A new novel from Maurice Gee

 

The Severed Land by Maurice Gee is the first YA novel from Maurice in 7 years and is available now at booksellers nationwide.

The Severed Land is truly gripping, brilliantly written, fresh and powerful – you really feel you’re in the hands of a master storyteller. You’re thrust into an utterly believable, vivid and scary world without any obvious descriptions or laboured explanations.

Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers for adults and children. He has won numerous literary awards, including the Wattie Award,the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award and the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award. Maurice Gee’s junior and young adult novels include The Fat Man, Orchard Street, Hostel Girl, Under the Mountain, The O Trilogy, and The Salt Trilogy.

RRP $19.99

Imprint: Penguin (NZ)

Footnote:
Many years ago I was a bookseller in Napier and Maurice Gee was the public librarian. We became good friends and then Maurice went to Nelson and became a fulltime author while I went to Auckland to enter world of book publishing.
We are now both retired and Maurice said the other day that he thought his writing life was over when part three of his Salt Trilogy, The Limping Man, was published in 2010. He said that this new work, The Severed Land  "came out of nowhere and surprised me". So this is a real bonus for all those many Maurice Gee fans out there.
Although described as a YA novel I warmly recommend it to adults also. A brilliant piece of writing.

Barack Obama May Receive $20 Million Advance For Memoir

He is likely to garner more advance money than any other president in history for his memoir.

Written By Brandee Sanders - Newsone 

 

When discussing his post-White House plans, former president Barack Obama shared that he wanted to focus on penning a book. According to Forbes, he may receive a $20 million advance for his memoir.

Esther Newberg, co-head of ICM Partners’ publishing unit, says that he is likely to garner more advance money than any other president in history for his book.  MORE

Let’s Get a Summer Book, With a Summery Cover...

	Get ready to sequester yourself in a small cool room wearing your heat-be-gone booties because this month at Text we’ve got the gripping thriller Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit, a South Australian-focussed edition of Griffith Review 55: State of Hope, a powerful work of non-fiction investigation by Kate Grenville in The Case Against Fragrance as well as gritty debut crime and a revealing tell-all memoir. The Perth Writers Festival kicks off on Thurs 23 February for four days. Text authors at the festival include Toni Jordan, Peter Mares, Elspeth Muir, Jock Serong, Eka Kurniawan and Ashleigh Wilson. Manuscript submissions for the Tenth Annual Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing close this Friday 3 February.  All details on how to submit are on our our website. If you have any questions regarding how to purchase heat-be-gone booties or how to avoid Dave's syndrome, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. from Text Publishing

It Was The Orange Prize, Then The Baileys Prize, And Now It Needs A New Sponsor

 

WORDS Posted: January 30, 2017

 

Not only that, but it may not be a prize anymore: “Organisers of the women’s prize have said they want its next sponsor to pay for a year-long boost for women’s fiction, rather than a once-a-year celebration when the winner is declared.”

 

Read the story at Published: 01.30.17

The Roundup with PW

Standing Up to President Trump
There never has been a president whose election has caused as much widespread alarm among so many people in all segments of the publishing industry as Donald Trump. more »

Finalists Named for 2017 PW Bookstore of the Year
This year’s bookstore finalists represent a broad range of independent bookstores, from across the country, both newer stores and long-established ones. The winner will be announced in March. more »

Baileys Drops Women's Prize Sponsorship: The drinks brand has supported the Baileys prize since 2014, but is refocusing its strategy on non-English speaking countries.

HC U.K. CEO: Books Before Innovations: Charlie Redmayne shares his perspective on India, experiments with digital and the future.

How to Escape the Slush Pile: Submitting short fiction to literary magazines can be a discouraging process, but a pre-submission checklist can help.

11 Memoirs By American Radicals: An array of books by muckraking journalists, anti-war activists, and other radical writers of 20th Century America.

César Aira's Infinite Footnote: Aira’s novels are difficult to classify—by turns realist, surrealist, absurd, and philosophical—but they are certainly indebted to Borges.

VIEW ALL »

 

 

 

Off the Shelf

How to Become Undone   By Elizabeth Breeden    |   Monday, January 30, 2017 Wally Lamb’s SHE’S COME UNDONE can be presented with many classifiers. It’s a debut, a coming-of-age story, a novel about mothers and daughters, an exploration into contemporary American anxieties, and a 1996 Oprah’s Book Club pick. READ MORE

Publishers Lunch

Today's Meal

People, Etc.

At Portfolio and Sentinel, Bria Sandford has been promoted to senior editor.

Former longtime chairman of Canongate for 22 years (and stepfather of Jamie Byng) Christopher Bland, 78, died on Sunday of prostate cancer. He also had served as chair of the BBC board of governors and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and published two novels in the past few years.

The UK's Women's Prize for Fiction is looking for a new sponsor after Bailey's said it had "regretfully decided to make way for a new sponsor" after this year's award. They took over sponsorship of what had been the Orange Prize in 2014. Chief marketing officer of Bailey's owner Diageo Syl Saller will join the prize's board, however.

Statistics
BookNet Canada released headline sales data for 2016 in advance of their annual research publication. Point of sales data from over 2,000 retail outlets shows trade book sales of 36.1 million units falling 6.4 percent ("slightly," in their vernacular), with dollar sales of $740 million (CA) declining 3.6 percent.

