27 minute read
● The Overlook Press
A NOVEL
BY SHARON SOCHIL WASHINGTON
A powerful work of Afro–magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty, witnesses the beauty and power in survival, and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities
Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18–month stillness. More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable array of who’s–who within pre–Civil War social circles. Conversations get heated quickly as Ismay, the hostess who hails from French royalty, antagonizes Palmer, a landowner whose parents had been sold into American slavery and who’s there to seek revenge, and Amanda, a shapeshifter and puzzlemaker who had been enslaved until this very gathering. At this party, Amanda learns of a plot that will doom a line of her—and Palmer’s—family to poverty. She devises her own counter–plot to undo the damage. Meanwhile, Blue comes out of her stillness, broke and devoid of inspiration. In profound grief and consumed by guilt, Blue travels to The Ranch where the voices grow louder and she has visions of two women from the distant past. As time collapses and Blue and Amanda meet in the space of possibility, Blue feels the spark of a power and creative energy she has only glimpsed. A novel of invention but grounded in the real, The Blue Is Where God Lives is a dual–timeline, time–bending novel of undeniable beauty, magic, and possibility. Sharon Sochil Washington, a cultural anthropologist and creator of White Space, a newsletter on Substack that explores the meaning between the words we use, has written for the Dallas Times Herald, New York Newsday, and the Akron Beacon Journal. She received degrees from Columbia University and The New School in New York City, and speaks regularly at universities and conferences on issues of social justice, race, economic insecurity, education, and media influences. The Blue Is Where God Lives is her debut novel. She lives in Houston. TRENDING CATEGORY: There is a strong appetite in the market for magic realism centered on the Black experience.
AUDIENCE: For readers of Helen Oyeyemi, Yaa Gyasi, Jacqueline Woodson, Octavia Butler, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
ABRAMS SUCCESS:The Blue Is Where God Lives offers an opportunity for Abrams to build on the success of the Megascope list in adult fiction.
SPECIFICATIONS
*272 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 140mm * HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 206mm * Hardcover with jacket
PUB MONTH: APRIL FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6710-4
US $27.00 CAN $34.00 ËxHSLELJy767104z
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-964-9
A NOVEL
BY SOPHIE HAYDOCK
Set in the extravagant, Bohemian art world of early 20th century Vienna, the electrifying untold story of the four women who posed for and inspired the groundbreaking erotic art of controversial painter Egon Schiele
UK praise for The Flames
“We learn more about great figures in time by watching the spaces around them. The Flames paints a history so detailed and vivid that we feel we were there in the flesh. A book to get lost in, a great feat of a debut.” ―DBC Pierre, Booker prize winner
“Full of scandal, love, betrayal, and heartache . . . Adele, Gertrude, Vally and Edith are given voices loud and clear.” ―Cosmopolitan UK
“A dynamic, vivid debut pulled off with considerable élan.” —Mail on Sunday
Amid an opulent society living under the shadow of war are four muses, women whose bodies were shown in intimate detail, depicted by the charming yet controversial artist Egon Schiele. Adele, his passionate and fierce admirer; Gertrude, his sister who survived their blighted childhood but is possessive, single–minded, and jealous; his mistress Vally, a poor young woman from a bad background but with steel at her core; and the two, very different, Harms sisters, Edith and Adele, both of whom vie to become Schiele’s wife. Over the course of little more than a decade, the four women risk everything—their reputations, their most precious relationships, and their sanity and souls—as they try to hold on to the man they adore. As World War I throws their lives off course forever, and the Spanish influenza pandemic ravages Europe, threatening everyone in its path, one question remains: Will any of them emerge unscathed from their relationship with this man? Sophie Haydock’s The Flames reimagines the intertwining lives of these women: four wild, blazing hearts longing to be known. In an elegant Bohemian city like 1900s Vienna, everything seems possible. But just as a flame has the power to mesmerize, it can also destroy.
