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NEWS
Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason has won the prestigious Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger.
Arnaldur Indridason has also won Sweden's Martin Beck Award for the best crime novel translated into Swedish given by the Swedish Academy of Detection. The winning novel, The Voice, was published in English by Harvill Secker in August 2006.
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Confessions of a Map Dealer
Paul Micou
  'My first mistake was to be heterosexual.'
Such is one of several complaints in the first of four conversations between Henry Hart - who is a married father of two young girls - and his long-time friend, Darius Saddler - who is gay and unattached.
It is just over a year since the two men last met. Crippled and humiliated by debt, Hart - a dealer in antique maps - has managed to ruin his marriage, to commit an undeniable act of theft, and to become a suspect in France for a very serious crime.
With a lover on the side, a stolen map in his pocket, an ace French detective on his trail, a wife who is unusually cold and in the know, it is time for Hart to enlist the help of his oldest friend.
Confessions of a Map Dealer relates the attempts of Hart and Saddler to knit their lives together again, and to extricate Hart from the myriad problems he has brought upon himself.
A mystery, a one-sided love story, a tale of guilt, blackmail and self-delusion, Confessions of a Map Dealer is an intricate comedy of errors from a celebrated practitioner of the genre.
Harvill Secker • RRP £12.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 03/07/2008 • 208 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1846551498
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Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America
Tim O'Grady
 In 1973, aged twenty-two, Timothy O'Grady left America for Europe. He had grown up through the time of moonshots and protest marches, new music and unprecedented economic expansion and of hopes for a new society, a new democracy and a new kind of man.
For the next thirty years he lived in and wrote about Europe. As he did, the American counter-culture crashed, Ronald Reagan came and went, wars were declared and the country was attacked by air. Much of the world began to look at America in a new way, wondering what had happened to it and where it was going. Among them was Timothy O'Grady, and he decided to go back and investigate.
Following in the footsteps of such Europeans as de Tocqueville, Dickens and Simone de Beauvoir, and such Americans as Henry Miller, Kerouac, Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, he went out onto the American road, travelling over fifteen thousand miles through thirty-five states. He met academics, the homeless, war veterans, political activists, New Orleans rappers, billionaires, novelists and a Ku Klux Klansman. A Yale legal historian told him why there are a million lawyers in America, a Chicago broker how executive pay is set and how the lobbying system works in Washington, and a Salvadorean gang member how life is on the streets of East Los Angeles. In every bar he stopped in, it seemed, there was a story of American life to be heard.
Using history, memoir, state-of-the-nation analysis and a novelist's skill at evoking places and people, Divine Magnetic Lands presents a picture of America as it evolved and how it is at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Harvill Secker • RRP £18.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 03/07/2008 • 544 pages • Royal Octavo • ISBN: 0436205130
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Knockemstiff
Donald Ray Pollock
 Knockemstiff is a pitch-dark and often hilarious collection of stories set in the tiny Appalachian town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, a community so deprived and diminished it no longer appears on any map.
The youth of Knockemstiff grow up in the malignant shadow of their parents; raised on abuse, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, they are stunted in every possible way: emotionally, mentally, sometimes physically. They talk a lot about escape but they never so much as cross the county line.
The stories in Knockemstiff are simple and compact, blunt and brutal, but are also infused with a deep sympathy for the incapacitating loneliness of poverty, neglect and severely limited horizons.
Knockemstiff is a human, very funny and unforgettable debut from a stunning new voice in American fiction.
Harvill Secker • RRP £15.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 03/07/2008 • 224 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1846551560
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Take Me To the Source: In Search of Water
Rupert Wright
 Colourless, tasteless, odourless, ageless: water is both the simplest thing on earth and the most complex. We cannot live without it yet it kills six thousand children a day. It is the ultimate renewable resource but we pollute it on a heroic scale.
In this enthralling voyage of discovery, Rupert Wright sets out to discover exactly what water is and why it plays such an important role in history, culture, art and literature. He penetrates to the heart of the development world supposedly bringing piped water to the poor, visits a bishop in Brazil willing to give up his life to save a river, and a child in India who waits by the roadside every morning for a bucket of water. And he describes Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings, the Parisian bar that serves fifty types of mineral water and the work of the engineers building an underground water supply to Manhattan.
Why, if water is so valuable does nobody want to pay for it unless it comes in a designer bottle? Is it really the oil of the twenty-first century? Will we all soon be fighting over it, or can it lead countries into co-operation rather than conflict?
Part cultural history, part reportage and part personal journey, Take Me To the Source is the fascinating story of the substance that makes life on earth possible.
Harvill Secker • RRP £12.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 03/07/2008 • 288 pages • B format • ISBN: 1846550718
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The Diving Pool
Yoko Ogawa
 From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, motherhood, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures contain a hairline crack of cruel intent.
A lonely teenaged girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool – a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.
A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy which may or may not be a hallucination.
Out of nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.
Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and, at times, darkly humorous collection of novellas about ordinary people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.
Harvill Secker • RRP £10.00 •
Hardback
Publication date: 03/07/2008 • 176 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1846552176
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Click for COMPLETE BACKLIST |
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The Redeemer
Jo Nesbo
 One freezing night in Oslo Christmas shoppers gather to listen to a Salvation Army street concert. An explosion cuts through the music, and a man in uniform falls to the ground, shot in the head at point-blank range.
Harry Hole and his team have little to work with: no immediate suspect, no weapon and no motive. But when the assassin discovers he has shot the wrong man, Harry Hole’s troubles have only just begun. After some exceptionally shrewd detective work, the team begins to close in on a suspected hit man, monitoring his credit card, false passport and the line to his employer. With no money, only six bullets and no place to stay in the bitter cold, the hit man becomes increasingly desperate. He will stop at nothing to eliminate his target.
