Coming soon - highlights 2011

The remarkable Alexander McCall Smith has no less than SIX books out this coming year…

• March 2011 – The Saturday Big Tent Wedding – Volume 11 in The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series
  AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW. EVENTS DIARY NOW CLOSED. VENUES TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON.
  (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency; Tears of the Giraffe; Morality for Beautiful Girls; The Kalahari Typing School for Men; The Full Cupboard of Life; In the Company of Cheerful Ladies; Blue Shoes and Happiness; The Good Husband of Zebra Drive; Miracle at Speedy Motors paperbacks and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency special edition slipcased hardback – all available now)
• May 2011 – Volume 3 in the Corduroy Mansions series
  (Corduroy Mansions paperback and The Dog Who Came in From the Cold hardback available now)
• July 2011 – Volume 7 in the 44 Scotland Street series
  (44 Scotland Street; Espresso Tales; Love Over Scotland; The World According to Bertie; The Unbearable Lightness of Scones paperbacks; and The Importance of Being Seven hardback all available now)
• August 2011 – Precious and the Monkeys – Precious Ramotswe’s very first case – a book for children and the young at heart.
  AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW. EVENTS DIARY NOW CLOSED. VENUES TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON.
• September 2011 – Volume 6 in the Isabel Dalhousie series
  (The Sunday Philosophy Club; Friends, Lovers, Chocolates; the Right Attitude to Rain; The Careful Use of Compliments; The Comfort of Saturdays pbk – all available now)
• November 2011 – Volume 4 in the Von Igelfeld series
  AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW. EVENTS DIARY OPEN.
  (Two and a Half Pillars of Wisdom –encompassing Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and The Villa of Reduced Circumstances – available now)

This worldwide best-selling author is available for interview and for short story/travel article/feature article commission. He has limited availability for events.

Alistair Moffat’s The Scots – a Genetic Journey

Launching in a blaze of coverage in February 2011 with a six part BBC Radio series and coinciding with the Scottish Census 2011. ALISTAIR IS AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW. EVENTS DIARY NOW OPEN.

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion. In Scotland: A DNA History, Alistair Moffat and Jim Wilson explore the history that is printed on our genes, and in a remarkable new approach, uncovers the detail of where we are from, who we are and in so doing colour vividly a DNA map of Scotland.

The former Edinburgh Festival Fringe director and author of a host of best-selling books ranging from Tuscany: A History (paperback out July 2011) to The Reivers, Alistair Moffat is available for interview, events and for feature article commission.

Stuart Clark – The Sky’s Dark Labrynth – April 2011

2011, the year in which the BBC chose a nightly astronomy programme to lead their schedules from the very top of the year, Polygon are delighted to publish the first two books in a new trilogy of historical novels set in the great ages of discovery in the skies.

The author is Stuart Clark, a former editor of the UK’s bestselling popular astronomy magazine Astronomy Now and a visiting fellow of the University of Hertfordshire. His most recent book, The Sun Kings (Princeton University Press, 2007), established him as a popular science writer par excellence. Last year Stuart further honed his storytelling skills by working for the BBC to develop ten stories for a forthcoming science-based drama series, Stormshield, and writing the outline for the astronomy episode of a forthcoming BBC2 series on the history of science. Most recently, he has dramatized and read a portion of The Sun Kings for Radio 3.

At the dawn of the seventeenth century it was widely believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yet some men knew that this was not so, and began to suspect that one of the greatest heresies of them all was in fact the truth. As Europe convulsed in conflict between Catholic and Protestant, these men were prepared to die for that truth.
Recreating the dramatic struggles between two Titans of science – Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galeilei – The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth is the first of a thrilling trilogy which explores a vital period in the history of man’s quest to understand the universe.

An hour in the company of Stuart Clark is not one to be forgotten quickly. An expert in the field of astronomy and a natural storyteller, he has now created three works of historical fiction set in and around the key ages of exploration of the skies – the first, published this Spring, centres on the worlds of Kepler and Galileo. His is a voice you’ll recognise instantly as a contributor and presenter from many television and radio programmes. AVAILABLE for interview, features, commission and events.

