little brown spring catalogue

8/19/2019 Little Brown Spring Catalogue

1/160


2/160

Contents

3. Little, Brown

20. Abacus

36. Virago

53. Sphere

77. Atom

97. Piatkus

127. Orbit

Little Brown Book Group, 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DY

T +44 (0)20 7911 8000 F +44(0)20 7911 8100 www.littlebrown.co.uk

2


3/160

3


4/160

Cancel the ApocalypseThe new path to prosperity Andrew Simms

Ever get the feeling that things are falling apart? You're not alone.

From bad banks to global warming it can all look hopeless, butwhat if everything could turn out, well, even better than before?

What if the only thing holding us back is a lack of imagination and

a surplus of old orthodoxies?

It's a topsy-turvy world in which a country can import the same

amount of ice-cream, toilet paper and other goods as it exports,

and where top bankers are paid millions for destroying economic

value, while hospital cleaners create value many times their pay.

In fascinating and iconoclastic detail – on everything from the cash

in your pocket to the food on your plate and the shape of our

working lives – Cancel the Apocalypse describes how the

relentless race for economic growth is not always one worth

winning, how excessive materialism has come at a terrible cost to

our environment, and hasn't even made us any happier in the

process.

Simms believes passionately in the human capacity for change,

and shows how the good life remains in our grasp. While globalwarming and financial meltdown might feel like modern-day

horsemen of the apocalypse, Simms shows how such end of the

world scenarios offer us the chance for a new beginning.

About the author

Andrew Simms is 'a master at

joined-up progressive thinking'

according to New Scientist

magazine. He is a Fellow andleading light of nef (the new

economics foundation).

• A bold and radical look at a world in which

we have become obsessed with economic

growth at the expense of quality of life –

and what we can do to change.

• Simms is a regular on Radio and T.V.

• From the author of Tescopoly

4

January

9781408702369

Sociology, Social Studies

Trade Paperback£13.99


5/160

Salvation of a Saint

Keigo Higashino

When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home,

his beautiful wife Ayane immediately falls under suspicion. Allclues point to her being the logical suspect, but how could she

have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away?

As Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly

unrelated sequence of events, he finds himself falling for Ayane.

When his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant

must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel

the most spectacular web of deceit they have ever faced . . .

Salvation of a Saint is a magnificently complex and page-turning

thriller, starring international crime fiction's most enigmaticsleuth. This is essential reading for all fans of exceptional crime

fiction.

About the author

Keigo Higashino was born in Osaka.

He started writing novels while still

working as an engineer at Nippon

Denso Co. He won the EdogawaRampo Prize for writing at the age

of 27, and subsequently left his job

to start a career as a writer in

Tokyo.

• Keigo Higashino is a cult figure and massive

bestseller

• His previous novel The Devotion of Suspect

X was made into a cult film and sold over

2 million copies in his native Japan

• Salvation of a Saint reunites readers with

Detective Kusanagi and physics professor

Yukawa from The Devotion of Suspect X

5

February

9781408704196

Crime & Mystery Fiction



6/160

The Fields

Kevin Maher

Dublin, 1984: Ireland is a divided country, the Parish Priest

remains a figure of immense authority who commands absolute

respect, and Jim Finnegan is thirteen years old, the youngest in a

family of five sisters. Life in Jim's world consists of dealing with the

helter-skelter intensity of his rumbustious family, taking break-

neck bike-rides with his best friend, and quietly coveting the local

girls from afar. But after a drunken yet delicate rendition of 'The

Fields of Athenry' at the Donohues' raucous annual party, Jim

captures both the attention of the beautiful Saidhbh Donohue and

the unwanted desires of the devious and dangerous Father Luke

O'Culigeen.

Bounced between his growing love for Saidhbh and the abuse he

receives at the hands of O'Culigeen, Jim's life starts to unravel. He

and Saidhbh take a ferry for a clandestine trip to London that has

dark and difficult repercussions, forcing Jim to look for the

solution to all his problems in some very unusual places.

The Fields is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary character:

Jim's voice leaps off the page and straight into the reader's heart,

as he grapples with his unfairly interrupted adolescence, with the

influence of the Church and with the divided loyalties that the

Troubles have provoked. Lyrical, funny, profoundly original and

endlessly inventive, it is a brilliant debut from a remarkable new

voice.

About the author

Kevin Maher was born and brought up in

Dublin, moving to London in 1994 to

begin a career in journalism. He wrote

for the Guardian, the Observer and TimeOut and was film editor of The Face

until 2002, before joining The Times

where for the last eight years he has

been a feature writer, critic and

columnist.

• Major new literary voice that sizzles with

life and energy.

• The big L, B debut fiction launch of spring

2013

• Won in a heated auction and publishing

simultaneously with Reagan Arthur Books

at HBGUSA, this is a novel with

international appeal

• Perfect for fans of Roddy Doyle, Mark

Haddon and Paul Murray's Skippy Dies

6

March

9781408704165

General & Literary Fiction

Hardback£12.99


7/160

The Tank War

The men, the machines and the long roadto victoryMark Urban

From the evacuation of France in 1940 to the final dash to

Hamburg in 1945, the 5th Royal Tank Regiment were on the front

line throughout the Second World War. Theirs was a war that saw

them serve in Africa as part of the Desert Rats, before returning to

Europe for the Normandy landings. Wherever they went, the

notoriety of the ‘Filthy Fifth’ grew – they revelled in their

reputation for fighting by their own rules.

The Tank War explains how Britain, having lost its advantage intank warfare by 1939, regained ground through shifts in tactics

and leadership methods, as well as the daring and bravery of the

crews themselves. Overturning the received wisdom of much

Second World War history, Mark Urban shows how the tank

regiments’ advances were the equal of the feats of the German

Panzer divisions.

Drawing on a wealth of new material, from interviews with

surviving soldiers to rarely seen archive material, this is an

unflinchingly honest, unsentimental and often brutal account ofthe 5th RTR’s wartime experiences. Capturing the characters in

the crews and exploring the strategy behind their success, The

Tank War is not just the story of an battle hardened unit, but

something more extraordinary: the triumph of ordinary men,

against long odds, in the darkest of times.

About the author

Mark Urban is Diplomatic and

Defence Editor for Newsnight and

the author of the Number One

Sunday Times bestseller, Task ForceBlack.

• Bestselling author with a proven track

record on BookScan

• Task Force Black has sold over 76,000

copies and was a Number One Sunday

Times bestseller

7

March

9781408703632

History

Hardback£17.99


8/160

Fractured Times Culture and society in the twentieth

centuryEric Hobsbawm

Born almost a hundred years ago in Alexandria – the cultural heart

of a bourgeois Mitteleurope – Eric Hobsbawm, who was to

become one of the most brilliant and original historians of our

age, was uniquely placed to observe an era of titanic social and

artistic change. As the century progressed the forces of

Communism and Dadaism, Ibiza and cyberspace, would do battle

with the bourgeois high culture fin-de-siècle Vienna represented –

the opera, the Burgtheater, the museums of art and science, City

Hall. In Fractured Times, Hobsbawm unpicks a century of cultural

fragmentation and dissolution with characteristic verve andvigour.

Hobsbawm examines the conditions that created the great

cultural flowering of the belle époque and held the seeds of its

disintegration, from paternalistic capitalism to globalisation and

the arrival of a mass consumer society. Passionate but never

sentimental, Hobsbawm ranges freely across his subject: he

records the passing of the golden age of the ‘free intellectual’ and

examines the lives of great, forgotten men; he analyses the

relation between art and totalitarianism and dissects cultural

phenomena as diverse as surrealism, women’s emancipation and

the American cowboy myth.

