FICTION & CRIME

JAY RAYNER is an awardwinning writer, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known as the restaurant critic for the Observer. He is a regular on British television, where he is familiar as a judge on MasterChef and, since 2012, he has been the chair of BBC Radio 4’s food panel show The Kitchen Cabinet. He likes pig.

02/09/2021 PB | 9781783352395 | 144pp | £5.00 Ebook | 9781783352401 World All Languages

John Arandhara ©

Chewing the Fat

Tasting notes from a greedy life Jay Rayner

A droolworthy collection of foody columns from a man

with a gargantuan appetite and glorious humour. Why are gravy stains on your shirt at the dinner table to be admired? Does bacon improve everything? And is gin really the devil’s work? In this rollicking collection of his hilarious columns, the award-winning writer and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner answers these vital questions and many, many more. They are glorious dispatches, seasoned in equal measure with both enthusiasm and bile, from decades at the very frontline of eating.

Praise for Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights: ‘Pure, unfettered joy . . . Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights is the perfect book for anyone who loves their food.’ Stylist

Being You Anil Seth

This radical theory of consciousness challenges our understanding of humanity itself.

Consciousness is the great unsolved mystery in our scientific understanding of the brain. Somewhere, somehow, inscribed in the brain is everything that makes you you. But how do we grasp what happens in the brain to turn mere electrical impulses into the vast range of perceptions, thoughts and emotions we feel? Anil Seth charts the developments in our understanding of consciousness, revealing radical breakthroughs that transform the way we think about the self. Drawing on original research and interdisciplinary collaborations, Being You puts forward a revolutionary framework of how we experience the world and our place within it.

‘Anil Seth thinks clearly and sharply on one of the hardest problems of science and philosophy, cutting through the weeds with a scientist’s mind and a storyteller’s skill.’ Adam Rutherford ANIL SETH is a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness science. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex and his writing has appeared in New Scientist, the Guardian and BBC magazine. @anilkseth

02/09/2021 HB | 9780571337705 | 320pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571337736 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

JOHN McGAHERN was born in Dublin in 1934. He was the author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories and the recipient of numerous awards and honours.

FRANK SHOVLIN is Professor of Irish Literature in English at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. He is working on the authorised biography of John McGahern.

02/09/2021 HB | 9780571326662 | 800pp | £30.00 Ebook | 9780571326679 World All Languages

The Letters of John McGahern

Edited by Frank Shovlin

The collected letters of John McGahern, ‘arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett’. (Guardian)

Consistently hailed as one of Ireland’s finest writers, the correspondence of John McGahern is an essential part of discovering and appreciating his literary lineage. This volume collects some of the witty, profound and unfailingly brilliant letters that he exchanged over the course of a well-travelled life with family, friends and literary luminaries such as Seamus Heaney, Colm Tóibín and Paul Muldoon. Meticulously edited with dedicated attention to the links within McGahern’s body of work, The Letters of John McGahern is one of the major contributions to the study of Irish and British literature of the past thirty years, acting not just as a crucial insight into the life and works of a much-revered writer – but also a history of post-war Irish, British and American literary life.

‘One of the finest writers of the twentieth century.’ Hermione Lee

COVER SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Nina Simone’s Gum

Warren Ellis

From the award-winning musician and composer, the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum.

In 1999, Nina Simone performed at Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage and took her used chewing gum. It’s remained with him ever since: a sacred totem, his creative muse. Twenty years later, worrying the gum would be damaged in transit to Nick Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibition, Warren decided to have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted. Nina Simone’s Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things and on experiences. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.

‘Warren has turned this memento, snatched from his idol’s piano in a moment of rapture, into a genuine religious artefact.’ Nick Cave WARREN ELLIS is an Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer, most famous for his work as collaborator and bandmate of Nick Cave, in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman and as a member of Dirty Three. Both solo and alongside Nick, he is also a multi-awardwinning film composer.

02/09/2021 HB | 9780571365623 | 208pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571365647 World All Languages

JUSTINE PICARDIE is the contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar. She has been a journalist for the Sunday Times, a columnist for the Telegraph, editor of the Observer magazine and features director of Vogue. She is the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed memoir If the Spirit Moves You and the bestselling Coco Chanel.

09/09/2021 HB | 9780571356522 | 352pp | £25.00 Ebook | 9780571356546 UK C/Wealth + Can, EU

Miss Dior

A Story of Courage and Couture Justine Picardie

The untold story of a resistance hero that illuminates ideas of female strength and beauty and the work of one of the world’s most iconic designers.

