Release party

[Note: It was just pointed out to me that somehow Blogger managed to lose all of my link lists. I've more or less rebuilt the list to the left (here's hoping they don't lose it again while we're gone), but I may not have time to rebuild the blog list and other links on the right side. If not, I'll get to it when I return. Sigh.]

Andy and I are in the final throes of preparation for our trip (to England and Scotland, and for three whole weeks, if you’ve missed my 97 previous references to it), with the accompanying anxieties, last-minute itinerary changes, and occasional jumpings out of bed at midnight to make notes of things we need to do. (If I make one more last-minute itinerary change, by the way, Andy may become exasperated and force me to make the trip on my own!)

Due to our glamorous travels, there will only be two or three more posts going up here before the end of October. Also, bear in mind that comment moderation may take a bit longer during that time, depending on wifi availability in our hotels (and my fatigue levels, no doubt), so don’t be alarmed if your comments don’t appear as quickly as they ordinarily do. In addition, I will probably not be able to respond to comments—though I will certainly be reading them, as always.

But we can’t go riding off into the sunset without a release party!

Okay, not literally a party, at least not in the sense of a Hollywood premeire with glamorous celebrities and haute couture, but it’s the closest we can come to one via this blog. I wish I could offer you all champagne and appropriate delicacies, and perhaps an elegant chat with Cate Blanchett or George Clooney, but in lieu of that, feel free to imbibe and consume the beverages and tidbits of your choice in celebration. For the new Furrowed Middlebrow imprint from Dean Street Press is officially live, with all nine books available for purchase in both physical and e-book formats (see below for the nitty gritty details)!

I’m pleased as punch about this, as you might expect, and although it’s true I can’t offer you Cate (with a C) to nibble tidbits with, I can offer a very exciting tidbit from a Kate (with a K), who is a megastar in her own right.

As part of our rollout, Dean Street sent copies of our two lead titles, A Chelsea Concerto and A Footman for the Peacock, to various media outlets and high-profile literati. And in only a few days’ time, we received an email from none other than the brilliant Kate Atkinson, author of numerous acclaimed bestsellers, including Life After Life, which many of you, I know, have read, and which features a powerful section set during the Blitz (hence our feeling that she might take an interest in the books). In her email, she said she had searched for a copy of A Chelsea Concerto when she was researching her book, but was unable to find it, so she was delighted to see it back in print. She also generously provided us with an enthusiastic blurb, which we are now using on the book’s cover, but I can’t resist reporting it here too:

I am so happy that A Chelsea Concerto is back in print. It is a gem of a book, one of the best personal memoirs of WW2 on the home front, written with an artist’s eye for detail and immediacy.

She also noted, I might cheerfully add, that she “loved” A Footman for the Peacock as well. I’m very grateful to Kate for her enthusiasm and generosity!

(Speaking of Cates and Kates, I told Rupert at Dean Street of my fantasy of seeing a film version of Concerto—which would surely, with the right handling and cast, be Oscar-calibre—and I said I couldn’t imagine a better lead than either the aforementioned Cate Blanchett or the incomparable Kate Winslet. So he’s actually sending copies of the book to their People. Perhaps there’ll be a bidding war for the rights?)

I was also delighted to see some feedback on the FM books from a real live bookstore recently. Check out this tweet from the Regency Bookshop in Surbiton, kindly admiring the book covers and linking to my recent post about them. Thanks, guys!

(Which reminds me, a small favor to ask of any of you doing some real life physical book shopping in the coming weeks. If you happen to be in a bookshop and see our books in stock, I would love to hear about it, and if you’re camera-savvy enough to take a picture of them on the shelves, I would love to see that as well and might share the news/pictures here. Not sure how many bookshops will carry them, but hopefully some will—perhaps including the Regency Bookshop?—and it will be very exciting to know about any sightings.)