Written with consummate imagination and skill, Fractured Times is

the last book from one of our greatest modern-day thinkers.

About the author

Eric Hobsbawm was a Fellow of the

British Academy and the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Before retirement he taught atBirkbeck College, University of

London, and after retirement at the

New School for Social Research in

New York. Previous books include

Age of Extremes, The Age of

Revolution and The Age of Empire.

He died in October 2012.

• Little, Brown/Abacus has sold over 150,000

copies of Eric Hobsbawm’s books

• ‘Arguably Britain’s most respected historian

of any kind, one of a tiny handful of

historians of any era to enjoy genuine

national and world renown . . . Both in his

knowledge of detail and his extraordinary

powers of synthesis, he was unrivalled’

- Guardian

8

March

9781408704288

History,Popular Culture

Hardback£25.00


9/160

The Trundlers

Harry Pearson

Some men are born medium-paced, some achieve medium-pace

others have medium-pace thrust upon them.

Bowlers who take wickets not with pace or spin, but – at speeds

between 65 and 85mph – by nagging accuracy are the commonest

in cricket. So far, however, nobody has paid them any attention.

Yet seam bowling remains one of cricket's most mysterious arts.

George Hirst, one of the best early exponents of swerve, was as

puzzled by it as his opponents. 'Sometimes it works,' he said, 'and

sometimes it doesn't.'

Examining the history of medium-pace bowling, explaining howswing both normal and reverse actually works, and telling the

story of some of the great and not-so-great dobbers such as

Shackleton ('His bowling, like his hair, never less than immaculate,'

noted Wisden approvingly), The Trundlers will bring bread-and-

butter bowlers who 'do a bit off the seam', 'wobble the odd one

about' or simply 'nag away at off-stump' out into the limelight for

the first time.

Warm, affectionate and told with Harry Pearson's trademark

humour , The Trundlers celebrates dobbers in all their sleeves-rolled-up, uncomplaining workaday glory.

About the author

Harry Pearson is a journalist and

writer who contributes regularly to

the Guardian, GQ and When

Saturday Comes.

• Pearson’s last book, Slipless in Settle, won

the MCC Book of the Year, the Cricket Book

of the Year at the British Sports Book

Awards and the Wisden Book of the Year

• Slipless in Settle has so far sold over 10,000

copies

9

April

9781408704066

Sports & Outdoor Recreation



10/16010

American Dream Machine

Matthew Specktor

Beau Rosenwald – overweight, not particularly handsome,

and improbably charismatic – arrives in Los Angles in 1962

with nothing but an ill-fitting suit and a pair of expensive

brogues. By the late 1970s he has helped found the most

successful agency in Hollywood.

Through the eyes of his son, we watch Beau and his partner

go to war, waging a seismic battle that redraws the lines of

an entire industry. We watch Beau rise and fall and rise

again, in accordance with the cultural transformations that

dictate the fickle world of movies. We watch Beau's partner,the enigmatic and cerebral Williams Farquarsen, struggle to

contain himself, to control his impulses and consolidate his

power. And we watch two generations of men fumble and

thrive across the LA landscape, learning for themselves the

shadows and costs exacted by success and failure.

About the author

Matthew Specktor was born and

raised in Los Angeles. His father was

a talent agent and his mother was a

screenwriter. Specktor worked infilm development for many years,

and has written several

screenplays. His writing has

appeared or is forthcoming in the

Paris Review , The Believer , Tin

House, Black Clock and Salon.com,

among other publications. He is a

senior editor and founding member

of the Los Angeles Review of Books.• Matthew Specktor grew up the son of

Hollywood royalty. American Dream

Machine is his take on his own youth and

experiences

• Specktor is very well connected, and is

currently collaborating on a screenplay with

James Franco, as well as editing the Los

Angeles Review of Books

• This is a big, intelligent all-engrossing book

of Hollywood glamour, grit, desperation

and ambition – a piercing look at theauthentic world of LA. Perfect for anyone

who loves Madmen, Entourage and Jennifer

Egan

• Protagonist Beau Rosenwald is utterly

engaging and strikingly real – a character

who will stay with you for long after you

finish readingApril

9780751551624

Modern Fiction

Trade Paperback

£12.99

Photo credit: Lisa Jane Persky


11/160

The Collector of Lost Things

Jeremy Page

The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as

if the Earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if

there ever was a place, where you could disappear.

The year is 1845 and young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on

an expedition to the Arctic in the hope of finding remains of the

by now extinct Great Auk. He joins a regular hunting ship, but the

crew and the passengers are not what they seem. Caught in the

web of relationships on board, Eliot struggles to understand the

motivations of the sociopathic, embroidery-loving Captain Sykes,

the silent First Mate French, the flamboyant laudanum-addicted

Bletchley and, most importantly of all, Bletchley's beautiful butstrange 'cousin' Clara. As the ship moves further and further into

the wilds of the Arctic sea, Eliot clings to what he believes in,

desperate to save Clara but drawn irrevocably back into the past

that haunts him.

About the author

Jeremy Page grew up in north

Norfolk and has worked as a script

editor and writer for FilmFour and

the BBC, in addition to teaching onthe Creative Writing MA at UEA. He

lives in London with his wife and

three children. He has published

two previous novels with Viking UK

and Viking US: Salt and The Wake.

• Praise for Page’s Salt :

‘Stunningly good’

- Rose Tremain

‘Striking, funny. Terrifying’

- Margaret Forster

• Jeremy's first novel was shortlisted for The

Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best FirstBook and the Jelf First Novel Award

11

April

9781408704189

General & Literary

Fiction,Historical Fiction

Hardback

£14.99


12/160

The Book of Fate

Parinoush Saniee

A teenager in pre-revolutionary Tehran, Massoumeh is an

ordinary girl, passionate about learning. On her way to school she

meets a local man and falls in love – but when her family discoverhis letters they accuse her of bringing them into dishonour. She is

badly beaten by her brother, and her parents hastily arrange a

marriage to a man she's never met. Facing a life without love, and

the prospect of no education, Massoumeh is distraught – but a

female neighbour urges her to comply: 'We each have a destiny,

and you can't fight yours.'

The years that follow Massoumeh's wedding prove transformative

for Iran. Hamid, Massoumeh's husband, is a political dissident anda threat to the Shah's oppressive regime and when the secret

service arrive to arrest him, it’s the start of a terrifying period for

Massoumeh. Her fate, so long dictated by family loyalty and

tradition, is now tied to the changing fortunes of her country.

Spanning five turbulent decades of Iranian history, from before

the 1979 revolution, through the Islamic Republic and up to the

present, The Book of Fate is a powerful story of friendship and

passion, fear and hope – and a rare insider's view of Iranian

society.

About the author

Parinoush Saniee is a sociologist

and psychologist. She worked for

the Iranian government in the

Ministry of Labour. She has writtenseveral novels, of which The Book

of Fate is the first; her second, The

Father of the Other One, was also

published to great acclaim in Iran;

others are awaiting approval by the

censorship board.

• Winner of the Boccaccio Prize in Italy

• Iran’s bestselling novel of all time – even

though it was banned for many years

12

April

9781408704608


Hardback

£14.99


13/160

The Serpent's Promise

Steve Jones

The Bible was the first scientific textbook of all; and it got some

things right (and plenty more wrong). Steve Jones’ new book

rewrites it in the light of modern science. Are we all descended

from a single couple, a real-life Adam and Eve? Was the Bible’s

great flood really a memory of the end of the Ice Age? Will we

ever get back to Methuselah given that British life expectancy is

still rising by six hours a day, every day?

