These are the four different covers to the book Under the Dome, by Stephen King - depicting each of the four main characters in the book.

As book covers go, these covers do look odd, with the title and author name pushed to the bottom of the image, almost as though the designer wished he didn’t have to include it at all. There are no quotes or straplines as per the norm - leaving the close up image of the character as clean and as uninterrupted by text as possible.

And there’s the brilliance of it. Yes, it does look odd. It doesn’t look right. I find I’m not comfortable with this look as a book cover… and surely that’s perfect for a Stephen King book - an uneasy read, involving something out-of-the-norm.

Moreover, this complete focus on each characters immediately tells the reader that the focus of the book will be these four characters - their unique story, their perspective. And with each close-up you can’t help but notice they are all looking up at the same point (one can assume the Dome), subtley highlighting their common ground and adding to the intrigue - what is this Dome they are looking at?

Moreover the four “character” covers are an interesting concept for marketing the book.   Which character are you most interested in - the old man, the child, the young woman, the young man? If you bought the book, which cover would you choose? It invites us to think about it, engaging us even before we’ve even thought about reading or buying the book!

Which, in fact, would you choose?  (I’d probably go with the young woman, being a young woman myself, or the child, as I actually find that image quite beautiful.)

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity and Online Marketing Manager

Want to flag up a cover for our Wednesday Cover Story? Write to chiara@allisonandbusby.com with your thoughts

You may not be surprised to hear that I’m not much of a pampering girl. I mean there aren’t many beauty treatments that justify a half hour of boredom, in my opinion. You can’t hold a book with tacky nail polish and you can’t have much of a conversation when your face muscles are being gently pummelled/polished (delete as applicable). And that’s before your purse is a good deal lighter.

So I was surprised at my own intrigued response to the idea of Fish Therapy. Yes you read that right. Fish Therapy is now available in London at Aqua Sheko. Take a seat and let dozens of Garra rufa nibble away at the dead skin cells on your feet! Surely this must be better than shedding dust all over the house?! Bingo, less housework, I’m sold!

Lesley-Anne Crooks, Sales & Digital Manager

Something book related and vaguely contemporary would be a good start, and thankfully an obliging newspaper soon popped up to satisfy both requirements. Last year the official (government) advice for graduates, moping in discontent at their debt and joblessness, was to seek their fortunes on foreign shores. Revised update. Last week, a certain paper screamed at the latest crop of frustrated A-level school leavers to ‘GO TO CHINA!’

Sound advice indeed; I have recently returned from a one-year stint of teaching in China, and having come back OK (whether my lungs did is another matter entirely) I can recommend the experience. More to the point, having during the year read a number of books on and from China, I can now recommend a few to my fellow ‘lost generation’ brethren who seek to venture to the Middle Kingdom:

River Town, by Peter Hessler. This account of two years spent as a foreign teacher in the late 1990s is requisite pre-departure reading. Although much has changed in the past ten years, the author’s honest depiction of ordinary life, his armoury of anecdotes, and his personal efforts to adapt provide good preparation for the culture shock of going to China.

Journey to the West: The Monkey King’s Amazing Adventures, by Wu Cheng’en (and Timothy Richard). The Monkey King is something of a hero in China, and apparently iconic to many youngsters (if my students’ daily references to him are anything to go by).  This rambling folk epic is, in a nutshell, the semi-historical, semi-mythical account of a pilgrimage to India to collect Buddhist scriptures, the pilgrims including Prince Tripitaka, a naughty pig, a water monster, and Monkey, who is essentially every modern superhero rolled into one fluffy form.

English, by Wang Gang – the story of Love Liu, a boy who grows up in remote western China during the Cultural Revolution and becomes enamoured of learning foreign languages. Shocking for the everyday brutality it depicts, it is hard to get into, as, being originally in Mandarin, the staccato language can feel a little stilted.

Repeat after Me, by Rachel de Woskin – I am reading it this week, a gift from a friend who thought I would relate to it. Although veering dangerously close to chick-lit, the fictional account of an English teacher in China is very readable, and whilst you may want to skip the dubious description of our heroine’s (pre-China) mental breakdown, many of her observations of the cultural differences between East and West and the relationships between their respective peoples are well-observed.