Sophie Haydock is an award–winning author based in East London. Haydock trained as a journalist at City University, London, and has worked at the Sunday Times Magazine, Tatler, and BBC Three, as well as freelanced for publications, including the Financial Times and the Guardian Weekend magazine, and organizations, such as the Arts Council, Royal Academy, and Sotheby’s. She is the winner of the Impress Prize for New Writers. Passionate about short stories, Haydock also works for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and is associate director of the Word Factory literary organization. The Flames is her debut novel.
SIGNIFICANT PLATFORM:
Haydock’s Instagram account @egonschieleswomen has an audience of 115,000 followers. She has written for the Times, the Guardian, Financial Times, and many other outlets.
HUGE AUDIENCE: It’s the perfect crossover commercial literary fiction, for fans of Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Paris Wife, The Miniaturist, and The Familiars.
GREAT UK BUZZ: The Flames was picked by Cosmopolitan UK as one of the best books of 2022. Since publication, it has garnered major rave reviews from the Guardian, Sunday Times, the Times (UK), Cosmopolitan, RED Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and Woman & Home.
FEMALE–FORWARD STORY:
Haydock gives voices to the real–life women—Adele, Gertrude, Valle, and Edith—who inspired and modeled for Schiele’s scandalous paintings.
SPECIFICATIONS
*4 black-and-white images *464 pages *WIDTH: 6" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 9" - 229mm
*Hardcover with jacket
PUB MONTH: MARCH FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6631-2
US $28.00 CAN $35.00 ËxHSLELJy766312z
CARTON QTY: 20
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-919-9
A NOVEL
BY MAT OSMAN
Set amid Elizabethan London’s fabled underground children’s theatre scene, a dazzling and hallucinatory historical novel that follows androgynous, bird–worshipping fortune teller Shay and the troupe’s enigmatic leader, Nonesuch
Praise for The Ruins
“There’s a touch of Pynchon in this complex, woozily dream–like novel about music, mystery and imagined worlds.” —Ian Rankin
“The Ruins reads like Raymond Chandler remixed by James Lasdun . . . Osman has written a great noir tale.” —Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief
“The Ruins is an intriguing and beautifully written tale.” —Mariana Enriquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire
“Brilliant and idiosyncratic.” —Anna Smaill, The Chimes
On a rooftop in Elizabethan London two worlds collide. Shay is a messenger girl and trainer of hawks who sees the future in the patterns of birds. Nonesuch is the dark star of the city’s fabled child theatre scene, as famous as royalty yet as lowly as a beggar. Together Nonesuch and Shay create the Ghost Theatre, a troupe of actors performing for the people, not the rich, who put on magical plays in London’s hidden corners. As these hallucinatory shows incite rebellion among the city’s outcasts, the pair’s relationship sparks and burns against a backdrop of the plague and a London in flames. Their fame is impossible to ignore, and soon they attract the attention of the queen herself. As the pair are swept up into the black web of the Elizabethan court, both are reminded that when people of their background fly too high, a fall is soon to come . . . Fantastical and stylistic, full of high drama and rich history, Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre charts the rise and dramatic destruction of a dream born out of love and torn apart by betrayal.
COMPELLING STORYTELLING:
Osman has reimagined Elizabethan London in a major novel full of prophecy and anarchy, gutter–rats and bird–gods, that is a meditation on double lives and fluid identities, with a bittersweet love affair at its heart.
MAJOR AUTHOR PLATFORM:
As a founder of the band Suede, Osman is a well–known musician who will garner a lot of attention for this novel, his second after the highly praised debut The Ruins.
BREAKOUT POTENTIAL: In the tradition of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and the novels of Lev Grossman and Neil Gaiman, stories that combine the historical and the fantastical, this book is certain to please and delight.