Many people deny the power of faith, many more the power of

science. In this ground-breaking work, geneticist Steve Jones

explores their shared mysteries – from the origins of life and

humankind to sex, age, death and the end of the universe. Hesteps aside from the noisy debate between believers and

unbelievers to show how the same questions preoccupy us today

as in biblical times – and that science offers many of the answers.

Erudite and accessible, The Serpent’s Promise is a witty and

thoughtful account of the ability and the limits of science to tell us

what we are.

About the author

Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics

at University College London and

the president of the Galton

Institute. He delivered the BBCReith Lectures in 1991, appears

frequently on radio and television

and is a regular columnist for the

Daily Telegraph.

• Darwin's Island was long-listed for the BBC

Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in

2009

• Steve Jones' books have combined sales of

over 100,000 copies

13

May

9781408702857

Popular Science

Hardback

£25.00


14/160

The Guns at Last Light The war in Western Europe, 1944 –1945Rick Atkinson

In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation trilogy, Rick

Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition foughtthrough North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he

tells the most dramatic story of all – the titanic battle for Western

Europe.

D-Day marked the commencement of the European war's final

campaign, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble

sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal

fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was

Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the

thrust to the heart of the Third Reich – all these historic events

and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a

mesmerising cast of characters.

With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Rick

Atkinson's remarkable accomplishment is manifest. He has

produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a

continent and preserved freedom in the West.

About the author

Rick Atkinson is the bestselling

author of An Army at Dawn (winner

of the Pulitzer Prize for history), The

Day of Battle, The Long Gray Line, Inthe Company of Soldiers, and

Crusade. His many other awards

include two Pulitzer Prizes for

journalism, the George Polk award,

and the Pritzker Military Library

Literature Award. He is a former

staff writer and senior editor at the

Washington Post .

• The final volume in the bestselling trilogy,

this is a brilliantly researched book, rich

with new material and vivid insights – the

definitive history of the war in North Africa1942 –1943

• An Army at Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for

History in 2003

14

May

9780316725590

History

Hardback

£30.00


15/160

Night Raid

Taylor Downing

The loss of British bombers over Occupied Europe began to reach

alarming levels in 1941. Could it be that the Germans were using a

sophisticated form of radar to direct their night fighters and anti-aircraft guns at the British bombers? British aerial reconnaissance

discovered what seemed to be a rotating radar tower on a clifftop

at Bruneval, near Le Havre. The truth must be revealed.

The decision was taken to launch a daring raid on the Bruneval

site to try to capture the technology for further examination. The

planned airborne assault would be extremely risky. The parachute

regiment had only been formed a year before on Churchill's

insistence. This night raid would test the men to the extremelimits of their abilities.

Night Raid tells the gripping tale of this mission from the planning

stages, to the failed rehearsals, when the odds seemed stacked

against them, to the night of the raid itself, and the scientific

secrets that were discovered thanks to the paras' precious cargo –

the German radar. Its capture was of immense importance in the

next stages of the war and the mission itself marked the birth of

the legend of the 'Red Devils'.

About the author

Taylor Downing is a television

producer and writer. He was

educated at Cambridge University

and went on to become ManagingDirector and Head of History at

Flashback Television, an

independent production company.

His most recent books include Spies

in the Sky, Churchill's War Lab and

Cold War (with Sir Jeremy Isaacs).

• The Bruneval Raid was a major turning

point in the Second World War

• The last book on the Bruneval Raid was

published in 1976

• Night Raid draws on sources, oral

testimonies and documents that were not

available in the 1970s to tell one of the

most gripping narratives of the war• Written by one of the UK's most successful

producers of TV history

15

May

9781408703724

History

Hardback

£20.00


16/160

Women at the ReadyThe remarkable story of the Women’s

Voluntary Services on the home front Robert and Patricia Malcolmson

From the summer of 1938, British women from all walks of life

joined the Women’s Voluntary Services (WVS). This disparate

band of women came together for the common good – to help

serve and protect their communities. By 1941 a million women

had enrolled.

These brave and dutiful women played a vital role in Britain's

victory. The positive impact of the WVS on wartime society was

universally acknowledged. They were instrumental in

implementing the large-scale evacuation of children from bomb-

targeted cities, in the care of the wounded, and in keeping those

in war service fed. Lady Reading, founder and fearless leader, was

one of the most influential women in twentieth-century Britain.

The story of the WVS has never been fully told before. Social

historians Patricia and Robert Malcolmson bring this vital part of

the Second World War to life in a vivid and engaging way through

the diaries and records of the women serving their country on the

Home Front. Women at the Ready promises to be a magnificentsaga of sacrifice and determination.

About the authors

Patricia and Robert Malcolmson are

social historians with a special

interest in the Mass Observation

archive. They have edited severalwartime and post-war diaries,

including Nella Last's Peace and

Nella Last in the 1950s. They live in

Nelson, British Columbia.

• Publication coincides with the 75th

anniversary of the Women's Royal

Voluntary Services (WRVS)

• The book has the full support of the WRVS,

which remains very active and involved

with a host of activities

• The authors draw on the riches of the

WRVS archive and Mass Observation

archive (diaries and records) to provide a

full and engaging account of everyday life

for the volunteers

16

May

9781408704103

History- Modern Period

Hardback

£20.00


17/160

The Hive

Gill Hornby

Welcome to St Ambrose Primary School. A world of

friendships, fights and feuding. And that's just the mothers.

Rachel Mason has always seen herself as bit of an outsider –

keeping an amused distance from the cliques and petty

squabbles at the school gates. But this year is different.

Recently divorced, Rachel needs her friends more than ever.

So why is Beatrice Stuart – her supposed best friend and

undisputed queen bee of the hive – ignoring her?

Meanwhile, the school is in desperate need of a new library.Enter the school committee, armed with a terrifying

schedule of fun runs, pub quizzes and bake sales. Bea – who

must be obeyed – has jobs for everyone, except herself. But

for every Heather (eager to volunteer, eager to wear a

fluorescent tabard) there is a Georgie (eager to step outside

for a fag; would rather fake her own death than wear a

tabard, thank you very much). And by the end of the school

year, everything will have changed – especially for Rachel . . .

The Hive is an irresistible novel – laugh-out-loud funny,

brilliantly observed and filled with fresh, fascinating, utterly

familiar characters. From the joys and perils (well, mainly

perils) of the Lunch Ladder; to the military operation that is

the Car Boot Sale; to the creation of a vaguely convincing

Dalek costume for a small child, all human life is here.

About the author

Gill Hornby is a journalist and

writer. She has four children and

lives with her husband, Robert

Harris, in Kintbury, Berkshire.

• The sensational international debut by a

major new talent

• Already causing a stir in the media with the

Sunday Times heralding it as the start of a

new wave of fiction

• One of the most heated auctions in recent

memory in the UK

• Sold in big deals in the US, Germany,

France, Italy, Holland, Brazil, Hungary and

Korea

17

May

9781408704356

Fiction,General & Literary

Fiction, Modern Fiction

Hardback

£12.99

Photograph by Gavin Smith, Camera Press London


18/160

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's

England How our ancestors lived two centuries agoRoy and Lesley Adkins

Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English

language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the

gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women

looking for love. Yet the comfortable, tranquil country that she

brilliantly devised is a complete contrast to the England in which

she actually lived. For twenty-nine of Jane Austen's forty-one

years, the country was embroiled in war. These were troubled

times, with disturbing changes in industry and agriculture and a

constant dread of invasion. The loss of America was followed by

terrifying revolution in neighbouring France, provoking fears that

the sporadic unrest and rioting in England might lead to wholesale

insurrection and the overthrow of the ruling classes.

