How to Be Hopeful by Bernadette Russell

How do we find hope? And how do we hold onto it?
This kind and compassionate book leads the way.

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How to Be Hopeful
Your Toolkit to Rediscover Hope and Help Create a Kinder World
By Bernadette Russell
Elliott & Thompson / £12.99 / 10 September 2020

How to be Hopeful is a celebration of hope: an essential and courageous thing to envisage, create and connect with in our everyday lives. It shows us the places we can look for hope – in ourselves, nature, art, the kindness of strangers, communities, science, technology, innovation, as well as our individual and collective actions – and ways to keep it alive through all the challenges life throws at us. It invites us to act on our hopes towards positive and real change and includes stories of seemingly impossible odds overcome by individuals and groups of people who dared to do so, and triumphed. Starting with how we find hope in ourselves, this book also offers practical and creative exercises and tips on how we can embrace and develop hope in our communities, the wider world and in our future, as we face the very real and complex challenges of our times.

Exploring scientific, philosophical and spiritual perspectives on hope throughout the centuries and today, How to Be Hopeful is the essential book for our times.

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TALKING POINTS

• Why we should try and find hope and how acting with hope can help us create positive change. How hope is different from wishful thinking or blind optimism, how hope can provide us with the fuel to transform our lives, our communities and the world.

• How hope is connected with compassion - how compassionate practise - to ourselves, each other and to the whole world, can restore hope and increase happiness.

• The ‘positivity bias’ of children - how understanding and being inspired by children and our younger selves can help us find and maintain hope as adults – bringing us joy and giving us courage to try things.

• Why adults are prone to pessimism and how we can counter this? How cynicism and negativity can diminish our lives and how nurturing hope can help us live our lives more fully.

• How hope can help us even when we’re faced with life’s big challenges, such as illness, grief, death and dying.

• How to remain hopeful in the face of huge global problems such as the climate crisis, and how to stay informed yet not drift to despair. How to become an active part of the solution, and how to enjoy yourself whilst doing so! (activism for beginners!)

• The neurological benefits of acts of kindness and self-care, and how they fortify hope - how being kind to yourself and others can and should co-exist and how compassionate practise makes you more resilient, hopeful and more able to recover from setbacks and disappointment.

• How to grow your hope by connecting with your communities and your neighbours, and improve your own life and the area in which you live.

• How science, tech and art can all provide us with hope for the future - and how we can support and join in with those who are working towards a brighter tomorrow.

• How to find hope in the midst of a barrage of online negativity and relentless bad news - how to stay informed and engaged with the world whilst increasing your happiness and hope.

• How sharing stories can help us regain hope when it is lost, those of triumph over adversity, succeeding despite the odds, and happy endings. Understanding the way we tell our own stories can affect how our hope and our happiness, and how to take charge of our own stories and our lives, to help us realise our dreams.

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‘This book is an invitation to start your own journey towards hope. I believe that active hope increases the chances that our future can be better and our present lives happier.’

Bernadette Russell

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ABOUT Bernadette Russell

Bernadette Russell is an expert on hope and kindness, as well as a writer, performer and activist who plants a lot of trees – and helps others do the same. She is author of The Little Book of Kindness and The Little Book of Wonder, both published by Orion and in multiple foreign editions around the world. Since 2012, she has toured the US and UK speaking about the importance and life-changing experience of practicing kindness, including for BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live, Action for Happiness, Birmingham School of Philosophy, People United’s Kindness Symposium, The Roundhouse, Tate Britain, Turner Contemporary, Sunday Assembly and the Southbank Centre, where she was nominated as one of sixty-seven change makers for her project 366 Days of Kindness. Since 2018 she has worked with the Royal Albert Hall, producing performances with kindness and creativity at their heart. 

Bernadette presents the ‘How to be Hopeful’ podcast.

More information at: https://www.bernadetterussell.com/ Instagram: @bernadetterussell / Twitter: @betterussell / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bernadetterussellwrites /

Bernadette is available for interviews, features and events.

Hey Hi Hello by Annie Nightingale

Hey Hi Hello
Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain's First Female DJ
By Annie Nightingale
White Rabibit / 3 September 2020 / hardback, e-book and audio / £18.99

50 stories and encounters in the inimitable voice of Annie Nightingale, celebrating 50 years of broadcasting and presenting at the BBC.

Featuring never before seen exclusive interview with The Beatles, Billie Eilish, Bob Marley and Primal Scream among others

Hey Hi Hello is a greeting we have all become familiar with, as Annie Nightingale cues up another show on BBC Radio 1. Always in tune with the nation's taste, yet effortlessly one step ahead for more than five decades, in this book Annie digs deep into her crate of memories, experiences and encounters to deliver an account of a life lived on the frontiers of pop cultural innovation.

Annie Nightingale was the first female DJ on the BBC and the Guinness World Record holder for the longest running radio show on BBC Radio 1. As a DJ and broadcaster on radio, tv and the live music scene, Annie has been an invigorating and necessarily disruptive force, working within the establishment but never playing by the rules. She walked in the door at Radio 1 as a rebel, its first female broadcaster, in 1970. Fifty years later she became the station's first CBE in the New Year's Honours List; still a vital force in British music, a DJ and tastemaker who commands the respect of artists, listeners and peers across the world.

Hey Hi Hello tells the story of those early, intimidating days at Radio 1, the Ground Zero moment of punk and the epiphanies that arrived in the late 80s with the arrival of acid house and the Second Summer of Love. It includes faithfully reproduced and never before seen encounters with Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, The Beatles and bang-up-to-date interviews with Little Simz and Billie Eilish.

Funny, warm and candid to a fault, Annie Nightingale's memoir is driven by the righteous energy of discovery and passion for music. It is a portrait of an artist without whom the past fifty years of British culture would have looked very different indeed.

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About the author

Annie Nightingale CBE began her career as a journalist, columnist and fashion boutique owner. She was the first female DJ on BBC Radio 1 and is now the stations longest serving broadcaster, celebrating 50 years at the BBC this year.

Annie was the first female DJ from Radio 1 to be inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame, and she received a special Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards. She was awarded MBE by The Queen in 2000, was made an honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Westminster in December 2012. She is an ambassador of The Princes’ Trust and patron of Sound Women, an organisation to promote women in broadcasting.

As well as touring the world as a live DJ, she has also released music compilation collections, including Annie On One (Heavenly) and Masterpiece (Ministry of Sound), and two volumes of autobiography, Chase the Fade and Wicked Speed.

Annie’s 50th anniversary at Radio 1 in 2020 will be marked by two documentaries on BBC TV, a series of events on Radio 1.

Annie lives in West London.

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“Annie was important to me back when I was a teenager, when not only was she one of the few people playing records I liked, she was a WOMAN doing it, which was inspirational to me. I wrote about her in my book Another Planet, where I quote a diary entry from 1978 which listed things I was loving in between watching Bowie on tv and taping a Bruce Springsteen album, the entry simply says, ‘Listened to Annie Nightingale’.”

— Tracey Thorn

“I can’t imagine what growing up without Annie Nightingale would have been like. I don’t want to contemplate the limitations that would have been imposed on my cultural life and my own ambitions in that sphere without her presence. Thank god I don’t have to and she was there every step of the way from a voice on the radio to an enthusiastic comrade in the chill out zone and post-rave party.”

— Irvine Welsh

“It wasn’t until I heard Annie Nightingale on Sunday evenings after the chart rundown that I understood what music radio could be. Nightingale had a broader music taste than, say, John Peel, but was alternative enough to introduce me to songs I never would otherwise have heard. She’s still on Radio 1 now, at the very Nightingale time of 1am. She still plays tracks I hate, tracks I love. She’s still the best.”

— Miranda Sawyer - ‘Top 50 inspiring cultural icons’, Observer

The Power of Us By David Price

The Power of Us: How we connect, act and innovate together
By David Price
Thread, Bookouture / 28th August 2020 / ebook, paperback, audio

We are witnessing the emergence of ordinary people working together to solve big problems in all aspects of our society, rooted in a communal desire to make the world a better place in which to live:

• The outdoor clothing company that sees record sales after telling its customers not to buy their clothes.

