Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford has been made into a stage production by Book-It Repertory Theatre and will run from 22 September to 28 October at The Centre Theatre in Seattle.
Thursday 29th November, 7pm – 9pm MAYFIELD LIBRARY, EDINBURGH Come and meet Scottish crime writers Alanna Knight (author of the acclaimed Inspector Faro and Rose McQuinn series) and Alex Gray, who will be talking about and signing copies of their books at Mayfield LIbrary, 1 Stone Avenue, Dalkeith, Edinburgh EH22 5PD. For more information […]
Wednesday 7th November, 11.00am CENTRAL LIBRARY, SHEFFIELD Come and meet Zoë Sharp at Sheffield’s Off the Shelf book festival as she talks about her unconventional route into writing, (she opted out of mainstream education at age twelve and wrote her first novel when she was fifteen) and the creation of her best-selling Charlie Fox series. […]
We’ve heard about pop-up libraries and phone-booths that have turned into mini-book exchanges. But this story on the BBC today has to top it all: a man in Manila, Philippines, who turned his own home into a free public library. It began as a simple concept: sharing his personal stash of books with his community, […]
We’ve talked in the past about how paperback covers are often completely different from the respective hardback covers. Designs that work well for a hardback book won’t always transfer well to a smaller paperback edition. And here is a perfect example. The cover to A Bespoke Murder, by Edward Marston (the first in his new […]
While we can still go away outside of school holiday times we’re making the most of it. So last week while everyone else was manically sewing on labels and dusting off blazers, we were packing up for a blissful week in northern France. At least that was our plan. Unfortunately we took along an unwelcome […]
This weekend, I watched The Hunger Games. I was in the mood for a bit of action-drama, but not the stereotypical blockbuster (the testosterone-laden, shoot-em-up, blow-em-up, beat-em-up style movie), so this instantly appealed. I will immediately point out that I had not read the books (and still haven’t), knew little about the intricacies of the plot (still don’t, other than what I […]
Enjoy a glass of wine and mingle with writers of historical fiction and non-fiction as they flock to Goldsboro Books off Charing Cross Road this Thursday 20 September.
So you want to write a book? Well, before you put pen to paper and dream of a world where you think of a story, write it down, send it to publisher, publisher prints it, book goes into bookshops, and book sells millions, perhaps a reality check is in order. And no better one than […]
Our broadband has been down since yesterday morning – hence the silence on the emailing, blogging, tweeting, Facebooking front. (Don’t get me started on the reasons why our broadband is down, I’ve spent enough time yelling at the relevant Customer Services people and am trying a new Zen approach – which largely involves denial.) Fact is, it has become incredibly apparent […]
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 […]
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, […]
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
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]