Spring Catalogue January-June 2015

Spring Catalogue
January-June 2015
I'll Have What She’s Having
My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting
Rebecca Harrington
A hilarious look at the eating habits of the skinny and
famous - from Gwyneth's goji berry and quail egg
concoctions to Jackie Kennedy’s baked potato and Beluga
caviar regimen.
About the author
Rebecca Harrington read
English at Harvard, Journalism
at Columbia and now works as
a staff writer for the Huffington
Post. An anglophile, she
regularly visits the UK but is
currently based in New York.
Rebecca Harrington leaves no cabbage soup unstirred in I’ll Have
What She's Having, her wickedly funny, wildly absurd quest to diet
like the stars.
Elizabeth Taylor mixed cottage cheese and sour cream; Madonna
subsisted on ‘sea vegetables’ and Marilyn Monroe drank raw eggs
whipped with warm milk. Where there is a Hollywood starlet
offering nutritional advice, there is a diet Rebecca Harrington is
willing to try. Facing a harrowing mix of fainting spells, pimples
and salmonella, Harrington tracks down illegal haggis to imitate
Pippa Middleton, paces her apartment until the wee hours
drinking ten Diet Cokes à la Karl Lagerfeld, and attempts
something forbiddingly known as the ‘Salt Water Flush’ to channel
her inner Beyoncé. Rebecca Harrington risks kitchen fires and
mysterious face rashes, all in the name of diet journalism. Taking
cues from noted beauty icons like Posh Spice (alkaline!), Sophia
Loren (pasta!) and Cameron Diaz (savory oatmeal!), I'll Have What
She’s Having is completely surprising, occasionally unappetising,
and always outrageously funny.
January
9780349006031
Humour Collections &
Anthologies
Paperback Original
£8.99
160pp
3
On the Wilder Shores of Love
Sketches from a Bohemian Life
About the author
Lesley Blanch, MBE, FRSL was
born a writer, traveller and
historian. She was born in
London on 6th June 1904 and
died on 7th May 2007 in France.
Lesley Blanch, edited by Georgia de Chamberet
There are two sorts of romantic: those who love, and those
who love the adventure of loving - Lesley Blanch
‘Lesley Blanch was not a school, a trend, or a fashion, but a true
original’ Philip Mansel
Most famous for The Wilder Shores of Love, her book about
women travellers, Lesley Blanch was a scholarly romantic, an
intrepid traveller and a fabulous character.
Born in 1904, she died aged 103, having gone from being a
household name to a mysterious and neglected living legend. She
was writing her memoirs at her death, beginning with her very
odd Edwardian childhood. Her goddaughter, who was working
with her at the time, has now collected that piece and many
others, some never published, some published only in French;
some letters, some Vogue articles to create On the Wilder Shores
of Love: Sketches from a Bohemian Life which captures the
essence of a rich and rewarding life spanning the twentieth
century.
Lesley Blanch chose to ‘escape the boredom of convention’ and
having first worked as a theatre designer, she became Vogue’s
features editor during World War II. In 1946 she left England,
never to return, with her diplomat-novelist husband, Romain
Gary. By the time they reached Hollywood they were literary
celebrities. Gary left her for the young actress, Jean Seberg.
Blanch headed East and travelled across Siberia, Outer Mongolia,
Turkey, Iran, Samarkand, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Sahara.
• On The Wilder Shores of Love,
first published in 1957 is still in
print and a much-loved book.
• Readers will love the eccentric,
clever, dashing woman who was
Lesley Blanch.
• The perfect book for fans of the
Mitfords.
January
9780349005447
Biography & Autobiography:
Literary
Hardback
£20.00
320pp
4
Laughing All the Way to the
Mosque
The Misadventures of a Muslim Woman
Zarqa Nawaz
A brilliantly funny collection of stories about what it’s
really like to be Muslim in western society.
Zarqa Nawaz has always straddled two cultures. She’s just as likely
to be agonising over which sparkly earrings will pimp out her hijab
as to be flirting with the Walmart meat manager in a futile
attempt to secure halal chicken the day before Eid. In Laughing All
the Way to the Mosque she tells the sometimes absurd,
sometimes challenging and always wickedly funny stories of being
Zarqa in a western society.