Speaking of Twitter, a universe I have only (at best) dabbled in thus far, Dean Street Press has an active Twitter account (@deanstpress) with an impressive following, where you can stay up-to-the-minute on the Furrowed Middlebrow titles as well as all of Dean Street’s Golden Age mystery rediscoveries and other publications. The idea has been floated, by the way, of a possible Furrowed Middlebrow Twitter and/or Facebook presence, and I am mulling it over. Can I see myself tweeting? Tweet, tweet. Hmmm, what do you think?

And speaking of online presences (how many times can I use “speaking of” in one post, you ask?—let’s see), an additional note that may inspire you to check out the Dean Street Press website with some frequency: They regularly have a “Free Kindle Ebook of the Week” available for downloading. They rotate through some of their popular titles, so you may well get lucky and find the occasional Furrowed Middlebrow title, available for nothing more than a couple of clicks of your mouse! (One quick note, though: Dean Street only has British ebook rights for the many lesser-known Patricia Wentworth books they’ve released—US ebooks are from Open Road Media, and are, I might add, rather pricier. The result of this is that when one of the Wentworth books is the free book of the week, it will only be available to customers in the U.K. However, when other titles, including the FM books, are on offer, they should be available on both sides of the pond.)

And speaking of… (sorry, just playing with you)

Now on to the details. I realize that some of my previous posts about our books haven’t contained complete information about buying the books, so this post (visually bland as it is without any pics) will finish up by having all the ordering information in one handy place. Then, the next post (assuming that all goes well when I’m off gleefully touching stones at Avebury or ogling Yorkminster) will be the purest book fetishism and will make up for this post's lack of photos—since I don’t have room for them in this post, I’m going to include all the full book jackets for you to peruse—and I’ll include the ordering information there too, just in case. But for now, here goes:

There are nine Furrowed Middlebrow titles in all (plus two additional Winifred Peck titles in Dean Street’s Golden Age mystery series that link up nicely). They’re all available both as physical books (print-on-demand, but quite lovely in my own slightly biased option—see here) and as e-books. The e-books are available exclusively from Amazon (and exclusively for Kindle—apologies to any users of other devices out there), and should be up on all its various English-language variants in the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US. The physical books are available from Amazon as well as from other online sources, including Book Depository, and, as mentioned above, from some bookshops as well.

Below, I’m listing all the books (click on a title to see my original review post about it) and providing links to purchasing them on Amazon US and Amazon UK (no offense to the Aussies or Kiwis or Canucks, or anyone else for that matter, but I fear that too many links may be as confusing as none at all). The links, by the way, will default to the physical books, but you’ll see the Kindle format option just under the title and author info—just click there if you prefer the e-book version (or of course, you can just type in the authors’ names and get there easily enough even without the link). Now, I know the list itself is by no means aesthetically pleasing, but I have—as you must know if you’ve been following this blog for a long time and have never seen an update to its overall design—no artistic eye whatsoever. But, ugly or not, at least the core information is present (or let me know if it’s not).

Thanks again for all the amazing support I’ve received from so many of you!


Note: You can easily find all nine of the Furrowed Middlebrow books by simply searching "Furrowed Middlebrow" on Amazon.

A Footman for the Peacock (1940) Rachel Ferguson	Amazon US Amazon UK
Evenfield (1942) Rachel Ferguson	Amazon US Amazon UK
A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) Rachel Ferguson	Amazon US Amazon UK
A Chelsea Concerto (1959) Frances Faviell	Amazon US Amazon UK
The Dancing Bear (1954) (review coming soon!) Frances Faviell	Amazon US Amazon UK
A House on the Rhine (1955) Frances Faviell	Amazon US Amazon UK
Thalia (1957) Frances Faviell	Amazon US Amazon UK
The Fledgeling (1958) Frances Faviell	Amazon US Amazon UK
Bewildering Cares (1940) Winifred Peck	Amazon US Amazon UK
And, as mentioned, there are two new titles in Dean Street's Golden Age mystery series that are being published to coincide with the Furrowed Middlebrow Winifred Peck title. Those are:
The Warrielaw Jewel (1933) Winifred Peck	Amazon US Amazon UK
Arrest the Bishop? (1949) Winifred Peck	Amazon US Amazon UK