We’re absolutely delighted that Gordon Brown‘s conspiracy thriller Darkest Thoughts – book 1 in the Craig McIntyre series – has been hailed by The Reading Agency as one of its Books Of The Year for 2017. Brilliant novel, brilliant author; the perfect combo. It’s up there with the likes of novels by Robert Harris and…
We see this as a relay – complete with dystopian baton-passing – more than as a straight race. After all, Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale came many years before Gillian Phillip‘s Bad Faith; and 1984 well before both. The theocratic premises are similar. In Bad Faith, there is a Putinesque collusion between the political leader and the One…
For some reason these scenes didn’t make the final edit for the BBC’s Planet Earth II. No idea why. Perhaps they’re saving them for the director’s cut?
The BBC’s Newsround has announced that ‘refugee’ has been deemed the Children’s Word of the Year. That comes after OUP analysed 120,000 stories written for BBC Radio 2’s 500 Words competition. In October, we published a children’s book (7+) about a very unusual refugee – Angle the crocogator – who has to leave Nowhere to go to Elsewhere. It…
3 of Strident’s authors – Victoria Gemmell (right), Catherine MacPhail (below) and Kirkland Ciccone (left) – will all be appearing at the 2016 Yay! YA+ festival on 21 April. It’s the festival’s second year, with Cumbernauld Theatre (between Glasgow and Stirling, 1 minute from the M80) again hosting. Tickets are available as of NOW. Go to www.YayYA.co.uk…
MEDIA RELEASE Release date: 21 January 2016 Strident and Olida reach agreement on integration of lists Strident Publishing and Olida announce today that they have agreed terms that will enable Olida’s authors to integrate their titles into Strident Publishing’s list. Olida and Strident’s lists both comprise adult and children’s fiction, as well as some…
Fancy hearing from one of the most interesting authors writing today? Nothing author Janne Teller will be in conversation with literary critic Paul Binding at Kensington & Chelsea’s Town Hall (Hornton St, W8). The event comes ahead of 2 world premières – Glyndebourne putting on Nothing as an opera in February while Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre are…
Is it: A. R2D2 B. Harrison Ford C. Hugh Holman Somehow we don’t think you’ll find that one too difficult! And the X-wing? It’s his mode of transport. (In the film, not in real life…)
Grab This Book has just posted this 5/5 review of Theresa Talbot‘s sociological crime novel Penance. Many thanks to the reviewer. Thanks also to Douglas Skelton for passing the book along, even with the odd name inscribed in it!
He’s also one of our favourite aminals. Aminals are, of course, animals that derive from 2 species. Can you guess which species feature in Hamley’s phylogenetic tree. Hamley is a bundle of fun. He crashes into Hugh Holman‘s The Almost Animals like a bowling ball into skittles. Which is your favourite aminal?
No, that’s not a typo! Talisman author Paul Murdoch is in Oxford today for the UK Final of the Kids’ Lit Quiz. And the Kids’ Lit Quiz is hosted by Wayne Mills, who is not from Oz, but from NZ – New Zealand. He is a wizard though, at least when it comes to young…
This interesting and insightful interview with Penance and This Is What I Look Like author Theresa Talbot, this article also contains some excellent advice for aspiring authors. Many thanks to Vicki Goldman at Off-the-shelf book reviews for asking the great questions that generated Theresa’s answers.
Well, who would have thought it of respectable BBC broadcaster Theresa Talbot. Thankfully it’s literary crime and not literally crime. The Evening Times has the full details…
Today sees the publication of Hugh Holman‘s The Almost Animals. It’s a gem of a book aimed at reading age 7+ but which will delight ‘read to’ children from 5 upwards. We wonder what everyone’s favourite aminal will be. And that’s not a spelling mistake – we do mean aminal. Our particular favourite – apart from…
When crime writer Michael J Malone writes a review it’s worth paying attention – he knows his stuff. And he’s just penned one here about Penance by Theresa Talbot. Don’t forget, you can read the first couple of chapters of Penance here.