About the author
Zarqa Nawaz created Little
Mosque on the Prairie for
Canadian television, and has
spent much of the past six years
writing comedy pilots for ABC,
CBS, NBC and FOX, and touring
the world as a sought-after
public speaker. She has been
interviewed or profiled by CNN,
the BBC, the New York Times
and Aljazeera. She lives in
Regina with her family.
From explaining to the plumber why the toilet must be within
sitting arm’s reach of the water tap (hint: it involves a watering
can and a Muslim obsession with cleanliness) to urging the
electrician to place an eye-height electrical socket for her fatherin-law’s epilepsy-inducing light-up picture of the Kaaba, Zarqa
paints a hilarious portrait of growing up in a household where,
according to her father, the Quran says it’s okay to eat at
McDonald’s - but only if you order the McFish.
February
9780349005935
Biography & Autobiography
Trade Paperback
£12.99
208pp
5
Rumer Godden – her novels reissued as
Virago Modern Classics
With a new introduction by Anita Desai
About the author
Rumer Godden (1907-98) was the acclaimed author of over sixty works of fiction and non-fiction for adults and
children. Born in England, she and her siblings grew up in Narayanganj, India, and she later spent many years living in
Calcutta and Kashmir. Several of her novels were made into films, including Black Narcissus, The Greengage Summer
and The River, which was filmed by Jean Renoir. She was appointed OBE in 1993.
The Battle of Fiorita
February
9781844088461
General & Literary Fiction
VMC
£9.99
304pp
The River
February
9781844088416
General & Literary Fiction
VMC
£9.99
224pp
The Lady and the Unicorn
February
9781844088478
Modern Fiction
VMC
£9.99
224pp
6
One of Us
About the author
Åsne Seierstad is the author of
four previous books: The
Bookseller of Kabul; The Angel
of Grozny; With their Backs to
the World and 101 Days - about
Afghanistan, Chechnya, Serbia
and Iran respectively.
Åsne Seierstad
The definitive account of Anders Breivik’s terrorist atrocity
and its aftermath by Norwegian writer and foreign
correspondent Åsne Seierstad, author of The Bookseller of
Kabul
‘Two hours after the blast in downtown Oslo, a tall, blond man
dressed in a police uniform boarded the little shuttle ferry to the
island of Utøya, where the youth wing of the Labour Party held
their yearly summer camp. He told the crew he had been sent to
inform the youths of the attack on the government headquarters.
Less than a minute after setting foot on the island, he killed his
first victim, one of the island’s two guards. Over the next hour he
would shoot a victim every minute, most of them kids aged
between 14 and 18. When the police finally arrived on the island,
the assassin had been killing teenagers for an hour and a half. The
police ordered him to stop shooting; he put down his weapon,
lifted his arms, surrendered and smiled.’
On 22nd July 2011 Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 of his fellow
Norwegians in a terrorist atrocity that shocked the world. Åsne
Seierstad had spent years visiting war-torn countries such as
Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya as a foreign correspondent and
writer. Now, for the first time, she was being asked to write about
her home country - quiet, peaceful Norway, with one of the
lowest murder rates in the world.
Told through numerous angles and sources, Seierstad recounts
the events of that terrible day and explores Breivik's background
and personality. It also tells the story of the aftermath – the
response to the attacks and how the survivors fought to rebuild
their lives.
• Åsne Seierstad is uniquely placed
to write the definitive account of
this shocking but important
story.
• 780,000 copies of The Bookseller
of Kabul sold in the UK and it
was a best-seller around the
world.
• The author is a highly
distinguished and experienced
foreign correspondent.
• A European best-seller.
March
9781844089192
History
Hardback
£16.99
352pp
7
Saving Safa
Rescuing a Little Girl from FGM
About the author
Waris Dirie is an internationally
renowned model and was the
face of Revlon skin-care
products. In 1997 she was
appointed by the UN as special
ambassador against FGM. She
lives in Vienna with her son.
Waris Dirie
From the best-selling author of Desert Flower: the true
story of saving a young girl from FGM
Waris Dirie, the Somalia nomad who became a supermodel, and
an anti-FGM activist, first came to the world’s attention with the
publication of her autobiography, Desert Flower. The book was
subsequently made into a film and little Safa Nour, from one of
the slums of Djibouti, was chosen to play the young Waris.
The book and the film record many extraordinary things - from
facing down a tiger, to being discovered by a famous
photographer in London - but it also tells the grim story of female
circumcision, an ordeal that the young Waris had to endure.