SPECIFICATIONS
*320 pages *WIDTH: 6" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 9" - 229mm
*Hardcover with jacket
PUB MONTH: JUNE FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6783-8
US $28.00 CAN $35.00 ËxHSLELJy767838z
ebook ISBN 979-8-88707-017-9
Mat Osman is the bassist and founding member of the popular British band Suede, as well as a composer for TV and film. He is the author of The Ruins (Repeater Books) in the UK. The Telegraph called it “the best novel ever written by a rock star,” and Ian Rankin said of it, that “there is a touch of Pynchon in this complex, woozily dream–like novel.” He lives in the UK.
BY NASH JENKINS
Prep meets The Secret History in this searing debut novel about a tragic scandal at an American prep school, told in the form of a literary investigation through a distinctly millennial lens
When Foster Dade arrives at Kennedy, an elite boarding school in the Northeast, the year is 2008. Barack Obama begins his first term as president. Kanye West’s “Graduation” bumps from the newly debuted iPhone; teenagers share confidences and rumors over BlackBerry Messenger and iChat. The internet as we know it today is slowly emerging from its cocoon. So, too, is Foster emerging—a transfer student and lonely young man, Foster is stumbling through adolescence in the wake of his parents’ scandalous divorce and his own budding anxiety disorders. But Foster soon finds himself in the company of Annabeth Whittaker and Jack Albright, the twin centers of Kennedy’s social gravity, who take him under their wing to navigate the cliques and politics of the carelessly entitled. Eighteen months later, Foster will be expelled, following a tragic scandal that leaves Kennedy and its students irreparably changed. But when a nameless student inherits Foster’s old dorm room, he begins an epic yearslong investigation into what exactly happened. Through Foster’s blog posts, playlists, text archives, and interviews with former classmates, and the narrator’s own obsessive imagination, a story unfurls—Foster’s, yes, but also one that asks us who owns our personal narratives, and how we shape ourselves to be the heroes or villains of our own stories. Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos is about privilege and power, the pitfalls of masculinity and its expectations, and, most distinctly, how we create the mythologies that give meaning to our lives. With his debut novel, Nash Jenkins brilliantly captures the emotional intensities of adolescence in the dizzying early years of the twenty–first century. Nash Jenkins grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University, he worked as a correspondent for Time in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C.; his cultural commentary has also been published by the Atlantic. He received his MA from the University of Chicago in 2019 and is currently a PhD student in media, technology, and society at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago. VAST AUDIENCE: This book is for Millennial fiction fans who love a brainy beach read: plenty of plot but not at the expense of gorgeous writing and big ideas (think Elif Batuman, Brandon Taylor, and Rebecca Makkai). Other generations will gravitate toward the book's coming–of–age themes.
AUTHOR BONA FIDES: Jenkins has published work in TIME, the Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal, and as a former journalist, he has excellent connections in the media world who will support this novel with reviews and other coverage.
FUN EPHEMERA: From campus maps and blog posts to playlists, brochures, and more, there is plenty of ephemera from the book to help with a creative marketing campaign.
SPECIFICATIONS
*544 pages *WIDTH: 6" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 9" - 229mm
*Hardcover with jacket
PUB MONTH: MAY FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6476-9
US $30.00 CAN $38.00 ËxHSLELJy764769z
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-835-2
A NOVEL
BY NATASHA CALDER
An unnerving, sinister, and brilliant dystopian novel about the choices we make at the end of the world, posing the question: Who can you trust when there’s almost no one left?
Years after complete antibiotic resistance has brought about global devastation, Kit ekes out an existence on a remote island alongside the taciturn Crevan, who has more recently fled the mainland. With once–curable diseases running riot, desperate measures are in place there: Those not yet infected are given experimental vaccines, and those for whom it’s already too late are culled. But Kit and Crevan are safe, protected on their island by a collapsing castle that holds a greenhouse and a well–stocked bunker within its ruins. When a woman washes ashore—near drowned but clinging to life—the question of her fate threatens the fragile balance of Kit and Crevan’s isolated world. While Crevan wants to keep her alive, Kit isn’t so sure. And there’s more to wrestle with: Kit and Crevan each have secrets—secrets they have been keeping both from each other and from themselves. As the crisis brought about by the drowned woman’s appearance consumes them, the fictions of their shared existence crumble, and the truth begins to emerge.