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England

of that time. From forced marriages and the sale of wives in

marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney

sweeps, this book eavesdrops on the daily chore of fetching water,

bull baiting, sedan chairs, highwaymen and the stench of corpses

swinging on roadside gibbets.

Giving a voice to these forgotten people and revealing how they

worked, played and struggled to survive , Eavesdropping on Jane

Austen's England is an authoritative and gripping account that is

sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining.

About the authors

Roy and Lesley Adkins are husband-

and-wife writers and

archaeologists, the bestselling

authors of over eighteen widelyacclaimed books on social and naval

history, archaeology, ancient Rome,

ancient Greece and Egyptology.

Their books include the bestselling

Jack Tar, Trafalgar, The War for All

the Oceans, Empires of the Plain

and The Keys of Egypt and have so

far been translated into sixteen

languages worldwide.

18

June

9781408703960

Language, Literature And

Biography

Hardback

£20.00

• ‘Roy and Lesley Adkins bring their world

alive . . . The material is so rich, that this is a

fascinating, even humbling read’

- Sunday Times

• ‘An extraordinary read’

- History Books of the Year, Daily Mail

• For further information about them and

their books, see their website

www.adkinshistory.com


19/160

Last Friends

Jane Gardam

Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat told with bristling

tenderness and black humour the stories of that Titan of the Hong

Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, and his clever, misunderstood wife

Betty. Last Friends, the final volume of this trilogy, picks up with

Terence Veneering, Filth's great rival in work and – though it was

never spoken of – in love.

Veneering's were not the usual beginnings of an establishment

silk: the son of a Russian acrobat marooned in north-east England

and a devoted local girl, he escapes the war to emerge in the Far

East as a man of panache, success and fame. But, always, at the

stuffy English Bar he is treated with suspicion: where did thisblond, louche, brilliant Slav come from?

Veneering, Filth and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship and

grace, the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and

the disappointments and consolations of age.

About the author

Jane Gardam has been awarded the

Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a

lifetime's contribution to the

enjoyment of literature; she hastwice won a Whitbread Award and

has been shortlisted for the Booker

Prize. She was awarded an OBE in

January 2009.

19

June

9781408703670

Modern Fiction

Hardback

£15.99

• ‘What a lot Jane Gardam knows

about love and its

accommodations; the rich

contradictory play of desire and

loyalty; the sudden storms of

feeling. And how elegantly andintelligently she writes about the

instinctive, tendril-like gropings of

one human heart towards another’

- Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph

• Jane Gardam’s classic novel Old

Filth was shortlisted for the

Orange Prize


20/16020


21/160

Stonemouth

Iain Banks

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile

his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston,

and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he wasrunning for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous

than turning up.

An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five

mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can

seem to offer little more than sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs and

a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides. And although there's

supposed to be a temporary truce between Stewart and the

town's biggest crime family, it's soon clear that only Stewart is

taking this promise of peace seriously. Before long Stu steps back

into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has

lost him, uncovering ever darker stories. Soon his homecoming

takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated.

Tough, funny, fast-paced and touching, Stonemouth cracks open

adolescence, love, brotherhood and vengeance in a rite of passage

novel like no other.

About the author

Iain Banks came to widespread and

controversial public notice with the

publication of his first novel, The

Wasp Factory , in 1984. He has sincegained enormous popular and

critical acclaim for both his

mainstream and his science fiction

novels.

• The hardback was a Sunday Times

bestseller

• Stonemouth was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

read by David Tennant.

• ‘Readable, gripping . . . One of his best’

William Leith, Evening Standard

•‘Addictive, funny and brilliantly observed’ - Daily Mail

• ‘Banks at his waspish, intelligent, nuanced

best’

- Scotland on Sunday

21

February

9780349000206

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99


22/160

A Million Heavens

John Brandon

On the top floor of a small hospital, an unlikely piano prodigy lies

in a coma, attended to by his gruff, helpless father. Outside the

clinic, a motley vigil assembles beneath a reluctant New Mexico

winter – strangers in search of answers, a brush with the mystical,

or just an escape. To some the boy is a novelty, to others a

religion. Just beyond this ragtag circle roams a disconsolate wolf

on his nightly rounds, protecting and threatening, learning too

much. And above them all, a would-be angel sits captive in a

holding cell of the afterlife, finishing the work he began on earth,

writing the songs that could free him. This unlikely assortment – a

small-town mayor, a vengeful guitarist, all the unseen desert

lives—unites to weave a persistently hopeful story of improbablecommunion.

About the author

John Brandon was raised on the

Gulf Coast of Florida, and has

worked at a lumber mill, a

windshield warehouse, and for aCoca-Cola distributor. Acclaim for

his first novel, Arkansas, led to his

appointment as a John and Renee

Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing

at the University of Mississippi.

• His books are a major talking point in the

US, garnering reviews from all top national

papers.

• Brandon was shortlisted for America's

prestigious Young Lions Award, for the

most promising writers under the age of 35

22

March

9780349138862

General & Literary

Fiction,Modern Fiction

Trade Paperback

£13.99


23/160

In the Shadow of the SwordThe battle for global empire and the end

of the ancient world

Tom Holland

In the 6th century AD, the Near East was divided between two

great empires: the Persian and the Roman. A hundred years on,

and one had vanished for ever, while the other was a

dismembered, bleeding trunk. In their place, a new superpower

had arisen: the empire of the Arabs. So profound was this

upheaval that it spelled, in effect, the end of the ancient world.

But the changes that marked the period were more than merely

political or even cultural: there was also a transformation of

human society with incalculable consequences for the future.

Today, over half the world's population subscribes to one of the

various religions that took on something like their final form

during the last centuries of antiquity. Wherever men or women

are inspired by belief in a single god to think or behave in a certain

way, they bear witness to the abiding impact of this extraordinary,

convulsive age – though as Tom Holland demonstrates, much of

what Jews, Christians and Muslims believe about the origins of

their religion is open to debate.

In the Shadow of the Sword explores how a succession of great

empires came to identify themselves with a new and

revolutionary understanding of the divine. It is a story vivid with

drama, horror and startling achievement, and stars many of the

most remarkable rulers ever seen.

About the author

Tom Holland is the author of

Rubicon, which was shortlisted for

the Samuel Johnson Prize and won

the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History2004; Persian Fire, which won the

Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman

Award 2006; and the highly

acclaimed Millennium. He has

adapted Homer, Herodotus,

Thucydides and Virgil for BBC Radio.

23

April

9780349122359

History

Paperback

£10.99

• Was a Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller

• L, B/Abacus has now sold over

320,000 copies of Tom Holland’s non-

fiction

• ‘A stunning blockbuster’

Robert Fisk, Independent

•‘Every bit as thrilling a narrative historyas Holland's previous works, [it] is also

a profoundly important book’

- Christopher Hart, Sunday Times

• ‘Written with flamboyant elegance and

energetic intensity. Unputdownable’

- Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Times


24/160

The Crocodile

Maurizio de Giovanni

Transferred from Sicily to Naples after a tangle with the Sicilian

Mafia, Detective Inspector Giuseppe Lojacono feels that he's

marking time, waiting out an awkward scandal. But when thebloodied bodies of teenagers start appearing around the city,

victims of a strange and sinister killer whom police and locals take

to calling The Crocodile, it soon becomes clear to Lojacono that

the killings are more than simple Mafia hits, and that the narrow

streets of Naples are more deadly than he'd dared imagine. Can

he catch the killer in time and save the city's children?

