Music / Non-fiction
F**K the Radio, We’ve Got Apple Juice:
Essays on a Rock ‘n’ Roll Band by Miranda Ward
Published 5 March 2013
Paperback: £9.99, ebook: £6.99
A few years ago, Oxford-based band Little Fish were living the rock ‘n’ roll dream; signed to a major label, they recorded an album in LA, and supported Courtney Love and Blondie on tour. But it wasn’t making them happy. So they left their label, set up a recording studio, and started doing the things that did make them happy, instead of the things they thought they should do to get played on Radio 1. This book is about making it work, making your own way, and making stuff. It asks important questions: Why do we make music? What do people want from bands? How do you make a living? What is a living? And what happens when you rewrite the myths you live by?
Miranda Wardis a writer and blogger who grew up on a ranch in California, came to visit Oxford, and stayed. Although she is not a musician, she quit her job to follow the band for the past three years as an observer.
Humour / History
Published 2 April 2013
Hardback: £12.99, ebook: £8.99
Described by its author Adrian Teal as “a Georgian Heat magazine”, The Gin Lane Gazetteis a lavishly illustrated compendium of scurrilous 'best bits' from a fictional newspaper of the latter 1700s. The antics of 21st century footballers and soap stars are as nothing when set alongside the hell-raising antics of the 18th century celebs. Filled with true stories of scandal and intrigue on every page, it reveals some of the most sensational headlines from a period which saw the flowering if the great age of newspapers and caricature.
Adrian Tealis a cartoonist and caricaturist for QI, and national press titles such as The Sunday Telegraph, The Sun, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, The Daily Mail, History Today, TimeOut and the Times Educational Supplement.
Fiction
A Box of Birds by Charles Fernyhough
Published 7 May 2013
Paperback: £9.99, ebook: £7.99
If you believe that you are just a bundle of nerve cells and chemical reactions, does that change how it feels to fall in love? After fourteen years, Charles Fernyhough’s eagerly anticipated return to the novel, A Box of Birds, is an ambitious literary thriller that explores the philosophical, ethical and moral questions raised by modern neuroscience.Set in a near-future world of experimental brain research, it tells the story of a young neuroscientist’s relationship with two of her students: the brilliant but unstable Gareth who is obsessed with the biochemical basis of memory, and James, a secret animal rights activist.
Charles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist. His most recent book, Pieces of Light was widely reviewed and highly acclaimed. His debut novel, The Auctioneer was widely praised. He writes for the Guardian, Financial Times and Sunday Telegraph.
Biography / Non-fiction
The Man in a Rubber Mask, by Robert Llewellyn
Paperback: £8.99, ebook: £6.99
When Robert Llewellyn first had his head encased in the one-piece latex foam-rubber balaclava that is the head of Kryten in Red Dwarf, it gave him a distinctly funny turn. Since then, he has sweated, frozen, been set on fire, exploded, spent thousands of hours in the make-up chair and thousands more being taunted by Craig Charles for being a middle-class b*****d. So it is a testament to the joyful camaraderie of the motley crew of space bums that 23 years later, Robert is still willing to don the rubber torture helmet for the recent triumphant series. Originally published in 1993, now completely updated with 43.7% extra smeg. The Man in the Rubber Mask reveals the full inside story of the making of Red Dwarf. Even the really embarrassing bits.
Robert Llewellyn is an actor, novelist, screenwriter, comedian and TV presenter. He is the author of five novels including News from Gardenia, published by Unbound. He writes under a rack of solar panels in Gloucestershire.
Published in autumn 2013
Hardback: £30.00
Letters of Note is the eagerly anticipated book from the website LettersOfNote.com., which receives over 1.5 million hits per week. Shaun Usher is a writer who has curated a collection of personal letters, telegrams and memos, ranging from a 9th century form letter from China used to apologise for having drunk too much at a dinner party, to a recent letter from Elton John offering advice to his 16 year-old self. Bound in beautiful white cloth on exquisite German paper, the book contains over 100 letters reproduced in facsimile, including many of the most popular letters from the website alongside never-seen-before correspondence.
Biography/Non-fiction
Saving Bletchley Park by Dr Sue Black
Published in autumn 2013
Bletchley Park was the wartime home of more than 10,000 mathematicians, cryptographers, linguists and others, who labored tirelessly to crack the Nazis’ ‘unbreakable’ codes. In Saving Bletchley Park, Dr Sue Black explains the incredible and ultimately tragic story of Alan Turing – the father of modern computing, the mysterious work that took place at Bletchley Park, and the significance this had to the outcome of World War II, and how the birthplace of the modern computer was saved by social media.
DrSue Black is a Senior Research Associate in the Computer Science department at UCL. Her research interests are software engineering and social media.
Economics/Non-fiction
Life After The State by Dominic Frisby
Published in autumn 2013
In 2005-6, Dominic Frisby became disillusioned with the advice his financial advisers were giving him, so he sacked them and began looking after his own money. Fascinated by the world of finance, and reading insatiably, he set up a podcast as an excuse to meet, talk to and learn from financial and economic experts. He began writing a column for Moneyweek. It quickly became obvious to Dominic that the global economy was a train crash waiting to happen, and was amazed that leading politicians, economists and journalists all failed to see it coming. He put everything he owned into gold, where it has since appreciated several hundred per cent. He predicted the financial crash of 2008, and now forecasts another one, even more calamitous. He believes that this crash with have serious political ramifications. In Life After The State, Dominic will explain his research about the nature of money, and the direct link between money and liberty, honesty and efficiency.
Dominic Frisby is a writer, actor, film maker, comedian, money guru and voiceover artist.