We have three completely different new proofs available for independent booksellers this month, plus samplers of Ian Sansom’s brilliant Paper: an Elegy - a book dedicated to the study and understanding of the world’s most ubiquitous man-made product.
Back Story by David Mitchell
In 2007, David Mitchell was advised to start walking regularly to cure his mystery back problems. On one such walk, across London on a warm day in 2012, he reflects on everything from his comedy career and his love life to Sherlock Holmes, space travel and the etiquette of a gents’ toilet.
David Mitchell was born in 1974, and grew up in Oxford. He was miserable at a Dickensian primary school but happy at Cambridge, where he was president of Footlights and met his comedy partner Robert Webb. Together they have starred in the BAFTA-winning series That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show.
Webbless, Mitchell has hosted BBC2’s The Bubble, Channel 4’s 10 O’Clock Live and Radio 4’s The Unbelievable Truth, and appeared on pretty much every British TV or radio panel show except Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Quote Unquote. He has acted in Jam and Jerusalem, Look Around You and Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, and writes a weekly column for the Observer. His flat has no doorbell, he once watched a comedy star wet herself on stage, he got stage fright on QI and he’s had a lot of trouble with women, but not always as much trouble as he’d have liked.
Back Story tells much the same story, but in a little more detail. David recently attended our independent booksellers lunch in Edinburgh, speaking about the book and signing proof copies for the booksellers in attendance. David will be promoting on publication, including bookshop signing events. Back Story is published in October.
Sutton by J. R. Moehringer
In Sutton, one of the most notorious criminals in American history is brought blazing back to life by master storyteller J. R. Moehringer. Willie Sutton was born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn in the first year of the twentieth century and came of age at a time when banks were out of control. Over three decades, from Prohibition through the Great Depression, from the age of Al Capone until the reign of Murder Inc., police called Sutton one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted list. But the public loved him. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks.
Based on extensive research, Sutton is the moving story of an enigmatic man, an arch criminal driven by love, forever seeking the beautiful woman who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart and disappeared. Sutton is published in January 2013.
How We Met by Katy Regan
How We Met is a contemporary story of love, friendship and grief, told with Katy’s inimitable laugh-out-loud humour, poignancy and heart. Liv Jenkins had been meticulously planning her ultimate to-do list – from the outrageous to sensible – of everything she longed to do before her dreaded thirtieth birthday, but when tragedy struck she never got the chance. Two years later, Liv’s five closest friends have come together on the anniversary of her death and have made a pact: they will complete Liv’s to-do list in tribute to her memory.
Over the next year, before what would’ve been Liv’s thirtieth birthday, her friends set out to complete the tasks. But along the way deeply buried secrets, silent guilt, unrequited love and years of lies, rise to the surface rocking their friendships. When they reach the end of Liv’s list the final task shakes the group to their core and they realise that they must face their futures and the consequences of their pasts, and with Liv’s help, live the lives they have always dreamed of. How We Met is published in February 2013.
If you’re an independent bookseller and you’d like a copy of one of these proofs, email us at independentthinking@harpercollins.co.uk