The Crocodile is a dark, bloody story of murder and revenge that

will grip and thrill you.

About the author

Maurizio de Giovanni lives and

works in Naples. In 2005 he won a

writing competition for unpublished

authors with a short story set in the1930s featuring the detective

Ricciardi, and then went on to write

his bestselling series of Ricciardi

novels. The Crocodile marks the

beginning of a new crime series set

in present-day Naples and starring

Detective Inspector Lojacono. His

books have been successfully

translated into several languages,

and a television adaptation isunderway in Italy.

• A dark new crime thriller from Italy that's

perfect for fans of bestsellers Michele

Giuttari and Donato Carrisi.

• Maurizio de Giovanni is a bestseller in Italy

and is published in several other European

countries.

24

June

9780349138886

Crime & Mystery Fiction,Fiction

Trade Paperback

£12.99


25/160

Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

David Sedaris

From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new book

of essays taking his readers on a bizarre and stimulating world

tour. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of theAustralian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to

the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn

about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveller's

experiences.

Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English

countryside or marvelling over a disembodied human arm in a

taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures

that are not to be forgotten.

About the author

David Sedaris is the author of a

number of bestselling books,

including Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk,

When You Are Engulfed in Flames,Dress Your Family in Corduroy and

Denim and Me Talk Pretty One Day .

He lives in London.

• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

and Me Talk Pretty One Day have sold over

40,000 copies

• ‘Sedaris’s anecdotes play off his sublime

talent for turning the absurdly neurotic into

the hilariously funny’

- GQ

• ‘Howlingly funny, jaw-snappingly honest

and endlessly perceptive. Sedaris’s

wellspring of quirky yet strangely universal

comic experiences show no sign of drying

up’

- Daily Mail

• ‘Sedaris can make Woody Allen appear

ham-tongued, Oscar Wilde a drag’

- Observer

25

April

9780349121635

Biography & Autobiography:

General

Trade Paperback

£10.99


26/160

The Limpopo Academy of Private

Detection

Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi have always relied on theadvice of the classic guide to their trade, The Principles of Private

Detection. But who is the eminent author, Mr Clovis Andersen,

and what if he were to come to Botswana? That seems a very

unlikely possibility, and yet . . . When Mr Andersen visits Botswana

on holiday, he is delighted and intrigued to stumble across a

roadside sign that reveals the existence of the No.1 Ladies'

Detective Agency.

Professional courtesy suggests that he call and announce himself.

Meanwhile, Mma Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti are embarking on

married life and building a new house – a tricky business under

any circumstances but especially hazardous when the name of the

contractor is the Joy and Light Building Company.

About the author

Following a distinguished career as

a Professor of Medical Law,

Alexander McCall Smith has turned

to writing full-time. He is the authorof over sixty books on a wide array

of subjects, and his books have

been translated into forty-six

languages. He lives in Edinburgh

with his wife.

• Unveiling a brand new look for everyone's

favourite series

• Time to celebrate – the new Botswana

paperback will be backed by his biggest

marketing campaign ever

• PR activity and online promotion around

publication

• English language sales for McCall Smith's

titles now exceed 20 million copies

worldwide

• Winner of Author of the Year three times

(BA, NIBBIES and Waterstones)

• www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk

26

March

9780349123158

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99


27/160

When I DieLessons from the death zone

Philip Gould

On 29 January 2008 Philip Gould was told he had cancer. He wasstoical, and set about his treatment, determined to fight his

illness. In the face of difficult decisions he sought always to

understand the disease and the various medical options open to

him, supported by his wife Gail and their two daughters, Georgia

and Grace.

In 2010, after two hard years of chemotherapy and surgery, the

tests came up clear – Philip appeared to have won the battle. But

his work as a key strategist for the Labour party took its toll, and

feeling ill six months later, he insisted on one extra, precautionary

test, which told him that the cancer had returned. Thus began

Philip's long, painful but ultimately optimistic journey towards

death, during which time he began to appreciate and make sense

of his life, his work and his relationships in a way he had never

thought possible. He realised something that he had never heard

articulated before: death need not be only negative or painful, it

can be life-affirming and revelatory.

Written during the last few months of his life, When I Diedescribes the journey Philip took with his illness, leaving to us

what he called his lessons from the death zone. This courageous,

profoundly moving and inspiring work is as valuable a legacy to

the world as anyone could wish to bestow – hugely uplifting,

beautifully written with extraordinary insight.

About the author

Philip Gould was polling and

strategic adviser to Tony Blair and

was deputy chairman of Freud

Communications. He was a visitingprofessor in media and politics at

the London School of Economics

and a member of the House of

Lords, as well as the author of The

Unfinished Revolution. Philip Gould

died at the age of sixty-one in 2011.

• A Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller

• ‘It should really be prescribed on the

NHS…the most life-enhancing book I've

ever read’

- Rachel Johnson, The Lady

• ‘The book's power comes from the urgency

and simplicity of the message’

- Sunday Ti mes• ‘An extraordinarily moving book . . .

inspiring in its discussion of mortality’

- Matthew D’Ancona, Daily Telegraph

27

April

9780349139111


General

Paperback

£7.99


28/160

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Simon Mawer

Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought

up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England, half French, half

British, naive yet too clever for her own good. But when she isrecruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime

France, it seems her hybrid status – and fluent French – will be of

service to a greater, more dangerous cause.

Trained in sabotage, dead-drops, how to perform under

interrogation and how to kill, Marian parachutes into south-west

France, her official mission to act as a Resistance courier. But her

real destination is Paris, where she must seek out family friend

Clément Pelletier, once the focus of her adolescent desires. Anuclear physicist engaged in the race for a new and terrifying

weapon, he is of urgent significance to her superiors. As she

struggles through the strange, lethal landscape of the Occupation

towards this reunion, what completes her training is the

understanding that war changes everything, and neither love nor

fatherland may be trusted.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky is both a gripping adventure story

and a moving meditation on patriotism, betrayal and the limits of

love.

About the author

Simon Mawer was born in 1948 in

England, and spent his childhood

there, in Cyprus and in Malta. He

has lived with his wife in Italy formore than 20 years, and he

teaches at the English School in

Rome.

• The Glass Room, shortlisted for the Man

Booker prize , has sold nearly 100,000

copies across all formats and was loved by

critics, readers and booksellers alike

• ‘Masterly . . . A tour de force that grips and

never lets go’

- Mail on Sunday

•‘I read late into the night and cried a littlewhen I was done. He writes about fear and

bravery better than any contemporary

novelist I know’

- Rachel Cooke, Observer

• ‘Mawer is a genuinely great contemporary

writer’

- Simon Schama, Financial Times

• ‘If you only read one book this year, read

this one’

- Allan Massie, Scotsman

28

April

9780349000060

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99


29/160

29

Abacus 40th Anniversary Paperbacks

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138848

Adventure / Thriller

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138855 Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138909

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: April


Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138947

General,Humour Collections &

Anthologies

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138978

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£10.99

The book that gave us tartan noir

The book that made us all feel wonderful

The book that inspired a million journeys

The book that announced a genius

The book that defined an era

The book that made Oscar Wilde

seem dull


30/160

30


Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138954

History

Paperback

£10.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138961

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138985

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349138992

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN:9780349139005

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139012

Autobiography

Paperback

£9.99

The book that rebuilt Rome

The book that dared to tell a different story

The book that told the truth about women

The book that everyone fell in love

with

The book that shone new light on

our times

The book that made us bear witness

h


31/160

31


Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139029

Autobiography: General

Paperback

£14.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139036

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139043

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139050

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£12.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139067

Business Ethics, Sociology,

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349139074

Economics &Current Affairs

Paperback

£9.99

The book that inspired the world

The book that only she could have written

The book that moved millions

The book that broke all the rules

The book that changed how we

think

The book that revealed what

really motivates us


32/160

• Isabel Dalhousie is Edinburgh's MmaRamotswe

• Reissued with stunning new jackets

• Nearly 300,000 paperbacks sold of The

Sunday Philosophy Club

• Winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library

Award (for a body of work)

• English language sales for McCall Smith's

titles are now almost 10 million copies

worldwide

• Winner of Author of the Year three times

(BA, NIBBIES and Waterstones)

• www.mccallsmith.com

32

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9780349118048

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: February

IBSN: 9780349118062

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: June

ISBN: 9780349118697

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

About the author

Alexander McCall Smith has a

double existence. He is a Professor

of Medical Law, but also an author

who has now written over sixtybooks on a wide range of

subjects. His collection of African

stories, Children of Wax , received

critical acclaim and has been the

subject of an award-winning film.

