Archive for May 21st, 2009

* Hodder has signed chick-lit author Belinda Jones in a move away from her previous publisher, Random House, in a four-book deal for an undisclosed sum. The first book in the deal is currently untitled, but will be set in Argentina, Cuba and Spain and published in paperback in April 2010. The further three books will be published each subsequent year also in April, keeping Jones positioned for the summer slot. Hodder plans to update the look of Jones’ books in the same way that it has previously repackaged Melissa Hill and Alexandra Potter.

* HarperFiction’s publishing director Lynne Drew has signed Headline’s outgoing editorial director Harriet Evans in a three-book deal. The deal, for “a good six-figure sum”, was agreed with Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown. Evans left Headline this week to work full-time on the novels. Her first, Going Home, was published in 2005. The first book in the deal, Evans’ fourth, is entitled I Remember You and will be published in hardback this November. It is set in Wiltshire and Rome, and described as “‘Room with a View’ meets ‘Roman Holiday’”.

* Orion has signed a further two novels by Emily Giffin in a “substantial” deal for an undisclosed sum. The first, entitled The Heart of the Matter, will be published in July 2010. The second as-yet-untitled novel has not yet been scheduled.

Liza Palmer, author of Conversations With A Fat Girl and Seeing Me Naked returns on October 29th with her new novel, A Field Guide To Burying Your Parents. The synopsis reads:

There are times when we’d all like to disown our family. But when the going got tough, Grace did it for real, leaving her family and even her lover behind.

With a lovely house, a new boyfriend and her family safely tucked in the past, everything seems perfect. Until Grace discovers that her estranged father is dying. Now she must decide whether to stay in her cosy new world, or return to face the wrath of her abandoned siblings and the wiles of an evil stepmother . . .

It sounds a really great read so I’ll definitely be looking out for it.

Meet Rebecca Bloomwood. She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time …shopping. Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems.

She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties.

Her only comfort is to buy herself something - just a little something …Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card? Confessions of a Shopaholic …the perfect pick me up for when it’s all hanging in the (bank) balance.

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One of my favourite authors has to be Melissa Hill. She always manages to write a story that keeps me guessing right up until the end, and the twists and turns throughout her book are fantastic. I have read several of her books now and loved them all. Here’s a little bit about Melissa:

“Melissa Hill lives in South Dublin with her husband and dog.

A number one bestseller in her native Ireland, she is the author of 8 best-selling novels. All have been translated into many different languages including French, German, Finnish, Latvian, Spanish, Norwegian, Portuguese Brazilian, Thai and Hungarian.

Hailed ‘the queen of the big plot twist’, her books combine all the warmth and humour of contemporary women’s fiction with plots that keep readers guessing from page to page in a style usually only seen in crime fiction.”

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