We are delighted to announce the publication of Angelmaker, the new novel from the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway. Featuring a cast of heroes and villains, men and women of high virtue and low morals (sometimes both simultaneously), Angelmaker is the story of a mobster’s son and a retired secret agent, teaming up to save the world.

To find out more and read the first chapter, visit http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/angelmaker/9780434020942

Praise for Angelmaker:

‘Harkaway has created a wonderfully entertaining, unguessable kaleidoscope of a novel. And e-book readers will miss the additional pleasure of a hardback that looks as gorgeously ornate as its contents.’ - The Times

‘It’s a wonderfully strange, rich piece of work - extremely entertaining and exciting - and has a wonderfully comic aspect to it as well.’  - William Gibson, New York Times

‘Distinctive, creative and blessed with the kind of imagination that leaves his novels bursting with invention, Nick Harkaway certainly isn’t an everyday author.’ - SFX

‘A very British bastardisation of Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Adams and China Miéville.’ - SciFiNow

Prepare to be amazed by this fantastic novel by the acclaimed author Marina Endicott. Scheduled to be published as a Windmill paperback in September, but if you can’t wait until then, the beautiful hardback edition is available now.

Little Women meets Water for Elephants - The Little Shadows tells the story of three sisters making their way in the world of vaudeville before and during the First World War. Setting off to make their fortune as a singing act after the untimely death of their father, the girls, Aurora, Clover and Bella, are overseen by their fond but barely coping Mama.

The sisters begin with little in their favour besides youth and hope, but each one slowly and steadily evolves into a unique and accomplished artist while navigating her way to adulthood among a cast of extraordinary charmers, charlatans, eccentrics, impresarios - and once in a rare while, a bright star with transcendent gifts.
With gorgeous prose and keen insight, Endicott lures us onto the brightly lit stage and then into the little shadows that lurk behind the curtain, and reveals how the art of vaudeville - in all its variety, madness, melodrama, and sorrow - echoes the art of life itself.

Praise for The Little Shadows:

The Little Shadows is my book of the year. Think of your favourite stories about sisters - the gravity, levity and subtlety with which the lives of siblings are woven together; Endicott puts her own spin on that.’ Helen Oyeyemi, author of Mr Fox

‘A vivid coming of age tale about the beautiful Avery sisters, thrust on the vaudeville stage after their father’s death. Set in early 20^th-century Canada, it catapults the reader into the beating heart of the travelling theatrical world - the smell of the greasepaint, heat of the spotlights, and high-wire adrenaline are near-tangible. Thrilling and moving this is a glittering jewel of a novel.’ Easy Living

The Little Shadows is a novel about art and women, and personal fulfilment and the thrill of performing… She has written an entertaining, moving and original work. - The National Post

The Little Shadows has Endicott’s wry sensibility, her pithy lyricism and her skill at pulling the rug out from under the reader’s feet. Like the previous novel, this one also concerns itself with big ideas: the point of art, sisterly and familial love and, as the war’s shadow extends and darkens, the meaning of life itself. - The Globe and Mail

It’s been chosen by STYLIST as one of their cult books for 2012, therefore it’s definately one not to be missed!

To find out more or to buy The Little Shadows, click here.

To find out more about Marina and her books, visit her website.

Windmill is delighted to be publishing The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker, available from 2 February 2012.  

For 200 years after 1650 the West Indies were the most fought-over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold.

Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption.

The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is a compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire.

Praise for The Sugar Barons:

‘A shocking tale of corruption and brutality…an admirable and gripping history’ Sunday Times

‘Very impressive - a meticulously researched piece of work and so engagingly written. It taught me so much that I didn’t know about British Caribbean history’ Andrea Levy

‘The Sugar Barons is an exemplary book; history as it should be written’ Independent

‘Gripping…a compendium of greed, horrible ingenuity and wickedness, but also a fascinating and thoughtful history.’ William Dalrymple

GET YOUR HANDS ON A SIGNED COPY

Great news! We have 8 signed copies to give away. To be in with a chance of receiving one, all you need to do is ‘Like’ us on Facebook and check the Facebook page to find out more. Good luck!

Nick Harkaway, acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, brings us another propulsively entertaining literary thriller, featuring an octogenarian spy, a mobster’s son with a heart of gold, and an extremely ugly dog.

Angelmaker is published in February 2012, but we are giving Windmill Books followers a chance to win exclusive proof copies. All you have to do is answer the following question:

What is the name of the pipe that is on fire in The Gone-Away World?

a) The Hakote Pipe

b) The Apprehension Pipe

c) The Jorgmund Pipe

Email windmill@randomhouse.co.uk by 5pm, Monday 12th December with the answer, your name and address to be in with a chance of winning. Good luck!

We’re delighted to announce that The Submission by Amy Waldman has been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2011. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on December 1st.