• The 17-yr old high school dropout who created the world's most used Covid tracking app.

• A school achieving great academic outcomes because of its commitment to diversity.

• The successful brewery giving customers the opportunity to become co-producers.

• A co-operative empowering communities to generate renewable energy.

David Price takes us behind the scenes of some of the world’s most innovative organisations harnessing the power of collaboration and diverse thinking to effect real change – and demonstrates what we can learn from them.

Thought-provoking and incisive, The Power of Us is an urgent call for leaders, teams and individuals to challenge the status quo. The response to Covid-19 has shone a light on how people-powered innovation is reshaping our world.  We’re seeing a global wave of self-determined and self-organised activism. The Power of Us offers a practical toolkit of ideas to show us how we can foster our own cultures of co-creators to transform our lives and rebuild a better world for the future.

'This uprising of action in response to COVID-19 demonstrates the ingenuity and talent that flourishes at the grassroots…It also fills a powerful desire for people to get involved and bring whatever expertise they have to bear—technical, medical, social, political, legal. This movement inspires hope for the future. Leveraging open, collaborative innovation by grassroots makers at international and local levels can help solve not just for the coronavirus but teach us new ways to work together to solve other challenges too.’ David Price

‘People are starting to find their voice, to understand that they can actually have an impact […] Doing our best is no longer good enough. We must now do the seemingly impossible. And that is up to you and me. Because no one else will do it for us.’ Greta Thunberg

Case studies in the book include:
Brewdog; Act-Up; Riders for Health; sparks & honey;
Liger Leadership Academy; Patagonia; WD40; New Roads School

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TALKING POINTS

• The New Activism - don’t just protest, provide solutions! (eg #MeToo, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter)

• We are witnessing new, and more effective, social movements redefining social, environmental and cultural norms, deploying the tools and techniques of mass ingenuity.

• During the coronavirus pandemic grassroots actions often outperformed governmental responses that were slow and unwieldy.

• Social movements, citizen scientists, and peer producers are now better connected and have learned from previous attempts to leverage social reform. They are willing to lead communities in a post-Covid world. Given the scale of the anticipated economic depression, we may have no option but to work closely with them.

Tips for successful businesses:

• Focus on the mindset – ingenious innovators will shape a problem to fit the skillset.

• Know your limitations – surround yourself with people who have the skills you lack.

• Make your actions practical, enterprising and collaborative.

• Social enterprise demands unreasonable attitudes – the world won’t change by itself.

• Be excited, not intimidated, by the scale of the challenge.

• 8 Key TEAM Ingredients:

o   Trust & Transparency


o   Engagement & Equity


o   Autonomy & Agency


o   Mastery & Meaning


 Medicine:

• Research suggests that up to 8% of patients with rare diseases have developed innovations that were unknown to the medical science community (eg Tim Omer who worked with the NightScout group to develop an artificial pancreas).

• The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly recalibrated development and safety timescales.

• The pandemic has also brought together user-innovators, lead patients, and producers in a powerful, effective alliance.

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About David Price

David Price is an expert in organisational learning for a complex future. He is co-founder of We Do Things Differently, a UK culture consultancy. In 2009 he was awarded an OBE for services to education.

He writes, talks, trains and advises, around the world, on some of the biggest challenges facing business, education and society: solving the problems of employee, student and civic disengagement; maximising our potential to be creative, innovative and fulfilled citizens, and understanding the global shift towards open organisations, and systems of learning. David is the author of Open: How We'll Work, Live and Learn In The Future. He lives in North Yorkshire.

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Watermarks by Lenka Janiurek

Lenka Janiurek has written the remarkable story of her life - an unflinching account of loss, success, love, despair, and the solace of the natural world.

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Watermarks
Life, Death and Swimming
By Lenka Janiurek
Allison & Busby / HB / 21 May 2020 / £14.99

Lenka Janiurek’s story really begins with the death of her mother when she was nine. She is the daughter of a Polish immigrant father, and one of eight children. Across the years she is plagued by the rage, addiction and despair of the controlling men she is closest to. This memoir grapples with identity, of trying to find a place in a world and within a family, that don’t feel like your own.

This remarkable story from the 1960s to the present day, describes the loss of her mother to her relationships with 2 stepmothers, early success as a playwright, extensive travel, and encounters with both extreme wealth and poverty. Throughout Lenka explores and celebrates the beauty and tragedy of living life to the full.

Watermarks is a stunning evocation of alienation, searching, and the restorative power of nature.  

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Talking points

• Wild swimming – Water has been central to Lenka’s life, at the moment she swims in the sea every day. 

• Green housing – Lenka is passionate about housing solutions, she helped build a straw bale house in Pembrokeshire. It was Grand Designs Eco home award winner in 2008.

• Living with chronic illness – both Lenka and her younger daughter have had ME, severely limiting their lives.

• Living off grid for a year up a mountain in West Wales 20 years ago.

• Extensive travel in remote areas of India with 2 children.

• Inherited trauma – trying to understand and process the legacies of war, secrets, grief, addiction, violence, and the loss of country and identity.

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About LENKA JANIUREK

LENKA JANIUREK was born in York. At the age of 17 she won the prestigious Young Writer’s Competition at the Royal Court Theatre and subsequently had three plays on at the Royal Court Theatre, a platform play at the National Theatre, and one at the Other Place with the RSC in Stratford-on-Avon. She has facilitated workshops in writing, drama, art, and well-being, in schools, colleges, at camps, and in a women's prison. And worked as a baker, fundraiser, caretaker, green builder and researcher. She has four children. She lives close to the sea in Wales.

Lenka is available for interviews, features and events.

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Kilo by Toby Muse

In this ground-breaking and utterly compelling book, Toby Muse draws on 15 years of reporting on the drug war in Colombia, giving readers unprecedented access to the entire cocaine supply.

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Kilo
Life and Death Inside the Secret World of the Cocaine Cartels
By Toby Muse
Ebury Press / Hardback / £16.99 / 26 March 2020

Join the deadly journey of cocaine, from farmer to kingpin.

Meet Maria. Maria doesn’t see herself as a criminal. She’s just a farmhand picking the crops that never lose money: coca.

This is Cachote. He prays to the Virgin of the Assassins that his bullets find their target. If he misses, he’ll have to answer to the cartel who pay him to take out their enemies.

Pedro works the coca labs. But this laboratory is hidden deep in the jungle, and he turns coca leaves into coca paste, a step just short of cocaine.

And finally, here is Alex. Alex is a drug-lord and decides where the drug goes next: into Europe or the US. And he wields the power of life and death over everyone around him.

Following one brick of cocaine from Colombia’s jungles to the Pacific Ocean as it races to join global underworld economy, Kilo is an unprecedented journey to the violent heart of the cocaine industry. On the way we will meet drug lords, contract killers, drug mules, cartel witches, as well as the Colombian police and US Coast Guard who are desperately trying to stop the kilo reach the consumers in the world’s richest countries.

Toby Muse has been on the ground in the drug war for over a decade, earning the trust of those involved on all sides. Telling the human stories of how the world’s second most popular drug gets from the Colombian jungle to the London street corner, Kilo is a devastating account of a multi-billion-pound business whose influence reaches across the world.

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Discussion points

• There is more cocaine in the world than ever, a result of a slowly crumbling peace process between the Colombian government and Marxist rebels.

• UK police are seizing record amounts of cocaine. The drug funds gangs in the UK and the rest of the world, fuelling violence.

• This cocaine is destabilizing parts of Latin America and empowering criminal gangs which then fuel emigration towards the US border

• How effective is the war on drugs? (running for five decades without victory in sight).

• The human story of cocaine – the men and women who live and die in cocaine.

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“Kilo is surely the best account of the cocaine trade that will be ever be written, as well as the most incredible work of investigative journalist I’ve read.”