Whether Violent or Natural is a startlingly original and thrilling novel for readers of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. In the tenseness of its plotting, the gradual unfolding of truth, and in the strange and gripping intensity of its narrator’s voice, Whether Violent or Natural is an intelligent, unputdownable novel that welcomes a huge new talent to the genre. Natasha Calder earned her degree in English from Trinity College Dublin and her master’s in medieval literature from Cambridge University. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Lackington’s, and Curiosities, among others, and she is coauthor of The Offset by Calder Szewczak. She is based in the UK. Whether Violent or Natural is her first solo novel.
SOPHISTICATED POST–
APOCALYPTIC FICTION: Calder is an astonishingly assured writer with a rare gift for voice, plot, and atmosphere, and the deftness and ambition of her worldbuilding compares to that of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.
A TIMELY READ: Dystopian fiction continues to sell, and this unsettling and edgy novel will speak to the current times.
STRONG PLATFORM: As one half of the duo Calder Szewczak, the author has an established fan base from the publication of her coauthored cli–fi book, The Offset, and they will also support her first solo novel.
SPECIFICATIONS
*224 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 140mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 210mm
*Hardcover with jacket
PUB MONTH: JUNE FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6466-0
US $26.00 CAN $33.00 ËxHSLELJy764660z
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-831-4
A NOVEL
BY PADDY CREWE
A bold, revisionist take on the Western novel set in the Georgia gold rush, for readers of Charles Portis and Cormac McCarthy, by a powerful debut novelist with an original voice
Praise for My Name Is Yip
“My Name Is Yip is a tremendous novel.” —Laird Hunt, National Book Award–shortlisted author of Zorrie and Neverhome
“Paddy Crewe has a 24–carat gift.” —Sebastian Barry, author of Days Without End
“I love the compelling narrator, somehow a cross between Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield and Charles Portis’s Mattie Ross. And like True Grit, Yip takes us on a wild ride.” —Michael Punke, author of The Revenant and Ridgeline
“My Name Is Yip is both an entertaining tale of gold, murder, and the impulse for revenge and a tender coming–of–age story amid the lawlessness of the American frontier.” —Paul Howarth, author of Only Killers and Thieves
“Thrilling . . . brim–full of humor, strangeness, and charm.” —Ian McGuire, Booker Prize–longlisted author of The North Water
“Magnificent. My Name Is Yip is a sheer joy. What a voice, what a story. It’s a glorious novel.” —Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers
It’s 1815 in the small town of Heron's Creek, Georgia, when Yip Tolroy––mute, medical anomaly, and social outcast––is born. His father has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, so he is raised by his mother: a powerful, troubled, independent woman who owns and runs a general store. She struggles to manage his needs, leaving Yip to find the means of asserting himself in an unforgiving, hostile environment. With the help of a retired doctor, he begins to transform his life by learning to read and write, his portal into the community a piece of slate and a supply of chalk. And then at the age of fifteen, Yip’s life is altered irrevocably. In the space of a few days he witnesses the discovery of gold, meets his faithful friend and comrade Dud Carter, and commits a grievous crime. Thrust unwittingly into a world of violence and sin, Yip and Dud are forced to leave town and embark on an odyssey that will introduce them to the wonder and horror of the American frontier until the revelation of a secret means they must return to Heron’s Creek and the fate that awaits them. With its colorful description of people and places, comic backbone, and compelling narrator, My Name Is Yip is a bold adventure––a gripping tale of courage, struggle, hope, and brotherhood––that reckons with the seductive pull of the American South and its dark and complex histories.
Paddy Crewe was born in Stockton–on–Tees. He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. My Name is Yip is his debut novel.
WELL–CONNECTED AUTHOR:
We have stellar blurbs from Sebastian Barry and the author’s mentor Erica Wagner, and are expecting blurbs from Hilary Mantel Barbara Kingsolver, and Ann Patchett.
