A Furrowed Middlebrow teaser

Well, if Taylor Swift can have a mysterious countdown clock on her social media, I don't see why I can't do a teaser of my own. Hers might be in reference to a new album, which is all very well and good, but surely nothing to compare to a new batch of Furrowed Middlebrow titles, right?

So this teaser is to say that an announcement is coming, hopefully this weekend. We've been working hard on putting everything together, and I just got word that all the permissions and contracts are in place, which means I've got the "all clear" (so to speak) to tell you about this very special batch of books, coming in July.

What makes it so special, you ask? Well, I'll tell you that part right now: This is our first themed batch of books, and if you've been reading the blog in the past few months, you probably won't have great difficulty guessing what the theme might be…

Yes, there is, it turns out, a reason that I've been so focused on reading and reviewing World War II novels. And although we might well have done it even if the timing wasn't so right, the fact that 2019 is the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the war (yes, my fellow Americans, those of us who were taught that WWII was 1941-1945 were merely the products of a faulty, U.S.-centric education system—I can't tell you how many people have looked confused when I've made reference to World War II beginning in 1939!) made it completely irresistible. And one of my goals was to represent all the major subdivisions I described in my WWII Book List here. (The list needs updating, but most of the books we're publishing are already included there.)

A final tidbit—the new batch includes a total of nine books by eight different authors. Our previous batches have included 2-3 authors and thus 2-3 sets of heirs and permissions, so we've had our work cut out for us!

The big reveal is coming soon!

[Imagine a countdown clock here—perhaps with Big Ben alongside a barrage balloon in the background.]