—  Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc

“Toby Muse goes beyond stereotypical crutches and achieves an honest and nuanced portrait of Colombia’s cancerous cocaine industry. Muse gradually reveals not just the stakes and the human toll behind every line of cocaine, but also the reasons why freeing Colombia from this deadly industry has proven so difficult. Kilo will prove enlightening even to those who lived first-hand the horrors of the country’s civil war.”

— Juanita Ceballos, Vice News

“In fifteen years covering Colombia, this is the best book I’ve ever read about the cocaine trade.”

— Matthew Bristow, former Colombia bureau chief, Bloomberg News

“‘Kilo explores the trenches of the drug trade like few other books. With vivid writing and deep access to the underworld borne from his decades in the field, Muse has produced a must-read for those trying to understand why decades of bloodshed and billions of dollars haven’t won the war on drugs.’ ”

— Jim Wyss, Pulitzer Prize winner

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ABOUT TOBY MUSE

Toby Muse is a British-American writer, television reporter, documentary filmmaker and foreign correspondent. He has reported from the front lines of the conflicts in Colombia, Iraq and Syria. He has embedded with soldiers, rebels and drug cartels, producing exclusive reports from cocaine laboratories and guerrilla jungle camps. He lived in Bogota, Colombia for more than fifteen years, reporting across South America and the endless drug war.

Toby is available for interviews, features and events.

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The Best, Most Awful Job Edited by Katherine May

What does it mean to be a mother?

Twenty writers speak out in this searingly honest, diverse and powerful collection.

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The Best, Most Awful Job
Twenty Writers Talk Honestly About Motherhood
Edited by Katherine May
Elliott & Thompson / 19 March 2020 / £12.99 / HB

Motherhood is life-changing. Disorientating, overwhelming, intense on every level, it can leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about yourself. Yet despite more women speaking out in recent years about the reality of their experiences – good, bad and in between – all too often it’s the same stories getting told, while key parts of the maternal experience still remain unspeakable and unseen. There are a million different ways to be a mother, yet the vision we see in books, on screen and online overwhelmingly fails to represent this commonplace yet extraordinary experience for most of us. It’s time to broaden the conversation.

The Best, Most Awful Job is a deeply personal collection about motherhood in all its raw, heart-wrenching, gloriously impossible forms. Overturning assumptions, breaking down myths and shattering stereotypes, it challenges perceptions of what it means to be a mother, bringing together a diverse range of bold and brilliant writers and asking you to listen.

Some highlights include:

• Hollie McNish on her trademark outspoken and sane form

• Josie George writing beautifully and carefully about mothering yourself and your child when your body won’t play ball

• Michelle Adams on meeting your adoptive child and learning to be a mother

• Peggy Riley on the lost heartbeat of a deeply yearned-for child

• Mimi Aye on the pain of her children being seen as ‘other’ in their own country

• Leah Hazard - practising midwife and author of Hard Pushed - on the scars our bodies hold as mothers...

• Stories also cover: being unable to conceive, step-parenting, losing a child, single parenthood, being an autistic mother, being a reluctant home-schooler and the many ways in which race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect motherhood.
  

‘All the pain, power and privilege of being a mother is here in these tales of step-parenting; being unable to conceive; having six children; single parenthood; and of how race, class, disability, religion and sexuality affect our perceptions of motherhood’ - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller Editor’s Choice

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ABOUT KATHERINE MAY

Edited and curated by Katherine May, an author of fiction and memoir whose most recent works have shown a willingness to deal frankly with the more ambiguous aspects of parenting. In The Electricity of Every Living Thing she explored the challenges – and joys – of being an autistic mother, and sparked a debate about the right of mothers to ask for solitude. In the forthcoming Wintering, she looks at the ways in which parenting can lead to periods of isolation and stress. She lives with her husband and son in Whitstable, Kent.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Michelle Adams grew up in the United Kingdom, but currently lives in Limassol, Cyprus where she lives with her family and two cats. She has written two psychological thrillers, and her next release, Little Wishes, is a love story set in Cornwall, stretching across five decades of life. Michelle writes fulltime, and can occasionally be found working as a scientist.

Javaria Akbar is a freelance writer. She has contributed to The Guardian, The Telegraph, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, The Pool, Munchies, Vice, Dazed Beauty and more. She is also a part-time cookery writer and mother of two. 

Charlene Allcott is a graduate of the Penguin Random House WriteNow programme and author of two novels: The Single Mum’s Wish List and More Than a Mum. She was born in Croydon and now lives in Brighton.

British-born to Burmese parents, MiMi Aye has always moved between two worlds, and her life at home in the suburbs of London with her husband and two children is very different from the life spent with her family back in Burma. Her latest book, Mandalay: Recipes & Tales from a Burmese Kitchen, was described by Nigella Lawson as “a really loving and hungry-making introduction to a fascinating cuisine” and by Tom Parker-Bowles as “a glorious revelation … autobiography, history and recipes all rolled into one magnificent whole ... a brilliant, beguiling book". She is on Twitter and Instagram as @meemalee and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/itsmeemalee

Jodi Bartle is a New Zealander who has lived in London for nearly twenty years. In-between, she has written for Vice, i-D, Chanel, Quintessentially, Gaggenau, Selfridges, Sunseeker and The London Mother on photography, interior design, fashion, art, travel and babies, in both print and on-line form. She is currently part of the journalistic and editorial team at MCCA’s Diversity & the Bar, a US-based publication which highlights diversity issues in the legal profession, and spills all her embarrassing parenting stories via her blog theharridan.

Playwright, screenwriter and prose writer, Sharmila Chauhan’s work is often a transgressive meditation on love, sex and power. Her plays include Be Better in Bed, The Husbands (Soho Theatre), Born Again/Purnajanam (Southwark) and 10 Women (Avignon Festival). Both her short films (Girl Like You, Oysters) were produced by Film London and her feature Mother Land was long-listed for the Sundance Writers’ Lab. Sharmila also has a degree in pharmacy and a PhD in clinical pharmacology. She lives in London with her husband, son and daughter and cat Tashi. You can find her at www.sharmilathewriter.com

Josie George lives with her son in a tiny terraced house in the urban West Midlands. Her days are watchful, restricted and often solitary, in a large part because of the debilitating disability she’s had since she was a child, but also because she’s discovered that a slow, quiet life has much to teach her. Josie’s brave and singular memoir will be published by Bloomsbury in early 2021. In the meantime, she is working on a novel and writes blogs about her powerful and gently subversive way of looking at the world at bimblings.co.uk. You can find her on Twitter as @porridgebrain.

Leah Hazard is a serving NHS midwife, author of the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story, and mother of two children. She lives in Scotland with her family and continues to write about the many wonders and challenges of women’s journeys to motherhood.

Joanne Limburg has published non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Her most recent books are the memoir Small Pieces: A Book of Lamentations (Atlantic Books) and the poetry collection The Autistic Alice (Bloodaxe Books). She lives in Cambridge with her husband and now-teenage son.

Susana Moreira Marques is a writer and journalist whose first book, Now and at the Hour of Our Death, was published in 2015. She was born in Porto in 1976 and now lives in Lisbon, where she writes for Público and Jornal de Negócios. Her journalism has won several prizes, including the Prémio AMI – Jornalismo Contra a Indiferença and the 2012 UNESCO ‘Human Rights and Integration’ Journalism Award (Portugal).

Dani McClain writes and reports on race, reproductive health, policy and politics, and is the author of We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood. She is a contributing writer at The Nation and a fellow with The Nation Institute. Her writing has appeared in outlets including Slate, Talking Points Memo, Al Jazeera America, EBONY.com and Guernica, and her feature reporting has received awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.

Hollie McNish is a writer based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She has published three poetry collections, Papers, Cherry Pie and Plum, and one poetic memoir on politics and parenthood, Nobody Told Me, about which The Scotsman said: ‘The world needs this book”. Her next book, Slug: And Other Things I’ve Been Told To Hate, will be published in February 2021 and is a collection of poems, memoir and short stories. She normally likes her tea with two sugars.

