THE BOOKSELLER BUYER’S GUIDE | PUBLISHERS’ AUTUMN TITLES
AUTUMN FICTION Highlights
Cathy Rentzenbrink, Contributing Editor of The Bookseller, selects the fiction highlights
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sublime and I really enjoyed The Secrets of Wishtide—the first in a new Victorian detective series by Kate Saunders that should do very well indeed. We have offerings from literary giants with books from Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran-Foer, Ann Patchett and Jay McInerny. Irish talent is well represented with new novels from Eimear McBride, Donal Ryan and Sebastian Barry.
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Athelinda Playford summons a house party and explains that she is leaving all of her considerable fortune away from her children and to a dying friend. What could be her motive for leaving money to someone who is expected to pre-decease her? Luckily Poirot and his detective friend Edward Catchpole are on hand to unravel the mystery.
EBERLEN, KATE MISS YOU MANTLE, 11 AUGUST, HB, £12.99, 9781509819935 So many books are optimistically compared with Me Before You and One Day, and this is a rare case where the comparisons are justified. Tess and Gus keep just missing each other as their lives change in ways they would never have anticipated. Will they ever properly meet? I read this in one go, alternately giggling and crying my eyes out. Eberlen is very wise on grief and the unlooked for paths that life offers. I predict huge commercial success.
HANNAH, SOPHIE; CHRISTIE, AGATHA CLOSED CASKET HARPERCOLLINS, 06 SEPTEMBER, HB, £18.99, 9780008134099 Hannah’s second go at a Poirot novel—her first, The Monocle Murders, did very well. Famous author Lady
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SAFRAN FOER, JONATHAN HERE I AM HAMISH HAMILTON, 06 SEPTEMBER, HB, £20, 9780241146170 The author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close tells a story of interwoven domestic collapse and global upheaval over three weeks. In Washington DC, three sons watch their parents’ marriage fall apart. Meanwhile, a massive earthquake devastates the Middle East and sparks a Pan-Arab invasion of Israel. What is the meaning of home and how much life can one man bear to try to lead and be found wanting?
MCBRIDE, EIMEAR THE LESSER BOHEMIANS FABER & FABER, 01 SEPTEMBER, HB, £16.99, 9780571327850 A Girl is a Half-formed Thing won the Desmond Elliot Prize, The Goldsmiths Prize and The Baileys Women’s Fiction Prize. McBride’s second novel is a story of sexual passion and the loss of innocence. An 18-year-old girl arrives in London from
There’s always more fiction in the first half of the year as publishers worry—with due cause—that quieter novels will get lost in the onslaught of Christmas. Autumn, then, belongs to the big beasts—sure things and literary lions. Big commercial titles this year include the last in Jeffrey Archer’s mega-selling Clifton Chronicles and a new outing for Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper’s Mount! Sophie Hannah’s second Poirot novel Closed Casket is
Now, many books are compared to Me Before You and One Day, but few live up to the hype. Miss You by Kate Eberlen really does and I look forward to Tess and Gus and their story of missed opportunities and second chances becoming ubiquitous. I was bowled over by The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead from the very first line. It’s a highly accomplished novel that is both an absorbing adventure story and a meditation on the evils and legacy of slavery. Anyone wondering at the parlous state of race relations in America should give this a read.
I usually leave out reissues for reasons of space, but thoughts of Christmas
TITLES NOT TO MISS
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Ireland to study drama and falls violently in love with an older actor. He has a dark past that she’s unprepared to cope with, and she also has troubles of her own.
MCINERNEY, JAY BRIGHT, PRECIOUS DAYS BLOOMSBURY, 08 SEPTEMBER, HB, £18.99, 9781408876589 The new novel from the author of Bright Lights, Big City is the third in the sequence that began with Brightness Falls and tracks the lives and loves of Corinne and Russell Calloway. It’s now 2008, their twins are 12, Russell runs his own publishing company and Corinne works in food redistribution. When Jeff Pierce’s posthumous novel based on his affair with Corinne becomes a hit, it makes it harder for Corinne and Russell to forgive each other their past indiscretions.
PATCHETT, ANN COMMONWEALTH BLOOMSBURY, 08 SEPTEMBER, HB, £18.99, 9781408880401 I’m dying with anticipation for Patchett’s seventh novel. When Bert Cousins kisses Beverley Keating at her daughter’s christening party—baby Frannie is tucked between them—their families are joined together
have lured me into including a rather nice My Family and Other Animals and a sumptuous—and sumptuously priced at £75—new edition of A Game of Thrones. I’ve also included The Winter King, first in Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord trilogy and the very definition of a thumping good read. Happy bookselling.
in a dance of fate. Twenty-four years later, Frannie has dropped out of law school and is working as a cocktail waitress. When she meets a famous author and tells him the story of her family, she has no idea of the consequences. Humour and heartbreak in equal portions, promises Bloomsbury.
RYAN, DONAL ALL WE SHALL KNOW DOUBLEDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER, HB, £12.99, 9780857524379 “Martin Toppy is the son of a famous Traveller and the father of my unborn child. He’s 17, I’m 33. I was his teacher. I’d have killed myself by now if I was brave enough. I don’t think it would hurt the baby. His little heart would stop with mine. He wouldn’t feel himself leaving one world of darkness for another, his spirit untangling itself from me.”
SAUNDERS, KATE THE SECRETS OF WISHTIDE BLOOMSBURY, 14 JULY, HB, £14.99, 9781408866863 This joyous Victorian detective novel is the first of a planned six-book series that will follow the adventures of Laetitia Rodd, a private detective of the utmost discretion. Mrs Rodd is the widow of an Archdeacon and lives in reduced circumstances in Hampstead with Mrs Benson, who once let out rooms to John Keats. Cases
arrive courtesy of her brother who is a criminal barrister. This is perfect curling up the sofa reading.
SMITH, ZADIE SWING TIME HAMISH HAMILTON, 15 NOVEMBER, HB, £18.99, 9780241144152 The fifth novel from the multi-award-winning author is an exuberant story of friendship and music that spins between north-west London and West Africa. Two brown girls dream of being dancers but only one has talent. The other has ideas about rhythm, time and freedom, about black bodies and black music and what constitutes a tribe. Their complicated childhood friendship comes to a sudden end in their twenties but is never quite forgotten.
WHITEHEAD, COLSON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FLEET, 3 NOVEMBER, HB, £16.99, 9780708898340 “The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.” Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. As she flees the temper of her owner in hope of a less grim life, she meets allies and enemies and is pursued by a slave catcher who will not rest until he has returned Cora to the horrific
punishment that awaits her. This is a powerful novel that impressively weaves the story of one woman with an overview of slavery in America before the Civil War.
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Cathy Rentzenbrink
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