, £12.99, hb, 9780702303517

The king and queen of picture books (whose combined sales total 75 million copies, says Scholastic) are back this autumn with a brilliantly titled picture book about a troll, a ghost and a witch who each boast that they are the scariest creature. But will a little girl they meet show them you don’t need to be big to be brave?

And do baddies always win? “Gloriously funny”, says the publisher, which promises laugh-out-loud moments on every page.

A F STEADMAN

Catherine Doyle & Katherine Webber Twin Crowns Farshore, 12th May, £8.99, 9780755503643

BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH

DAVID WALLIAMS

Charlotte Eyre selects 25 of the most eagerly awaited children’s titles due for publication in the rest of the year, from Ant and Dec to Benjamin Zephaniah

Charlotte Eyre @charlotteleyre

A

dventure and bravery, even in troubled times, run through children’s and Young Adult publishing this year, perhaps reflecting the need for courage in order to face the world we live in. Rose and Wren, the heroines of Farshore’s big YA fantasy Twin Crowns, overturn a corrupt regime to regain their birthright, while the heroine of Tolá Okogwu’s Academy of the Sun leaves everything she knows behind to train at a school for children with superpowers in Nigeria. Books by Emma Carroll and Phil Earle are set in the Second World War and will

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11th March 2022

be big-hitters in June.

The turmoil of war-torn Syria is explored in one of Bloomsbury Children’s biggest books this year, Zoulfa Katouh’s As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow, but there is humour, too, with Sam Copeland and Jenny Pearson teaming up to launch their joint series, The Underpants of Chaos.

Publishing has in recent months focused attention on being more inclusive when it comes to disability and Cerrie Burnell’s Wilder than Midnight features a disabled heroine and is set to launch in April.

Finally some big names: David McKee is publishing the 30th title in the Elmer series and Robin Stevens will be back in the autumn with The Ministry of Unladylike Activity, a spin-off from her Murder Most Unladylike series.

The world needs cheering up right now, which is surely one of the reasons this uplifting YA fantasy— and first partnership between the two YA stars—was acquired in a major pre-empt deal.

Rose and Wren are twin sisters who have been separated at birth. When Wren comes to claim the crown, whose side is Rose on? Does she align herself with her sister or her protector, the shadowy Rathborne? Exciting, romantic and with genuine crossover appeal, Twin Crowns will appeal to readers aged 11 to 100.

A F Steadman Skandar and the Unicorn Thief Simon & Schuster Children’s, 28th April, £12.99, hb, 9781398512429

Steadman’s début fantasy about bloodthirsty unicorns is one of the most talked-about children’s and YA novels of the year. Teenager Skandar is selected to be a unicorn rider but things take a dangerous turn when a dark enemy steals the island’s most powerful unicorn. S&S acquired the manuscript—from Steadman’s agent and fellow children’s author Sam Copeland (see above)—in what is believed to be a world record-breaking deal for a début, and rights have sold in 38 territories. One scout said this is the book they are most intrigued about. Will it live up to the hype?

Sam Copeland & Jenny Pearson The Underpants of Chaos

Benjamin Zephaniah; Onyinye Iwu (illus) We Sang Across the Sea: The Empire Windrush and Me

Puffin, 2nd June, £7.99, pb, 9780241521069

Scholastic, 7th April, £6.99, pb, 9780702311161

Two of the funniest children’s authors writing today are joining forces on a new series about spy detective duo Tuchus and Topps. The first book kicks off as they investigate the “Shivers”, which are causing all kinds of problems, such

This glorious picture book tells the story of Mona Baptiste, who boarded “HMT Empire Windrush” to achieve her dreams of becoming a famous singer in the UK. Told in singsong verse, Zephaniah celebrates Baptiste’s courage and love of life, while

Iwu brings her to life in riotous colour. Scholastic commissioned this celebratory and uplifting tale following the success of Zephaniah’s awardwinning Windrush Child (2020), and is publishing ahead of Windrush Day in June.

Tolá Okogwu Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun Simon & Schuster Children’s, 9th June, £7.99, pb, 9781398505087

A young girl discovers her hair has psychokinetic powers in this exhilarating, pacy action novel, which is being developed into a Netflix production

by Will Smith and David Oyelowo. After finding out what her hair can do, Onyeka is taken to the Academy of the Sun, a school in Nigeria where children with superpowers are trained. Described as “Black Panther” meets Percy Jackson, there are shades of X-Men, too.