Saima Mir is an award-winning journalist. She started her career at the Telegraph & Argus and went on to work for the BBC. She is a recipient of the Commonwealth Broadcast Association’s World View Award, and has written for numerous publications including The Times, The Guardian and The Independent. Her essay for the anthology It’s Not About the Burqa appeared in Guardian Weekend and received over 250,000 hits over two days. Her novel The Khan will be published by Oneworld in 2021.

Carolina Alvarado Molk was born in the Dominican Republic, and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a PhD in English from Princeton University, and is currently working on a collection of essays about her experiences growing up undocumented.

Emily Morris is an author and freelance journalist from Manchester, UK. My Shitty Twenties, her memoir of single parenthood, was named a Guardian readers’ favourite book of 2017, and has been optioned for a TV series, which is in development. She is currently working on a novel.

Jenny Parrott is publishing director of Point Blank, the literary crime imprint at prize-winning independent publisher Oneworld, and she teaches creative writing. She also writes WW2-set sagas under the names Kitty Danton and Katie King, with series currently at Orion and HarperCollins.

Huma Qureshi is an award-winning author, journalist and blogger. Her journalism has appeared in The Guardian and The Observer, as well as several other national publications including The Times, The Independent and New Statesman. Her first book, In Spite of Oceans, a collection of short stories, won The John C Laurence Award from The Authors' Foundation. Her blog, Our Story Time, is a collection of her personal writing.

Peggy Riley is a playwright and writer.  Her novel, Amity & Sorrow, is about how we make families, however strange they might appear.  Her short fiction has been shortlisted for prizes including Bridport and the Costa Short Short prize.  Her work for theatre has been produced off-West End and on the fringe, on tour and in community, for radio and site-specifically.  Originally from Los Angeles, Peggy lives on the North Kent coast with a husband and an enormous golden retriever. You can find her at www.peggyriley.com

Michelle Tea is the author of ten books, the founder of literary non-profit RADAR Productions, the co-creator of Sister Spit, and the curator of Amethyst Editions, a collaboration with the Feminist Press. Her most recent book is Against Memoir.

Tiphanie Yanique is a poet, novelist and essayist, and Professor of English and of African American Studies at Wesleyan University. Born in the Virgin Islands, she lives in New Rochelle, New York, with her family. Her 2016 poetry collection, Wife, won the Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the Forward Felix Dennis Prize for a first collection. She has written for publications including the New York Times, Best African American Fiction, the Wall Street Journal, and American Short Fiction.

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Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon by Dr Rahul Jandial

World-leading neuroscientist and neurosurgeon Dr Rahul Jandial blends cutting-edge research and beautiful storytelling to offer a vital resource on the best ways to boost your memory, control stress and emotion, unleash your creativity, raise smart kids and reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.

'A powerful and trustworthy insight into the brain. You will love his playful storytelling and guidance' - Dr Rupy Aujla - author of ‘The Doctor's Kitchen' and 'Eat to Beat Illness'

‘Your brain’s best buddy… You’re amazing …. I could talk to Rahul all day’ – Chris Evans

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Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon
The New Science and Stories of the Brain
By Dr Rahul Jandial
Penguin Life / 6 Feb 2020 / £9.99

From the operating room, where he performs some of the riskiest surgeries around, to the lab, where he works on leading clinical trials, Dr Rahul Jandial is on the cutting edge of the latest advancements in neuroscience.  

For years he has transformed the lives of his neurosurgery patients by putting them through 'brain rehab', his specially developed boot camp for restoring brain function. In this eye-opening, informative and accessible guide, he uses his years of expertise to show how healthy people can rewire their brains to work in a higher gear.

Mixing smart brain hacks with case studies and storytelling from his own experiences on the operating table, learn how to train your brain with America’s top brain surgeon.

Tips that work and are backed by real science

• Harness creativity by utilizing your dream states– this will improve creativity. Unstructured free play in childhood is the foundation of adult creativity.

• Sleep well with simple strategies – when you sleep you transform short term memories stacked up during the day into memories that can last a lifetime. After studying for a test students will actually remember more after a nap or a night’s sleep than if they had stayed awake and kept studying for an extra few hours.

• Practice meditative breathing – a new study of patients living in hospitals with electrodes inserted and measured shows this ancient technique has a modern scientific basis, it improves the structure, physiology and function of your brain. During mindful breathing connections are strengthened between the amygdala, and area where strong emotions (both positive and negative) are processed, and the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, mindful breathing helps the frontal lobe stifles negative emotions.

• Eat a MIND diet to help your mental health. The major approach to stave off dementia and maybe even fight off depression. Older adults who eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains are less likely that those who don’t to develop depression—based on a new field called nutritional psychiatry.

• Skip breakfast and try intermittent fasting - going without food for a day increases your brain’s natural growth factors, which support the survival and growth of neurons. It helps stave of neurodegeneration.

• Build your neuroplasticity – use your non-dominant hand, acquire a new language and don’t rely on sat nav (using your internal compass rather than looking at google maps is a great way to develop valuable spatial orientation skills).

• Try a ‘surgeon’s workout’ - surgeons who perform complex/long operations need to be in top shape to have steady hands! A master surgeon has the shoulder of a pro quarterback, arm of tennis player and fingers of guitar player. Dr Jandial says ‘Go to fatigue and then THREE more reps. The only way the brain tells muscles to plump up (hypertrophy) is when muscles tell the brain we are tired and overworked. Its less about how many reps you do and more about doing those extra reps after one hits their individual fatigue point.’
   

MYTHS that should be shattered

• Melatonin is not the sleep hormone

• The gut is not your second brain

• The brain can’t rewire, but it can repurpose

• Our brains are “gray”, quite the opposite think opalescent and iridescent

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ABOUT DR RAHUL JANDIAL

Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD. is an American dual-trained neurosurgeon and scientist at City of Hope, a research centre, hospital and postgraduate training faculty in Los Angeles. When he isn't performing surgery he is leading a team of scientists in Jandial Laboratory, named after him and known for its cutting-edge approach to brain surgery and neuroscience. In addition to being a world-class surgeon and scientist, Dr Jandial is the author of ten academic books and over 100 papers, but Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon is his first book for a general audience. For more information, have a look at Dr Jandial’s SHOW REEL.

‘Want to be happier, feel younger AND stave off dementia? Then try a leading neurosurgeon's brilliantly simple workouts for your little grey cells with this ingenious BOOTCAMP FOR YOUR BRAIN' - Daily Mail

‘Forget supplements and pricey potions – these easy, doctor-approved exercises and lifestyle upgrades can help boost your brain at any age’ - New York Post

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Feel Better in 5 by Dr Rangan Chatterjee

'One of the most influential doctors in the country' - Chris Evans

‘Trying to be healthy can be overwhelming – what if it all it took to make a real difference was 5 minutes of your day?’

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Feel Better in 5
Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life
By Dr Rangan Chatterjee
Penguin Life / 26 December 2019 / £16.99

If you’ve ever started an intensive plan only to stop days, weeks or months later, or struggled to prioritise your health, it’s not your fault – behavioural science shows that most plans simply aren’t built to last. Feel Better in 5 is the first daily 5 minute plan that is easy to maintain, easy-to-follow and requires only the smallest amount of willpower. Drawing on Dr Rangan Chatterjee's twenty years of experience and real-life case studies from his GP practice, Feel Better in 5 is your daily plan for a happier, healthier you at no extra cost.

Top tips, tricks and lifestyle tweaks from the book include:

• A strength workout that you can do anywhere

• Gut-boosting snacks you can eat on the go

• Yoga moves to relax and stay supple

• Breathing exercises to calm the mind
  
  

“It only takes 5 minutes to start changing your life. For good.

Take 5 minutes, 3 times a day for a happier, healthier you.”

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ABOUT DR RANGAN CHATTERJEE

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practicing GP for the last two decades and resident BBC Breakfast doctor, he most recently co-created the ‘Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine’ course with the Royal College of GPSs. He is the host of the #1 iTunes podcast, Feel Better, Love More, which is one of Apple’s most downloaded new podcasts. Rangan’s first two books, The 4 Pillar Plan and The Stress Solution, have both been Sunday Times bestsellers. Dr Chatterjee lives with his wife and two children.

www.drchatterjee.com | @drchatterjee | @drchatterjeeuk | @drchatterjee

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I, Robot by Peter Crouch

Following on from his huge bestseller, How to be a Footballer, Peter Crouch dives even deeper into the secret world of football. 

