Blog
Morganville Residents – competition winners announced
28 February, 2014
Rachel Caine fans do you still have your Morganville I.D. on your person at all times? Watch out, Amelie might be planning spot checks, but you didn’t hear that from us. Anyway, as well as giving you some slight protection from getting it, err, in the neck from the Founder, these Morganville I.D. cards were […]
The Other Side of the Story
27 February, 2014
At the weekend I had some friends visiting so we played tourists and ventured out to see Wicked, the West End musical. While I’ve seen quite a few plays, this was my first musical and I wasn’t disappointed. The two female leads had incredible voices and their characters were quite hilarious as polar opposites. Acting […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Top That!
26 February, 2014
Yesterday finished covers for our second book with Fiona McIntosh, The French Promise, arrived from the printers. Doesn’t it look gorgeous? The French Promise follows on from the story of The Lavender Keeper, returning to the characters of Luc and Lisette as they try to put their demons to rest in the years following the […]
The Theme Park’s Afoot!
25 February, 2014
Fans of 221b Baker Street resident Sherlock Holmes are in for a treat or a shock depending on your perspective. The deerstalker-wearing detective is about to get the same kind of treatment that has so far been reserved for that most magical (and bankable) literary hero Harry Potter: a theme park. Yes, coming soon to […]
Documentaries: Part 2
24 February, 2014
I said last week that I would let you know my thoughts on the Gore Vidal documentary: Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia that I was seeing, courtesy of DocHouse. So, fulfilling my promise I would like to say that I am reeeeling from Thursday’s screening at the ICA and have come away from […]
The Wild Girl competitions
21 February, 2014
Going up around the London Underground right now are some beautiful posters. Well, I would say that as they feature Kate Forsyth’s fairy tale-inspired books Bitter Greens and The Wild Girl. To celebrate the release of The Wild Girl in paperback, we’re running a competition to win a very swish Champagne spa day for two […]
Thought Criminals welcome
20 February, 2014
Do you feel the itchy glare of CCTV cameras as you walk down the street? Do you wonder, post-Snowden, who else might be reading your emails and tweets? For anyone who enjoys a little Orwellian paranoia, there’s a new stage production for one of the earliest and possibly best dystopian novels out there: 1984. And […]
Dress Envy
19 February, 2014
This morning the jackets for Mary Nichols’ A Different World arrived from the printers: The woman holding her hat and looking up instantly makes me think of her searching the sky for planes – such a simple image that manages to convey quite a lot about the book. Not only is it a great image, but […]
Jane Eyre: The Book that Just Keeps Giving
18 February, 2014
How many of you had to study the same text at school year in year out? I suppose English teachers fall back on the classics for a reason. But Jane Eyre was amongst those that I never grew tired of studying and similarly, as an adult, I love watching a brand new TV/film production when […]
A night of storytelling in swish surroundings
17 February, 2014
I do like putting on an audiobook from time to time, although it isn’t my go-to reading format. But it’s rare these days that storytelling is an event, a night out, which is why the mention in a weekend paper of Pin Drop Studio jumped out at me. The Pin Drop Studio hosts authors and […]
Are you lying comfortably? Then I’ll begin…
14 February, 2014
I was astounded the other week to learn that one of my favourite childhood reads: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory turns a whopping fifty years old this year. Isn’t it wearing well, isn’t it? I do hope that copies of Roald Dahl’s classic are having surreptitious / riotous after-hours parties on bookshelves around the world. […]
A Literary Memory Lane
13 February, 2014
Last week I became an auntie for the very first time to a beautiful little girl called Rowan. With a new member of the family comes lots of things to look forward to: cute baby clothing, learning first words, birthdays and many more. But something I’m really looking forward to is story time. I can’t […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Under the Covers
12 February, 2014
In April we have a title coming out that is sure to put a little ‘spring’ in your step: Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries. The author is Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the first person to hold the title of Central Park Administrator in New York who now writes history of landscape design […]
A fine performance from Fiennes
11 February, 2014
Ralph Fiennes has a talent for giving me to heebie-geebies. I recall seeing him in The English Patient (ouch – those burns), he was the creepy and conflicted Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, and let us not forget his turn as the nasally challenged He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But he might be about to break his freaking me […]
The Wonderful World of Documentary
10 February, 2014
Whilst ploughing my way through most of this years’ film awards-season offerings, I’ve also been enjoying some fantastic documentaries lately. Last weekend I was invited to Open City Docs Fest’s ‘History of Documentary Weekend’, by a friend (who is way more in the know about these things). We headed to UCL for a screening of […]
With the benefit of hindsight…
7 February, 2014
What do The Bell Jar and Where the Wild Things Are have in common? Very different books of course, but they were both published in 1963. Literary web magazine and blog Bookslut have decided to step in and right the wrongs of book awards past, creating the Daphnes or ‘The Corrections‘, choosing the best book […]
National Storytelling Week
6 February, 2014
We’re in the midst of the fourteenth annual National Storytelling Week. As a publisher it’s not surprising that this initiative to promote the oldest artform appeals to us here at A&B. Why not see if there’s an event happening near you, like Stories by Candlelight at the Polar Museum, Cambridge tomorrow (Friday) or the Anti-Valentine […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Changing Covers
5 February, 2014
For a while now I’ve had my eye on The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. I saw the eye-catching hardback in Waterstones and immediately picked it up. Something about the title, together with the woman on the front, made me think of the 1920s Jazz age. And I wasn’t far off. Set in New York […]
The Shelf Help Reading List
4 February, 2014
I recently finished The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz – a book that has been following me everywhere for the past month or so. I kept seeing giant posters on the Underground and wondering what it was about. Grosz has been a psychologist for the past twenty-five years, over 50,000 hours spent listening and responding to […]
For the Love of Libraries
3 February, 2014
Last Friday, a giant book-shaped bed, set within a night-time dreamscape, rose up as the centrepiece of the first exhibition to take place at Peckham Platform (next door to the iconic Peckham library). Bookbed, by local artist Ruth Beale, explores learning, imagination and the book-as-symbol alongside current thinking in culture, education and public space. As […]
Shopping for the bear necessities…
31 January, 2014
We’ve got our fingers on the pulse, we’re ahead of the curve here at A&B. I would like to draw your attention to a blog I posted this time last year in which I urged you to check out the sporadic posts over at Fiction to Fashion. Julie, the brain behind the site, works for […]