Miss Dior paints a portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the designer Christian Dior: his beloved younger sister, Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume. Picardie’s journey takes her to Occupied Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistance – until she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the German concentration camp of Ravensbrück. On release, barely recognisable to her brother, Catherine retreated into anonymity, ending her life caring for the roses that make up her signature scent. Picardie’s exploration of how a nation silenced this wartime trauma leads her deep into the secrets of her own family’s history, and the result is unforgettable. Fully illustrated, including exclusive images from the Dior archives.

Alicia Canter ©

The Joy of Small Things Hannah Jane Parkinson

Drawn from the successful Guardian column, these everyday exultations and inspirations will get you through dismal days.

Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring the small pleasures of life, whether she is revelling in a fluffy dressing gown (‘like bathing in marshmallow’), finding calm in solo cinema trips, noticing the personalities of fonts (‘you’ll never see Comic Sans on a funeral notice’), celebrating the pocket or feeling no guilt calling time on a book she isn’t enjoying. Parkinson’s funny and tender observations – selected from her immensely successful Guardian column – remind us of the everyday pleasures life has to offer. This book is a balm for anyone having an unsteady time.

‘A real soul-salve of a collection: beautifully written and full of gentle insight and warm wit. Keep it near you to dip into whenever you need to feel better about the world. A notso-small joy in itself.’ Nigella Lawson HANNAH JANE PARKINSON is a comment and features journalist for the Guardian and Observer. She writes on politics, the arts, football and mental health. @ladyhaja

07/10/2021 HB | 9781783352357 | 160pp | £9.99 Ebook | 9781783352371 World All Languages

Writer, broadcaster and cultural critic PAUL MORLEY has written about music, art and entertainment since the 1970s. The author of numerous books, his most recent publications are Nothing, Piece by Piece, The North, Earthbound, the Sunday Times-bestselling The Age of Bowie, The Awfully Big Adventure and A Sound Mind.

07/10/2021 HB | 9780571252497 | 365pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571255351 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

Kevin Cummins ©

From Manchester with Love

The Life and Times of Tony Wilson AKA Anthony H. Wilson Paul Morley

The legendary music writer’s genre-defying biography of the Factory Records co-founder and Manchester icon.

From Manchester with Love is the life, times, truth and lies of Tony Wilson: committed northerner, loudmouth, enthusiast, reporter, wind-up merchant, broadcasting revolutionary, documentary maker, music mogul, down-to-earth intellectual, fearless, flamboyant, affectionate, argumentative, foppish, impatient, stoner, trailblazer, critic, jealous, promiscuous, nonchalant, ruthless, show off, chaotic strategist, dynamic archivist, dodgy idealist, minor celebrity, comrade, scandal monger, flawed prophet, ironic propagandist, ecstatic nihilist, arch-English romantic, the bombastic bloody minded grudgeholding self-made man walking the tightrope between art and commercialism, atheism and the Catholic tradition, highbrow pretensions and lowbrow desires, the wildness of Joy Division and the Happy Mondays and the future imaginings of a mythedup Madchester.

Eruption

Paul Brannigan

Published to mark the first anniversary of this death, a searching, affectionate and in-depth look at the life and legends of Eddie Van Halen.

Arriving in California as children in the early 1960s, Edward Van Halen and his brother Alex were ripe for the coming musical revolution. Minds blown by Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend, the brothers formed a band of their own. Van Halen set a new bar for the rock’n’roll lifestyle and created an entirely new sound. They became the quintessential Californian band of the 1980s. But Eddie’s struggles played out in public: substance abuse, difficult relationships and a longrunning battle with cancer. In Eruption, Paul Brannigan reaches beyond the boundaries of a conventional rock biography to explore the cultural, political and social contexts that shaped an icon while turning up the volume on a life lived in the fast lane.

Praise for Birth School Metallica Death: ‘Big and impressive and, like its subject, irresistible.’ Sunday Times A former editor of Kerrang!, PAUL BRANNIGAN is the author of the bestseller This Is a Call: The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl and the co-author of the two-volume Metallica history, Birth School Metallica Death and Into the Black.