'Peter Crouch is a comedy genius' - Daily Mail 

'The funniest man in British sport' – Metro 

‘One of the funniest human beings on the planet’ Romesh Ranganathan

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I, Robot - How to be a Footballer 2
By Peter Crouch
Ebury Press / 17 October / Hardback £20/ Ebook £9.99

A true legend of English football, with a career that has taken him from World Cups to Champions League finals, Crouch is prized for his self-deprecating humour and his universal appeal that transcends club affiliation. Newly retired after a stellar career, the humble professional with a great sense of humour has gathered legions of fans hungry to hear his hilarious take on the frequently ridiculous world of football.

In I,Robot Crouch further lifts the lid on the nation’s favourite sport in his usual honest, candid and utterly entertaining way. Whether it’s offering genuine insider insight into how the game works – from striker selfishness or the art of bench-warming to explaining what managers or agents really do. Then there are his legendary tall tales – from accidentally becoming best mates with Mickey Rourke (though not Madonna) to spilling the beans about, well, Gareth Bale’s magic beans. And why does Crouchy’s dad still walk the dog in his 2005 England tracksuit? This book is a true insider guide.

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ABOUT PETER CROUCH

Peter Crouch is a retired English professional footballer. He was capped 42 times by the England national team between 2005 and 2010, scoring 22 goals for his country in that time, and appearing at two World Cups. He is one of 28 players to have scored 100 or more Premier League goals, holding the record for the most headed goals in Premier League history. With a truly illustrious footballing career behind him, he has played for Queens Park Rangers, Portsmouth, Aston Villa, Norwich, Southampton, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Tottenham Hotspur, Stoke, Burnley and England. Peter’s award winning That Peter Crouch Podcast is due to air for a third series this Autumn.

@petercrouch

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ABOUT TOM FORDYCE

Tom Fordyce, Peter’s co-writer, is the BBC’s award-winning Chief Sports Writer. He ghosted Swim Bike Run, the autobiography of Alistair and Jonny Brownlee, which was a Sunday Times number one bestseller; The World of Cycling According to G with Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas and Sevens Heaven with Ben Ryan, winner of the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year 2019. Tom hosts That Peter Crouch Podcast with Peter, alongside Radio One’s Chris Stark.

@tomfordyce

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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister by Jung Chang

A major new biography from the internationally-bestselling author of Wild Swans, Mao and Empress Dowager Cixi. A gripping story of sisterhood, revolution and betrayal, and three women who helped shape the course of modern Chinese history.

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Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
By Jung Chang
Jonathan Cape / 17 October / Hardback / £25

They were the most famous sisters in China. As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the centre of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history.

Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the ‘Father of China’, Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao’s vice-chair.

Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right.

Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang’s unofficial main adviser – and made herself one of China’s richest women.

 All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters’ worlds.

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey from Canton to Hawaii to New York, from exiles’ quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. In a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.

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ABOUT JUNG CHANG

Jung Chang is the internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China; Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday); and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China. Her books have been translated into over 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies outside Mainland China where they are banned. She was born in China in 1952 and came to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.

Jung Chang is available for interview and events .

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BOOK TOUR 2019/2020

·      Cheltenham Literary Festival – 12 October

·      Durham Literary Festival – 13 October

·      Manchester Literary Festival – 14 October

·      Linghams Bookshop – 15 October

·      Salisbury Literary Festival – 18 October (Salisbury Cathedral)

·      London Literature Festival / Asia House at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank – 19 October

·      Dublin Festival of History – 20 October (Printworks of Dublin Castle)

·      Toppings, Edinburgh – 22 October (Greenside Church)

·      Toppings, Bath – 23 October (Christchurch)

·      Waterstones, Canterbury – 24 October

·      Blackwells, Oxford – 29 October (Newman Rooms)

·      Dulwich Literary Festival – 13 November (George Farha Auditorium)

·      Chorleywood Bookshop – 18 November (Chorleywood Memorial Hall)

·      Daunts, Marylebone High Street – 28 November

·      Cambridge Literary Festival – 1 December

·      How To Academy, Conway Hall – 2 December 

·      Aldeburgh Literary Festival – 5-8 March 2020

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The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

With film rights bought by the producers of ‘La La Land’ and ‘The Night Manager’ and foreign rights sold in 28 countries this novel about the secrets behind Boris Pasternak's banned literary masterpiece, Dr Zhivago, is Hutchinson’s lead debut for 2019.

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The Secrets We Kept
By Lara Prescott
Hutchinson / 3 September / Hardback, Ebook, Audio/ £12.99

A book really can change the world.

At the height of the cold war, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR and help Boris Pasternak’s new novel make its way into print around the world.

Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who uses her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a novice, and under Sally’s direction quickly learns how to blend into a crowd, make connections and ferry classified documents all over Washington DC.

The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story - the decades-long love affair between Boris Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga, who went to prison for him and was the inspiration for Zhivago’s heroine, Lara – with a narrative about two American women whose lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk are entangled with the history of the CIA.

From Pasternak’s country estate in Peredelkina to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, D.C . to Paris, Manhattan, and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a time and a place and a watershed moment in the history of literature with astonishing veracity and command.

Lara Prescott has woven an irresistible literary thriller from one of the greatest love stories of all time. This unforgettable debut novel – which captivates in its rich historical detail and soars in emotional intensity – is destined to be one of the books of the year.

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TALKING POINTS

• How Lara’s old job working on political campaigns made her interested in cold war propaganda tactics—how tactics have evolved from books to Twitter bots and Facebook groups, but the motives are still the same.

• How history repeats itself re: the censorship of literature, persecution of writers, and how those in power still fear the power of words.

• Historically the spy novel genre is male-dominated, but there is now a rise of women writing spy fiction.

• 2020 is the 60th anniversary of Pasternak’s death - his legacy and the importance of Doctor Zhivago today.

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ABOUT LARA PRESCOTT

Lara Prescott received her MFA as the prestigious Fania Kruger Fellow from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. Before she started the MFA, she was an animal protection advocate and a political campaign operative.  She worked on campaigns around the world – including for the first woman prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. She also worked at Bully Pulpit Interactive and AKPD.

Her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, BuzzFeed, Day One, Tin House Flash Friday, and other places. She won the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize (and Pushcart honourable mention) for the first chapter of this novel.  She has spent years researching the history around The Secrets We Kept.

Lara lives in Texas with her family.

www.laraprescott.com/  @laraprescott

Lara will be in the UK from 28 September – 5 October 2019

She will be appearing at literary festivals and bookshops including:

• Mr B’s, Bath – Tuesday 1 October

• Henley Literary Festival – Wednesday 2 October (lunchtime)

• Chorleywood Bookshop (event at Chorleywood Library) – Wednesday 2 October (evening)

• Ilkley Festival – Saturday 5 October

• Cheltenham Literary Festival – Sunday 6 October

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Bearmouth by Liz Hyder

A bold and original novel about justice, independence and resisting oppression that introduces a remarkable new voice.

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“Liz Hyder is a writer of true courage”

— David Almond

“Ambitious and darkly brilliant...It’s provocative, tender, claustrophobic and epic. It blew my mind”

— Kiran Millwood Hargrave

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Bearmouth
By Liz Hyder
Pushkin / 19 September / hardback / £12.99

Newt has been living and working in Bearmouth mine from a tender age. The days are full of strict routine and a quiet acceptance of how things are – until, that is, Devlin arrives. Newt fears any unrest will bring heightened oppression from the Master and his overseers. Life is hard enough and there is no choice about that. Or is there? Newt is soon looking at Bearmouth with a fresh perspective - one that does more than whisper about change: one that is looking for a way out.

Liz Hyder has written an astounding debut novel that shows a young person daring to challenge the status quo. Bearmouth draws on Liz's research into the working conditions of children in Victorian mines in Britain. Inspired by her findings, she has created an imagined world riven with social injustice and populated by characters who don't simply accept things because they are told they must.

