New York Times"An occasion of wit and an act of subversion, these are the bad dreams of the modern world, given color and shape and submitted to a grid that can be grasped instantaneously."
Mail on Sunday"Isabel Ashdown's storytelling skills are formidable; her human insights highly perceptive."
It's great to hear that book groups are enjoying our novels, and to celebrate this and encourage more groups to discover our authors we're offering a special 3 for 2 deal: buy two copies of any Myriad novel and get the third free (incl. p&p). Contact Vicky Blunden for details.
Don't forget that as part of our mission to encourage and support creative writers, we have joined forces with West Dean College to launch a new annual prize for a narrative work in progress. The deadline for entries is 28 February and the shortlist will be announced in May as part of at a Brighton Festival event. Judges include novelist and playwright Sue Eckstein, editor of Waterstone's Books Quarterly Ed Wood and Rogers, Coleridge & White literary agent Hannah Westland. Click here for full details and rules of entry.
Isabel Ashdown's novel will feature alongside nine other books from independent publishers in Legend Press' innovative Exclusively Independent promotion throughout London's independent bookshops and libraries this month. Now in its third printing, Glasshopper was listed in The Observer as one of the best débuts of 2009 and chosen by Juliet Nicolson in the London Evening Standard as one of her favourite books of the year.
Ed Hillyer's forthcoming novel, The Clay Dreaming (published in March) has reached shortlist; the final twelve début novels will be announced towards the end of February. In Hillyer's emotive and mysterious novel, a remarkable cricket team arrives In Victorian England – they are Australian Aborigines, and among them is the singular and deeply spiritual King Cole. Read more in Waterstone's Books Quarterly's interview with the author.
We've just received advance copies of Robert Dickinson's début novel, The Noise of Strangers. Published on 3 March, it features a group of friends trying to behave as though the world around them isn't collapsing into a nightmare of corporate power and politics.
Sue Eckstein has completed her dramatisation of The Cloths of Heaven for Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. Recording is due to start next month and the actors will be announced shortly. The five-part serialization of the novel will be broadcast each day from 15 to 19 March.
Two Myriad titles have been chosen for this month's shortlist in The People's Book Prize. Vote in the fiction category for I have waited, and you have come by Martine McDonagh. In the non-fiction category, vote here for Funny Weather by Kate Evans.
