As her latest Jackson Brodie thriller comes out, the award-winning author discusses cosy crime, sniffy critics, and how she investigated her own family’s secretsKate Atkinson has an idea for a fun side-hustle: at some point in the future, when she’s done with the second world war, and with her jaded private eye, Jackson Brodie, she’ll bring to life the creative projects that have hitherto existed only as facets of her characters’ lives. She’ll take the fortune teller Madame Astarti from her third novel, Emotionally Weird, and put her at the centre of her own series of mysteries; she’ll conjure up a script for Green Acres, the rural soap opera that features in her two short-story collections, 2002’s Not the End of the World and last year’s Normal Rules Don’t Apply; she’ll craft episodes of the TV police procedural Collier, in which Brodie’s one-time girlfriend Julia played a pathologist. And finally, she’ll flesh out the breathtakingly hammy murder mystery that a cast of clapped-out actors perform at Burton Makepeace, the stately home that is the setting for her new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook.Writing these scenes – teeming with aristocrats, actors, Russian countesses, clergymen and a “fastidious little Swiss detective” – were Atkinson’s treat, she tells me, as she constructed the novel during lockdown. “I would have done so much more of that,” she explains, as we sit sipping coffee in a studiedly antiquated hotel near her home in Edinburgh. “But I... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-08-10 08:00:37 UTC ]
The winning book at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults has been criticised for endorsing New Zealand's participation in World War I and "glorifying" the killing of Germans. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2016-08-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tinder Press has acquired Letters from a Suitcase, a collection of letters spanning the "short but passionate love affair" and marriage between communist couple David and Mary Francis during the Second World War. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-08-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Award-winning author, poet, and playwright Joyce Carol Thomas, whose works largely focused on family and the African-American experience, died on August 17. She was 79. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-08-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The History Press is to publish a book based on an original set of sketchbooks and diaries from a signaller in the First World War. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-07-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bestselling novelist Chris Cleave talks to Alice O'Keeffe about his new book which tackles the Second World War, Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-04-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Alma Books has signed a middle-grade story about what happened to all the pets in World War Two by Miriam Halahmy. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-02-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s opus, which ‘unmasks his false allegations, whitewashing and outright lies’, will debut at 20 on non-fiction chart after publishers received 15,000 orders A new critical edition of Mein Kampf is set to make its debut on German bestseller lists this weekend,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Adolf Hitler’s political manifesto Mein Kampf is to be published for the first time in Germany since the end of the Second World War, the BBC has reported. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It’s 1956 and Germany and Japan rule the world after winning the Second World War. To celebrate their success, Hitler and Hirohito run an annual youth motorcycle race between Berlin and Tokyo which tests competitors’ stamina, skills and ability to survive. And not just against the often terrible... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Michael Morpurgo has signed a three book deal with HarperCollins and the first new title will be published later this month. Eagle in the Snow, released 8th October (h/b, £12.99), was inspired by the true story of Henry Tandey, the most decorated British soldier of the First World War and the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-10-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Animals, World War Two and an aspiring Olympic runner are among the subjects of stories shortlisted for the Scottish Children's Book Awards. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2015-09-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Author of The Caine Mutiny will look back on his century of experience in Sailor and FiddlerThere can’t be many centenarians who can celebrate their birthday by raising a glass to a new professional departure, but Herman Wouk – 100 on Wednesday, 27 May – is about to publish his first memoir.... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-05-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Exceptional service in the Second World War was a prologue to a publishing career at two influential global groups for Gordon Graham, who is remembered by former publishing analyst Eric de Bellaigue Gordon Graham, who died on 24th April 2015 aged 94, was a past president of the Publishers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-05-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister for propaganda during the Second World War, is suing publisher Random House Germany for using an extract from his diaries. The biography Goebbels, published in Germany in 2010 under the Siedler imprint, is by Peter Longerich, professor of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Passion! Mystery! Crime! After the Australian government banned the import of American pulp magazines at the onset of the second world war, publisher Frank Johnson stepped into the market with a flurry of crime, adventure and romance novels. Drawn from his archives, a collection of cover art,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jessie Childs has won the 2015 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for history for her book about religious persecution in Elizabethan England, God's Traitors (Bodley Head). She beat off competition from five other shortlisted authors to win the £2,000 annual prize, funded by former PEN member Marjorie... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-04-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster will publish a book by William Sitwell on how Lord Woolton kept Britain fed during the Second World War. Non-fiction publishing director Iain MacGregor acquired world rights for Eggs or Anarchy in a deal with Caroline Michel at PFD. The book looks at Woolton's time as the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jenny Uglow and Mark Bostridge are among the five authors shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2015. The £2,000 prize, funded from former PEN member Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman’s bequest to English PEN, celebrates the best non-fiction on a historical subject from any period up... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-03-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin Random House Children’s will this autumn publish a new Second World War novel from John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Set for publication in September 2015, The Boy at the Top of the Mountain is about an orphan called Pierrot who is sent to the home of Adolf Hitler... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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