Of course, I shall also have to explore Allison & Busby’s China-themed books: Becoming Madame Mao, by Anchee Min, and the three Inspector Wang mysteries, by Christopher West (which, by the way, are currently 40% off!)

Georgina Phipps, Editorial Administrator

It’s been a fantastic six and half years, and there are a lot of things I will be able to look back on and smile at, and feel proud about. And of course, there will be many things I will miss as well.

You can be sure that in my new life as a teacher-in-training I’ll continue to support A&B in my own little way by wearing my A&B jute bag with pride around the uni campus and turning all the A&B books face out on bookshop shelves. I’ll also continue to read this blog to see what’s going on in the world of A&B, so make sure you keep writing, everyone!

All my very best to all the A&B blog readers. And goodbye to 13 Charlotte Mews!

Love Louise Watson (now Ex-Editor at A&B!) x

To the top of my must-read list it goes…

Lara Crisp, Managing Editor

So it is always a bit exciting and refreshing when a cover design so clearly breaks the mould with something new and unique, and in the case of C, by Tom McCarthy, an intricate, well-thought out, and original design that perfectly encapsulates the themes in the book.

I’d like to quote Kevin From Canada who describes how indeed it fits in with the actual experience of reading this very complex novel: “It comes with a palimpsest dust cover of scribbled patterns, while underneath on the cover itself is the “C”, with a gridded starscape in the background. The black spills over into the front and back inner covers with almost furry edges. The design is an entirely fair — even brilliant — visual representation of the challenges of the book. You need to fight your way through the confusion of the present, find the patterns that are in the array of the supertext, hark back into history, knit all those elements together and then it might all make sense.”

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager

Want to flag up a cover for our Wednesday Cover Story? Write to chiara@allisonandbusby.com with your thoughts

We’re all used to hearing news stories every year about the shiny new words that have had the official stamp of acceptance by the English language and have made it into one of the dictionaries. Just the other day, chillax made headlines as it was welcomed into the Oxfrod Dictionary of English (how a word that I first remember from the film Superbad has come so far so quickly, I don’t know). But spare a thought for the plight of words on their last legs and desperately in need of someone to love, care and appreciate them.

Can you offer a unique and probably tongue-twisty word a good home? Then visit www.savethewords.org and pledge to ‘adopt’ a word into your daily vocabulary. I think ‘jussulent’ (adj. full of broth or soup), the word I’ve adopted, is the perfect word to take on as summer fades and I’ve felt a nip in the air of late. Time for some hearty tomato and chorizo soup…

Lesley-Anne Crooks, Sales & Digital Manager

It is a hard film to watch - shocking and very “real” - yet I felt it was obviously trying to portray something much more profound and meaningful (about society in general) yet it never quite delivered. It was only after, when the credits came up that I realised it was based on the novel by Portuguese nobel-prize winning author, José de Sousa Saramago, entitled Ensaio sobre a cegueira (literally translated: Essay on Blindness).

I am now very curious to read the book which I think is likely to be very powerful, and offer a more complex, deeper level to the story than what the film was able to project. What’s more, after a brief read on Wikipedia I see that Saramago wrote a sequel Ensaio sobre a lucidez (literally translated Essay on Lucidity - published in UK as Seeing) which takes place in the same city as Blindness and features several of the same characters. This piques my curiosity even more, and  I may very well be putting these two books on my reading list.

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager

Lancashire Libraries has been focusing on crime fiction and true crime this year, recommending a variety of books in all crime sub-genres (from classic crime to psychological thrillers), hosting special author events and organising other (legal of course) crime-related activities…

And here’s the latest: Crime-writer Zoë Sharp, author of the hugely acclaimed thrillers featuring female bodyguard Charlie Fox, has teamed up with them to launch a crime-writing short story competition.

She has provided this intriguing first line of a story:

‘I always swore, if ever I came back to Lancashire again, I’d kill him.’‘

Now all anyone has to do is finish the story off - either as a piece of flash fiction (maximum word limit 500 words) or as a short story (maximum word limit 5000 words).

Closing date is the 30th September 2010. For more information on how to enter click here.

Might take a shot at this over the weekend. If you heard about the competition here and want to have a go, email us a copy of your submission too at chiara@allisonandbusby.com! We’d love to hear what Zoë Sharp has inspired you to write!

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity and Online Marketing Manager