‘A brilliant debut by a writer who spins an unputdownable tale.’ Denise Mina, two-time winner of the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year A controversial sociological crime novel inspired by the story of the riot that ultimately closed the snappily-titled Glasgow Magdalene Institution for the Repression of Vice and for the Reformation of Penitent…
Kirkland Ciccone will be running an Advanced Higher Creative Writing workshop this Friday (4th September) in Edinburgh. It’s part of a Creative Writing Conference run by Edinburgh University and will take place at Moray House School of Education in the city’s Canongate. Should be a lot of fun.
Fortunately we didn’t need to. But when we spotted Talisman author Paul Murdoch heading for Waterstones in East Kilbride, we nabbed him and ‘persuaded’ him to sign a few copies for us. The ‘persuaders’ fled their seats before they could be captured on film, but we caught brief sight of one of them as he made a break…
We spotted these and thought they were too good not to share. Kirkland’s books in Kirkland’s words… Conjuring The Infinite ‘…an eerie creepy kooky spooky thrill ride into the darkest realms of magick…and the fractured psyche of the teenage brain, complete with raining toad and a green fur coat of wrath.’ Endless…
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be publishing this gem in October. The Almost Animals by Hugh Holman tells the tale of Angle the crocogator’s search for acceptance in Elsewhere. (Angle is the green one on the top ledge, under the WELCOME TO NOWHERE sign.) We adore this book. It’s quirky, uplifting and poignant, with that underdog-deifies-the-odds cleverness…
If you caught David Almond’s excellent ‘A World Beyond Alice’ programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday you’ll have heard him talking Janne Teller about her provocative modern classic Nothing. It’s a remarkable existential novel, with an equally remarkable tale behind its publication. If you missed the programme, click here to go to it on the BBC…
The downside of being a traffic reporter must be that you lose the ability to use ‘I was delayed in traffic’ as an excuse for turning up late. But hopefully a short hop to Glasgow’s Mitchell Library from nearby BBC Scotland HQ will be straightforward for Beechgrove Potting Shed host and traffic presenter Theresa Talbot when she…
Stephen King and TT from BBC Radio Scotland. Eh…what’s the link (we hear you ask)? Well, it suddenly occurred to us that Theresa Talbot‘s This Is What I Look Like is to Traffic and Travel presenting what Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is to putting pen to paper: both are entertaining memoirs…
Theresa outlines the rather odd suggestion that gave rise to her book…
Theresa Talbot, Kirsty Wark, Christopher Brookmyre and James Naughtie. All on the same pavement at the same time, and all in Pitlochry. Ok, they’re not there in person. Not yet. But they will be soon – Winter Words at Pitlochry Festival Theatre runs 13-21 Feb 2015. Theresa will be main attraction at the Literary Lunch…
At a recent event at Waterstones in Glasgow’s Argyle Street, their children’s bookseller Lana noted a resurgence in rip-roaring adventure novels. It seems book-buyers are embracing jeopardy again. At Strident we like a good dose of danger and get our kicks not on Route 66, but from reading Matt Cartney’s Danny Lansing Adventures series. Few characters take risks like…
As This Is What I Look Like continues to amuse the nation, Theresa Talbot has been invited by The Sun to choose a few of her own favourite books. Her own book – the antidote to misery memoirs – is now available in branches of WH Smith throughout Scotland, as well as in Waterstones (where it’s…
Read the hilarious new Scottish Book Trust: Author Confessions…with Kirkland Ciccone and you’ll find out which actor Kirkland Ciccone thinks looks just like him (its not who you might imagine!) as the Conjuring The Infinite and Endless Empress author bares his soul.
…but with a bit of grunge thrown in, because Conjuring The Infinite and Endless Empress author Kirkland Ciccone appears to have kidnapped the ghost of Kurt Cobain and whisked him off to the yurt at Edinburgh International Book Festival, as you can see in this great new video: Kirkland is off to collect the Catalyst Award…
Because this one does. Why? The clue is in the blurb. (Click to read it.)