Hot Key, 4th May, £12.99, hb, 9781471412271

Cerrie Burnell Wilder than Midnight Puffin, 28th April, £7.99, pb, 9780241457160

Wilder than Midnight is set to be a major launch for Puffin this April. An inclusive and bold middlegrade fairytale adventure that features a disabled heroine, it was inspired by the author’s own experiences. A second novel, set in the same world, will be published in 2023.

E Lockhart’s 2014 thriller, We Were Liars, returned to the bestseller lists recently thanks to its popularity on TikTok. Bonnier says it has sold more than 600,000 copies through UK and international channels since its publication in 2014, but 255,000 of those were in the past two years because of BookTok. Family of Liars, a prequel, is “for the people who made the original book fly online”, Lockhart has said.

Sharna Jackson The Good Turn Puffin, 12th May, £7.99, pb, 9780241523599

E Lockhart Family of Liars

Jackson’s new mystery adventure middle-grade was inspired by Josephine Holloway, the founder of the first Girl Scout group for Black girls in America.

While working towards getting their Camping Badge, three friends find

evidence of people living in an abandoned factory.

Who are they? The Good Turn is The Bookseller’s children’s Book of the Month for May, described as “smart, bold and intricately plotted” by former children’s previewer Fiona Noble. The first in a threebook deal Puffin struck with Jackson.

Phil Earle While the Storm Rages Andersen Press, 2nd June, £7.99, pb, 9781839132056

Earle’s previous novel, When the Sky Falls, about a boy who works in a zoo during the Second World War, was the Times’ children’s book of the year for 2021. While the Storm Rages is not a sequel but is on similar territory: it is 1939 and a boy called Noah attempts to save a motley crew of animals by borrowing his father’s boat. Heartwarming, adventurous and inspired in part by Earle’s love for writers such as Katherine

Rundell and Robert Westall.

for over £1.3m through BookScan, and was by far the biggest-selling kids’ non-fiction title in the UK in 2021—and Rashford was named FutureBook Person of the Year, too.

His fiction début is certain to make a big impact.

Marcus Rashford with Alex Falase-Koya; Marta Kissi (illus) The Breakfast Club Adventures: The Beast Beyond the Fence Macmillan Children’s Books, 26th May, £6.99, pb, 9781529076622

David Walliams; Adam Stower (illus) The World’s Worst Pets

The Beast Beyond the Fence is the first in a series and the début fiction title by Manchester United and England footballer and campaigner Rashford, who signed a multi-book deal with Macmillan Children’s Books. You Are a Champion, written with Carl Anka, has sold in excess of 230,000 units

HarperCollins Children’s Books, 28th April, £14.99, 9780008305802

Walliams, of course, needs no introduction and this new release will undoubtedly soar to the top of the charts.

The World’s Worst Pets is his third picture book collaboration with Stower, and his sixth in the World’s Worst series.

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BOOKS

Bologna Preview Children’s Top Picks

the Boat’s lead title for 2022. McGowan’s Lark won the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal.

Ant McPartlin, Declan Donnelly, Dr Miquela Walsh; Katie Abey (illus) Propa Happy: Awesome Activities to Power Your Positivity Red Shed, 26th May, £8.99, pb, 9780008524340

National treasures Ant and Dec are making their entrance into the world of children’s books—with help from educational psychologist Walsh—with Propa Happy, an activity book of games, jokes and quizzes meant to promote and nurture emotional wellbeing. While it probably won’t be in the running for the Carnegie Medal, the authors’ popularity means Farshore won’t have to work too hard on getting it in front of parents. Author proceeds are going to support child protection charity NSPCC, which is a nice touch.

MALORIE BLACKMAN

Louie Stowell Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Taking the Blame

ROBIN STEVENS This outing contains 10 cautionary tales about animals, including a supersonic tortoise and a magician’s rabbit.

HarperCollins is promising a “gargantuan” marketing and PR campaign. Look out for Walliams’ latest middle-grade title too, in its usual late autumn slot.

Robin Stevens The Ministry of Unladylike Activity Puffin, 29th September, £12.99, hb, 9780241429860

Stevens, the author who kick-started the trend of murder mystery books for children, is back with a spin-off to her Murder Most Unladylike series.