Saving Safa opens with a letter from Safa, now aged seven, who
explains that she is worried that she will undergo FGM in spite of
the contract her parents have signed with Dirie’s Desert Flower
Foundation stating that they will never have their daughter cut.
Waris drops everything and flies to Djibouti where she meets
Safa’s father and mother who thinks her daughter should be cut to
stop the community ostracising them. Waris brings them to Paris
and to Vienna, they learn about the foundation and Safa’s father
finally comes round to the idea of working for the foundation as
well.
As Safa was saved from FGM through a contract with her parents,
the Foundation believes a thousand other girls can be saved
through providing their families with aid in return for a promise
not to mutilate their daughters
• The UK campaign against FGM
has never been stronger.
• Waris Dirie is a much loved
activist.
• The Desert Flower Foundation is
opening offices around the world
March
9780349005966
Biography & Autobiography
Trade Paperback
£13.99
224pp
8
Mary Renault – her novels reissued as
Virago Modern Classics
About the author
Mary Renault (1905-1983) was born in London and educated at St Hughs, Oxford. She trained as a nurse at Oxford’s
Radcliffe Infirmary, where she met her lifelong partner, Julie Mullard. Her first novel, Purposes of Love, was published in
1937. In 1948, after North Face won a MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard emigrated to South Africa. There,
Renault was able to write forthrightly about homosexual relationships for the first time - in her masterpiece, The
Charioteer (1953), and then in her first historical novel, The Last of the Wine (1956). Renault’s vivid novels set in the
ancient world brought her worldwide fame. In 2010 Fire From Heaven was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.
The King Must Die
The Bull from the Sea
March
9781844089635
Classic Fiction,General & Literary Fiction
VMC
£8.99
320pp
March
9781844089628
Classic Fiction,General & Literary Fiction
VMC
£8.99
320pp
9
I Go by Sea, I Go by Land
About the author
P. L. Travers (1899-1996) was
born in Queensland, Australia.
She worked as a secretary, a
dancer and an actress, but
writing was P. L. Travers’s real
love, and for many years she
was a journalist. It was while
recuperating from a serious
illness that she wrote Mary
Poppins - ‘to while away the
days, but also to put down
something that had been in my
mind for a long time’, she said.
She recieved an OBE in 1977.
P. L. Travers
First published in 1941, this children’s classic, by the
author of Mary Poppins, has been unavailable for many
years. A moving story of a little girl and her brother, who
must leave their parents and home in the Sussex
countryside for safety in America.
‘James and I stayed on at home and everything was quiet and
sunny and we got to thinking the war would never come after all...
Just when we were so sure nothing would happen, the German
plane came over. It came over one night at one o’clock in the
morning and the sound was quite different from an English plane
and we all woke up. You could hear it drumming and drumming
like a big bee in a flower, buroom, buroom, buroom, round and
round in the air above the house. Then suddenly there were five
loud explosions. After that there was a terrible silence and I knew
that Father and Mother were looking at each other in the
darkness and I felt myself getting small and tight inside. Then
Father said quietly, ‘Meg, they must go!’’
Now I am going to write a Diary because we are going to America
because of the War. It has just been decided. I will write down
everything about it because we shall be so much older when we
come back that I will never remember it if I do not. So this is the
beginning. Oh, please let us come back soon, please.’
This is the fictional diary of Sabrina Lind, an eleven-year-old
English girl who, with her little brother James, is sent on the long
voyage across the sea to her aunt in America.
Image taken from inside book
• A classic children’s book by the
author of Mary Poppins. Much
revived interest in P. L. Travers
following the film, Saving Mr
Banks.
• With beautiful illustrations by
artist and sculptor Gertrude
Hermes OBE.
• For readers approx. 10+.
March
9780349005744
Classic Fiction
VMC
£6.99
128pp
10
Adeline
About the author
Norah Vincent’s first book, Selfmade Man (2006) was an
international media sensation
and a New York Times bestseller. Previously, Vincent
wrote a column for the Los
Angeles Times. Her work has
also appeared in the New York
Times, New Republic, Village
Voice and the Washington Post.
She lives in New York.
Norah Vincent
A captivating novel of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury
group.
Adeline is a gorgeous reimagining of the historical events that
brought Virginia Woolf to the riverbank, with a stunning
dénouement worthy of its protagonist.
