Blog
The next books on the To Be Read list…
10 September, 2012
Currently I find myself in the rare situation of having nothing to read. I usually have a stack of unread books at home which I gradually deplete until the next stack arrives with my birthday, Christmas, or an unfortunate spending splurge in a bookshop. My most recent buys were Anna Karenina and On Chesil Beach, […]
Friday Shot of the Day
7 September, 2012
Given that almost everyone owns a mobile phone these days, public phone booths will soon become obsolete. But I think we’ve already found a perfect use for them. Leave them be and turn them into public bookswap libraries. It’s already started you know… Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager
The little things that inspire an author…
6 September, 2012
“How did you come up with that idea?”, “Is your main character based on anyone you know?”, “Why did you pick that setting?”. These are common questions authors get asked. And whilst, of course, a novel is for the most part the result of an author’s imagination, the building blocks often begin with little snippets of […]
Wednesday Cover Story: An Agatha Christie Moment
5 September, 2012
Stylist has alerted us to the fact that it is Agatha Christie week in Devon from the 9-16th September and has featured a nice article about her iconic cover art. Cover art being a daily discussion in the A&B office (depending on how it’s going the discussion can either end in much despair or a […]
Reaching a reader…98 years late
4 September, 2012
Got an idea? Want to ask a question? Today it only takes a few keystrokes into Twitter, Facebook or an email to reach a mind-boggling number of people on the other side of the world instantly. Which is probably why I like this story about a record-breaking message in a bottle so much. Stumbling upon […]
Should books be given age restrictions?
3 September, 2012
A recent article on the BBC website made me consider something I’d never really thought about before: should books have age certificates? The Fifty-Shades phenomenon means that shops are now filled to the brim with adult-content books – in fact, they’re all being made as visible as possible: in pride of place on display tables, […]
How to mark this last day of summer
31 August, 2012
There you have it. Today is the end of the summer. There’s a new chill in the air, we’re past the last bank holiday of the year (no more quick summer escapes) and it’s the 31st August so you can’t really argue the point. So, how might you mark this last day of summer? 1. […]
More than just a simple read…
30 August, 2012
Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin… I’m cool auntie Lesley, don’t you know? Well, my two-year-old niece hasn’t officially given me that title, and it may now be in doubt, but I’m hoping that it’s only a matter of time. When she visited over the bank holiday weekend I was deluded enough to think […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Word on the street about Devoured cover
29 August, 2012
We’ve said this a million times over how lovely it is to hear from our readers who take the time to tell us how much they enjoyed one of our books. And whilst the focus is usually the content of the book, it’s a thrill when we get told how much they love the packaging […]
Food inspired by books…
28 August, 2012
This week in my hunt for interesting book-related tidbits, I came across Fictitious Dishes, an art project by Dinah Fried which consists of five photos of meals from famous literature (below, her Moby Dick inspired meal – click on image to view more as featured in Bon Appetit). A very strange but also very original […]
The Seven Year Itch
24 August, 2012
We are moving offices soon so there’s a great deal of ruthless clearing out and decluttering going on at A&B. We have been at Charlotte Mews for almost seven years now and we love this area (Susie, for its proximity to The Groucho; Chiara for the amazing foodie spots in the area, Christina for the […]
Cake: a fixed point in a crazy, mixed-up book world.
23 August, 2012
This summer has been oddly full of excitement and exertion of various kinds. We’ve win enough Olympic medals to fill a double scull, Fifty Shades of Grey has gotten the nation more than a little hot under the collar and there have been unconfirmed sightings of even myself at the gym. But sanity does seem […]
Wednesday Cover Story: A little about the image for Elegy for Eddie
22 August, 2012
We’ve already waxed lyrical about illustrator Andrew Davidson who produces the beautiful woodcut artwork for Jaqueline Winspear‘s Maisie Dobbs covers. But we have a new favourite now – the sombre tone and striking image for the cover to Elegy for Eddie (out next month). We had the extra pleasure, in this case, of seeing his […]
Bradley Cooper is The Elephant Man
21 August, 2012
In an office made up of women, it’s probably not suprising that Bradley Cooper should come up in conversation. But before you think our discussion didn’t evolve past the word “Yum”, I will quickly say that our conversation did not, in fact, involve any lascivious comments (akin to those spoken by men watching beach volleyball […]
Books coming soon to a cinema near you…
20 August, 2012
At the moment I’m reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and have just realised that the new film adaptation is out on 7th September. Being only halfway through the (massive) book, I need to get a move on! I’m determined to finish before watching the film, which looks promising – with a cast of Keira Knightley, Aaron […]
Does your book match your bikini…?
17 August, 2012
For me, now travelling avec enfant, there are other considerations that affect my search too. Trendy hotspots Mykonos, Ibiza and Puerto Banus are now off the list. There’ll be no more hobnobbing with celebs, dancing till dawn and… matching my bikini to my reading list as the Huffington Post recommends here: Book Bikini Matching. But […]
Getting lost (quite literally) in books…
16 August, 2012
The upcoming release of Killing the Emperors (the new satirical crime novel by Ruth Dudley Edwards featuring in the line of fire: the world of conceptual art) has had us girls in the office talking about the value, or lack of, (therein lies the debate) of modern art, the likes of Damien Hirst, the Turner […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Garment of Shadows cover revealed! (And the winner is…)
15 August, 2012
Two weeks ago we asked you to guess the colour of the border on the cover to the upcoming Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes book Garment of Shadows, by Laurie R King – to get in with a chance of winning a copy of the book. Since then we’ve been inundated with a diverse range […]
Literary Everests…
14 August, 2012
We’ve been spoiled for Team GB achievements these past weeks: our cup of golden glory runneth over. And it’s in the light of this success that I read some of the responses online to the ‘official’ ten most difficult books as proposed by literary site The Millions on Publisher’s Weekly. If you like scaling the […]
Female Literary Legends…
13 August, 2012
Over the past two Olympic weeks we’ve seen Team GB collect a hoard of gold medals, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that many were won by women – according to The Guardian, 36% of all medals (at the time of writing) were collected by female athletes. Still not the 50% we’re striving for, […]
Olympic Art
10 August, 2012
‘Write about what you know’ they always say. Pfft. Look at me, I’m going to write about art about which I know next to nothing. Our author Ruth Dudley Edwards knows quite a bit about it though, and in her upcoming book Killing the Emperors (available in November) she courts controversy with a very unforgiving […]
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