This time May Wong, sister to original detective Hazel, decides to become a spy during the Second World War. With her friend Eric she masquerades as an evacuee to inveigle her way into Elysium Hall, where someone is passing information to Germany. Stevens has now sold nearly 1.1 million books through Nielsen BookScan.

Christine Pillainayagam Ellie Pillai is Brown

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Faber Children’s, 5th May, £8.99, 9780571366910

A coming-of-age romance novel about the titular Ellie, who is trying to navigate first love, strict parents, friendship and an over-dramatic personality. Début author Pillainayagam says it is the book she wishes she had when she was growing up, because it is about a brown girl straddling two cultures but never feeling she fits into either.

A big YA launch for Faber, which is releasing an original soundtrack ahead of publication. Copies of the book will feature QR codes alongside corresponding songs.

Emma Carroll Escape to the River Sea Macmillan, 9th June, £12.99, 9781529062700

Carroll’s title is a sequel to Eva Ibbotson’s classic novel Journey to the River

Sea, which was originally published in 2001, and it the second time MCB has had a new writer has take on the Ibbotson mantel, after Sibéal Pounder and illustrator Beatriz Castro’s Beyond Platfrom 13 was released in 2019. Carroll’s take features evacuees, Nazis, ancient giant sloths and journeys in the Amazon. It is a thrilling, engrossing adventure that can be enjoyed by Ibbotson fans or those who have never read her work. Carroll, who is often referred to as the queen of historical fiction for children, was the perfect choice of author.

Walker, 4th August, £7.99, 9781529501223

The first in Stowell’s Loki series—Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good—was released in February and the hilarious and intelligent diary-style story about the god of mischief being stuck on earth in the body of an 11-year-old has already sold 21,000 units to date; this should give great momentum to the follow-up, due in August.

autumn. McKee, who won the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, has sold 1.5 million books through Nielsen BookScan for £7.5m.

S F Said Tyger David Fickling Books, October, other details TBC

In Tyger, S F Said’s first novel in almost 10 years, a young boy called Adam, who lives in an alternate world where the British Empire is still a ruling force, finds a mysterious, mythical animal in a rubbish dump. David Fickling Books says this is the “long-awaited book of the decade” and is promoting a “very significant” promotional campaign, while Said claims it is the best book he has ever written.

Malorie Blackman Autobiography (title TBC) Merky Books, September, £16.99, 9781529118674

Malorie Blackman received 83 rejection letters while trying to become a children’s author. In this autobiography, she will reveal how she went from fledgling writer to becoming one of the most influential and beloved authors of today, along with the books that made her who she is. A must for Blackman fans, as well as aspiring authors and illustrators.

Elizabeth Laird; Mehrdokht Amini Stories of Peace and Kindness for a Better World Otter-Barry Books, 1st September, £16.99, hb, ISBN TBC

This gorgeous gift collection of stories from wartorn lands such as Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan focuses on peace and kindness. All sorts of themes could have been included but these are the qualities most sorely needed in these troubled times, says publisher Janetta Otter-Barry.

Mehrdrokht Amini is an Iranian-born illustrator who has lived in Britain since 2004.

Emma Roberts; Rae Ritchie, Tomislav Tomic (illus) The Secret Unicorn Club Magic Cat, 4th August, £20, hb, 9781419760204

Magic Cat is building a reputation for making unusual and beautifully illustrated titles, and The Secret Unicorn Club is no exception. It invites the reader to join a secret club of unicorn experts, who look after unicorns in the wild, and earn 10 badges to become an official Secret Unicorn Club member. The publisher will set up an actual club around this book when it is released in the summer.