‘a mighty impressive piece of work… compelling, powerful and utterly unique. The voice of Newt is so original, demonstrating a lyrical dexterity in such a brilliant style’ - Brian Conaghan, winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award

‘A hugely atmospheric read... a page-turner for sure’ - John McLay, Artistic Director, Bath Children's Literature Festival

‘memorable, different and stunning… BEARMOUTH is *that* fresh and new, and that exciting, just as Mortal Engines was when it came out’ - Katy Moran, author

‘clearly destined for greatness... It will stop you in your tracks. It will grip you, bewitch you, haunt you. It's a brilliant, brilliant book’ - Nicholas Pegg, writer, director, actor

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TALKING POINTS

• How the Victorian era has been glamorised, we think of top hats, steam trains and infrastructure not the exploitation it was built on

• The parallels between the Victorian era and now - how exploitation today has been re-branded as opportunity with the likes of zero hours contracts

• Mining and children– with children as young as four working down the mines six days a week, it is a forgotten part of British history for many

• The lack of creativity in the education system – importance of creative writing for and with young people

• What I’ve Learnt from Storytelling - from working on soaps and ongoing series to novels, films, plays and a writing retreat in rural Scotland. The importance of understanding all sorts of stories in terms of content, form and style.

• From the birth of the industrial revolution to the famed ‘blue remembered hills’ – why Shropshire is the best kept secret in the country

• In defence of suburbia – growing up on the edge of the capital with Epping Forest as a playground

• Language – why dialect, accents and making up words is important

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ABOUT LIZ HYDER

Liz Hyder is a writer, creative workshop leader and freelance PR Consultant in the arts. She has been part of Writing West Midlands’s Room 204 writer development programme since 2016. In early 2018, she won The Bridge Award/Moniack Mhor's Emerging Writer Award. Bearmouth is her debut novel.

A past member of the National Youth Theatre, Liz has a BA in Drama from the University of Bristol and is on the board of Wales Arts Review. Previously, she’s developed a pilot series with Channel 4 Scotland, collaborated with the E17 Shadow Puppet Theatre for the Cultural Olympiad and been runner-up of the Roy W Dean Writers’ Grant (International Writing Award). Her debut short film The Caller won the Highly Commended Award at London Film Festival and was the only UK film in competition at Slamdance that year.

She worked in BBC publicity for six years on everything from EastEnders, Holby and Casualty to Radio 4. Since going freelance, she has been shortlisted for and won various PPC Awards with both Riot Communications and Maura Brickell. Since 2016, she has been the Film Programme Coordinator at the main Hay Festival.

Liz is available for interviews, features, events and creative workshops. She is based in Shropshire but travels widely.

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MORE INFORMATION

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

What You Did by Claire McGowan

‘A brilliant, breathless thriller that kept me guessing to the last shocking page’

—Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said/She Said

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What You Did
By Claire McGowan
Thomas & Mercer / 1 August / Kindle £3.98 / hardback £18.89 / paperback £4.99

A vicious assault. A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?

It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.

When Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend? With Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying, but which? And why?

When the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.

‘A knockout new talent you should read immediately.’ - Lee Child

‘One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while... astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.’
- Peter James

‘Plenty of intrigue makes this a must read’ - Woman & Home

‘A great novel that happens to be a crime novel....A winner’ - Mark Lawson, Radio 4 Front Row

’McGowan’s pacy, direct style ensures that the twists come thick and fast.’ - The Irish Times

‘Taut plotting and assured writing’ - Good Housekeeping

’A gripping yarn you will be unable to put down’ - The Sun

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TALKING POINTS

• Should we keep the same friends all our lives?

• What does modern friendship mean? Competitive friendship /frenemies

• Envy and how it can ruin your life, especially between friends, and how it can be sparked off by social media posts, the pressure to have a perfect life

• Being an outsider at an Oxbridge University - what it was like going to Oxford as a state-school pupil from Northern Ireland

• What it’s like writing about sexual assault in the wake of Me Too – the responsibility to get it right

• The beta marriage - so much pressure to ‘have it all’, is it good to have a ‘crash and burn’ marriage so that you can learn what you really want from life and love, and do it right next time?

• Traditional gender roles – the benefits of being raised by a working mother and a father who did most of the childcare and housework (very unusual in rural Ireland in the 80s)

• The joys of having platonic male friends – going to an all-girl convent school and then an old-fashioned university I didn’t have male friends until I was in my twenties. They now enrich my life in all sorts of ways

• What’s it like to experience loneliness as a young person and the shame and stigma attached to this, and how to build a friendship group from scratch

• The best way to be dumped – why ‘ghosting’ should be banned and why we should bring in a ‘dating charter’ for etiquette in these days of Tinder and online hook-ups

• Is divorce contagious? – when I got divorced at the age of 31 I was the third in my close group of six friends to break up within less than a year

• How illness helped me find my dream job

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ABOUT CLAIRE MCGOWAN

Born in Northern Ireland in 1981, Claire McGowan studied in Oxford then lived overseas in France and China. She is the author of standalone thriller The Fall, and the Paula Maguire series, including The Lost, The Dead Ground, The Silent Dead, A Savage Hunger, Blood Tide, and The Killing House. The Paula Maguire series was optioned by the BBC in 2014. A ten-part radio drama written by Claire was broadcast on Radio 4 in early 2019, and as a screenwriter she was selected as the 2017/18 Nickelodeon International Writing Fellow.

Claire set up the Crime Thriller Writing MA at City University, London, and has also taught for the Arvon Foundation, Guardian Masterclasses and at many literary festivals.

As Eva Woods, she has published four women’s fiction novels, including the bestselling How To Be Happy.

More information is available from: www.ink-stains.co.uk and you’ll find Claire on Twitter at @inkstainsclaire 

Claire is available for interview, features and events.

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MORE INFORMATION 

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Just Another Mountain by Sarah Jane Douglas

An uplifting memoir from a strong female voice that shows the restorative power of mountain walking  

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Just Another Mountain  
by Sarah Jane Douglas 
Foreword by Sir Chris Bonington  
Elliott & Thompson / 20 June / hardback / £14.99 

“Loads of people get horrible diagnoses all the time so really it isn’t anything special or extraordinary that I found myself with membership to the cancer club. To be honest, I’d been expecting it, but the news was still received like a swift kick to the balls. For me, the hardest thing to get my head around was the fact that twenty years earlier I’d held my own mum’s hand when breast cancer stole her life from mine. It had taken me most of my adulthood to recover from her loss... Faced with my diagnosis, there was only one thing I could do, the thing I’d come to rely on so much these last few years. I had to put one foot in front of the other, and just keep walking.”

— Sarah Jane Douglas

In 1997, at the age of 24, Sarah lost her mother to breast cancer. Alone and adrift in the world, she very nearly gave up hope – but she’d made a promise to her mother that she would keep going no matter what. So she turned to the beautiful, dangerous, forbidding mountains of her native Scotland.   

By walking in her mother’s footsteps, she learns to accept her own troubled past, finding the strength to overcome her grief – and, ultimately, to carry on in the face of her own diagnosis twenty years later. 

Searingly honest and utterly relatable, bringing the exhilarating triumphs and challenges of mountain walking to life with wit, charm and raw candour, Just Another Mountain is a story of hope and redemption, of a mother and a daughter, and of how we can learn both to live and to love. Sometimes, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other … and just keep walking. 

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Talking points

• Mountain climbing – from Scotland’s Munros to Kilimanjaro and the Himalayas 

• Mother daughter relationships and dealing with loss 

• Unpicking the mystery of the death of her Mother’s greatest love (and the man who was nearly her stepfather), Gerry, in the Himalayas 

• Female friendship 

• Cancer – and sanity saving daily walks throughout the course of treatment 

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About Sarah Jane Douglas

Sarah Jane Douglas writes the popular blog ‘Smashing Cancer in the Face’. She is an artist and former teacher who lives with her two teenage sons in an old fishing village on the northeast coast of Scotland, is a lover of mountains and is proud to be Munroist number 5764. This is her first book. 

