Portobello Book Blog

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend the Author Showcase event which Cornerstone was bringing to Edinburgh. It was a wonderful evening in the beautiful surroundings of the Cannonball Restaurant right at the top of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. There were people from different areas of the book world such as booksellers, bloggers, journalists and people involved with various book festivals.

It was lovely to meet publicists who worked with the authors we heard from on the evening and hear the enthusiasm for the books they had been working on. I came away with lots of new reading material and thought I’d share a bit about these books with you. First of all, three books which I was lucky enough to get a proof copy of – they all sound amazing.

The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves

A lifetime together. Six months of silence. One last chance.

Frank hasn’t spoken to his wife Maggie for six months.

For weeks they have lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed and eaten at the same table – all without words.

Maggie has plenty of ideas as to why her husband has gone quiet.

But it will take another heartbreaking turn of events before Frank finally starts to unravel the secrets that have silenced him.

Is this where their story ends?
Or is it where it begins?

With characters that will capture your heart, THE SILENT TREATMENT celebrates the phenomenal power of love and the importance of leaving nothing unsaid.

The Silent Treatment will be published in hardback, ebook and audiobook formats in April.

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle by Neil Blackmore

‘Your brother takes me for a barbarian, Mr Bowen. But I assure you, I’m quite well trained.’

When Benjamin and Edgar Bowen embark on a Grand Tour of Europe, they are ready to meet People of Quality. They have trunks full of powdered silver wigs and matching suits, a hunger to experience the architectural wonders of Ancient Rome and an ability to quote Voltaire (at length). They will make connections and establish themselves in high society, just as their mother has planned.

But it soon becomes apparent that their outfits are not quite the right shade of grey, their smiles are too ready, their appreciation of the arts ridiculous. Class, they learn, is not something that can be studied.

Benjamin’s true education begins when he meets Horace Lavelle. Beautiful, charismatic, seductive, Lavelle delights in skewering the pretensions and prejudices of their milieu. He consumes Benjamin’s every thought.

Love can transform a person. Can it save them?

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle is also published in April in hardback, ebook and audiobook fomats.

Feathertide by Beth Cartwright

One girl was born to be different…

Marea was born to be different – a girl born covered in the feathers of a bird, and kept hidden in a crumbling house full of secrets. When her new tutor, the Professor, arrives with his books, maps and magical stories, he reveals a world waiting outside the window and her curiosity is woken. Caught in the desire to discover her identity and find out why she has feathers fluttering down her back like golden thistledown, she leaves everything she has ever known and goes in search of the father she has never met.

This hunt leads her to the City of Murmurs, a place of mermaids and mystery, where jars of swirling mist are carried through the streets by the broken-hearted. It is here that she learns about love, identity and how to accept being that little bit different.

Feathertide will be published in hardback and ebook in July.

And now two books for which we got a sampler

Anti-Social – The secret diary of an anti-social behaviour officer by Nick Pettigrew

Has your life become unbearable because the person living above you has a fondness for crack cocaine, the company of strangers and dance music? Or maybe you find being racially abused every day by your neighbour rather bothersome. Evidence tends to suggest it can grate after a while.

Or maybe you’re a social worker, mental health nurse, police officer, firefighter, dog warden or vicar and you’ve been landed with someone who’s a pain in the arse. Who are you going to call? That would be me, or at least somebody like me: an anti-social behaviour officer.

Anti-Social is the diary of a council worker whose job is to keep his community happy, or at least away from each other’s throats. That’s hard enough at the best of times but when government cuts mean that hospitals, social services and police are all at breaking point, the possibility of complete chaos is never far away.

This is an urgent, timely but, most of all, hysterically funny diary of a life spent working with the people society wants to forget and the problems that nobody else can resolve. This book will make you laugh, cry and boil with rage within a single sentence.

Anti-Social will be published in hardback and ebook in July.

Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan

The devil’s daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin, to work as maid for the Minister of Culture, a man who lives a dual life. But the real reason she’s there is to bear him and his barren wife a child, the consequences of which curse the tenement building that is their home for a hundred years. As we travel through the nine floors of the building and the next eight decades, the resident’s lives entwine over the ages and in unpredictable ways. Along the way we encounter the city’s most infamous Madam, a seance, a civil rights lawyer, a bone mermaid, a famous Beat poet, a notorious Edinburgh gang, a spy, the literati, artists, thinkers, strippers, the spirit world – until a cosmic agent finally exposes the true horror of the building’s longest kept secret. No. 10 Luckenbooth Close hurtles the reader through personal and global history – eerily reflecting modern life today.

Luckenbooth will be published in January 2021

It really was a great night and so lovely to have the opportunity to meet the authors and chat about their forthcoming books. I’m really looking forward to reading them. Huge thanks to Cornerstone for bringing such a great event to Edinburgh and thanks to Kelly for having me along as her plus one.

One final photo taken on the way home, just because it’s not every bus stop which offers a view like this!