Rachael David; Beatrix Hatcher (illus) I Am NOT a Prince

Anthony McGowan Dogs of the Deadlands

David McKee Elmer and the Gift

Zoulfa Katouh As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

Rock the Boat, 1st September, £12.99, hb, 9780861542741

Andersen Press, 1st September, £12.99, hb, 9781839131592

Bloomsbury Children’s, 15th September, £12.99, 9781526648525

McKee’s 30th Elmer book shows Elmer’s elderly relatives dealing with hearing loss and memory loss. It is unusual to see books for the very young explaining these issues and Andersen has established a threeyear-partnership with Alzheimer’s Research UK, which will release resources from the

A speculative YA novel set amid the Syrian revolution, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is a “stunningly beautiful” novel by début author Katouh, says Bloomsbury. Salama, a former pharmacy student who volunteers at a hospital in Homs, has to decide whether to leave. Will Kenan, the boy she was

Watership Down meets The Call of the Wild in McGowan’s new, Chernobyl-set adventure, which is about a girl who is forced to leave her dog behind when the reactors explode, and the animals that grow up in the shadow of the nuclear power plant. Beautifully written and emotionally devastating, this is Rock

supposed to meet to talk about marriage when war broke out, sway her decision? Rights have already sold in 12 territories and Little, Brown acquired US rights in a pre-empt.

Orchard Books, 26th May, £10.99 9781408362266

Publishing ahead of Pride month in June, I Am NOT a Prince is a charming celebration of being one’s true self. In fairytale land, young frogs wait to be turned into princes, but Hopp knows that isn’t for him. When he meets a new friend, Hopp undergoes a magical transformation that has a positive effect on everyone in the lagoon, not just himself. One of The Bookseller’s Editor’s Choices for May.

BOOKS

Bologna Preview Agents’ hotlists

A M Heath How to be More Hedgehog Anne-Marie Conway A bullied girl comes to terms with her stammer.

Agent Julia Churchill Rights UK (UCLan), Italy (Garzanti)

Kip of the Mountain Emma Gourlay A girl finds a mysterious egg and keeps it safe and secret. The egg hatches into a little monster, who becomes her best friend, but is then stolen.

Agent Julia Churchill Rights Australia (HarperCollins)

A Storm of Sisters Michelle Harrison The wintery fourth book in the bestselling A Pinch of Magic series, following the adventures of the Widdershins sisters.

Agent Julia Churchill Rights UK (Simon & Schuster Children’s)

The Boy with a Thousand Faces Roxane de Rouen A boy with an everchanging face, one that reflects whatever people want to see, journeys to the mysterious Silver City to find out who he really is.

Agent Julia Churchill

Curtis Brown

Agents’ Hotlists The books agencies are backing to fly at Bologna 16

11th March 2022

Charamba: L’Hotel pour Chats (The Hotel for Cats) Marie Pavlenko; Marie Voyelle (illus) A light and humorous tale for younger readers following a group of feline friends as they navigate the trials and tribulations of living in a cat hotel.

Agent Roxane Edouard Rights France (Flammarion Jeunesse)

The Wintrish Girl Melanie La’Brooy A “wild” middle-grade fantasy featuring at least three impossibly daring escapes, a dragon with a fear of unicorns and “some stylish execution wear”.

Agent Tara Wynne Rights ANZ (University of Queensland Press)

Where Seagulls Dare Anthony Horowitz With “thrills, spills, and jokes on every page”, the Alex Rider creator returns with his first Diamond Brothers detective novel in 15 years.

Agent Jonathan Lloyd Rights UK (Walker)

Le Jardin des Fees (The Fairy Garden) Audrey Alwett; Nora Moretti (illus) “Mysterious and beautifully” illustrated YA graphic story set in the year 1890, following 15-year-old Lucie, who is sent away to live with distant cousins in a run-down castle in Normandy.

Agent Roxane Edouard Rights France (Drakoo)

Empyreal Megan Scott A début supernatural YA fantasy set in a Cornish manor, featuring magic, romance and hidden secrets.

Agent Steph Thwaites Rights UK (Magpie), US (Inkyard), Spain (Editorial Hidra)

Darley Anderson A French Girl in New York Anna Adams “Fun and heartfelt” teen romance set between small-town France and New York City. “A modernday Cinderella story about big dreams, classical music, identity and love”.

Agent Mary Darby Rights French (Hachette Romans Jeunesse), Serbian (Vulkan), film and TV under option

The Haunting of Tyrese Walker J P Rose An 11-plus adventure début where dark and strange things start happening when 13-yearold Tyrese attracts the attention of a malevolent spirit while visiting his family in Jamaica.

Agent Clare Wallace Rights World English (Andersen Press)

The Day No One Woke Up Polly Ho-Yen The fifth middle-grade novel from the awardwinning Bristolian.

Eleven-year-old Ana and her ex-best friend Tio are the only people who wake up one morning, and they go on a mission to discover what happened.