READERSHIP: Reminiscent of A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Sisters Brothers in voice and description, for readers of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Charles Portis’s True Grit, as well as Denis Johnson and Annie Proulx.
STUNNING DEBUT: This is a powerful and enthralling debut novel with an incredible voice and a fresh approach to American frontier archetypes that should get a lot of review attention and pull in readers who fall in love with literary historical novels with an Americana vibe.
SPECIFICATIONS
*368 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 229mm
*Paperback
PUB MONTH: JUNE FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6230-7
US $18.00 CAN $23.00 ËxHSLELJy762307z
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-711-9
A NOVEL
BY SALLY OLIVER
An exquisitely eerie and unsettling speculative novel that grapples with questions of trauma, identity, and the workings of memory—now in paperback!
Praise for Garden of Earthly Bodies
“Garden of Earthly Bodies ripples with visceral language that conceals an ominous underbelly, ever threatening to burst free.” ―Chicago Review of Books
“An affecting portrait of a young life shaped by grief, set against an unnerving, surreal medical backdrop, somewhere between My Year of Rest and Relaxation and A Cure for Wellness. . . . A remarkable, thought–provoking, vivid book.” —Will Wiles, author of The Way Inn and Plume
“Intelligent, addictive, and disturbing.” —Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House and What Should Be Wild
“Garden of Earthly Bodies is a debut to savor. Sally Oliver writes with startling intensity.” —Victoria Gosling, author of Before the Ruins
“Wonderfully intriguing.” —Helen Fisher, author of Faye, Faraway
Months after her sister’s death, Marianne wakes up to find a growth of thick black hairs along her spine. They defy her attempts to remove them, instead proliferating, growing longer. The hairs, Marianne’s doctor tells her, are a reaction to trauma, developed in the wake of the loss of her sister, Marie. Her doctor recommends that Marianne visits Nede, a modern, New Age rehabilitation center in a remote forest in Wales where the patients attend unorthodox therapy sessions and commune with nature. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As the hairs on her back continue to grow, the past starts to entangle itself with the present and the borders of her consciousness threaten to disintegrate. She finds herself drawn back compulsively to the memory of Marie, obsessing over the impulse that drew her sister toward death and splintered her family apart. As Marianne’s memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Haunting, lyrical, and introspective, Garden of Earthly Bodies is a startlingly accomplished and original debut about the bond between two sisters, love and its limits, and our inability to ever truly to know the minds of others. With an intense and precise attention to the internal workings of minds and bodies and a disturbing speculative plot, the novel welcomes an assured new voice to the genre. Sally Oliver earned a master’s in English at Lancaster University before moving to London to start a career in publishing. She now works for the agency Greene & Heaton. Garden of Earthly Bodies is her debut novel.
HARDCOVER OFF TO STRONG
START: Garden of Earthly Bodies was named a best new book by Bustle, Book Riot, and Tor.com, and was reviewed by Chicago Review of Books.
TARGET AUDIENCE: For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands, Samanta Schweblin, Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and fans of Black Mirror.
CROSSOVER HORROR
APPEAL: Hybrid literary fiction with speculative and horror elements are on trend.
SPECIFICATIONS
*320 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 140mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 210mm
*Paperback
PUB MONTH: JUNE FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-5936-9
US $17.00 CAN $22.00 ËxHSLELJy759369z
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-568-9
A NOVEL
BY BEATRICE HITCHMAN
From an acclaimed and powerful talent in historical fiction, a literary historical novel set in a Bohemian enclave of Vienna about love, freedom, and what constitutes a family—now in paperback!
