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Previews Paperback preview


October Paperback Previews


October promises plenty of cosy paperbacks with spooky tales for Halloween and festive reads for the start of the Christmas season


Will Smith @likewinterblue


O


ctober’s paperback offering is steeped in things dark and spooky and this is also the unofficial starting gun for the Christmas giſt season, pre-emptively festive. The lengthening nights give rise to two powerful examinations of darkness, as Jacqueline Yallop’s Into the Dark and Annabel Abbs’ Sleepless blend personal stories with cultural investigations of night-time. In fiction, Jane Austen’s Regency world is active again with Jessica Bull’s début enlisting her for some sleuthing in Miss Austen Investigates, while Melinda Taub explores the super- natural possibilities of Pride and Prejudice in the continuation The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch. This month’s reissues include a notable development in accessibilit from Bloomsbury. Following in the footsteps of


Submissions should be sent to Caroline at St Ives, Frome Park Road, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 3LF. Hard copies preferred (covering letter & AI essential), email submissions welcome. See thebookseller.com/publishing calendar for submission deadlines.


BOTH Press, the adult imprint founded by Books on the Hill in Clevedon, nr Bristol, Bloomsbury are republishing a range of popular backlist titles in a dyslexia-friendly format. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season are among the books which will be printed in a blue ink sans serif font on cream paper. Penguin are publishing a gourd full of Halloween reading in the new Weird Fiction series, comprising four reissued novels and an anthology. Christmas themed titles also feature heavily. The reissue of Jill McGown’s Scene of Crime in a modern festive cover continues the trend towards rediscovered seasonal crime thrillers in recent years. British Library Crime Classics, pioneers of the concept, have a fresh festive reissue too in Elizabeth Anthony’s Dramatic Murder: A Lost Christmas Murder Mystery. Many significant reissues antici- pate forthcoming screen adapta- tions, from Gregory Maguire’s Wicked to Niall Williams’ Four Letters Of Love and Liane Moriart’s Apples Never Fall.


BookScan ratings accompanying titles are based on TCM sales (excludes e-book, export, direct, library and other sales) of the author’s most recent original work in a similar format with at least six months’ sales through Nielsen BookScan, using the notation left.


50,000+ 25,000+ 10,000+ 5,000+ 3,000+


Next issue The next edition of The Bookseller (23rd August) will feature our New Titles: Fiction & Non-Fiction (Nov); Discover (Sept), Children, Paperback Previews (Nov)


20 26th July 2024


Book of the Month A reflective, poetic read about a troubled professor


Literary Teju Cole


Tremor Faber & Faber, 10th, £9.99, 9780571283361


A rich, complex and poetic novel following Tunde, a university professor of photography in New England, who from the outset is in reflective mood: cards are dropping into his department notifying him of deaths among unknown emeritus professors, and one day


soon they will feature names he knows. Tunde recalls leaving West Africa for a life teaching in


America, only to encounter its own complex histories in the everyday. America’s relationship with indigenous people is inescapable. Its history as a settler-colonial nation and its obsession with captivity narratives haunt him. A scene at an antiques barn drives home these everyday truths as he prepares a lecture on art and violence, centred around artistic depictions of the Middle Passage. So much of the novel is then about what is seen and unseen, and the tremors felt from our proximity to violence, both past and present. Split across eight sections, the novel feels like a sequence of snap- shots, each one filled with detail, digression and beauty. This is a great read for those who love autofiction, poetic


immersion in lives and smart contemporary takes on campus novels. “Although highly conceptual, Tremor is heartbreakingly tender,” said the Guardian.


© T Cole


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