An ambitious work in the tradition of Woolf herself, Adeline
audaciously explores the interior consciousness of the most
interior of authors from the summer she began working on To The
Lighthouse through to the winter she finished Between the Acts.
• In 2015 BBC2 will broadcast Life
In Squares, a three-part miniseries set around the perennially
popular Bloomsbury Group.
April
9780349005645
General & Literary Fiction
Hardback
£14.99
224pp
11
Novel On Yellow Paper
Stevie Smith
The first novel from Stevie Smith, one of the country’s
favourite poets, was a runaway best-seller on first
publication in 1936. It is as original now as it was then.
Stevie’s alter ego Pompey is young, in love and working as a
secretary for the magnificent Sir Phoebus Ullwater. In between
making coffee and typing letters for Sir Phoebus, Pompey scribbles
down - on yellow office paper - her quirky thoughts. Her flights of
imagination take in Euripedes, sex education, Nazi Germany and
the Catholic Church, shattering conventions in their wake.
• Smith's novels The Holiday and
Over the Frontier will be
published in ebook for the first
time, to coincide with this
reissue.
• One of Britain’s driest, quirkiest
writers, the author of the
famous poem Not Waving But
Drowning.
About the author
Stevie Smith (1902-71) was
born Florence Margaret in
1902. She lived in Palmers
Green, London, and for much of
her life worked, until
retirement, as a secretary for
the magazine publishers Sir
George Newnes and Sir Neville
Pearson. When she tried to
publish a volume of poems, she
was told to ‘go away and write
a novel’. Novel on Yellow Paper
was the result, and it turned
her into an instant celebrity.
Two further novels – The
Holiday and Over the Frontier –
followed, but it is her poetry
that has secured her legacy. In
1966 she received a
Cholmondeley Award and in
1969 was awarded the Queen's
Gold Medal for Poetry.
April
9780860681465
Classic Fiction
Paperback
£8.99
240pp
12
Mossy Trotter
About the author
Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75) is
increasingly being recognised as
one of the best writers of the
twentieth century. She wrote
her first book, At Mrs
Lippincote's, during the war,
and this was followed by eleven
further novels and a children's
book, Mossy Trotter. Her short
stories appeared in Vogue, the
New Yorker and Harper’s
Bazaar. Rosamond Lehmann
considered her writing
‘sophisticated, sensitive and
brilliantly amusing, with a kind
of stripped, piercing feminine
wit’, and Kingsley Amis
regarded her as ‘one of the
best English novelists born in
this century’.
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor is a major author on the VMC list. Mossy
Trotter, which has been out of print since its first
publication in 1967, is her only book for children.
‘We - that is, Herbert and I - want you, Mossy, to be our page-boy,’
Miss Silkin said, staring hard at Mossy again, as if she were trying
to imagine him dressed up, and with his hair combed.
Mossy went very red, and nearly choked on a piece of cake, and
Selwyn laughed, and went on laughing, as if he had just heard the
funniest joke of all his life. They both knew what being a page-boy
meant. One of the boys at school - one of the very youngest ones had had to be one, wearing velvet trousers and a frilled blouse.’
When Mossy moves to the country, life is full of delights - trees to
climb, woods to explore and, best of all, the marvellous dump to
rummage through. But every now and then his happiness is
disturbed - chiefly by his mother's meddling friend, Miss Silkin.
And a dreaded event casts a shadow over even the sunniest of
days - being a page-boy at her wedding.
In her only children’s book, Elizabeth Taylor perfectly captures the
temptations, confusion and terrors of a mischievous boy, and just
how illogical, frustrating and inconsistent adults are!
• Approximate age guide: 8+
• Elizabeth Taylor is one of the
most popular and successful
authors on the VMC list. She is a
favourite of literary reviewers
and Mossy Trotter, her only
children’s book, is sure to attract
a lot of attention.
• With drawings by Tony Ross, one
of the most popular illustrators,
best known for The Little
Princess series and the Horrid
Henry books.
April
9780349005577
Fiction, Classic Fiction
VMC
£7.99
160pp
13
Naked at the Albert Hall
The Inside Story of Singing
About the author
Tracey Thorn was singer and
songwriter with Everything But
the Girl from 1982-2000. At
that point she semi-retired
from the music business to
bring up her children. She has
since recorded three solo
albums, Out of the Woods, Love
and Its Opposite, and Tinsel and
Lights, and published her
autobiography, Bedsit Disco
Queen. She lives in London with
her husband Ben Watt and
their three children.