Praise for All of You Every Single One
“With a masterful eye for historical detail, Beatrice Hitchman’s ambitious new novel plunges us headfirst into the bohemian world of Vienna’s early–20th– century golden age. . . . All of You Every Single One shines as a beautiful, poignant, and deeply felt tale.” —Vogue, Best Books of 2022
“This liberating novel about queer chosen family is beautifully detailed and filled with heart.” —Brit + Co
“A stellar work that blends the best of history and fiction.” —Historical Novel Society
“[A] sweeping story . . . fans of Sarah Waters's historical dramas should take note.” —Electric Lit
“A touching and atmospheric ode to queer characters and their struggles during such a poignant time in history, we can guarantee you won’t put this one down until it's finished.” —Women.com
“An absorbing novel of love and lust and found family.” —Library Journal
“Hitchman’s writing is beautiful from the start.” —Manhattan Book Review Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds. Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter. But Julia’s yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos and threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those closest to her. Ada Bauer’s wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism—and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably. Through the lives of her queer characters, and against the changing backdrop of one of the greatest cities of the age, Hitchman asks what it’s like to live through oppression, how personal decisions become political, and how far one will go to protect the ones they love. Moving across Europe and through decades, Hitchman’s sophomore novel is an intensely poignant portrait of life and love on the fringes of history. Beatrice Hitchman is an author and an academic whose research focuses on queer fiction and the ethics of historical fiction. Her first novel, Petite Mort, was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, the Polari Prize, and the HWA Debut Dagger. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Brighton. All of You Every Single One is her second novel.
FOR FANS OF HISTORICAL
LGBTQ+ STORIES: Will appeal to readers of Sarah Waters and fans of Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
PRIDE PLACEMENT: The paperback publication will allow continued opportunities for Pride–related coverage.
FANTASTIC HARDCOVER
COVERAGE: The novel was featured on Buzzfeed three times and was a Vogue Best Book of 2022.
SPECIFICATIONS
*320 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 140mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 210mm
*Paperback
PUB MONTH: MARCH FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-5694-8
US $17.00 CAN $22.00 ËxHSLELJy756948z
CARTON QTY: 24
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-414-9
A SIMON SERRAILLER CASE
BY SUSAN HILL
In this newest installment of Susan Hill’s electrifying crime series, Simon
Serrailler finds himself in devastating new territory as a sophisticated drug network sets its sights on Lafferton
Praise for A Change of Circumstance
*“As usual, Hill weaves many disparate themes into one riveting, deeply affecting story awash in suspense and social commentary. Top–notch!” —Booklist
“Series fans will enjoy catching up with Serrailler and company.” —Publishers Weekly
Praise for Susan Hill
“Hill knows how to keep those pages turning.” —Chicago Tribune
“The intelligence of this brooding series rivets a reader’s attention.” —Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post
“Hill, an award–winning novelist, shows just how good crime writing can be.” —Parade
“Not all great novelists can write crime fiction, but when one like Susan Hill does it, the result is stunning.” —Ruth Rendell
“P. D. James meets Barbara Kingsolver.” —Washington Post
Susan Hill is back with A Change of Circumstance, the eleventh book in the acclaimed mystery series featuring the enigmatic and brooding chief police inspector Simon Serrailler. DCS Serrailler has long regarded drugs ops in Lafferton as a waste of time. The small–time dealers picked up outside the local high school can’t—or won’t—turn in any valuable names, so they're merely given a fine and the trail runs cold. But when the body of a 22–year–old drug addict is found in neighboring Starley, the case pulls Serrailler into the underbelly of an elaborate drug running operation that pushes narcotics out from the cities, into the suburbs, and right down to villages. The foot soldiers? Vulnerable local kids like Brookie and Olivia, whose involvement gives Serrailler a bitter taste of this new landscape. It’s a harsh winter in Lafferton, and with struggles both at home and on the job, Serrailler soon learns that even the familiar can hold shocking surprises. . . . With A Change of Circumstance, Hill delivers yet another gripping piece of the Serrailler canon. Written in the tradition of the fabulous mysteries of Ruth Rendell and P. D. James, this newest case is sure to enthrall new fans and surprise old ones in what is a captivating new addition to a highly acclaimed series. Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread Book, Somerset Maugham, and John Llewellyn Rhys awards, received the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year, and have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The play adapted from her famous ghost novel, The Woman in Black, has been running in the West End since 1989. The eleven books in her Simon Serrailer series are all available from Overlook. STRONG SERIES SALES: The Simon Serrailler books have sold more than 250,000 copies across all formats.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM: Praise includes reviews from outlets such as the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and authors Ruth Rendell and P. D. James.
