Blog

Friday night – just as I like it

11 September, 2012

I like surprises, which is just as well as last Friday I was treated to two. Firstly a friend wasn’t well enough to use her tickets to see As You Like It at the Globe so I was the lucky one making use of them, peering down from the Gods. I’ve been well and truly […]

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. […]

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, […]