Sarah actively fundraises for Cancer charities. Last year The Show (Breast Cancer Care) raised £150,000, and Sarah also arranged a ‘Full Monty’ to raise money for Maggie’s Highlands. 

Sarah is available for interview, features and events.

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More information

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt by Gary Bell

The start of a fantastic new legal series, perfect for fans of Robert Galbraith, written by an acclaimed QC and set in the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction world of the halls of British justice

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Beyond Reasonable Doubt 
Elliot Rook, QC: Book 1
By Gary Bell (and Scott Kershaw)
13 June 2019 / Hardback / Raven Books / £12.99

Elliot Rook QC is one of the greatest barristers of his generation. He is also a complete fraud.

Unbeknown to the high society of the Inns of Court surrounding him, Rook is not the Old-Etonian, Oxford graduate he pretends to be. In fact, he is an ex-petty criminal with a past that he has spent decades keeping secret. 

Until now...

A young woman has been found murdered on the outskirts of Rook’s home town. Billy Barber a violent football hooligan and white supremacist – is accused of her murder. Barber is insisting that Rook defend him. If Rook refuses, Barber will expose him, bringing crashing to the ground the life and career that Rook has spent his life building. Rook must now team up with Zara Barnes, the state-school-educated apprentice dismissed out of hand by his snobbish legal counterparts, but in whom Rook sees a special talent.

The truth is there for the finding.

But at what cost?

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Talking points

• Gary used his own life as inspiration for his fiction (including pretending to be an Old Etonian)

• Social diversity at the Bar

• Cuts in legal aid and the knock-on effects

• Crime and its causes

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About Gary Bell

Born into a coal mining family, Gary Bell QC left school without any qualifications and was an apprentice mechanic, fork lift truck driver, production line worker, builder, fireman and door-to-door salesman, as well as a notorious football hooligan, before being arrested for fraud aged 18.

After a brief stint in prison he set off to seek fame and fortune abroad and, after two years drifting around Europe ended up penniless and homeless. He next enrolled in a FE College to study his O and A levels, and then went on to study law as a mature student at Bristol University where he 'became' an Old Etonian.

After graduating he spent a year as a litigation lawyer in Beverly Hills before coming back to England to become a barrister. He has spent over thirty years at the Bar, specialising in defending in major fraud and murder trials, becoming a QC in 2012.

Always on the look out for challenges and opportunities he has also been an award winning stand-up comedian; an after-dinner speaker (when at University he won several national debating competitions and was runner up in the World's Humorous Debating Competition at Princeton); he has learned to fly a plane, hosted his own TV show (the Legalizer) on BBC1; writes regularly for national newspapers; has a column in The Spectator and wrote his best-selling autobiography, Animal QC.

* Gary Bell is available for interview, features and events *

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About Scott Kershaw 

Scott Kershaw is the author of two novels. Prior to becoming an author, Scott worked as a professional chef for several years, and travelled the continent as a music journalist.

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More information 

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

What Lies Around Us by Andrew Crofts

What Lies Around Us by Andrew Crofts

Red Door | 13 June 2019 | Hardback | £12.99

Why would one of Silicon Valley's most powerful billionaires offer a British ghostwriter a million dollars to write the autobiography of one of Hollywood's biggest stars?

Only once he is living and working amongst the world's richest and most beautiful people does the ghost realise that there is way more than a publishing deal at stake. Everyone he meets seems to have a hidden agenda and someone is willing to kill to ensure that their plans work out. But what are those plans, who are the ultimate puppet-masters and how far are they willing to go?

What Lies Around Us takes us to a world where ghostwriters work with presidents, (James Patterson and Bill Clinton writing The President is Missing), and create presidents, (Tony Schwartz who ghosted The Art of the Deal ,  setting President Trump on the road to becoming the most famous name in the world). 

This is the world of myth-makers, story-tellers and media manipulators – the people who really run the world and the ones who shape the global conversations.

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Talking points

• How exactly does it work when a rich and powerful man like Trump decides they want to write a book? Who shapes the message? How is the message sold?

• Who is more likely to be telling the true stories today – ghostwriters, who are paid to create bestselling books, or journalists, who are paid to sell newspapers and create click-bait?

• Why are books still such powerful media weapons, as illustrated by the multi-million selling political books of 2017 from authors like Michelle Obama, Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff?

• How much power do ghostwriters and speech writers exert when telling the stories of political and business leaders and other celebrities?

• Do traditional publishers add any value to a book? In this story every publisher in the world wants the book that the ghost is writing, but if the subject can afford to publish it themselves, why would they need a traditional publishing deal?

• There is so much written about how hard it is to make a living as a writer, less about how much in demand ghostwriters are.                                                              

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About Andrew Crofts

Andrew Crofts has published more than 100 books, including Confessions of a Ghostwriter, Freelance Writer’s Handbook and Ghostwriting, a dozen of which were Sunday Times bestsellers. Best-selling author, Robert Harris quoted Ghostwriting extensively in his novel The Ghost, later filmed by Roman Polanski with Ewan McGregor in the lead. 

Travelling all over the world Andrew has worked with victims of enforced marriages in North Africa and the Middle East, sex workers in the Far East, orphans in war-torn areas like Croatia and dictatorships like Romania, victims of crimes and abused children everywhere. He has also worked with celebrities from the worlds of film, music, television and sport.

Andrew’s fiction includes the critically acclaimed Secrets of the Italian Gardener, in which the same ghostwriter finds himself dangerously enmeshed in the Arab Spring while ghosting for a Middle Eastern ruler.

More information is available from: http://andrewcrofts.com/ and you’ll find Andrew on Twitter at @AndrewCrofts 

Andrew is available for features, interviews and events.

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More information

For more information about this book, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The Breakdown: Making Sense of Politics in a Messed-Up World by Tatton Spiller

The Breakdown is a smart, entertaining handbook showing how we can understand – and feel better about – modern politics.

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The Breakdown: Making Sense of Politics in a Messed-Up World
By Tatton Spiller
Elliott & Thompson / 30 May / hardback / £12.99

We’re in a time of enormous political engagement, but most of us are ill equipped to truly understand and debate the issues currently rocking our world. Instead, we become entrenched in our echo chambers, convinced that those with a different viewpoint are stupid, awful human beings whose actions must be stopped. This lack of political knowledge and wider understanding is unsurprising – after all, few of us are taught about our political system or about different ideologies – but it leaves us unable to engage in the conversation, to influence others’ opinions, or to effect change. It leaves us with no control.

With sections including How it All Works; How Different People Think; and Making Change Happen, this superbly clear-sighted, light-hearted and judgement-free book will equip readers with the tools they need to understand the different arguments, to work out what is happening and why – and then to do something about it.

In a shifting political landscape that can at times be frustrating, emotional or confusing, The Breakdown is an oasis of calm in a turbulent world.

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TALKING POINTS

• How subscription ‘news’ websites have a vested interest in keeping you angry

• How we dehumanise the opposition thereby preventing any kind of meaningful debate

• Why there is a reluctance to try and solve problems and find workable solutions, and the damage this is causing

• Social media abuse and the damage it is doing to democracy

• A snappy tour of different political ideologies (liberals; libertarians; socialists; traditional conservatives; one-nation conservatives; social democrats)

• A tour of political battlegrounds – Education; Privatisation; Tax and Spend; Immigration; Free speech; Brexit

• A look at successful changemakers of the 21st Century, and what drove that success

• Tips to keep your head clear and out of your echo chamber

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ABOUT TATTON SPILLER

Tatton Spiller is the founder of Simple Politics, a hugely successful project that aims to explain and engage people with politics, both online and via talks. He has been a teacher and a journalist, and worked at the Houses of Parliament, devising, training and delivering education sessions for visiting school students. While at Parliament, he watched many, many debates, engaged thousands of people, and organised Q&A sessions with hundreds of MPs. This gave him a real insight into how the whole thing works. The nagging feeling that nobody was really breaking down politics in a way that engages people never left him.

