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The event is on 31st March and doors open at 7.45pm for 8pm talk. For more information, go to the official site.
Tickets are £7 with £7 off the book, or, if you live locally and can buy your tickets in the bookshop in person before the day of the event, there may be a reduction.
More like this…
About Corrag and Susan:
By Susan Fletcher:
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This is the amazingly atmospheric new novel from Susan Fletcher, author of the bestselling Eve Green and Oystercatchers.]]>
This is the amazingly atmospheric new novel from Susan Fletcher, author of the bestselling Eve Green and Oystercatchers.
The Massacre of Glencoe happened at 5am on 13th February 1692 when thirty-eight members of the Macdonald clan were killed by soldiers who had enjoyed the clan’s hospitality for the previous ten days. Many more died from exposure in the mountains.
Fifty miles to the south Corrag is condemned for her involvement in the Massacre. She is imprisoned, accused of witchcraft and murder, and awaits her death. The era of witch-hunts is coming to an end – but Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite, hears of the Massacre and, keen to publicise it, comes to the tollbooth to question her on the events of that night, and the weeks preceding it. Leslie seeks any information that will condemn the Protestant King William, rumoured to be involved in the massacre, and reinstate the Catholic James.
Corrag agrees to talk to him so that the truth may be known about her involvement, and so that she may be less alone, in her final days. As she tells her story, Leslie questions his own beliefs and purpose – and a friendship develops between them that alters both their lives.
In Corrag, Susan Fletcher tells us the story of an epic historic event, of the difference a single heart can make – and how deep and lasting relationships that can come from the most unlikely places.
We have four copies of special Corrag proofs to give away. Click here to email I Heart Free Books and you’ll be entered into a special prize draw*
Check back here early next week for an audio interview with Susan.
*Winners selected at random. Competition closes 8pm (GMT) on Friday.
More like this…
By Susan Fletcher:
More free books from other authors:
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The creator Horace Bent asks:
In celebration of the end of a wonderful decade in books, what better way to toast some of the bestsellers than to delete both their titles and their authors from existence?
The competition is open till the 31st January and involves decipering the clues in the image above. Click here to find out how to enter and read the original Bookseller post. Scott reckons he’s got the answers already. He would.
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- The Twilight saga because my niece has told me to read it (and so did India Knight in last week's Sunday Times and I always do what India recommends)
]]>Paula Byrne
Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool. Her second book, Perdita, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Her most recent book, Mad World, was published last year to critical acclaim.
On my Christmas list are the following books:
- The new biography of the Queen Mother by William Shawcross (especially after hearing all the hullaballoo on Woman’s Hour)
- Selina Hasting’s The Secret Life of Somerset Maugham
- Behind Closed Doors: at Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery
- The Twilight saga because my niece has told me to read it (and so did India Knight in last week’s Sunday Times and I always do what India recommends)
- James Lee Milne by Michael Bloch
Christopher Hirst
Christopher Hirst wrote the witty ‘Weasel’ column in the Independent for over a decade and was nominated for the Glenfiddich Best Food Writer Award in 2007. His book, Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen, is published by Fourth Estate in March.
To give:
- Leviathan by Philip Hoare
- Edible Seashore by John Wright
- The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
To be given:
- Larousse Gastronomique
- A Gambling Man: Charles II and the People of the Restoration by Jenny Uglow
Tash Aw
Tash Aw’s debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent book, Map of the Invisible World, is published in paperback next year.
To get or to give…
Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
The Education of a Gardener by Russell Page
The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross
Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop
Don Quixote (translated by John Rutherford).
We hope you’re enjoying our Christmas Wishlist feature. Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
]]>With the runaway success of Lonely Planet’s digitized guides firmly in their sights - the LP’s language guides, despite offering only 600 words and not a great deal of interactivity, have repeatedly reached the top 20 paid travel apps ranking – Time Out have begun launching their range of city travel guides as apps.
The first app – initially only covering New York – has married mapping from Google with Time Out’s own extensive content, offering a constantly-updated guide to the city. The app manages to be both highly simplistic and very effective: using the iPhone’s GPS in combination with the myriad reviews and listings Time Out have to offer on a city’s cultural landscape.
Interestingly, the Time Outers have offered up their app for free – attempting to draw out a strong dividing line between themselves and Lonely Planet. For more discerning customers – read those with a thicker wallet – the app offers a ‘Critics Choice’ filter, whilst those looking to get more for their dollar can make use of the ‘Free and Cheap’ criterion. Other added features are the ability to send recommendations to friends and the fact that the app works even when you’re not connected.
Whilst the graphics aren’t great and Time Out are hardly going to blow the world away with their functionality, they have crossed one big hurdle: combining mapping data with creative content and have thus outdone LP on this front – time will tell who’ll be more successful.
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With The Bookseller talking about an ‘explosion in the number of apps’ available for the iPhone, and Apple’s device starting to be taken seriously as a challenger to Amazon’s Kindle, a small German start-up has set the running with the cross-publisher project ‘Zehnseiten.’
Brought to the world from the depths of Bavaria, Zehnseiten (ten pages), have combined the iPhone platform with that most traditional mainstay of publishing publicity – the public reading, presenting authors reading the first ten pages of their works, filmed in black and white and with only a glass of water for company.
