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Hutchinson
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Maya
by Alastair Campbell
Maya Lowe is one of the world’s biggest movie stars. Steve Watkins is her life-long friend. Both swear their relationship hasn’t changed since they shared a school desk as London teenagers. But can a friendship like theirs really survive a fame as great as Maya’s? Can a man like Steve, working away for a Heathrow logistics company, seriously remain part of her life? He certainly thinks so. But amid the twists and turns of Maya’s public and private lives, the gulf between what Steve thinks and what is actually true gets ever wider. And in a world where the obsession with celebrity seems to make everyone want to be one, truth is hard to find.
Set in modern-day Britain, America and France, Alastair Campbell’s second novel is part psychological thriller, part exploration of the psychology of fame. Steve is a brilliantly ambiguous figure, narrating a story full of morally complex characters from the worlds of film, business, TV, journalism and private investigation. Whether through stars with a love-hate relationship with their public; agents milking the culture of celebrity; a media that cannot get enough because the public always want more, Campbell depicts a society feeding vainly on fame, and the dangerous consequences for those caught up in its frenzy.
Hutchinson • RRP £18.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 04/02/2010 • 416 pages • Royal Octavo
• ISBN: 0091930871
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The Day the Falls Stood Still
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Bess Heath is born to a life of privilege, one bound by Edwardian convention and a duty to marry well.But in 1915, on the verge of her eighteenth birthday, she returns home from school to an unfamiliar scene – the elegance of the life she once knew has vanished, her father is a broken man, jobless and losing hope, and her mother is struggling to keep the family afloat. Isabel, the lively, charismatic sister Bess has always relied on is almost unrecognisable. Her engagement called off, she languishes in her bedroom, brooding and refusing to eat. And all the while the society Bess has always known faces its own transition – one where the magnificence of Niagara Falls is threatened by the power companies that seek to harness its power for themselves.
Forced into an early adulthood, Bess finds solace with riverman Tom Cole, against her family’s strong objections. He is not from their world. Rough-hewn and guileless, Tom has as uncanny knack for reading the Niagara’s whims and a reputation for daring rescues on the river. He understands better than anyone the awesome and potentially devastating power of the falls and consoles her through a tragedy that nearly ruins her. But as their lives become more fully entwined, Bess is forced to make a painful choice between what she wants and what is best for her family…
Hutchinson • RRP £12.99 •
Trade Paperback
Publication date: 04/02/2010 • 320 pages • Royal Octavo
• ISBN: 0091925967
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Inside the Kingdom
by Brian Loomes
Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in the world, and yet the country’s roiling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state, driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of the Prophet Muhammed over a thousand years ago. In a world where events in the Middle East continue to have geopolitical consequences far beyond the region’s boundaries, an understanding of this complex nation is essential.
With Inside the Kingdom, British journalist and bestselling author Robert Lacey has given us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. More than twenty years after he first moved to the country to write about the Saudis at the end of the oil boom, Lacey has returned to find out how the consequences of the boom produced a society at war with itself.
Filled with stories told by a broad range of Saudis, from high princes and ambassadors to men and women on the street, Inside the Kingdom is in many ways the story of the Saudis in their own words. It is a story of oil money that opened the door to Western ways, and produced a conservative backlash with effects that are still being felt today. It is a story of kings and princes who worried more about keeping power than the dangerous consequences of empowering radical clerics. It is a story of men who challenged orthodoxy and risked prison or death in the name of furthering open society, and of women who defied laws saying they should not write, drive, or play sports. And, at its heart, it is a story of a people attempting to reconcile the religious separatism of the past and the rapidly changing world with which they are increasingly intertwined. Their success – or failure – will have powerful reverberations in their own country, and across the globe.
Hutchinson • RRP £20.00 •
Hardback
Publication date: 22/10/2009 • 432 pages • Royal Octavo
• ISBN: 009193124X
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