Agent Clare Wallace Rights World English (Simon & Schuster Children’s), options in Iran, Russia

David Higham Associates The Notorious Scarlett and Browne Jonathan Stroud Set in a broken, future England “where gunfights and monsters collide”, this is the exciting second title in a fantasy teen series by the bestseller Stroud.

Agent Veronique Baxter Rights French (Gallimard), German (cbj), Italian (Mondadori), options in five more

The Amazing Mr Blunden Antonia Barber The late Barber’s classic ghost story with a time travelling twist, now the subject of a new Sky Original film starring Mark Gatiss, Simon Callow and Tamsin Greig.

Agent Caroline Walsh Rights Italian (Giunti)

Orla and the Wild Hunt Anna Hoghton An enchanting tale rooted in folklore, and a heartwarming story of family, love and loss.

Agent Caroline Walsh Rights German (DTViates)

DHH Literary Glow Up, Lara Bloom Dee Benson The first in a snort-laugh inducing teen diary series featuring 14-year-old Lara Bloom (the clumsiest teenager in the whole world) as she navigates school, friends, crushes and the daily war she must wage against her Afro hair.

Agent Hannah Sheppard

Most Likely To Sarah Bonner YA début for Bonner as a website takes off at Sophie’s school encouraging students to vote on which girl is most likely to do increasingly outrageous things. But as the most popular votes

start coming true, the questions turn to murder.

Agent Hannah Sheppard

Summer Under the Stars Kate Mallinder A follow-up to Mallinder’s Summer of No Regrets is a road-trip full of drama —”but also friendship, warmth and heart”.

A feel-good, up-lit teen read.

Agent Hannah Sheppard Rights UK & Commonwealth (Firefly)

Eve White Literary Agency Einstein the Penguin Iona Rangeley A stray penguin knocks at a family’s door holding a suitcase labelled “Einstein”; a warm, funny new series, “perfect for fans of Paddington”.

Agent Eve White Rights UK (HarperCollins Children’s), Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Greece, Georgia

Rock Paper Killers Alexia Mason When a group of Dublin teenagers arrive at a rural cliff-top college to cram for their final exams, little do they know that one of them will never make it home…

Agent Eve White Rights UK (Simon & Schuster Children’s)

My Heart and Other Breakables Alex Barclay Ellen Brown, 16 and a half, has recently lost her mum. In this hilarious and deeply moving diary, she records her most intimate feelings as she sets off on an international quest to find her father…

Agent Eve White Rights UK (HarperCollins Children’s)

The One Stop Shop: Blast Off! Tracey Corderoy Shopkeepers Wilbur and Fred help every customer find their perfect adventure in this fresh, funny new chapter book series celebrating the power of imagination.

Agent Eve White Rights UK (Little Tiger)

The Worst Day Ever!

James Bishop Comic SF which has alien Mylan Bletzleburger travelling the universe, collecting stories of people having a terrible time, in the hope of finding the worst day ever.

Agent Eve White Rights UK (Hachette Children’s)

The Good Literary Agency Quiet Storm Kimberly Whittam Tender, character-led middle-grade set in a Mancunian school. The title explores themes of confidence, friendship and anxiety.

Agent Gyamfia Osei Rights UK & Commonwealth (Usborne)

The Christmas Crash Course Kai Spellmeier Set in a quirky town, this queer YA romance explores themes of first love, sexuality and toxic masculinity.

Agent Gyamfia Osei

Hardman & Swainson The Double Trouble Society Carrie Hope Fletcher “Spell-binding” middlegrade mystery from Hope Fletcher, mixing together two best friends, a witch’s curse and a haunted house.

Agent Hannah Ferguson Rights World English (Puffin)

Ellie Pillai is Brown Christine Pillainayagam A spectacularly funny coming-of-age début YA novel about exploring identity, friendship and family, “all about learning to dance to your own beat”.

Agent Thérèse Coen Rights UK & Commonwealth (Faber)

Ki Agency When the Dragon Falls Amber Chen “Iron Widow meets Red Rising” in this “silkpunk” YA/crossover fantasy by a rising star of Wattpad.

Agent Anne C Perry

TheBookseller.com

LBA The Boy, the Clock and the North Star Charlotte Haptie Gill, the son of a film star, is about to find out about the Midnight Market, “the most secret, strange and dangerous place in the world”.