Alexander McCall Smith Paperbacks


33/160

33

Abacus Paperback Highlights

Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9780349122380

Biography General

Paperback

£12.99

Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9780349123561

History

Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9780349000275

Travel Writing

Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9780349000190

Autobiography

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9780349120850

Travel WritingPaperback

£9.99

Pub Month: June

ISBN: 9780349123721

Memoir & Satire

Paperback

£8.99

b b k i hli h


34/160

34

Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9780349000015

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9780349122663

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: May


Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: JuneISBN: 9780349123905


Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: May

ISBN: 9780349000114


Paperback

£7.99

Abacus Paperback Highlights

Kingdom of Strangers

Zoe Ferraris

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9780349000152


Paperback

£7.99

Ab Li P b k Hi hli h


35/160

35

Abacus Literary Paperback Highlights

The Day of the Battle

Rick Atkinson

Pub Month: MayISBN: 9780349116358

History

Paperback

£14.99

Bloody Foreigners

Robert Winder

Pub Month: May

ISBN: 9780349138800

HistoryPaperback

£12.99

Vanished Years

Rupert Everett

Pub Month: May

ISBN: 9780349000237

Autobiography, MemoirPaperback

£8.99


36/160

36


37/160

Penelope

Rebecca Harrington

Meet Penelope O’Shaughnessy, Harvard freshman.

To make friends at Harvard, she just has to be herself – but not

too much.

Armed only with her Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights poster and

party conversation modelled on the repartee of Noël Coward,

Penelope is bewildered by the apparent lack of kindred spirits on

campus. And her roommates are baffling: Emma is busy signing up

for insanely difficult courses and obsessing about something called

a 'finals club'; and the rarely glimpsed Lan has painted her room

black and shut the door. Gustav, a dashing, rumpled-linen-suit-

wearing upperclassman of uncertain European origins who has

caught Penelope’s eye, never seems to be in the freshman dining

hall, so it seems unlikely she will ever find out if he matches up to

her hero, Hercule Poirot.

Penelope follows our heroine's progress through her first year

among America's elite, as she navigates the mysteries of life, love,

inappropriate tutors, marionette operation and how to kiss on

both cheeks and avoid disaster.

About the author

Rebecca Harrington read English at

Harvard, Journalism at Columbia

and now works as a staff writer for

the Huffington Post . Penelope is herdebut novel.

• A debut as charming and witty as The Dud

Avocado

• A campus novel for the twenty-first century

37

January

9781844089260


Hardback

£14.99


38/160

Bedsit Disco Queen

Tracey Thorn

I was only sixteen when I bought an electric guitar and joined a

band. A year later, I formed an all-girl band called the Marine Girls

and played gigs, and signed to an indie label, and started releasingrecords.

Then, for eighteen years, between 1982 and 2000, I was one half

of the group Everything But the Girl. In that time, we released

nine albums and sold nine million records. We went on countless

tours, had hit singles and flop singles, were reviewed and

interviewed to within an inch of our lives. I've been in the charts,

out of them, back in. I've seen myself described as an indie

darling, a middle-of-the-road nobody and a disco diva. I haven't

always fitted in, you see, and that's made me face up to the

realities of a pop career – there are thrills and wonders to be

experienced, yes, but also moments of doubt, mistakes, violent

lifestyle changes from luxury to squalor and back again,

sometimes within minutes.

About the author

Tracey Thorn was singer and

songwriter with Everything But the

Girl from 1982 –2000. At that point

she semi-retired from the musicbusiness to bring up her children.

She has since recorded two solo

albums, Out of the Woods and Love

and Its Opposite. Her new album is

to be released on 29th October

2012. She lives in London with her

husband Ben Watt and their three

children.

• Tracey Thorn is a much-loved artist with a

devoted fanbase: Everything But the Girl

had numerous hits and sold 9 million

records; and her solo albums have sold over

50,000 albums.

• Tracey Thorn has over 30,000 followers :

@tracey_thorn

• ‘The Alan Bennett of pop memoirists. I

loved her book so much, I wanted to form a

band too’

- Caitlin Moran

38

February

9781844088669


Film, Television, Music, Theatre

Hardback

£16.99

Rumer Godden her novels reissued for the first time as


39/160

39

Rumer Godden – her novels reissued for the first time as

Virago Modern Classics

Virago will publish fifteen of Rumer Godden’s titles in beautiful new editions in 2012 –14.

From the iconic Black Narcissus to Godden’s books for younger readers, such as Thursday’s Children,

these are a major addition to the Virago Modern Classics.

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088423

General & Literary FictionPaperback

£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088553


£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088393


Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088454


Paperback

£9.99



40/160

40


Virago Modern Classics

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088577


Paperback£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088591


Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088560


Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844088584


Paperback

£9.99



41/160

41


Virago Modern ClassicsListen to the Nightingale and Thursday's Children mark a new and exciting departure for the

Virago Modern Classics: stories for younger readers to treasure.

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9781844088508


Paperback

£6.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9781844088485


Paperback

£6.99

About the author

Rumer Godden (1907-98) was the

acclaimed author of over sixty

works of fiction and non-fiction for

adults and children. Born in

England, she and her siblings grew

up in Narayanganj, India, and she

later spent many years living in

Calcutta and Kashmir. Several of

her novels were made into films,

including Black Narcissus, The

Greengage Summer and The River,

which was filmed by Jean Renoir.

She was appointed OBE in 1993.


42/160

In Diamond Square

Mercè Rodoreda

Barcelona, early 1930s: Natalia, a pretty shop-girl from the

working-class quarter of Gracia, is hesitant when a stranger asks

her to dance at the fiesta in Diamond Square. But Joe is charmingand forceful, and she takes his hand.

They marry and soon have two children; for Natalia it is an

awakening, both good and bad. When Joe decides to breed

pigeons, the birds delight his son and daughter – and infuriate his

wife. Then the Spanish Civil War erupts, and lays waste to the city

and to their simple existence. Natalia remains in Barcelona,

struggling to feed her family, while Joe goes to fight the fascists,

and one by one his beloved birds fly away.

A highly acclaimed classic that has been translated into more than

twenty languages, In Diamond Square is the moving, vivid and

powerful story of a woman caught up in a convulsive period of

history.

About the author

Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (1908 –83)

was born and raised in Barcelona.