Moving at a breathless pace, The Redeemer is Jo Nesbø’s most gripping thriller yet.
Harvill Secker • RRP £11.99 •
Trade Paperback
Publication date: 05/03/2009 • 560 pages • Royal Octavo • ISBN: 1846550408
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Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families' Pursuit of Justice
Ruth Dudley Edwards
 The Omagh bomb was the worst massacre in Northern Ireland's modern history - yet from it came a most extraordinary tale of human resilience. As the bombers congratulated themselves on escaping justice, the families determined on a civil case against them and their organisation.
No one had ever done this before: many are likely to do it in the future. It was a very domestic atrocity. In Omagh, on Saturday, 15 August, 1998, a 500lb bomb placed by the Real IRA, murdered twenty-nine shoppers - five men, fourteen women and nine children, of whom two were Spanish and one English: the dead included Protestants, Catholics and a Mormon. Although the police believed they knew the identities of the killers, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. Taking as their motto 'For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing', families of ten of the dead decided to go after these men through the civil courts, where the burden of proof is lower.
These were ordinary people who knew little of the world - they included a factory worker, a mechanic and a cleaner; they had no money, no lawyers, and there was no legal precedent for such an action. This is the story of how - with the help of a small group of London sympathisers that included a viscount and two ex-terrorists - these Omagh families surmounted all the obstacles to launch a civil case against the Real IRA and five named individuals. Along the way the families became formidable campaigners who won the backing of Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush as well as of Bob Geldof and Bono.
Aftermath is not just an astonishing story in itself: it is a universal story of David challenging Goliath, as well as an inspiration to ordinary people anywhere devastated by terrorism. The Real IRA today: ETA tomorrow: the Mafia, perhaps, the day after.
Harvill Secker • RRP £12.99 •
Trade Paperback
Publication date: 06/11/2008 • 320 pages • Royal Octavo • ISBN: 0436205998
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Novel 11, Book 18
Dag Solstad
 Bjørn Hansen, a respectable town treasurer, has just turned fifty and is horrified by the thought that chance has ruled his life. Eighteen years ago he left his wife and their two-year-old son for his mistress, who persuaded him to start afresh in a small, provincial town and to dabble in amateur dramatics. In time that relationship also faded, and after four years of living alone Bjørn contemplates an extraordinary course of action that will change his life for ever.
He finds a fellow conspirator in Dr Schiøtz, who has a secret of his own and offers to help Bjørn carry his preposterous and dangerous plan through to its logical conclusion. However, the sudden reappearance of his son both fills Bjørn with new hope and complicates matters. The desire to gamble with his comfortable existence proves irresistible, however, taking him to Vilnius in Lithuania, where very soon he cannot tell whether he's tangled up in a game or reality.
Novel 11, Book 18 is an uncompromising and concentrated existential novel that accommodates all of Dag Solstad’s fundamental themes, and for which he received the Norwegian Critics’ Prize for Literature for the second time.
Harvill Secker • RRP £14.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 06/11/2008 • 192 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1843432110
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Slumberland
Paul Beatty
 The break-out novel from a literary virtuoso about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger.
Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his creative eye to man's search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic world.
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic - and spiritual - other.
Ferocious, bombastic, and laugh-out-loud funny, Slumberland is vintage Paul Beatty and belongs on the shelf next to Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and Junot Díaz.
Harvill Secker • RRP £12.99 •
Trade Paperback
Publication date: 06/11/2008 • 256 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1846552427
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Listen to My Voice
Susanna Tamaro
 Marta is raised by her grandmother in her house in Trieste, a safe haven of stories, books and enchantment. She knows that her mother died when she was young, and she believes that her father is a Turkish prince. But, as she grows older and this fairy tale disintegrates, Marta feels only anger towards her grandmother for withholding information about her parents.
When her grandmother dies, Marta is alone in the world. One day, in the dusty attic, she finds a box belonging to her mother which may help to uncover her own past. With clues found in her mother’s journal and a worn photograph, Marta decides to track down her father, who she believes may still be alive. Feeling the need to escape her grandmother’s house, which is populated by secrets, Marta embarks on a journey to Israel, seeking what is left of her mother’s family in an attempt to make sense of where she came from.
Written as a young woman’s narrative addressed to the memory of her grandmother, Listen to My Voice is a poignant coming of age story, and a beautifully crafted meditation on the importance of history and belonging.
Harvill Secker • RRP £12.99 •
Trade Paperback
Publication date: 02/10/2008 • 160 pages • Demy Octavo • ISBN: 1846550645
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The Pyramid
Henning Mankell
 When Kurt Wallander first appeared in Faceless Killers back in 1990, he was a senior police officer, just turned forty, with his life in a mess. His wife had left him, his father barely acknowledged him; he ate badly and drank alone at night.
The Pyramid chronicles the events that led him to such a place. We see him in the early years, doing hours on the beat whilst trying to solve a murder off-duty; witness the beginnings of his fragile relationship with Mona, the woman he has his heart set on marrying; and learn the reason behind his difficulties with his father. These thrilling tales provide a fascinating insight into Wallander’s character, and demand to be read in one sitting. From the stabbing of a neighbour in 1969 to a light aircraft accident in 1989, every story is a vital piece of the Wallander series, showing Mankell at the top of his game. Featuring an introduction from the author, The Pyramid is an essential read for all fans of Kurt Wallander.
Harvill Secker • RRP £17.99 •
Hardback
Publication date: 02/10/2008 • 384 pages • Royal Octavo • ISBN: 1846550971
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