Agent Louise Lamont

How I Became a Dog Called Midnight Ben Miller George has always wanted to know what it would be like to be a dog, and one enchanted fountain later, he gets his wish—”with chaotic and hilarious results”.

Agent Luigi Bonomi Rights UK (Simon & Schuster)

Jessie Leys and the Leash of Hawks Abiy Orr As the new maid in the Swanson household, Jessie knows she should mind her own business, but when you have a nose for trouble and an itch to know things, it’s impossible not to get tangled up in a deadly ring of spies and princes.

Agent Louise Lamont

Three Girls Katie Clapham Minnie, Lena and Alice are not friends—but when they are thrown together for a school photo, they may just prove the best friends they’ve never had.

Agent Louise Lamont Rights UK (UCLan), German (Carlsen)

Girl in Real Life Tamsin Winter Eva has been the subject of her parents’ wildly successful YouTube channel ever since she was born, but when a humiliating “period party” post goes viral, Eva decides enough is enough.

Agent Luigi Bonomi Rights UK (Usborne)

Madeleine Milburn The Dollcasters Jordan Lees The first in a new middle-grade fantasy series in which Northern Lights meets A Monster Calls, from début author

Lees. “A celebration of friendship, daring and kindness, set in a richly imagined, surprising world.”

Agent Chloe Seager Rights World (Puffin)

The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of Lottie Brooks Katie Kirby Second in Kirby’s Lottie Brooks series, in which a lead role in the spring musical gives Lottie a chance to dazzle her mega-crush Daniel… with her talent as a singing crab.

Agent Chloe Seager Rights UK & Commonwealth (Puffin), Czech (Fragment), Dutch (Gottmer), Estonian (Eesti Raamat), French (Gallimard), German (Atrium), Italian (Salani), Polish (Znak), EU Portuguese (Presenca), Russian (MIF), Slovak (Albatros), Spanish (Duomo)

Heart’s Fire Alexia Malouf A dual point of view romantic fantasy from début author Malouf, in which Princess Amira is caught between head and heart, and must choose either peace in her kingdom or her “oncein-a-lifetime magic soul connection”.

Agent Chloe Seager

Tag, You’re Dead Kathryn Foxfield The newest from bestselling YA author Foxfield is an “entertaining, high-octane and read-in-a-singlesitting thriller” about a live-streamed, city-wide game of tag.

Agent Chloe Seager Rights UK & Commonwealth (Scholastic), options in Czechia, Italy and Russia

The King is Dead Ben Dean Dean’s “unputdownable” Black LGBTQ+ YA thriller is set against the backdrop of a reimagined royal family.

Agent Chloe Seager Rights UK & Commonwealth (Simon & Schuster)

Marjacq Scripts The Funny Life of Football James Campbell

Silly stories, partly true facts and hilarious pictures, just in time for the World Cup. Agent Diana Beaumont Rights World (Bloomsbury), Spanish (Anaya)

The Gurgle Monster Gemma Fowler Picture book in which a house makes strange noises at night—but what sounds like a monster is not scary at all.

Agent Sandra Sawicka

Mina and the Slayers Amy McCaw A Halloween-themed follow-up to Waterstones Children Book of the Year-longlisted McCaw. Agent Sandra Sawicka Rights World English (UCLan)

The Asparagus Bunch Jessica Scott-Whyte A “hilarious” story for ages 10-plus about being different: “where attitude not platitude is welcome”.

Agent Catherine Pellegrino Rights World (Welbeck Flame)

PFD Fatima and the Invisible Necklace Laila Rifaat Middle-grade fantasy in which 11-year-old Fatima discovers that her late parents belonged to a secret time-travelling society. She tries out for time travel academy the Infinitum, but all is not well…

Agent Lucy Irvine

Lottie Parton is a Bad Friend Ruby Granger YA début from “studytuber” influencer Granger, in which overachieving straight-A student Lottie’s life starts to unravel when another girl goes missing.

“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder meets Am I Normal Yet?” Agent Lucy Irvine

The Dangerous Life of Ophelia Bottom Susie Bower Born into the Bottom family of travelling actors, Ophelia longs to be like other girls. But when the troupe stops in the too-perfect seaside town

of Stopford, the mysteries start piling up: who is threatening the Bottoms?