The full shortlist is:

Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury)
The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee (Fourth Estate)
Down The Rabbit Hole, Juan Pablo Villalobos (And Other Stories)
The Collaborator, Mirza Waheed (Viking)
The Submission, Amy Waldman (William Heinemann)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/11/guardian-first-book-award-shortlist

Amy Waldman was the co-chief of the South Asia bureau of The New York Times. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic and the Boston Review and is anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. She lives with her family in Brooklyn. William Heinemann published the hardback on August 18th and the paperback will be published by Windmill in June 2012.

Praise for The Submission

‘Amy Waldman’s debut novel is the most successful yet at making sense of 9/11…Writing the “9/11″ novel has, at times, seemed like a test (and a race), a cunningly thought-out exercise to try the mettle of some of the brightest and best in the class. Novelists were quick to take up the challenge: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, Joseph O’Neill’sNetherland, Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, John Updike’s Terrorist, Martin Amis’s “The Last Days of Muhammad Atta”, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close…[TheSubmission] is the best 9/11 novel to date… intelligence and wit, in accomplished prose. This is a deeply thoughtful and moving account of the myriad ways in which, when the towers came down, the US psyche became a casualty too.’ Michael Prodger, Financial Times

‘The grief surrounding 9/11 is central to this exceptional debut about a changing America…The novel centres on Khan and the three family members. Through their stories and interactions Waldman builds a tale of complexity and tension…Waldman’s prose is almost always pitch-perfect, whether describing a Bangladeshi woman’s relationship with her landlady or the political manoeuvring within a jury. The characters are wholly realised and believable as individuals, but they also stand in for stories and conflicts that go beyond their own lives.’ Kamila Shamsie, Guardian, Book of the Week

‘An absorbing, accomplished debut…Waldman [has a] feel for novelistic light and shade and an instinct for chasing down telling, surprising details…Waldman’s sensitivity to the multidimensionality of the issues is matched by an observant eye for the details of social interaction…This knack for shaping scenes, along with judicious intercutting between various elements, make Waldman’s novel an intelligent, satisfying read.’ Sunday Times ]]> http://www.windmill-books.co.uk/index.php/2011/11/the-submission-shortlisted-for-the-guardian-first-book-award-2011/feed/ http://www.windmill-books.co.uk/index.php/2011/10/helen-rappaport-magnificent-obsession-event/ http://www.windmill-books.co.uk/index.php/2011/10/helen-rappaport-magnificent-obsession-event/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:57:59 +0000 Harvey http://www.windmill-books.co.uk/?p=1151 Helen Rappaport will talk about her new book, Magnificent Obsession, at Blackwell Bookshop in Oxford.

More info

To celebrate the release of Douglas Coupland and Graham Roumieu's fantastically twisted Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People, Windmill Books, in association with Waterstone's, are giving you the chance to win an exclusive sampler of the first two chapters! All you have to do is answer the following question:

What is the name of the undead substitute teacher in Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People?

Click here for a clue, and to see some of the wicked and malicious characters from the book. Send your answer to windmill@randomhouse.co.uk with your name and address, and you will be entered for the draw. Winners announced 1st November at 5pm. Good luck!

Will Self’s writing room has been on the blog before, and today I read his amazing piece The Trouble With my Blood. Beautiful and not a little discomfiting.

As the half life between ‘Thing’ and ‘Ironic tumblr about Thing’ decreases yet more, we have Sh*t That Siri Says, dedicated to people trying to trick the robot inside the iPhone 4S. (One day soon there will be ironic tumblr blogs about things that don’t even exist yet, at which point I will give up on the internet forever and live in a cave. Probably. Until I get bored.)

The peerless xkcd on picking passwords you’ll actually remember. (Now was it wmillbooks with two zeros and a z, or one?)

Ever wanted to see what people were searching for on Wikipedia? No? Well…you can anyway, with this strangely mesmerising website.

Here’s lookin’ at you kid - a gallery of ultra-close up animal eyes. Brilliant.

And finally, we’re a bookish blog so here’s a wordy game from the OED to pass the time. Good weekends all!

‘The Prix Goncourt committee took a record hour and a half to elect The Map and the Territory the winner of France’s highest literary honour … Readers … are unlikely to quibble with the decision.  Houellebecq’s fifth book is not only his best for years but very likely his best ever, a serious novel about ageing and death which employs its author’s trademark wit towards some delicious exercises in satire and self parody… a challenging, mature and highly intelligent book’ Daily Telegraph

”[Houellebecq] has shown that the novel can still shock and disturb, still be the subject of passionate debate. We’re not talking about a reality television show or a film or a video game or a rap artist - these are cleverly constructed literary novels. All novelists everywhere have benefited from his audacity‘ William Boyd, Sunday Times

