From The Girl on the Train to Gone Girl, badass women rule in today’s blockbusters. Author Kate Mosse picks her favourite justified sinnersThis year has been, in fiction at least, the year of the wild woman. Novels driven by vengeful, unreliable female narrators and psychopathically flawed protagonists have topped the bestseller charts – Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, Renée Knight’s Disclaimer, Lisbeth Salander in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, following in the footsteps of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Complicated, flawed, delusional, violent, transgressive and out of control, these are women seeking retribution and taking matters into their own hands. Mad, bad or misunderstood, they are satisfying to read about and satisfying to write. So where do such characters come from? One of the most commonly asked questions at any literary event is how a character comes to life. Is character the keystone, the first component of a novel? Or is it an idea that first whets the author’s appetite? A period or an object? Or imagination, pure and simple? We give different answers, of course, because we each have our own technique. Besides, the various inspirations for a new book often happen near-as-dammit simultaneously and unconsciously, with lots of conflicting ideas rushing forward at the same time. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-10-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
Paula Hawkins has withstood a robust first week challenge from David Walliams, as The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) rolled into the Official UK Top 50 number one spot for a third consecutive week. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-05-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The new paperback of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Black Swan) has hurtled to the Official UK Top 50 number spot, selling 59,093 copies for £224,947 in its first three days on sale. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-05-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins' bestseller The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) will launch this year's Richard and Judy summer book club, with W H Smith also unveiling the club's "fresh" new look. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-05-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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German media group reiterates plan to increase stake to 70-75% as full-year core profits climb 4.7%Bertelsmann has reported a 4.7% rise in full-year core profit and reiterated its plan to raise its stake in Penguin Random House, the book publisher which helped to drive the earnings increase. The... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-03-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jacqueline Wilson and Melvyn Bragg are among the names to speak at this year's FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the literary event and will bring together an array of speakers including authors David Baddiel, Liz Pichon, Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-01-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Regular readers of The Bookseller will be aware of the three trends driving the print renaissance: adult colouring books, clean eating titles and psychological thrillers. Thus far in 2015, total sales are up 6% year on year through Nielsen BookScan, with a good deal of that down to 2015 breakout... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Books by Bill Bryson, Paula Hawkins and John Green are among the shortlist for Sainsbury’s ebook of the year 2015 award. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Children’s book The Fox and the Star by aPenguin cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith has beaten Harper Lee and Paula Hawkins to be crowned The Waterstones Book of the Year 2015. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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From The Girl on the Train to Gone Girl, badass women rule in today’s blockbusters. Author Kate Mosse picks her favourite justified sinnersThis year has been, in fiction at least, the year of the wild woman. Novels driven by vengeful, unreliable female narrators and psychopathically flawed... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-10-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Transworld) is Amazon.co.uk’s biggest selling ebook of 2015 so far, the retailer has revealed. The list of top 20 ebooks of the year is dominated by female authors, with E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey companion novel, Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as told by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-08-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, continuing Stieg Larsson’s crime series, are both due out on Thursday Two very different heroines are poised to return to the nation’s bookshelves: Tiffany Aching, teenage witch and protagonist of the late Terry... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-08-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’s 'The Girl on the Train' regained the lead on Apple’s iBooks bestseller list, for the week ended August 10 Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-08-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’s blockbuster debut, "The Girl on the Train," led overall ebook sales for the first quarter of the year, from January to March. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-08-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E.L. James’s 'Grey' was once again the top selling title in Apple’s iBooks store, coming in one spot ahead of Paula Hawkins’s 'The Girl on the Train.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-08-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins's blockbuster debut, 'The Girl on the Train,' led ebook sales for the first quarter of 2015. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-08-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’s debut thriller, "The Girl on the Train," performed well in several European markets in June. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E.L James’s 'Grey' and Paula Hawkins’s 'The Girl on the Train' took the #1 and #2 spots, respectively, on Apple’s iBooks bestseller list for the week ended July 13. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-07-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Plans to hype David Lagercrantz’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel by tattooing a volunteer reader, now mercifully cancelled, took branding a little too literallyWith Go Set a Watchman finally out, it’s time to move on to thinking about the summer’s next most-anticipated/hyped novel, which has... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-07-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) passed the 800,000 unit mark across all formats in the UK and Ireland last week as it became the first book since Nielsen BookScan records began to earn 20 Original Fiction number ones. Hawkins’ run of 20 non-consecutive numbers ones broke the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-07-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) has become the title with the longest run as an Original Fiction number one since records began. Last week, Hawkins’ book spent its 20th non-consecutive week atop Original Fiction, eclipsing the previous record of 19 weeks set by Dan Brown’s The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2015-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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