And who is dumping plastic junk in the ocean?

Agent Silvia Molteni Rights UK & Commonwealth (Pushkin)

The Rollercoaster Boy Lisa Thompson Thompson’s latest middlegrade is “The Grand Budapest Hotel” meets “Paddington 2” as in the middle of the night Todd and Laurie’s bipolar dad bundles them into the car to the Paradise Hotel, which he says is a luxurious mansion. It turns out to be a run-down dump which holds a mystery that must be solved.

Agent Adam Gauntlett Rights UK & Commonwealth (Scholastic)

The Secrets Act Alison Weatherby “Nail-biting” YA mystery set in Bletchley Park, where messenger girl Pearl and code-breaker Ellen become friends and fall for the wrong boys.

But then tragedy strikes and there is a spy in their midst: can they unmask the traitor before it is too late?

Agent Lucy Irvine Rights World English (Chicken House)

RCW Where the Light Goes Sara Barnard The 2019 YA Book Prize winner’s fourth novel explores grief and the dark side of fame. Emmy, who adores her pop star older sister Lizzie, is devastated when Lizzie takes her own life.

Agent Claire Wilson Rights UK (Walker)

Twin Crowns Catherine Doyle & Katherine Webber First in a YA duology from the bestselling authors, a high-stakes fantasy rom-com about twin princesses separated at birth who are now vying for the crown.

Agent Claire Wilson Rights UK (Farshore), US (HarperCollins), Germany (Heyne), Italy (Mondadori), France (Bayard) and seven others

The Stone Callers Ross Montgomery The two-time Costa shortlistee’s newest has Evie recruited into a secret magical organisation.

With evil returning to the land, Evie finds she is the only one who can stop it.

Agent Claire Wilson Rights UK (Walker)

The Shaw Agency The World Between the Rain Susan Cahill Middle-grade début fantasy inspired by Celtic mythology, celebrating the positivity of darkness.

Agent Kate Shaw

Anisha Accidental Detective: Holiday Adventure Serena Patel; Emma McCann (illus) The fifth in this awardwinning middle-grade series has Anisha’s family on a very unlikely holiday when they discover an amusement park’s mascot—Delilah the Duck—has been destroyed.

Agent Kate Shaw Rights UK & Commonwealth (Usborne)

Honesty & Lies Eloise Williams The Welsh Children’s Laureate’s “gripping” historical middle-grade novel about two 12-yearold servant girls—one from London, one from Wales—who are in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Agent Kate Shaw Rights UK & Commonwealth (Firefly)

Twice Upon a Time Isabel Thomas The award-winning science writer’s non-fiction title for those aged seven and over explores the fascinating world of convergent evolution.

Agent Kate Shaw

The Soho Agency Clarice Bean: Untitled Book Eight Lauren Child Child’s classic character returns in a new adventure for 2022.

Agent Philippa Milnes-Smith Rights World (HarperCollins Children’s)

17

Hedgewitch Skye McKenna The first in a five-book middle-grade fantasy series set in the “shadowy magic of faerie” by début author McKenna. “Perfect for fans of Nevermoor, The Worst Witch and The Wizards of Once”.

Agent Philippa Milnes-Smith Rights UK & Commonwealth excluding Canada (Welbeck), Brazil, Czechia, Slovakia

Wonderful You/ Your Yes and Your No Kate Jane Neal Two picture books which communicate and celebrate the power and unique qualities of every individual, by the successful creator of Words and Your Heart.

Agent Philippa Milnes-Smith Rights North America and ANZ (Feiwel and Friends)

Utterly Dark Philip Reeve New fantasy trilogy from the Mortal Engines creator, centring on the Dark family, who have been Watchers of the remote island of Wildsea for centuries.

Then the current Watcher mysteriously drowns and young Utterly Dark takes over, and soon she starts to discover her connection with the forces which dwell in the deep ocean.

Agent Philippa Milnes-Smith Rights World (David Fickling), translation sold to France, Holland, Poland

Swarm Enemy Tim Peake & Steve Cole Astronaut Peake and bestselling author Cole’s second in the Swarm series, rooted in cuttingedge space-age science and technology.

Agent Philippa Milnes-Smith Rights World (Hodder Children’s), translation sold to Germany

United Agents The Imagination Chamber Philip Pullman A companion title to Pullman’s “Lyra universe”, with a collection of scenes from the His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust series.

