Wednesday Cover Story, Author at Allison & Busby

Wednesday Cover Story: A smorgasbord of covers

21 May, 2014

The other week we received copies of Mary Nichols’ new German edition of The Girl on the Beach. The cover that might have been consciously designed with fans of Downton Abbey in mind. After all, she says adopting a Through the Keyhole drawl, who would live in a stately pile like this? The arrival of […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Angela Thirkell

7 May, 2014

There’s nothing quite like running into an old friend you haven’t seen for donkey’s years and re-discovering how much you like and admire them. And for fans of Angela Thirkell, Virago have run even more of her backlist through their Gok Wan-style reissue process and sent them back out into the world to see old […]

Wednesday Cover Story: BOOKS!

30 April, 2014

If you had a late one last night or you think there’s a headache creeping up on you, perhaps it would be best to view the rest of this blog post behind the safety of a pair of sunglasses. For it seems right to use the word ‘unleash’ for the cover and book I recently […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Eyes have it

2 April, 2014

Have you ever felt like you’re being watched? Not me. I’m the kind of oblivious person who usually has her nose in a book or her mind merrily in the clouds and has to be shouted at repeatedly before I realise someone wants my attention. But even I have noticed a proliferation of creepy eyes […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Go Big or Go Home

26 March, 2014

At this time of year we’re busy with preparations for the London Book Fair: finalising appointments, consulting the seminar schedule for interesting topics and, my favourite, planning on how we can make our stand look stunning. A big part of that are the posters that will adorn the stand, giving those wandering the aisles of […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Great things come in pairs

19 March, 2014

Great things really do come in pairs, like the new Laurie R. King covers for A Monstrous Regiment of Women and A Letter of Mary. With one in print and the other now on the way, these beauties would look great on any bookshelf. I’m not normally one for pink covers but I think A […]

Spring is in the Air

5 March, 2014

We’re nearly three months into 2014 and I’ve noticed something great: the days are getting lighter. The air is still a bit chilly but my journey to and from work is no longer in the dark. So from this point onward it’s going to get warmer and brighter. There’s something wonderfully optimistic about spring; flowers […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Top That!

26 February, 2014

Yesterday finished covers for our second book with Fiona McIntosh, The French Promise, arrived from the printers. Doesn’t it look gorgeous? The French Promise follows on from the story of The Lavender Keeper, returning to the characters of Luc and Lisette as they try to put their demons to rest in the years following the […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Under the Covers

12 February, 2014

In April we have a title coming out that is sure to put a little ‘spring’ in your step: Writing the Garden: A Literary Conversation Across Two Centuries. The author is Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the first person to hold the title of Central Park Administrator in New York who now writes history of landscape design […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Changing Covers

5 February, 2014

For a while now I’ve had my eye on The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. I saw the eye-catching hardback in Waterstones and immediately picked it up. Something about the title, together with the woman on the front, made me think of the 1920s Jazz age. And I wasn’t far off. Set in New York […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Great Minds…

29 January, 2014

Last week you might have seen that the entire office was cooing over the advance covers for Rachel Caine’s brand new, post-Morganville novel, Prince of Shadows. And who can blame us, not only does our cover girl look rather lovely in her Elizabethan outfit, but the shadow of a boy cast behind her hints nicely at […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Now, you look familiar…

22 January, 2014

Earlier this month there was a piece in the Evening Standard about Dido Belle, the black Londoner who helped end black slavery in Britain (in light of the upcoming film Belle which will hit cinemas in the UK this spring). A spotlight on a remarkable woman, and a very interesting article which begins so: ‘Among the […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Return of the 3D Cover

15 January, 2014

You’ve heard of 3D printers, right? Over the past year these clever machines have been cropping up in the news as they’ve churned out the mundane (dental work) to the sinister (a functioning gun). But finally someone has brought 3D print back to it’s roots of books. Check out this limited edition slipcase for Chang-Rae […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Revealing The French Promise

8 January, 2014

If you loved The Lavender Keeper, by Fiona McIntosh then you’ll be one of those readers waiting impatiently for the sequel. The French Promise will be out in March, but to whet your appetite, here’s a sneak peak of the cover as Christina’s just finished designing it. Et voilà… For those who have yet to […]

Wednesday Cover story: Iconic covers…and soup

27 November, 2013

I spotted the other day that Campbell’s, purveyors of fine soups, had decided to celebrate the 50 years since Andy Warhol incorporated the brand into his artwork with a set of limited edition tomato soup cans. Pretty nifty eh? It made me think about those images in the world of books that are iconic, absolute […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Hungarian Fountain…

20 November, 2013

You can usually tell if a book if a UK or foreign edition. There are certain styles or designs that you simply wouldn’t see on a UK cover. As diverse as book covers may be, there is something that tells you (aside from the English text) it’s a UK or at least an Anglo-version. Author […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Discovering Rushdie

13 November, 2013

Salman Rushdie: great author, figure of controversy, one whom I have been guided to read since early days of study. We finally meet. …And I’m ‘shamed’ (sorry!) to say that it’s down only in part to former post colonial studies and three rounds of Booker awards, and rather more because LOOK AT THESE COVERS! These […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Why mess with a classic…

6 November, 2013

In our weekly office meeting today, we discussed the fact that we will soon be needing a reprint of the wonderful book War in Val D’Orcia, by Iris Origo – a captivating diary in which Iris recounts a year of wartime occupation living on her Tuscan estate, La Foce. She never left her estate, hiding […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Illustrated Covers

30 October, 2013

I never thought of myself as a lover of illustrated covers, but now I definitely am. I was trying to find a special birthday present for a friend and found the Folio Society’s website, whose philosophy is that ‘Great books should be outstanding not only in literary content but also in their physical form.’ And […]

Wednesday Cover Story: First peek at the Chronicles of Harry Lytle

23 October, 2013

Arson, murder, treason and the stench and decay of Restoration London during the Great Plague… Such is the setting for Paul Lawrence‘s novels in The Chronicles of Harry Lytle. We’ll be releasing the new book in the series, Hearts of Darkness in hardback in January, together with the previous two books, The Sweet Smell of […]

Wednesday Cover Story: So, what’s the deal with orange covers?

9 October, 2013

There are some months where we don’t see any of our authors and others where we have the pleasure of enjoying the company of many. In the past two weeks we’ve lunched with Kate Forsyth, partied with Caro Fraser, mingled with John Wilcox and D E Meredith, and today we had a visit from Edward […]