News
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Christmas promotion for Thistle titles
20 Dec 2013
A number of Thistle books have been selected for Amazon’s big Christmas promotion - the 12 Days of Kindle. All of these fantastic books, across a range of genres, are available until 2014 for just 99p.
Non-fiction:
Churchill & the Secret Service by David Stafford ‘A startlingly good book.’ MRD Foot, SPECTATOR
Heads Up by Dominic Carman ‘This is a fascinating and unique book, often punchy, at times outrageous, and always difficult to put down. Somehow, Dominic Carman has spirited out of a set of leading heads’ views and opinions which they probably would never acknowledge in public, as well as the occasional traditional view. The approaches are in many cases entirely contradictory, yet the effects on schools are clearly very comparable. No head - or governor – should be without this book; and for many parents it will be an eye-opening and extraordinary read.’ Tim Hands, master Magdalen College School, HMC chairman 2013-2014
Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford ‘“Spies Beneath Berlin” delivers surprise after surprise, and makes all previous accounts of of this amazing story quite obsolete. It’s a real page turner too – I read it virtually at a sitting’ Len Deighton
Novel: Plan It. Write It. Sell It by Lynne Barrett-Lee Got a burning desire to write a novel but don’t know where to start? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Written by bestselling novelist and creative writing tutor, Lynne Barrett-Lee, Novel: Plan it. Write it. Sell it, will teach you the skills you need to do that, step by step.
Atlantis and the Silver City by Peter Daughtrey ‘A new and compelling case for the location of the Atlantis heartland. An intriguing and thought-provoking read.’ Graham Hancock – author of Fingerprints Of The Gods
An Encyclopedia of Naval History by Anthony Bruce From the beginnings of the age of sail and firearms to the present day, the Encyclopedia of Naval History provides a complete and comprehensive guide to world naval history.
Fiction:
The Alchemist’s Apprentice by Jeremy Dronfield ‘Funny, weird and intricate… A gifted, original writer’ Sunday Telegraph
The Nudists by Guy Bellamy ‘It is rare for a book to be comic, happy and readable all at once but Guy Bellamy’s The Nudists is just that.’ Daily Telegraph
Lestrade and the Ripper by M J Trow ‘Barrowloads of nineteenth century history… If you like your humour chirpy, you’ll find this sings.’ Daily Telegraph
The Dividing by Jeff Gulvin It’s 1946, the war in Europe is over and John Quarrie has just left school. Godson to the most famous Texas Ranger in history, he’s on his way to spend the summer with his grandma. No sooner is he off the bus, however, than he comes across Pious Noon and Willow Flood, and so begins their adventure. A terrible summer storm, an inheritance forfeited, two corrupt sheriff’s deputies, and a terrifying boat trip across The Dividing.
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'Haggard Hawks' in Guardian best of 2013
19 Dec 2013
Paul Jones’ Haggard Hawks & Paltry Poltroons was featured in The Guardian as one of the Best Language Books of 2013.
Stocking filler books for 2013
You can follow the book on Twitter: @haggardhawks
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Mike Pannett is top trend on Twitter
18 Dec 2013
Agency author Mike Pannett is currently trending at number one on Twitter nationwide. #Dontditchthedogs
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David Haviland selects December Agent's Pick
18 Dec 2013
David Haviland has chosen Gil Hogg’s espionage thriller Codename Wolf as the IPR Agent’s Pick for December.
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Early praise for God's Traitors from Antonia Fraser
16 Dec 2013
Jessie Childs’s God’s Traitors : Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, which explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall and published by Bodley Head in March, has had a cracking endorsement from Antonia Fraser who has described it as ‘A triumph of story-telling, backed by first-rate research’.
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Jack Beatty reviews Sean McMeekin
16 Dec 2013
Sean McMeekin’s July 1914: Countdown to War has been warmly reviewed by Jack Beatty, senior editor of The Atlantic, and news analyst for NPR:
“When I saw July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin in a book store, my heart sank. The “July Crisis” that followed the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo and that ended in war is the most ploughed over episode in diplomatic history. Although by no means a scholar, I had read “The World Crisis, Volume I, 1911-1914″ by Winston Churchill, the two –volume history by Sidney Fay published in the 1920s, the documentary history edited by Immanuel Geiss published in the 1960s, and the three-volume opus by Luigi Albertini published in English in the 1950’s. Of more recent works, the diplomatic dance of death in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, and London occupies much of Hugh Strachan’s massive “The First World War Volume I: To Arms (2001)”, the first third of David Stevenson’s “Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (2005),” and nearly all of “Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (2003),” edited by Richard H. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig. How, I wondered in the bookstore, could there be anything new to say about the July Crisis? And how could Sean McMeekin, called the “leading young historian of modern Europe” by Norman Stone, how could the author of original works like The Russian Origins of the First World War and The Berlin-Baghdad Express–what was this imaginative, multilingual scholar doing spending his time on this stale subject? It took only a few pages of “July 1914″ to buoy my heart. McMeekin makes this old story new. His history reads like a novel. Better, it unfolds like a play. There is no “going behind,” as Henry James termed authorial interventions in a novel’s forward flow. There is no going ahead, either. Events happen in the text as they did in life. The historical actors don’t know the consequences of their acts; neither does the reader. The footfalls of the future echo only in the foreshadowings that end chapters: “As they awoke Monday, Bethmann and Jagow would have some quick thinking to do. News was flooding in from Belgrade, Vienna, Petersburg, Paris, and London. Almost none of it was what anyone in Berlin wanted to hear.” McMeekin adds dollops of fresh savory fact on every page. More importantly, he sees the whole crisis unclouded by bias for or against his characters or their countries. He saves moral judgment for the end. “When we examine the key moral question of 1914–responsibility for the outbreak of European, then world war—it is important to keep degrees of responsibility in mind. Sins of omission are lesser ones than sins of commission: likewise, actions are not equivalent to the reactions they occasion.” That last observation is characteristic of McMeekin’s subtle turn of mind. He applies it exquisitely in assessing blame for the war. Serbia, the source of the plot to kill the Archduke, stands first “in the dock of judgment.” Next Austria-Hungary, for its reckless escalation of the crisis. Next Germany, for giving Austria the notorious “blank check” to attack Serbia. Closely behind is Serbia’s protector, Russia: “The decision for European war was made by Russia on the night of 29 July 1914, when Tsar Nicholas II, advised unanimously by his advisers, signed the order of general mobilization. General mobilization…meant war.” Next France, for goading Russia on, and for…well, enough. ”July 1914″ is superb history and compelling reading.”
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Cathy Glass launches writing guide
13 Dec 2013
Cathy Glass’s new creative writing guide About Writing has gone straight to number one in its Amazon category.
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Marina Chapman documentary reviewed by Daily Telegraph
13 Dec 2013
Adrian Michaels reviews Woman Raised by Monkeys, National Geographic’s unusual account of Marina Chapman’s return to the Colombian jungle.
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Christian Jennings is interviewed by Prospect magazine
13 Dec 2013
‘Bosnia, writes Christian Jennings at the beginning of his new book, is “still struggling to come to terms with the events that took place from 1992 to 1995.” Central to the attempts to deal with the legacy of the war in the Balkans is the work of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), an organisation that, in 1999, took on the job of identifying the remains of the victims of that bloody conflict. In its mandate, the ICMP assumed the task of helping governments in the region “deal with the enormous problem of persons who had been killed or had gone missing as a result of wars, ethnic conflicts [and] human-rights abuses…”’
