Launch Titles
Architectural detail of the main entrance to Albert Bonniers Fรถrlag, Stockholm.
Mission Statement
Manilla Press will be a home for novelists, journalists, memoirists, thinkers, dreamers, influencers, authorities, and experts. Building on the two-hundred-year-old tradition of the Bonnier publishing group in Sweden, we will create a publishing space for writing that speaks to our times. Our reach will be international, our range broad, we will publish with focus, passion and conviction, and we will seek to find and publish under-represented voices.
BLACK
Initial sketches and development of the Manilla Press logo, inspired by the grandfather clock from the library at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
Pantone 325C C53M0Y23K0
The Inspiration
As part of their two-hundred-year-old publishing tradition, the Bonnier family have a long-standing commitment as patrons of the arts in Sweden. They are renowned for their extensive collection of art and furnishings in their family home, Nedre Manilla, in Stockholm. One piece that seems to embody this tradition is the beautiful grandfather clock that stands in the library. This grandfather clock was bought by Lisen and Karl Otto Bonnier in the 1880s and was manufactured by Stjärnsunds Manufakturverk, the most famous producer of clocks in Sweden at the time. This piece symbolises both our heritage and our continued commitment to publishing works of literature of the highest standard for future generations.
Detail from library at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
What We Publish
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Social Commentary: Polemical voices exploring the urgent issues of our times.
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Books to Inspire: Accessible books of quality that inform and illuminate the complex world around us.
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Memoir: Unique experiences that are also universal ones.
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Social History: Exploring the past as a way of shedding light on the now and the future.
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Popular Science: Books by experts in the areas of psychology, medicine, humanity, and the world around us.
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Fiction: Voices from around the world, novels that make us think, that highlight issues of the day, and tell the stories of those who might otherwise be forgotten or go unnoticed.
Graphic detail from the library at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
From the bestselling author of The Familiars. Two women, bound by a child, and a secret that will change everything . . .
Stacey Halls The Foundling 6 February 2020 Hardback | 9781838770068 TPB | 9781838770075 Audio Digital Download 9781838771126 Ebook | 9781838770082 Fiction
London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst – that Clara has died in care – the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed – by someone claiming to be her.
The Foundling is a captivating story of mothers and daughters, class and power and love against all odds. Stacey Halls was born in 1989 and grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and has written for publications including the Guardian, Stylist, Psychologies, The Independent, The Sun and Fabulous.
Detail of rug at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
The International Number One Bestseller, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Kite Runner.
Christy Lefteri The Beekeeper of Aleppo 6 February 2020 Paperback | 9781838770013 Audio Digital Download 9781785769252 Ebook | 9781785769023 Fiction
Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live happily in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo – until the unthinkable happens and they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront the pain of their own unspeakable loss. Above all, they must journey to find each other again. Moving, powerful, compassionate and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. She is a lecturer in creative writing at Brunel University.
Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
Christiana Figueres Tom Rivett-Carnac The Future We Choose 25 February 2020 Hardback | 9781838770822 TPB | 9781786580368 Audio Digital Download 9781838771034 Ebook | 9781838770839 www.wechoosethefuture.com Non-Fiction
We have two choices for our future, which is still unwritten. It will be shaped by who we choose to be right now. So, how can we change the story of the world?
The Future We Choose is a passionate call to arms from former UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and Tom Rivett-Carnac, senior political strategist for the Paris Agreement. We are still able to stave off the worst and manage the long-term effects of climate change, but we have to act now. We know what we need to do, and we have everything we need to do it. Practical, optimistic and empowering, The Future We Choose is a book for every generation, for all of us who feel powerless in the face of the climate crisis. Christiana Figueres was the UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change between 2010 and 2016. Tom Rivett-Carnac was a senior political strategist for the Paris Agreement of 2016. Together they are the co-founders of Global Optimism and co-hosts of the podcast Outrage and Optimism.
Detail of rug at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
Helen Moffett Charlotte 14 May 2020 Hardback | 9781785769108 TPB | 9781838770754 Audio Digital Download 9781838771256 Ebook | 9781785769115 Fiction
For lovers of Pride and Prejudice and Longbourn, an intoxicating novel that tells the story of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the unfortunate Mr Collins after Lizzy Bennet spurns him. Charlotte’s married life with Mr Collins propels her into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom. Jane Austen cared deeply about the constraints on women in Regency England. This powerful reimagining takes up where Austen left off, offering a fresh, feminist addition to the postAusten canon. Helen Moffett is a South African writer, activist and award-winning poet. Charlotte is her first novel.
Detail of Junta by Hanna Pauli (1900),. Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
Hardback | 9781786580399 TPB | 9781786580405 Audio Digital Download 9781786580436 Ebook | 9781786580429 Fiction
Laura Imai Messina
25 June 2020
THE PHONE BOX AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Laura Imai Messina The Phone Box at the Edge of the World
A sweeping, moving novel that is becoming an international sensation – based on an incredible true story. When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue. Then one day she hears about a widower who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to accept their loss. Yui decides that she too will make the pilgrimage, to the phone box at the edge of the world. We all have something to tell those we have lost . . . Laura Imai Messina has been living in Japan for the past 15 years. The Phone Box at the Edge of the World has sold in over 17 countries and is a number one bestseller in Italy.
Architectural detail by Ragnar Ă–stberg The library at (1910). Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
For readers of Educated, Hillbilly Elegy and Three Women.