ENDURING CATEGORY: Mystery and crime fiction is an evergreen category, and Hill’s dedicated fan base will respond enthusiastically to this new installment.
SPECIFICATIONS
*320 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 229mm
*Paperback
PUB MONTH: MARCH FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-5974-1
US $17.00 ËxHSLELJy759741z
CARTON QTY: 40
ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-581-8
STORIES
BY DENNARD DAYLE
For readers of Jason Pargin, Paul Beatty, and George Saunders, an electrifying and wholly original collection of satirical stories that create a bitingly funny portrait of American racism, capitalism, and politics—now in paperback!
Praise for Everything Abridged
“By turns prescient of our anxious, conspiracy–fraught times and mournful of majestic worlds to come ruined by all too familiar hatreds. But the post–WWIII stand–up riffs? Truly funny stuff.” ―Vulture
“Incredibly entertaining and so damn illuminating.” ―Entertainment Weekly
“Slyly defiant and blazingly imaginative, like the best modernist literature, Everything Abridged is a powerful celebration of flaw and failure. It’s a book that revels in the timelessness of obsolescence and the freedom of powerlessness. Dayle’s a genre–shattering writer, whose wit and intellect never cease to entertain. This refreshingly original and powerfully funny collection is a debut to remember.” ―Paul Beatty, New York Times bestselling author
“Everything Abridged: Stories by Dennard Dayle: 1.Miscategorized. Calling this addictively book–shaped act of language subversion “stories” is like calling New York City “buildings” 2.The nonstandard reference to all sorts of things it would have been disturbing to learn if you hadn’t been laughing so hard 3.Herald of a major new talent—what more do you need to know? Why are you still reading the cover and not the inside?” ―Susan Choi, National Book Award–winning author of Trust Exercise
Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible. A copywriter on a space colony advertises a weapon with the potential to destroy his home during an intergalactic war. These and other linked stories, many of which feature a speculative bent—about being Black in America, law enforcement practices in an android society, Olympic speed walking, consumerism, nuclear war, and more—are interspersed with hilarious, one–line definitions for words ranging from abolition to zygote, creating a sharply humorous portrait of American inequality. With his singular wit, sharp prose, and shrewd observations, Dennard Dayle captures the struggles his characters face to keep hold of their sanity in a society collapsing into chaos and absurdity.
Dennard Dayle is a Jamaican–American writer from New York City. He is a graduate of Princeton University and received his MFA from Columbia University. His short fiction has been published by The New Yorker, Clarkesworld, Matchbook, the Hard Times, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and his satirical performance art has been covered by NBC, the New York Post, and New York magazine. Dayle is based in Brooklyn. Everything Abridged is his debut collection. PHENOMENAL PRAISE: The book has been supported by such literary powerhouses as Paul Beatty, Susan Choi, and Gary Shteyngart, and was reviewed in Vulture and Entertainment Weekly, and covered by The New Yorker.
TARGET AUDIENCE: For readers of Jason Pargin’s This Book is Full of Spiders, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Lincoln in the Bardo, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
HUMOR FOR OUR TIME: The topics and themes covered in the stories in Everything Abridged perfectly capture the national mood during such uncertain and tumultuous times while cracking jokes and creating madcap scenarios that readers cannot help but laugh at.
SPECIFICATIONS
*320 pages *WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 152mm *HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 229mm
*Paperback
PUB MONTH: APRIL FICTION
ISBN 978-1-4197-6097-6
US $17.00 CAN $22.00 UK £12.99 ËxHSLELJy760976z