Max Benitz – Six Months Without Sundays – June 2011

At the height of the Afghanistan conflict in 2010, 23-year-old Max Benitz completed six months shadowing soldiers on the frontline and investigating the work they undertake on our behalf. He was unique as a reporter – he was the same age as the men he worked with, witnessed and occasionally cried over. He brings back the story of his peers.

Max Benitz was a teen actor, appearing most notably in the box-office success, Master and Commander. Following his studies for a degree at Edinburgh University, Max has now taken a step back from the screen and uses his name to draw attention to the work and honest bravery of Britain’s serving military personnel in Afghanistan. From April to September 2010, Max was embedded with the Scots Guards, posted on the frontline and given unprecedented access to the troops. Their often harrowing experiences are captured here in interview, diary and photographs. HE IS AVAILABLE for interview, events and features.

Sam Meekings – The Book of Crows

From the author of Under Fishbone Clouds. AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEW AND EVENTS
A young girl is kidnapped and taken through the desert to an isolated mountain brothel. Two thousand years later, after a suspicious landslide near Lanzhou, a low-level bureaucrat searches for a missing colleague. A thirteenth- century Franciscan monk, traversing the Silk Road, begins his extraordinary deathbed confession, while five hundred years earlier, a grieving Chinese poet is summoned to the Emperor’s palace. In a series of delicately interlaced stories, Sam Meekings’ richly poetic and gripping second novel follows the journeys of characters whose lives, separated by millennia, are all in some way touched by the mysterious Book of Crows.
Praise for Under Fishbone Clouds:
‘A powerful and mesmerizing novel, both mythic and intimate . . . a great accomplishment of imagination, insight and lyricism’
– Amy Tan ‘Lavishly imagined and skilfully narrated’ – The Independent

Sam was born in Margate and grew up in Walberton, near Chichester. He currently splits his time between the UK and Qatar. He took an undergraduate degree in Modern History and English Literature at Mansfield College, Oxford University, and, later, a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Edinburgh University. Since 2005 he has lived and travelled throughout China and now Qatar, working as a teacher
and editor. He is available for interview, travel articles and events.

Shirley McKay – Time and Tide

Hew Cullen found an immediate audience when he first appeared in Hue & Cry in 2009. Shirley McKay has shaped him, as she has her own career, quickly rising to become a performer, a recognised voice, and a much-loved writer of historical fiction. This is the third Hew Cullan mystery. Previous books in the series are Hue & Cry and Fate & Fortune.
‘A gripping mystery that holds the reader to the very last page, and a marvellous portrait of St Andrews in the 16th century’ – John Burnside

Shirley lives with her family in Fife. At the age of fifteen she won the Young observer playwriting competition, her play being performed
at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. She went on to study English and Linguistics at the University of St Andrews before attending Durham University for postgraduate study in Romantic and seventeenth-century prose. She was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger. She is available for interview, feature commissions and events.

Jake Wallis Simons – The English German Girl

The English German Girl takes place during one of the most fascinating and resonant times of the last century. We meet the Klein family in 1930s Berlin as they encounter the rise of the Third Reich. on Kristallnacht German friends try to help the family, and fifteen-year-old daughter Rosa has a narrow escape from the Nazis and their sympathisers. otto and Inga must now decide which of their two children to send to England on the Kindertransport.

Jake Wallis Simons is a novelist, journalist and graphic artist. His acclaimed first novel, The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew, was named by the Independent on Sunday as a Book of the Year. His second novel, The English German Girl — about the Kindertransport — will be published by Polygon this month, April 2011.

Jake’s comics have been commissioned by the Times, for whom he writes regular features on arts and culture, ideas and psychology, food, child development, Israel and religion. He has also written features for the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, the Telegraph, La Repubblica and other publications, and his work has been featured in The Week magazine. He is a contributor to BBC Radio 4′s From Our Own Correspondent.

Born in London in 1978, Jake was awarded a first class degree in English from St Peter’s College, Oxford, before undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Jake is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, and Practitioner-in-Residence at Bournemouth University. He lives with his family in Winchester.

And that is just a taste – Tam Dalyell, Robin Harper, Kevin MacNeil and many others still to come. More details soon.