Wednesday Cover Story, Author at Allison & Busby

Wednesday Cover Story: Revisiting La Foce

24 August, 2011

BBC4 is reshowing Francesco da Mosto’s Italy Top to Toe (Tuesdays 8pm). It is a wonderful series and last night saw Francesco in Tuscany, meeting Iris Origo’s daughter Benedetta at the family’s magnificent estate La Foce, immortalised by Iris’s wartime memoir War in Val d’Orcia – a modern classic and one of A&B’s perennial bestsellers. […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Sneak peak of the next crime sensation…

17 August, 2011

If you thought Scandinavia might not be able to produce any more brilliant crime writers, well think again. There’s a new rising star on the horizon by the name of Kjell Eriksson. His first book in the acclaimed Ann Lindell series, The Princess of Burundi, won the Swedish Crime Academy Award for Best Crime Novel […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The sadness and madness of riots

10 August, 2011

It is not surprising that today I have chosen to feature the cover to A Bespoke Murder, the first book in Edward Marston‘s upcoming new crime series set in the First World War. The book opens just after the sinking of the Lusitania which sparked a wave of anti-German riots and arson attacks in London […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Sneak peak of The Dragon Diaries series…

3 August, 2011

Our Art editor, Christina, has finalised the covers to the first two books in The Dragon Diaries series by Deborah Cooke: Flying Blind (out October 2011) and Winging It, and without a doubt they can be filed under my very official list of “Favourite A&B Covers”. Here they are: I seem to be regressing to […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Sell-Out Book Cover Poster

27 July, 2011

We’ve showcased The LIterary Gift Company on this blog before – and rightly so, as it presents such a lovely array of inspiring gifts for book lovers. One of the things they offer are posters of book jackets, and amongst them the very stylish poster (so stylish that it was actually spotlighted in Stylist magazine’s […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Don’t you just Love (Inc.) It?

13 July, 2011

Following on from the huge success of the Morganville Vampire series, we have been searching for other worthy addition to our YA list. So I’m delighted to announce that we have recently signed up the brilliant writing pair of Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout! We will be publishing the hugely entertaining LOVE INC. in September […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Find the Book Title Competition

6 July, 2011

It’s the middle of the working week, I didn’t win the Euromillions yesterday and the clouds over London are threatening to ruin the bout of summery weather we’ve been having, and so I feel it’s time to cheer things up with some fun and games and a chance to have you win some free books! […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Working the Trend

29 June, 2011

It a very very common current trend to play with parched-paper/sepia-like backgrounds and the dark sillhouette of a figure, in order to create an evocative book cover. Let’s take Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder, and the Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón to name but a few. But there’s one cover following […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Would you agree with Dazed and Confused?

22 June, 2011

We have recently republished the great classic Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes and it was picked up by Dazed and Confused magazine who featured our rerelease in their July issue (currently on sale). We get top marks from the mag – ‘big-ups and all kudos to A&B’ – for bringing this London ‘yoof novel‘ back […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series

15 June, 2011

Time for a bit of a trumpet fanfare as we are now the proud publishers of Jacqueline Winspear and her New York Times bestselling Maisie Dobbs series! We will be publishing The Mapping of Love and Death (the 7th book in the series) in hardback this November, followed by A Lesson in Secrets in March […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Ah, those 70’s covers…

8 June, 2011

I spent an enteraining half-hour at my parents house recently, browsing their library for something to read. I ended up homeing in on a shelf of old 70s paperbacks and amusing myself for a while looking at their covers. The cover that took the biscuit was that of The Navigator, by Morris West (pictured below) […]

Wednesday Cover Story: One Day it’ll be over…

1 June, 2011

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting just a tad weary of seeing One Day, by David Nicholls everywhere? Granted, I’m sure that if we published the book, I’d have no issue with this at all and would find it simply marvellous to spot it in yet another commuter’s hands. But seeing as […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Using the old to inspire the new…

25 May, 2011

In March 2001 Allison & Busby republished the classic novel Absolute Beginners, by Colin MacInnes – first published in 1959 and now required reading in many undergraduate literature courses. The cover to that edition can be seen below – and the strong red, white and blue colouring and bullseye shape was cleverly reused on the […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Why change cover design mid-series?

18 May, 2011

We recently received the comment below from one of our readers, in light of the new cover design for Gale Force, Book 6 in the Weather Warden series, by Rachel Caine and we thought our Wednesday Cover Story would be a good place to address this issue. From Sammy (reader and fan of the Weather […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Sneak peek of last Lake District Mystery reprint

11 May, 2011

Anyone who is a fan of Martin Edward’s Lake District mysteries will know they’ve recently been given a revamp with striking new covers (very neon colouring – I love it!). The new look for The Serpent Pool prompted the redesign of the previous titles in the series beginning with The Coffin Trail and the The […]

Wednesday Cover Story: How we came to talk about The Postmistress covers

4 May, 2011

Working in book publishing and in open plan office, it is natural that at some point in the week (possibly day) we will talk about a cover to a book – one of ours or one from another publisher. Exactly how we might end up talking about a particular cover may vary… It could be […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Designing with apps

27 April, 2011

A while ago I came across the article about how the cover to The New Yorker had been designed using Brushes, a new app on the iPhone. This week, I see that the cover to the Annual issue of Creative Review – which always involves a different treatment of the letter ‘A’ – has also […]

Wednesday Cover Story: When Crafts and Books Collide

20 April, 2011

Art Editor, Christina, has been beavering away at finishing off book jacket designs for the rest of the year’s titles. There are some beautiful new looks coming up – sneak peak of Book 11 in the Morganville Vampire series, Last Breath (out November 2011) which Christina just finished today, below! – so keep an eye […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Modernising the classics with the new Penguin Essentials

13 April, 2011

On Monday, Georgina (our Editorial Administrator) flagged up the fact she was loving the covers to the new reprints of the Penguin Essentials. Then yesterday at the London Book Fair, Joe Pickering, publicist at Penguin, mentioned them in passing (nicely done, Joe) in the seminar Tweet Success about social media. (Yes, this one of the […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The 19th Century Poster Look

6 April, 2011

I’ve just come across the book Bloody Winter, by Andrew Pepper, due out next week. It’s the latest Pyke Mystery and I’m loving the series look which hints at a 19th century poster rather than a book cover – where the text takes centre stage rather than an image. And I particularly like the use […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Revival of Inspector Ghote

30 March, 2011

This week we mourn the loss of revered crime writer HRF (Harry) Keating (read more in News…), best known for his inimitable Inspector Ghote series, set in India and comprising an impressive list of 24 titles. Although the series ended in 2000 (after 22 books), readers saw the return of Ghote in 2008 when we […]