‘If the French had a prize for literary provocation, Michel Houellebecq would win in a walk…The Map and the Territory is a delight to read … vigorously, enjoyably un-French … [it] skewers the art world’s pretentious jargon and galloping mercantilism … The late novelist John Updike once summed up the conventional view of Houellebecq by deploring the French writer’s “thoroughgoing contempt for, and strident impatience with, humanity”. The Map and the Territory may force a revision of that judgment.’ Financial Times

‘A great read … Houellebecq, as both his writing and his infrequent forays into public life suggest, doesn’t seem like someone who takes much notice of what people tell him to do. Thank goodness’ Guardian

‘A dark master of invention…From the very first paragraph of this brilliant, often preposterous, Prix Goncourt winning novel, the reader can be in no doubt that they’re in the blistering bleak, darkly inventive grand massif that is Houellebecq land’ Evening Standard

‘The outlaw of French letters returns with an acerbic riff on art and celebrity … A very interesting writer - witty, wildly erudite, with a scattergun approach to the inanities that he sees all around him’ Douglas Kennedy, The Times

‘Houellebecq is an astonishing writer … The Map And The Territory is funny, shocking, brutal and unbearably poignant. It is, in the sense that the 18^th century philosopher Edmund Burke meant it, sublime’ Scotland on Sunday

‘What on Earth is a French existentialist and winner of France’s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, doing being reviewed here? He’s not commercial, doesn’t pander to any market, his prose is not always accessible, and certainly doesn’t always zip along. Turned off already? Well don’t be. If ever there was a novelist for our globally dysfunctional times it’s Michel Houellebecq …‘ Henry Sutton, The Mirror (4-star Book of the Week)

Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

Kick of the discussion of this brilliant and thought provoking book with the discussion points below.

1. Who is your favourite Forgetting Zoë character? It doesn’t have to be the one you ‘like’ best in terms of personality. For example, as much as you may hate Thurman as a person, and the things that he does, but you may like the way he is drawn, the details of his speech or idiosyncrasies and mannerisms.

 2. Why do you think Robinson chose to tell the story of Forgetting Zoë in the third person and to explore the lives of three protagonists - Zoë, Thurman, and Ingrid - rather than just focusing on Zoë’s story? Do you think the novel would have worked as well, or better, narrated by Zoë in the first person? If so, why?

3. What are some of the ways in which Zoë’s development has been stunted by growing up as Thurman’s captive? Describe the dynamic between Zoë and Thurman. Did Zoë and Thurman’s relationship feel credible to you?

4. How would you describe Ingrid? Did you warm towards her as a character, or find her cold and distant? Did her suicide feel credible?

5. The various types of power dynamics between the sexes - Thurman and his parents; Zoë and Ingrid; Zoë and Thurman; Ingrid and Jon; Zoë and Red Bess and Bob - are at the core of Forgetting Zoë. Describe and discuss some of the important relationships in the book.

6. What conclusions can you draw about Thurman’s ideas regarding sex and power?

7. In Forgetting Zoë the novel’s wild landscapes and weather can be seen as characters in the novel, in that they reflect the mental landscape of the protagonists — from the fictional, windswept island of Unnr, to the cauterized, unforgiving landscape of the Arizona desert. Both are, in their way, dangerous and claustrophobic landscapes. Robinson explores the relationship between these physical landscapes and emotional suffering, but how do these aspects of the protagonists’ inner and outer lives interact? Or rather, what was unique about the settings of the book, and how did the settings enhance or take away from the story?

8. Forgetting Zoë has an unusual structure for a thriller about captivity: Zoë escapes two thirds of the way through the book. Why do you think this is?

9. Robinson has been praised for not telling the reader what to think, and allowing the worst scenes in the book to take place in the reader’s imagination. Also, the words ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ are never used in the book, though at its core the book explores the syndrome and its effects on both Zoë and Thurman. How convincing or realistic do you think the portrayal of Stockholm Syndrome is, and how important is it that the syndrome is never mentioned?

10. In relation to the previous question, most of the information about the actual kidnap itself, on the morning of October 8^th, 1999, is missing from the novel. Why do you think Robinson chose to do this?

11. Robinson has been praised for his taut, spare prose. Why might the prose in Forgetting Zoë be characterized as ’spare’? Discuss examples or particular passages that highlight this quality of Robinson’s writing. What effect does this style have on the novel as a whole, or on your ability to imagine the time and place in which it is set?

12. What were you most affected by in the novel?

13. On page 33, Thurman’s mother says, ‘we all suffer at the hands of those we love’. Can you relate to this statement? If so, to what extent do the characters remind you of yourself, or someone you know? In what ways do lines such as these reveal evidence of the author’s worldview?

14. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way?

15. Discuss the title of the novel, particularly with regards to the final scene in the book in which Zoë walks away from the burning ranch house. How might Zoë’s qualities of self-possession and self-awareness be reconciled with the conclusion? How do you feel about the end of the novel?

16. What sort of problems do you think Zoë will face now that she is out there, on her own, in the real world? What does joining the outside world do to Zoë, and what might it mean for her future?