It's
that time again!
No
theme this time around—just eight stellar new reprints, by three marvelous
authors, due for release from Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press in
January of 2020. This will bring us to 46 titles in all, enough to fill an
entire shelf of my—er, I mean, your bookcase!
First
up is an old favorite, by which I mean both an author that we've published
before and an author who helped inspire my passion for British women writers in
the first place.
We've already published five of the very best titles from D. E. STEVENSON, and in January we'll
add three more. Not exactly a trilogy, but featuring overlapping characters
from the Dering family, Vittoria Cottage
(1949), Music in the Halls (1950),
and Winter and Rough Weather (1951)
are fan favorites and wonderful tales of postwar life in England and
Scotland.
(NOTE: Winter and Rough Weather
has previously been reprinted and released in e-book as Shoulder the Sky. Although there is some
evidence that the latter was actually DES's preferred title, DES's
granddaughter specifically requested that we use the former for our edition and
we have honored her wishes.)
Next
up, I'm really thrilled to add another much-beloved and widely-known author to
our list. Many of you already know DORA
SAINT (better known by her pseudonym, Miss Read) as the author of two
bestselling series, the Thrush Green
and Fairacre books.
But last May I
wrote about coming across a lesser-known Miss Read treasure (see here).
Fresh from the Country (1960) was
such a delight, I couldn't believe the rights wouldn't already have been
snatched up by some savvy publisher. Happily for me, however, I get to be that savvy publisher!
And
finally, you had to know it would be on my mind: Having used the "buried
treasure" heading for only (if my count is correct) three reviews on this
blog, and having already published the books reviewed in two of those posts,
hmmmm, perhaps the third one will be coming around soon?
Yep,
I'm over the moon that we'll be able to publish four absolutely brilliant
novels by DORIS LANGLEY MOORE, who may be the most famous
person ever to be a horribly neglected author.
I reviewed the novels here
and here,
fell head over heels in love with them, and now A Game of Snakes and Ladders (1938, 1955), Not at Home (1948), All Done
by Kindness (1951), and My Caravaggio
Style (1959) all join the Furrowed Middlebrow "books in print".
Smart, funny, gorgeously plotted, and delightfully unpredictable, they deserve
to be classics but have been neglected for half a century. No more!
And
that's that for January. Not too bad, eh? I should be able to share the new covers here before long, as well as information on intros. And work is already going on
furiously behind the scenes (i.e. very often while sprawled on the sofa or lounging
in bed) to start pulling together Batch 6…