Nonfiction declined 10.4 percent on a unit basis, and 7.1 percent in dollars, as fiction fell 6.7 percent in units and 5.6 percent in dollars. Thanks to Harry Potter, juvenile sales fell less than one percent in units, and gained 6.7 percent in dollars.

Latest from The Bookseller

A year in review: Potter power defied by Paula J K Rowling’s original Harry Potter septet, vocalised by Stephen Fry, dominated the audio download chart in 2016, but their magic fell short of displacing Paula Hawkins’ pre-eminent psychological thriller. Women's Prize for Fiction seeks new sponsor after Baileys deal ends The Women’s Prize for Fiction is seeking a new sponsor after Baileys, which has backed the prize for the past four years, decided not to renew its support in 2018. 'Inspiring' former Canongate chairman Christopher Bland dies Former Canongate chairman Christoper Bland has died aged 78. Malorie Blackman to boycott US literature festivals after Trump travel policy Former children's laureate Malorie Blackman has vowed to boycott literature festivals and events in the US while Donald Trump's "travel ban" policy - barring refugees and arrivals from predominantly Muslim countries - is in place. Bloomsbury launches health and wellness imprint Green Tree Bloomsbury Publishing has launched Green Tree, an imprint dedicated to health and wellness publishing. Quick Reads seeks broader reach This year will see Quick Reads—the adult literacy campaign founded by Baroness Rebuck in 2006—looking to greatly expand its remit. Roxane Gay tells ABA 'books more important than ever' Books and bookstores will be more important than ever in the current climate, US feminist writer Roxane Gay told the American Booksellers Association's 12th Winter Institute in Minneapolis. Novelist Douglas Edward Reeman dies British novelist Douglas Edward Reeman, creator of the Richard Bolitho series, has died. Alison Steadman is latest celebrity to pen children's book for Hachette Hachette Children’s Group (HCG) has signed a picture book text by actress Alison Steadman. Headline to publish vlogger Grace Victory Headline has acquired No Filter, the first book from vlogger Grace Victory, known for promoting body positivity as the internet’s "Big Sister". Redmayne to narrate Fantastic Beasts audiobook Eddie Redmayne will narrate an audiobook version of J K Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Pottermore has announced. Morpurgo and Doyle amongst LBF author line-up Children’s writer Michael Morpurgo will join Roddy Doyle and Polish author Olga Tokarczuk on London Book Fair’s ‘author of the day’ line-up this year.

Most read stories of the past week on The Bookseller

 

Our round-up of the most read stories of the past week on The Bookseller: 1. Authors fear accusations of cultural appropriation, forum hears 2. Mary Berry launches Everyday with Mel and Sue 3. Amazon launches £20,000 KDP prize 4. Author Emma Tennant dies 5. MFN clauses threaten validity of publishers’ Amazon contracts (£) 6. Pan Mac promotes Francesca Main and Trish Jackson 7. PA pushes for stronger UK stance against Amazon post-Brexit 8. J K Rowling praises booksellers to mark first Specsavers Bestseller Awards 9. Pearson Education to move to Harlow's Kao Park 10. Book trade cautiously welcomes Amazon's new e-book deal (£)

 

Lit Hub Weekly

·         On the page, and in the streets, we must write a better story: Molly Crabapple, Yaa Gyasi, and Paul Beatty react to the inauguration of Donald Trump. | The Guardian

·         This fall, Doubleday will release The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, which is expanded from the “only written remnant of a children’s fairy tale from [Mark] Twain, though he told his daughters stories constantly.” | The New York Times

·         On George Saunders’ children’s book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, “one of the most haunting stories Saunders ever wrote about the anxiously self-interested.” | VICE

·         “It isn’t Trump as a character, a human type—the real-estate type, the callow and callous killer capitalist—that outstrips the imagination. It is Trump as President of the United States.” Philip Roth on Donald Trump. | The New Yorker

·         “The drama of Wideman’s personal history can seem almost mythical, refracting so many aspects of the larger black experience in America, an experience defined less by its consistencies, perhaps, than by its many contradictions—the stunning and ongoing plurality of victories and defeats.” A profile of John Edgar Wideman. | The New York Times Magazine

Aravind Adiga’s Novel Is About the Game of Cricket — and Sexual Awakening

By MARCEL THEROUX   - The New York Times   -   JAN. 27, 2017

 

                

A nation of cricket obsessives: Kolkata, Dec. 5, 2014. Credit Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

SELECTION DAY
By Aravind Adiga
289 pp. Scribner. $26.

 

After a year that has shattered so much received wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic, perhaps there’s some comfort to be taken in one nailed-down certainty: The chances of cricket ever displacing baseball, basketball or football in the bosom of the American public are close to zero.

 

How different things are in Aravind Adiga’s homeland, India, a nation of cricket obsessives. There, devotion to the sport is an enthusiasm that unites 1.3 billion people, propels its finest exponents to a status of semi-divinity and seems to offer a shot at transformative victory to every slum kid with the physical gifts and stubbornness to master the game. It’s this possibility that powers Adiga’s “Selection Day,” a novel about the bewitching dream of athletic glory.

MORE