Agent Caradoc King

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11th March 2022

Bologna Preview Agents’ hotlists

Rights UK (Scholastic), most translation rights under option

The Silver Chain Jion Sheibani “Highly important” first YA novel from Sheibani about mental health struggles and the solace we find in music and rhythm, friendship, family and honesty.

© Oskar Proctor

BOOKS

Agent Megan Carroll Rights World English (Puffin)

Agent Emily Talbot Rights UK (Hot Key)

Dreaming by Starlight Siobhan Curham An “inspirational, heartwarming” novel, the first in a series for girls aged 10-plus, about “the power of friendship and making your dreams come true”.

LAUREN CHILD

Agent Jane Willis Rights UK (Walker)

Ambrose Follows His Nose Dick King-Smith & Josie Rogers; Stephanie Laberis (illus) A recently discovered story—about the titular rabbit with an extraordinary sense of smell—by King-Smith, completed by his greatgranddaughter Rogers and published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s birth.

Incredipedia Mat Ricardo A guide book of skills, tricks and hacks that will help you be “cooler, funnier, smarter, happier and more incredible” from the comedian, magician and variety performer.

Agent James Willis

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

Agent Jane Willis (for Bog Eyed Books) Rights UK (Bog Eyed), French (Editions Caurette)

The Angel of Grimsby Natasha Holmes A magical coming-of-age middle-grade novel “with hints of Skellig”. Thirteenyear-old Georgie, from Grimsby, is pulled into a supernatural realm—but is it where she truly belongs?

Agent Megan Carroll

The Wylie Agency Bitter Akwaeke Emezi From National Book Award finalist Emezi comes a companion novel to the critically acclaimed Pet, exploring both the importance and cost of social revolution— and how youth lead the way.

Watson, Little The Boy Who Rescued a Rainbow Corrina Campbell Author/illustrator Campbell’s second picture book is a story about the meaning of being strong, brave and fearless which aims to help children engage and talk about feelings of love and loss.

Agent Rachel Richardson (on behalf of Little Door) Rights World (Little Door)

Adam Wins the Internet Adam B First of two “laugh-outloud” middle-grade novels from the TV presenter and YouTuber about an introverted 12-year-old (Adam) who lives with his single mum and little brother. Adam wants to be popular, but learns that being loved online is really not the most important thing.

Agent James Willis Rights World English (Bloomsbury)

Agent Caradoc Kimg Rights UK (PRH Children’s)

Walkies!

David Ziggy Greene The first picture book by the Private Eye cartoonist, full of “running, sniffing, barking, splashing, tangling and, er... weeing”, which every dog lover will recognise.

The Whisperling Hayley Hoskins First in a middle-grade “gothic girl power” series, set in Victorian Bristol and featuring 12-yearold Peggy, who as a “whisperling” can speak to the dead, and must use her powers to save her friend, who has been accused of murder.

Agent Jacqueline Ko Rights US (Random House), UK (Faber), Poland (Proszynski)

PHILIP PULLMAN

The Adventures in Time Dominic Sandbrook

A non-fiction children’s series from the historian and podcaster: the first five titles are on the Second World War, the wives of Henry VIII, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and the Vikings.

Agent James Pullen Rights UK (Particular), Germany (Penguin Junior), Hungary (Open Book), Romania (Polirom), China (Beijing Imaginist), Korea (Will Books)

Rene & Glumfoot Mikey Please An original picture book project from the co-creator of Oscarnominated Netflix animation “Robin Robin”.

Agent Luke Ingram

The Encyclopaedia of Gardening for Children Jamaica Kincaid & Kara Walker An illustrated encyclopaedia of plant history and nomenclature, drawing in the intersections of the plant world with history, race, mythology, colonial appropriation and independence.

Agent Jeffrey Posternak Rights US (FSG), UK (Picador)

Mama’s Sleeping Scarf Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writing as Nwa Grace-James The first original children’s book from the Women’s Prize for Fiction winner, envisioned as a bedtime story to be read to children younger than five years old.

Agent Sarah Chalfant Rights UK (HarperCollins Children’s), US (Knopf), Canada (Puffin), Nigeria (Narrative Landscape), Brazil (Companhia das Letras), Norway (Gyldendal)

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