07/10/2021 HB | 9780571311453 | 400pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571311484 UK C/Wealth + Can, EU

PAUL AUSTER is the bestselling author of the New York Trilogy, The Invention of Solitude, Mr Vertigo, The Book of Illusions and Sunset Park, among many other works. His most recent novel, 4 3 2 1, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

07/10/2021 HB | 9780571353354 | 992pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571353378 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU

COVER TO COME

Burning Boy

Notes on Stephen Crane Paul Auster

One of the great American writers of our time examines the life and work of an American genius of an earlier era.

American writer Stephen Crane died in 1900 at the age of twenty-eight. In his short, intense life, this burning boy wrote a masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, other novels, short stories and dispatches from the front of two wars. His adventurous life took him to the Wild West, Mexico, then to Cuba during the Spanish American War – dodging bullets, which killed those around him, and suffering shipwreck on his way home. His last eighteen months were spent in Britain, where he became a close friend of Joseph Conrad. Auster’s intention is to restore Crane to the pantheon of modernist twentieth-century authors such as Conrad. Through Auster’s skill as a novelist, Crane leaps off the page and into the reader’s heart.

Looking for Trouble

Virginia Cowles

This sensational 1941 memoir by a trailblazing war correspondent brings wartime Europe vividly to life, championed by Christina Lamb.

Looking for Trouble sees the young Virginia Cowles doing just that. As one of the first women war correspondents, she reported on the frontline of wartime Europe – always in the right place at the right time. She was in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, flinging off her heels under shellfire; Prague for the Munich crisis; Italy to interview the ‘dapper’ Mussolini; Berlin when Germany invaded Poland (after taking tea with Hitler); Helsinki as the Russians threatened; Paris as the Germans approached; London in the Blitz . . . A tribute to Cowles’s storytelling magic and bravery in questing for the truth, her incredible testimony makes you an eyewitness to history as you have never experienced it before.

‘Excellent . . . Hard to put down.’ Caroline Moorehead ‘An extraordinary first-hand account.’ Anne Sebba VIRGINIA COWLES was born in Vermont in 1910. She became a roving war correspondent for the Sunday Times, reporting from Civil War Spain, wartime Europe and North Africa. She later wrote a play with Martha Gellhorn and numerous biographies. Cowles was killed in a car accident in 1983.

07/10/2021 HB | 9780571367542 | 480pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571280872 World English Language

RODERICK BEATON is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London. He is a three-time winner of the Runciman Award and his books have been shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Cundill History Prize.

04/11/2021 HB | 9780571353569 | 480pp | £25.00 Ebook | 9780571353583 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

The Greeks

Roderick Beaton

The epic, fascinating history of one of the world’s great cultures.

The Greeks: A Global History is the story of a culture that has contributed more than any other to the way we live today. The way we think, the way we learn, how we are entertained and how we are governed – all of this finds its roots in a small group of people who first emerged on the south-eastern edge of Europe over three thousand years ago. Covering the entire globe and four millennia, this enrapturing story shows how one of the world’s most celebrated cultures has been continuously forged by currents of history, migration and resource crises, redefining itself through interaction with many diverse peoples. In today’s age of rising nationalism, this epic, sweeping history becomes crucial reading.

Praise for Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation: ‘The best history of Greece around . . . Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life.’ Victoria Hislop

Colin McPherson (Getty Images) ©

Allegorizings

Jan Morris

Published one year on from her death, Jan Morris’s Allegorizings is the final despatch from one of the greatest chroniclers of the twentieth century.

Almost nothing in life is only what it seems . . . Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Crisis, the Eichmann trial, the Cuban Revolution and so much more. Now, in Allegorizings, published posthumously as was her wish, Morris looks back over some of the key moments of her life. From her final travels to the USA and across Europe to later journeys on her beloved trains and ships, from the deaths of her old friends Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the enduring relationships in her own life and reflections on identity and nations, it bears testimony to her uniquely kind and inquisitive take on the world.

‘She was one of the most extraordinary, inspiring, kindest people I ever had the luck to meet. Please read her.’ Robert Macfarlane JAN MORRIS was born in 1926, of a Welsh father and an English mother. She spent the last years of her life with her partner Elizabeth Morris in the top left-hand corner of Wales. Her books include Coronation Everest, Venice, the Pax Britannica trilogy and Conundrum. She was also the author of six books about cities and countries, two autobiographical books, several volumes of collected travel essays and the unclassifiable Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere.

04/11/2021 HB | 9780571234134 | 204pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571370696 UK C/Wealth + Can, EU