Tracey Thorn
Tracey Thorn, musician and author of the best-selling
autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen, offers a unique
insider’s take on the art of singing: why and how we sing,
and the voice’s power to captivate
In her best-selling autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen, Tracey
Thorn recalled the highs and lows of a thirty-year career in pop
music. But with the touring, recording and extraordinary
anecdotes, there wasn't time for an in-depth look at what she
actually did for all those years: sing. She sang with warmth and
emotional honesty, sometimes while battling acute stage-fright.
Part memoir, part wide-ranging exploration of the art, mechanics
and spellbinding power of singing, Naked at the Albert Hall takes
in Dusty Springfield, Dennis Potter and George Eliot; Auto-tune,
the microphone and stage presence; The Streets and The X Factor.
Including interviews with fellow artists such as Alison Moyet,
Romy Madley-Croft and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, and
portraits of singers in fiction as well as Tracey’s real-life
experiences, it offers a unique, witty and sharply observed
insider’s perspective on the exhilarating joy and occasional
heartache of singing.
• Bedsit Disco Queen was a Sunday
Times Top Ten hardback bestseller and has sold over 33,000
copies across all editions.
• A unique insider perspective on
singing and pop music, written
by an internationally acclaimed
singer and lyricist with an
established fan base.
May
9780349005263
Music
Hardback
£14.99
352pp
14
West With The Night
About the author
Born in England in 1902,
Markham grew up in East
Africa. She apprenticed as a
trainer and breeder of
racehorses and in the 1930s
became an African bush pilot.
In 1936 she became the first
person to fly solo across the
Atlantic from east to west.
Markham died suddenly in
1986.
Beryl Markham
Ernest Hemingway wrote to a friend: 'She can write rings
around all of us . . . I wish you would get it and read it
because it is really a bloody wonderful book'
Introduction by Martha Gellhorn
West With The Night appeared on 13 best-seller lists on first
publication in 1942. It tells the spellbinding story of Beryl
Markham -- aviator, racehorse trainer, fascinating beauty – and
her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and 30s.
Markham was taken to Kenya at the age of four. As an adult she
was befriended by Denys Finch-Hatton, the big-game hunter of
Out Of Africa fame, who took her flying in his airplane. Thrilled by
the experience, Markham went on to become the first woman in
Kenya to receive a commercial pilot’s license.
In 1936 she determined to fly solo across the Atlantic -- without
stopping. When Charles Lindbergh did the same, he had the wind
behind him. Markham, by contrast, had a strong headwind
against her and a plane that only flew up to 163 mph. On 4
September, she took off ... Several days later, she crash-landed in
Nova Scotia and became an instant celebrity.
• Deserves to be ranked alongside
Out Of Africa.
• Time Out was an international
best-seller on first publication
with life sales of over 38,000
copies.
June
9780860685418
Biography & Autobiography:
General
VMC
£8.99
320pp
15
Patricia Highsmith – her novels reissued
as Virago Modern Classics
About the author
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred
Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscarwinning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a
world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger'. Patricia Highsmith died in
Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.
Little Tales of Misogyny
Patricia Highsmith
January
9780349004938
Classic Fiction
VMC
£4.99
144pp
People who knock at the door
Patricia Highsmith
June
9780349004976
Classic Fiction
VMC
£7.99
336pp
Little Tales of Misogyny is Highsmith's legendary, cultish short-story collection.
With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbours into
sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured
lawns. In these darkly satirical, often hilarious, sketches you'll meet seemingly
familiar women with the power to destroy both themselves and the men around
them.
In a pitiless story of prying suburban self-righteousness, Patricia Highsmith
introduces the Alderman family as they descend into moral crisis. When smalltown insurance salesman Richard Alderman becomes a born-again Christian, his
once tight-knit family quickly begins to rip apart at the seams. He and his
youngest son, Robbie, embrace their newfound faith, while his elder son Arthur
rejects it.
Caught in the middle of the ensuing web of lies, his wife, Lois, tries to keep the
family together, but when the church elders start to interfere in Arthur's love life,
events spiral toward violence. In this masterful late work, Highsmith weaves a
powerful tale about blind faith and the peculiar ideas of justice that lie
underneath the veneer of respectability.
16