The app’s brilliantly user-friendly layout and simple biographies mean that they largely succeed in their aim of giving both author and book centrality, ‘in a measured fashion.’ The aim, presumably, it to whet the reading public’s appetite for these new works – spurring them on to buy the whole physical product in response. The paradoxical result is that the audio-visual mastery of the iPhone brings the words on the page back to centre stage.
Impressively, the app’s developers have managed to secure the involvement of a cross-section of publishers, from big names such as Suhrkamp – Herman Hesse’s publisher and the publishing house that brought T.S.Eliot to German speakers, to the old East German publisher Aufbau which in its heyday published greats such as Christa Wolf – to smaller niche publishers, such as the Swiss imprint Sanssoucci. It’s range of authors is also extensive, covering the evocative migrant literature of Rafik Schami to the satirical non-fiction of Christoph Süβ.
Though the future looks bright for Zehnseiten, the app does have its draw backs – constructed entirely with flash, you can’t link to specific extracts; access too, can be painfully slow. And, conspicuously lacking an English-language section, it’s difficult to see the app’s plucky developers making waves outsides of German speaking Europe. But with their unusual combination of the multimedia functions of the iPhone app with the monochrome of the traditional public reading, Zehnseiten have kicked the app race off with something quite special.
]]>It has also just been announced that Chimamanda is on the shortlist for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; winner to be announced Monday 30th November. Congrats Chimamanda!
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Annie. Otherwise known as ‘Gran.’ Phyllida’s mother-in-law. She is forced to move in after her daughter, whom she had lived with previously, absconds to Cornwall with 'a beautiful young man.' Has been getting increasingly ‘Mutt and Jeff’ of late.
Phyllida. Annie’s daughter-in-law. The author of the notes to Annie that explain what’s going on, and the author (and illustrator) of the book.
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Annie. Otherwise known as ‘Gran.’ Phyllida’s mother-in-law. She is forced to move in after her daughter, whom she had lived with previously, absconds to Cornwall with ‘a beautiful young man.’ Has been getting increasingly ‘Mutt and Jeff’ of late.
Phyllida. Annie’s daughter-in-law. The author of the notes to Annie that explain what’s going on, and the author (and illustrator) of the book.
Mother. Phyllida’s mother. Has changed to enamel pots because she thinks aluminium pots create poisonous chemicals, and ‘that’s what’s the matter with uncle Arthur.’
Uncle Arthur. Doesn’t like All Bran. Keeps a hammer in his bedroom to smash his pills into little bits.
Dad. Phyllida’s husband and Annie’s son. Likes to go golfing. Also known as Eric Thompson, writer and narrator of the Magic Roundabout.
Granny. Phyllida’s maternal grandmother. A ‘frightful bigot.’ She used to wear black garters on her green bloomers – ‘an unfortunate green, that seemed to glow in the dark.’
Mr Parnes. Responsible for the hearing aid that Annie has to have fitted, much to her discomfort. Ex-RAF.
Mrs Keith. An elderly friend of the family. Mrs Keith was like something ‘out of Dickens.’ When a bizarre foreign bird arrives in her husband’s warehouse, she knits it a woolen body stocking.
Boot. The cat. Is sick quite a lot. Especially when over indulging on spiders.
Emma and Sophie. Phyllida’s two children.
To find out more about Phyllida’s fasinating family life, why not read this article on the Guardian website.
]]>The tribal homelands of the Nez Perce are set in stunning, rugged Western-alpine scenery, where the foaming Snake and Salmon Rivers collide. The tribe had held these lands for up to 13,000 years when the first European settlers arrived, promising the Nez Perce Christian salvation and profitable trade. Instead, when gold was discovered in the local hills, a swarm of squatters poured onto the land, fencing off stolen territory and clashing violently with the Nez Perce. The settlers, convinced that their conquest of the West was divinely-ordained destiny, pressured the tribe to sell their most treasured jewel, the pristine Wallowa valley, but the young Chief Joseph had made a death-bed promise to his father never to relinquish the land in which his ancestors lay buried — “My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and mother.”
Finally, in the summer of 1877, after one humiliation too many, a band of young Nez Perce warriors snapped and went on the rampage, killing fifteen settlers. The United States Army rushed to fatally punish the tribe, who fled into the mountains — the great Nez Perce exodus had begun.
What happened next defies belief. Over the next four months over 700 men, women and children travelled around 1,700 miles over the most inhospitable terrain in the West, pursued by four armies. It’s an astonishing tale of human resilience and hope, and it was a tremendous privilege to be able to travel in the footsteps of the tribe.
But as I made the journey, the evidence mounted of a remarkable historical turnaround. For the descendants of those first settlers, the white ranchers and farmer and loggers living in the north-West today, have learned the lesson that young Joseph’s father was so desperate to impart, of loving and protecting your homeland — but they have learnt too late. The ravaged forests, dammed rivers, open coal mines and polluted waters that now define the old Nez Perce homelands made it all too clear — that the settlers sold their fathers’ bones, and now they are paying the price. And that’s what makes the tale of the Nez Perce so compelling to me, that not only does it teach us a lesson about the strength of the human spirit, but also about how man should occupy the earth.
Brian Schofield is currently the assistant travel editor, culture and news review writer at the Sunday Times. His first book, Selling Your Father’s Bones, is part history and part travelogue through the wilderness of the stunning landscape of the continental United States. It was published in paperback by HarperPress this July.
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