Welcome all followers new and old to Windmill - a shiny new site for a shiny new publisher. We want you to get to know what we’re all about, which is why we’re giving away five Windmill Books hampers*, each containing:

Plus:

A Windmill Books notebook, AND a set of fancy book postcards.

To win, all you have to do is tell me in the comments section below is: what pop duet featured in Mrs Ballard’s parrot vignettes? I’ll pick five winner at random in ten minutes - go go go!

Windmill Books picked up a number of great reviews this week, here are the highlights:

‘Witheringly funny … A rock memoir in the misanthropic vein of Lucky Jim‘ Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times

Read the full review

‘[A] cleverly plotted and elegantly written novel…Unsworth has evidently done a great deal of research, but this is woven seamlessly into the fabric of the novel so that the reader is caught up in the excitement of Somerville’s discoveries’ Peter Parker, The Sunday Times

Read the full review

‘I’ve read lots of books about economics this last year.  This is one of the very best … Superb’ William Leith, Evening Standard

‘A fluent and indirect paean to Keynesian economics…this resonates with the contemporary turmoil in global financial markets’ James Urquhart, Financial Times

Read the full review

‘Ahamed unravels the story of the most terrible financial collapse in history from the perspective of the four men who were largely responsible: the leading central bankers in the United States, Britain, France and Germany’ Simon Shaw, Mail on Sunday

In honour of the launch of www.windmill-books.co.uk, we want to get you up to speed on some of the books we’ve published in the last year. And we can think of no better way than giving you a bumper bundle of books that are sure to have stockings well filled this Christmas.

To win all of these books, plus limited edition Windmill Books notepads and postcards (insert ‘ooos’ here), just answer this question: at what time in the day do I get most of my reading done? Is it:

a) In bed

b) At work

c) On the commute

Answers will be accepted via the medium of Twitter - tweet @WindmillBooks and I’ll pick the winner randomly at 4:30. Good luck!

Harvey

 Rachel Heath’s debut novel The Finest Type of English Womanhood has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. The judges praised the book as “dark and gripping story which merges fact and fiction so powerfully”.

The winner will be announced on the 5th January, and Windmill will publish the paperback in February.

Welcome to your sneak peak of the new site for Windmill Books, proud publishers of some of the most exciting new and established literary authors around today.

The site will officially be launched on the 1^st December, with more of the latest titles, news from our authors, events, competitions, podcasts, and posts from The Turbine blog than you can shake a pointy stick at. As this is a test site, some of the pages may be a little slow to load; it’ll be back to its slick best for the full site. Otherwise please have a rummage round, and let us know what you think by leaving comments or tweeting us @WindmillBooks.

The Windmill Team

Douglas Coupland, John Niven and Nick Harkaway have all been chosen in ShortList magazine’s list ‘The 50 Books Every Man Should Own’.

The list also has a feature by Nick Harakaway in which he praises Josh Bazell’s Beat the Reaper, published by Hutchinson ealier this year, and Windmill in 2010: ‘Bazell’s a pretty good contender for Raymond Chandler’s crown…I was consumed with envy reading this one; it’s so damn good.’

ShortList called Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World a ’superlative debut…proof of a glittering talent’, whilst in Kill Your Friends ‘Niven’s dry, black humour and caustic wit keep the laughs coming in what is a truly coruscating, darkly hilarious account of the music industry, written by one of its own.’

ShortList is available free in the London area.