She began writing fiction and

published her first novel, Aloma, in

the 1930s. At the outbreak of the

Spanish Civil War in 1936, Rodoreda

sought exile in France and

Switzerland, where she remained

until the 1970s. In Diamond Square

was published in 1962; it went on

to become the most highly

acclaimed Catalan novel of modern

times. She was awarded Catalunya's

highest literary honour, the Premid'honor de les Lletres Catalanes,

and the Mercè Rodoreda literary

prize for short stories and

narratives was established in her

honour.

• A moving and compelling depiction of the

Spanish Civil War in Barcelona that will

appeal to fans of Irène Némirovsky and

Suite Franҫaise or Hans Fallada's Alone in

Berlin

• Translated by the world-renowned

translator Peter Bush

•

‘The most beautiful novel published inSpain since the Civil War’

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

42

March

9781844088959

Modern Fiction

Hardback

£14.99


43/160

Wave

Sonali Deraniyagala

The book opens and we are inside the wave: thirty feet high,

moving at twenty-five mph, racing two miles inland. And from

there into the depths of the author's despair: how to live now thather life has been undone?

Sonali Deraniyagala tells her story – the loss of her two boys, her

husband and her parents – without artifice or sentimentality. In

the stark language of unfathomable sorrow, anger and guilt, she

struggles through the first months following the tragedy –

someone always at her side to prevent her from harming herself,

her whole being furiously clenched against the reality she can't

face; and then reluctantly emerging and, over the ensuing years,

slowly allowing her memory to function again.

Then she goes back through the rich and joyous life she's

mourning, from her family's home in London to the birth of her

children, to the year she met her English husband at Cambridge,

to her childhood in Colombo, while learning the balance between

the almost unbearable reminders of her loss and her fundamental

need to keep her family, somehow, still with her.

About the author

Sonali Deraniyagala has an degree

in Economics from Cambridge

University and a doctorate in

Economics from the University of

Oxford. She is on the faculty of the

Department of Economics at SOAS,

University of London, and is a

research scholar at Columbia

University. She divides her time

between the U.K. and the U.S.

• Written with great power and insight that

bears comparison to Joan Didion's The Year

of Magical Thinking

• ‘The most powerful and haunting book I

have read in years’

- Michael Ondaatje

43

March

9781844089284

Biography &

Autobiography,Biography &

Autobiography: Literary

Hardback

£12.99


44/160

Fifty Shades of Feminism

Edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Susie Orbach and

Rachel Holmes

Fifty years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, havewomen really exchanged purity and maternity to become desiring

machines inspired only by variations of sex, shopping and

masochism – all coloured a brilliant neuro-pink?

In this volume, fifty women young and old – writers, politicians,

actors, scientists, mothers – reflect on the shades that inspired

them and what being woman means to them today.

Contributors so far include: Tahmima Anam, Joan Bakewell,

Bidisha, Lydia Cacho, Shami Chakrabarti, Lennie Goodings, LindaGrant, Natalie Haynes, Siri Hustvedt, Jude Kelly, Kathy Lette, Kate

Mosse, Bee Rowlatt, Elif Shafak, Ahdaf Soueif, Shirley Thompson,

Natasha Walter, Jeanette Winterson – alongside the three editors.

44

March

9781844089451

Hardback£10

Lisa Appignanesi Rachel Holmes

Susie Orbach


45/160

Mom and Me and Mom

Maya Angelou

'In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was not a good

time to be born black, or woman, in America.'

So begins this stunning portrait of Vivian Baxter Johnson: the first

black woman officer in the Merchant Marines, purveyor of a

gambling business and rooming house, and mother to one of our

most cherished literary treasures.

Anyone who's read the classic, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,

knows Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother in

Stamps, Arkansas. In Mom and Me and Mom, Angelou details

what brought her mother to send her away and unearths the well

of emotions Angelou experienced long afterwards as a result.

While Angelou's six autobiographies tell of her out in the world,

influencing and learning from statesmen and cultural icons, Mom

and Me and Mom shares the intimate, emotional story about her

own family.

About the author

In addition to her six volumes of

autobiography, Maya Angelou has

written several collections of

poetry, including On the Pulse of

the Morning for the inauguration of

President Clinton. She has a life-

time appointment as Reynolds

Professor of American Studies at

Wake Forest University.

• Virago has sold over 2 million copies of

Maya Angelou’s books

• President Obama awarded Maya Angelou

the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying,

‘her voice has spoken to millions’

45

April

9781844089147


General

Hardback

£12.99


46/160

Blood & Beauty

Sarah Dunant

Acclaimed novelist of the Italian Renaissance Sarah Dunant now

takes on the era's most infamous family: the Borgias.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of

Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more

than in Rome and in the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia

buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not

just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate

children, but by his blood: he is a Spanish Pope in a city run by

Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic,

consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women and

power must use papacy and family to succeed.

His eldest son Cesare, a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even

colder soul, is his greatest – though increasingly unstable –

weapon. Later immortalised in Machiavelli's The Prince, he

provides the energy and the muscle. His daughter Lucrezia,

beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old

when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages:

from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to

political player.

Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood and Beauty is

a majestic novel that breathes life into this astonishing family and

celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex

and relentless.

About the author

Internationally bestselling writer

Sarah Dunant is famous for her

Italian historical novels: The Birth of

Venus, In the Company of the

Courtesan and Sacred Hearts, which

have been translated into more

than thirty languages. She has

worked widely in television, radio

and print, and has written ten

novels and edited two collections of

essays. She lives in London and

Florence.

• ‘There is no more accomplished guide to

Renaissance Italy’

- Michael Arditti

• ‘Writes like a painter, and thinks like a

philosopher’

- Amanda Foreman

46

May

9781844087426


Hardback

£16.99


47/160

The Woman Upstairs

Claire Messud

‘I'm halfway through my life, or maybe more, and I'm finally

awake to the fact that it's in my hands alone. I've believed in other

people, had faith, been patient, waiting for my moment – enough,already. Who have I been kidding?’

Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter,

colleague, friend, employee. She teaches at an elementary school

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the children and the parents

adore her; but her real passion is her art, which she makes alone,

unseen. To be an artist is, she is sure, her real destiny.

Then one day Reza Shahid appears in her classroom: eight years

old, a perfect, beautiful boy. Reza's parents are on a year-long visitfrom Paris: Skandar, his father, has a fellowship at Harvard; Sirena,

his mother, is a glamorous installation artist apparently on the

brink of huge success.

For that magical year, Nora is admitted into their charmed circle,

and everything is transformed. Or so she believes. As it turns out,

her liberation from the benign shackles of her old life is not quite

what it seems, and she is about to suffer a betrayal more

monstrous than anything she could have imagined.

About the author

Claire Messud was born in 1966

and was educated at Yale and at

Cambridge. She is the author of

three novels, including The

Emperor's Children, a New York

Times bestseller. She lives in Boston

with her husband and their two

children.

• Claire Messud’s previous novel, The

Emperor's Children, was longlisted for the

Man Booker Prize and has sold more than

half a million copies

• Virago is delighted to have become Claire

Messud’s new UK publisher

• The Woman Upstairs is a searing novel of

huge emotional force

47

May

9781844087310

Literary Fiction

Hardback

£14.99


48/160

Careless People Murder, Mayhem & the Invention of The

Great Gatsby Sarah Churchwell

Since its publication in the spring of 1925, The Great Gatsby hasbecome one of the recognised masterpieces of the twentieth

century, beloved by readers across the world and regularly named

as one of the greatest novels ever written in English.

Now comes a book which tells of the mayhem and the surprising

story behind the novel, exploring in newly rich detail the relation

of Fitzgerald's masterpiece to the chaotic world in which he lived.