Loved and Wanted
A Memoir of Choice, Children and Womanhood 15 October 2020 Hardback | 9781786580542 TPB | 9781786580559 Ebook | 9781786580573 Non-Fiction
LOVED AND WANTED Christa Parravani
Christa Parravani
In 2017 Christa Parravani had recently moved her family from California to West Virginia, and was surviving on a teacher’s salary and raising two young children with her husband, screenwriter Anthony Swafford. Another pregnancy, a year after giving birth to her second child, came as a shock. Christa had a history of ectopic pregnancies, and worried that she wouldn’t be able to find adequate medical care. She immediately requested an abortion but her doctor refused to help. The only doctor who would perform an abortion made it clear that this would be illicit, not condoned by her colleagues or their community. Christa Parravani has crafted, through her own harrowing experiences with healthcare in contemporary America, an account of one woman’s reckoning with life, death and choice. Christa Parravani is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed memoir Her, which shares Parravani’s journey through grief after the loss of her identical twin sister Cara. She is an Assistant Professor in Creative Non-fiction at West Virginia University.
Detail from library at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
The art of listening to others, from the internationally bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
17 September 2020 Hardback | 9781786580474 TPB | 9781786580498 Audio Digital Download 9781786580528 Ebook | 9781786580504 Non-Fiction
STORIES OF HOPE Heather Morris
Heather Morris Stories of Hope Finding Inspiration in Everyday Lives
Heather Morris grew up in rural New Zealand. As a young girl she would sit at her grandfather’s feet and listen as he spoke to her about his experiences of war – stories he told no one but Heather. She discovered that people would entrust her with their most sacred stories if she stopped and listened. In Stories of Hope, Heather will explore the art of listening – a skill she employed when she met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of Auschwitz. It was her ability to really hear what he was trying to tell her, that led him to pick Heather to tell his extraordinary story of courage, survival and love against the odds. Heather Morris is an international number one bestselling author, who is passionate about stories of survival, resilience and hope. Her novels The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka’s Journey have been published in 52 countries throughout the world.
Architectural detail, by Ragnar Ă–stberg (1910).
18 February 2021 Hardback | 9781838772062 TPB | 9781838772079 Audio Digital Download 9781838772086 Ebook | 9781838772093 Non-Fiction
THE NINE Gwen Strauss
Gwen Strauss The Nine A True Story of Nine Daring Women and Their Escape from the Third Reich
The thrilling, cinematic untold story of nine young women, WWII resistance fighters, captured by the Nazis, who launched a breathless escape from a death march and found their way home. This remarkable story is an account of the enormous acts of bravery which led to the capture of nine women French resistance fighters. They were interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to a forced labour camp that was part of Buchenwald. They survived until the end of the war, when they were sent out on a death march, from which they launched a breathless escape and made it back to Allied lines. For too long the stories of courage from WWII have been about men – here is a story about a group of women heroes who fought fearlessly against the Germans and lived to tell the tale. Gwen Strauss is the great-niece of one of the nine extraordinary women. She is a published poet and lives in Provence, where she is the director of the artistic fellowship programme at The Dora Maar House.
Detail of a foil block from the library at Nedre Manilla, Stockholm.
For readers of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Taddeo and the essays of Zadie Smith, a beautifully wrought examination of the female experience.
11 November 2021 Hardback | 9781786580580 TPB | 9781786580627 Audio Digital Download 9781786580603 Ebook | 9781786580610 Fiction
THE BEAR WOMAN Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist The Bear Woman
In 1541, a young woman named Marguerite de La Roque accompanied her guardian on one of the first French colonial expeditions to the new world. After a sexual scandal on board ship, she was punished with abandonment on a barren, uninhabited island in the North Atlantic. Centuries later, Swedish writer Karolina Ramqvist came across the legend of the Bear Woman and became obsessed with this woman’s story of survival against the odds. An interwoven account of Marguerite de La Roque’s fierce struggles and eventual escape from the island, where she bore a child, and the author’s own life of solitude as a writer and a mother of three, The Bear Woman is an exploration of the meaning of motherhood and life as a woman, both then and now. Karolina Ramqvist is one of the most influential Swedish writers and feminists of her generation. In 2015 she was awarded the prestigious P. O. Enquist Literary Prize for her novel The White City. This is her first work of non-fiction.
The first book published by Albert Bonnier in1837, a translation from French entitled Proof that Napoleon Never Existed.
Bonnier Books UK is a major UK publisher with sales of £80m. Home to 14 adult and children’s imprints, we publish across a wide variety of genres for different ages. From fiction, politics and memoir to self-help, activity and reference – we believe every book matters.
About Bonnier Books UK
Our talented authors include Stacey Halls, Christy Lefteri, T. M. Logan, Andrew Lownie, Ollie Ollerton, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, Wilbur Smith, Lynda LaPlante, Rosie Goodwin and Lily Allen – to name but a few. Bonnier Books UK is owned by Bonnier Books, a family-owned company headquartered in Sweden. Bonnier Books is a top-15 world publisher.
Manilla Press Bonnier Books UK 80–81 Wimpole Street London W1G 9RE Follow us on Instagram: @manilla_press An imprint of Bonnier Books UK www.bonnierbooks.co.uk For PR enquiries, contact Francesca.Russell@ bonnierbooks.co.uk For Sales enquiries, contact Stuart.Finglass@ bonnierbooks.co.uk ‘Nedre Manilla’ cover pattern by Klara Bartilsson for Manilla Press.