Tatton is available for interviews, features and events.

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MORE INFORMATION

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years by Stephanie Calman

We imagine the teenage years as a sort of domestic meteor strike, when our dear, sweet child, hitherto so trusting and innocent, is suddenly replaced by a sarcastic know-all who cruelly disregards the important wisdom we have to pass on. But with her characteristic unflinching honesty and bracing wit, Stephanie Calman debunks that myth.  

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Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years 
By Stephanie Calman 
Published in hardback by Picador on 16 May 2019 at £12.99 

Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years by Stephanie Calman

When you’re pregnant you think: ‘I’m having a baby’, but you’re not. Inside that chubby exterior is a person who will eventually catch trains by themselves, share a fridge with ten strangers, go to a festival in Croatia without succumbing to a drug overdose, and one day, bring you a gin and tonic when your own mother is dying.  

Bad news: adolescence begins much earlier than you expect, around the age of seven.  

Good news! The modern teenager is a compassionate soul, the product of political correctness, Circle Time and all five series of ‘Friends’. 

Not quite so good news: the key insights you’ve gathered over four or five decades are still going to be brutally rejected, with a casual: ‘Like, whatever. Can I go now?’  

Stephanie takes a fresh look at this whole process and finds that her teenagers are frequently thinking and feeling the same thing as she is: that the other person has all the power and basically hates them. 

And having nurtured them through every stage of development, from walking to school by themselves to their first hangover, she finds herself dreading the separation – feeling bereaved even – as they skip off to university without a second glance. As the grown-up, you cannot let them see you in this pathetic state. It’s time to be brave and try to move on with your life. 

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Talking points

• Navigating the shift from teenage years to adulthood 

• Dealing with the death of a parent, as a parent 

• Preparing yourself for your children to flee the nest by dwelling on the bad times 

• Are teenagers really so difficult, or have they had a bad press? 

• How working from home as two freelancers helps promote benign neglect 

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About Stephanie Calman

Stephanie Calman is the founder of the ground-breaking Bad Mothers Club website and the author of six previous books including the bestselling Confessions of a Bad Mother. She created the hit Channel 4 sitcom Dressing For Breakfast and has appeared on many TV shows including Have I Got News For You and The Wright Stuff.

She has also written for most British newspapers and magazines including the Daily Telegraph, Observer, Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ and Harpers & Queen, and has contributed to a wide variety of radio programmes, including Woman's Hour and The Today Programme. She is still married to the author Peter Grimsdale, whose latest book High Performance is also out on May 16. 

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More information

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Jamie Murray launches YouTube channel

Six-time Grand Slam doubles champion and Davis Cup winner Jamie Murray OBE also has 21 ATP Doubles titles and represented Great Britain in the Davis Cup 2007-2018 and in the Olympic Games 2008, 2012and 2016.

Jamie has launched his YouTube channel to give a unique and inspiring insight into the life and business of a doubles pro and to share his training drills and coaching tips with players, fans and coaches of all ages and stages.

“Doubles has been my career since 2006 but it is also the bedrock of our school, club and county competitions. I want to inspire many more players to improve their doubles game and by creating my own YouTube channel I can share as much as I can of what I do on and off court. YouTube is a great way to learn all sorts of things – I learned how to make scrambled eggs by watching Gordon Ramsay and I want to make my tennis tips as easy to follow as that! It’s going to be a simple, effective platform for people all over the world to come and learn about tennis.”

— Jamie Murray

Video clips will be uploaded regularly and will include tactics and positioning for different doubles situations; easy to follow coaching tips and skill-building exercises; warm up and cool down routines; fitness training for speed, strength and flexibility; nutritional advice – how to fuel and refuel before, during and post-match or training; mental preparation and video analysis; the role of the coach; how to choose a doubles partner; the art of on court communication and much, much more.

There will also be lots of fun updates on what Jamie likes doing when he’s not on the tennis court; what music he listens to, his favourite TV shows, restaurants and his fantasy football team.

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ABOUT JAMIE MURRAY

Jamie Murray, 33, is a professional tennis player. He grew up in Glasgow and attended Dunblane Primary School and Dunblane High School. 

As a young player he was coached by his mother, Judy, and by the age of 12 was one of the top 3 players in Europe alongside Rafael Nadal and Richard Gasquet.  He was a GB Junior Internationalist from the age of 10-17 and National 18 + under Boys Doubles Champion in 2002.  He made the decision to concentrate on doubles as a career in 2006. The following year at the age of 21, he won his first Grand Slam title in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon with Jelena Jankovic. Since then Jamie has gone on to claim 21 ATP doubles titles and captured two men’s Grand Slam doubles titles, at the Australian Open and the US Open in 2016. He picked up another two mixed doubles Grand Slam titles in 2017 with Martina Hingis at Wimbledon and the US Open and most recently he partnered Bethanie Mattek-Sands at the 2018 US Open, his 6th Grand Slam victory. He was also a key member of the GB team which won the Davis Cup in 2015.

Jamie lives in Wimbledon, London, with his wife Alejandra, who he married in 2010 at Cromlix House near Dunblane. Away from tennis, Jamie enjoys golf (right-handed), playing off a handicap of 4. He is a member of Wentworth Club. When not competing, Jamie is a regular commentator on the BBC, Eurosport and Sky Sports. Murray was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to tennis and charity.

• Jamie is currently working with the LTA and Glasgow Life to help organise and promote the ATP Challenger Tournament, called the Murray Trophy, to be held in Glasgow from 16-22 September 2019.

• Jamie is a Patron of the children’s charity, Whizz-Kidz, helping youngsters with disabilities to become active and independent. Jamie is involved in a sports mentoring capacity and is committed to raising awareness of wheelchair sport.

• Other charities that Jamie supports include: Judy Murray Foundation; Children Change Colombia

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ADDITIONAL TALKING POINTS

• doubles vs singles in tennis, and why singles get all the attention

• the psychology of playing doubles and the art of communication

• the importance of giving back to tennis and his role on the ATP player council

• how to build a partnership with your team mate (Jamie had nearly 50 different partners between 2009 and 2012, before teaming up with John Peers and then Bruno Soares)

• the different between men’s doubles and mixed doubles

• his hopes for tennis in Scotland

• making tennis fun and stimulating for kids

• making tennis accessible and affordable to everyone

• the support team that makes life as a pro athlete work

• fitness, rehab and nutrition / hydration dos and don’ts

• how to plan your tournament schedule

• life on the road – Jamie is typically on tour for 25-30 weeks a year

• travel tips for jet lag, and hotels and restaurants in tournament cities

• his ambassadorial role with Whizz Kidz

• his love for Manchester United, Hibs and Game of Thrones

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Instagram: jamie__murray
Twitter: @jamie_murray
Facebook: @jamiemurrayofficialpage
Website: www.jamiemurraytennis.com
YouTube: Jamie Murray https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ_iXG2_cy8yqXKcydGL9pg

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One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence

Ready Player One meets Stranger Things in this new novel by the bestselling author whom George RR Martin describes as “an excellent writer.”

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One Word Kill
By Mark Lawrence

1 May 2019 | £19.99 HB | £4.99 PB | e-book £3.98 | Audiobook £20.12 | 47North (an imprint of Amazon Publishing)

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.

He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.

Challenge accepted.

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‘The ending is absolutely spectacular and wraps everything up perfectly. I loved the setting, the protagonist, the characters including the supporting and very minor players, the thrills and spills and emotions.’ - Fantasy Book Review

‘an enthralling tale about people challenged by dire adversity, and isn’t that at the heart of every great story?’ - The Fantasy Hive

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Mark Lawrence is married with four children and lives in Bristol with his family. Before becoming a writer his day job was as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say 'this isn't rocket science … oh wait, it actually is'.

He is the author of the Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns and Emperor of Thorns), the Red Queen’s War trilogy (Prince of Fools, The Liar’s Key and The Wheel of Osheim) and the Book of the Ancestor series (Red Sister, Grey Sister and Holy Sister).

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MORE INFORMATION

For more information about this book, please don't hesitate to get in touch.