Careless People is a fascinating reconstruction of the crucial

months during which Fitzgerald returned to New York in the

autumn of 1922 – the parties, the drunken weekends at Great

Neck, Long Island, the drives back into the city to the jazz clubs

and speakeasies, the casual intersection of high society and

organized crime and the growth of celebrity culture of which the

Fitzgeralds themselves were the epitome.

Combining elements of biography, social history and, for the first

time, a proper investigation of the high-profile murder which was

a crucial source of inspiration for the deaths at the heart of the

novel, Careless People is a passionately written and compelling

story of the genesis of one of the twentieth-century's greatest andmost popular masterpieces.

About the author

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of

American Literature and Public

Understanding of the Humanities at

the University of East Anglia. She

reviews widely.

• A wonderful piece of literary detective

work, a reconstruction of the crucial

months before The Great Gatsby was

written

48

June

9781844087662

Social & Cultural History

Hardback

£18.99


49/160

Our Cheating Hearts

Kate Figes

Most of us manage to be monogamous, most of the time. But most

of us also know that adultery is the ‘crime’ we could imagine

ourselves committing.

For centuries the couple relationship has sat uncomfortably at the

apex of private and public life, but now the state, and even many

religions, no longer insist that we marry in order to enjoy sexual

pleasure, to have children, to be good citizens or to protect our

economic security. So it is absolute fidelity in sexual love above all,

which stands as the primary symbol of commitment to that love. In

our progressive times, monogamy has become the ideal.

But reality is far from the ideal: in the UK alone, research suggest

that up to two-thirds of married women and three-quarters of

married men have engaged in at least one extra-marital sexual

activity and a quarter of all couples present for therapy because of

an affair. 'Adultery is both ordinary and forgivable,' writes Siri

Hustvedt, and yet we don't understand it.

This book lifts the taboos, asks the tough questions, suggests that we

can survive an affair and that it can lead to a better understanding of

ourselves and our relationships. Monogamy is possible and manycouples manage it either throughout their relationship or for long

periods of time. But for the countless others a more honest and

humane public debate around the subject of infidelity is essential.

Our Cheating Hearts, by the author known and respected for

charting the emotional territory of relationships, is that book.

About the author

Kate Figes is the author of four

previous works of non-fiction: The

Big Fat Bitch Book , Life After Birth,

The Terrible Teens – What Every

Parent Needs to Know and, most

recently, Couples: How We Make

Love Last , as well as two novels.

• Kate Figes is a respected writer with a

strong media profile, recognised as the

expert on relationships.

49

June

9781844087280

Psychology

Trade Paperback

£12.99

Virago paperback highlights


50/160

50


Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9781844086054

Biography &

Autobiography: General

Paperback£8.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9781844088621

Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9781844088638

Fiction

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9781844087549

Historical Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: April

ISBN: 9781844087884

Biography & Autobiography:General

Trade Paperback

£12.99

Pub Month: MayISBN: 9781844084777

Historical Fiction

Paperback

£7.99



51/160

51


Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9781844087730

Pregnancy, Birth & Baby

Care: Advice

Trade Paperback

£14.99

Pub Month: January

ISBN: 9781844088270


£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844087945


General

Paperback

£9.99

Pub Month: February

ISBN: 9781844086658

Modern FictionPaperback

£7.99

Pub Month: March

ISBN: 9781844086450

History

Paperback

£10.99



52/160

52


Pub Month: June

ISBN: 9781844087723

Essays, Journals, Letters & Other Prose

Works

Paperback

£8.99

Pub Month: June

ISBN: 9781844087860

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: JuneISBN: 9781844087785

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99

Pub Month: June

ISBN: 9781844089000

Fiction, Modern Fiction

Paperback

£7.99


53/160

53


54/160

The Salem Witch Society

K.N. Shields

Salem, New England, many dark nights ago.

It is a time of spells and shadows, of black magic and blood.

And the most famous witch hunt in history is about to begin . . .

Years later, a young woman is found savagely murdered, a

pitchfork thrust through her neck, her body arranged in the shape

of a star: the death pose of a witch. Someone – or something – is

reviving the terror of the notorious Salem witch hunts. And only

one man – a brilliant, eccentric loner with a dazzling mind and a

fascination with witchcraft – can keep the evils of the past at bay.

About the author

K.N. Shields grew up in Portland,

Maine. He graduated from

Dartmouth College and the

University of Maine School of Law.

He continues to reside along the

coast of Maine with his wife and

two children. This is his first novel.

• Sphere's January debut

• Rich in history, mystery and witchcraft, The

Salem Witch Society is a twisting, terrifying

thriller

• Perfect for readers who loved A Discovery

of Witches and The Interpretation of

Murder

54

January

9780751549102

Historical Fiction

Paperback

£6.99


55/160

The Valentine's Card

Juliet Ashton

The Valentine's card was meant to be Orla's fairy-tale ending, but

really, it was only the beginning . . .

Orla adores her actor boyfriend, Sim, who's away filming a

sumptuous costume drama. Although the long-distance

relationship means that she can eat toast for dinner and watch as

much reality TV as she likes, she misses him like crazy.

But Valentine's Day changes everything . . . The same morning

Orla learns that Sim has died, she receives a card from him. As

Orla travels from Ireland to London, to live and breathe Sim's final

moments, can she bring herself to open the Valentine's card and

read his final message?

A heart-warming and heart-breaking novel about the power of

love, laughter and friendship.

About the author

Juliet Ashton is an Irish writer living

in chaotic exile in London with her

family and animals. This is her

debut novel.

• Perfect for readers of Marian Keyes, Cathy

Kelly, Lisa Jewell and books like One Day

and P.S. I Love You

55

January

9780751544275

Modern Fiction

Paperback

£6.99


56/160


57/160

Death in St James's Park

Susanna Gregory

Five years after Charles II's triumphant return to London there is

growing mistrust of his extravagant court and of corruption among

his officials – and when a cart laden with gunpowder explodesoutside the General Letter Office, it is immediately clear that such

an act is more than an expression of outrage at the inefficiency of

the postal service.

As intelligencer to the Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Chaloner cannot

understand why a man of known incompetence is put in charge of

investigating the attack while he is diverted to make enquiries

about the poisoning of birds in the King's aviary in St James's Park.

He becomes even more suspicious of his employer's motives when

he discovers that the witnesses he needs to interview have closelinks to the business conducted in the General Letter Office,

activities more firmly centred on intercepting people's mail than

delivering it.

Then human rather than avian victims are poisoned, and Chaloner

knows he has to ignore his master's instructions and use his own

considerable wits to defeat an enemy whose deadly tentacles

reach into the very heart of the government: an enemy who has

the power and expertise to destroy anyone who stands in the

way.

About the author

Susanna Gregory was a police

officer in Leeds before taking up an

academic career. She has served as

an environmental consultant during

seventeen field seasons in the polar

regions, and has taught

comparative anatomy and

biological anthropology.

She is the creator of the Matthew

Bartholomew series of mysteries

set in medieval Cambridge as well

as the Thomas Chaloner books, and

now lives in Wales with herhusband, who is also a writer.

• Susanna Gregory is also the author of the

Matthew Bartholomew series, the latest of

which was selected for the Big City Read in

York.

57

January

9781847444349


Hardback

£19.99


58/160

The Soul of It AllMy music, my life Michael Bolton

After four decades in the music industry, Michael Bolton has

become one of the most successful musicians of our time. The

Soul of It All is a backstage pass into his life lived thus far – into the

venues, buses, limos and hotel rooms of stardom, and finally into

his home and heart.

His story will go long and dive deep, not only into his self-

proclaimed 'vagabond vampire'

little brown spring catalogue

Documents