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Dear Book Case customer or friend,
The Upper Calder Valley is a magnet for talent! No fewer than three
locally-based authors have nationally-published books out this month - see
below under "Local Authors". Peter Thomas has added a new
book - about Hebden Royd Red Star AFC - to his current
bestselling "History of Hebden Bridge", and Jill Liddington
will be taking the nationally best-selling Rebel Girls on the road around
Yorkshire again.
Oxford University Press has been relaunching its Worlds
Classics series (the ones with the useful notes in the back), and
we're taking the opportunity to restock. We've tried to make it a bit easier to
get at our pre-20th-century fiction section by moving a card stand (space is
always a problem at The Book Case), and the Greeks and Romans are where they
usually are (unless of course they are in Philosophy).
New to Hebden Bridge is Piers Cross who has a
range of CDs with magical stories for relaxation and sleep for children. We
found them very soothing when we played them in the shop!
You've been a bit reticent about what books you're
enjoying, but we do have acclaim for Philip Roth's Plot Against
America, Scarlett Thomas's End of Mr Y, Barry
Unsworth's Ruby in Her Navel and Anita Amirrezvani's Blood of
Flowers. No one reports not enjoying anything. Buck up there!
There's another great Literary Quiz this month
from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker, this one on Song. See
below.
Just into stock are the latest issues of our US spiritual magazines,
Sagewoman - celebrating the Goddess as the Queen Hera;
Pan Gaia - on planetary change; and New Witch
- featuring Raven Digitalis.
We've heard from New Zealand that Rabbit has temporarily gone AWOL
again - but was eventually found in an old microwave oven in a shelter at the
bottom of the garden. Jo comments: "We have borrowed a phrase that Rabbit
the Rabbit learned when he attended your Harry Potter midnight book launch,
and will hencerforth maintain constant vigilance over Elliot's selection
of hiding places."
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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED
BOOKS
We highlight every month books we think are of
particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and
a CD.
Adult fiction: Alfred and Emily - Doris
Lessing (£14.99 at The Book Case). The first book after
Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize takes her back to her childhood in Southern
Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents lead. 'I
think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and
has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it
is a legacy I could have done without.’
Adult non-fiction: A History of Modern
Britain - Andrew Marr (£8.99). Confronts head-on the victory of
shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions
of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be
defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification.
Children: Whale Gets Stuck - Karen Hayles.
(£5.99) When Whale gets stuck on an ice floe, will his friends
be able to rescue him? Wonderful illustrations by Charles Fuge help tell this
story of friendship with a gentle ecological theme Ages: 2+ yrs.
CD: Joaquin Rodrigo: a Portrait (£10.99). A
representative selection of the prolific composer's music, including the
celebrated Adagio from the Concierto de Aranjuez. A Naxos
bestseller.
Price
Promotions
The quality bargain books on our centre table keep
moving and we still have some copies of Andrew Bibby's Backbone of
England at a special price of £12 and Ted
Hughes's Letters at £5.00 off. We're keeping
Puffin's 3-for-2 "Friends for Life" promotion of the following children's
classics going:
A Little Princess; Little Women; The Secret Garden; The Wind in
the Willows; Black Beauty; The Wizard of Oz; Treasure Island; Just So Stories;
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Oliver
Twist; and The Call of the Wild.
NEWS
Local Interest
A Century of Stars: Hebden Royd Red Star AFC 1908-2008 -
Peter Thomas (£4.00)
Hebden Royd Red Star AFC, under its
various names, is the oldest continuously-existing club in the Halifax League
and celebrates its centenary in October this year. This colourful new book is
full of memories, interviews, anecdotes and photographs, and due out 1st May!
To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Representation of the
People (Equal Franchise) Act in 1908 when women over 21 finally won
the right to vote, and the centenary of the Edwardian suffrage caravan
tour when a horse-drawn caravan set off from Whitby harbour to
take the Votes for Women message out to the remotest Yorkshire dales and market
towns in 1908, Jill Liddington and her bestselling
Rebel Girls book will be touring Yorkshire over the summer,
starting in June. We'll keep you posted, and the book is still selling well at
The Book Case. It includes local heroine Lavena Saltonstall.
Local Authors
Foul Play - Tom Palmer (£5.99)
Danny is
obsessed with two things: football - especially City Football Club - and
investigating crimes. So when England and City footballing hero Sam Roberts is
reported missing the day after Danny saw him being taken, blindfolded, into the
bowels of the City FC stadium late at night, he's determined to get to the
bottom of it. But is Danny getting into something he can't handle? From the
Todmorden based writer and reader-developer, an exciting new story for young
football fans, published by Puffin.
In Search of Thinking: Reflective Encounters in
Experiencing the World - Richard Bunzl (£10.95)
What are our
memories and feelings? What are ideas? What is the nature of time? How do our
thoughts connect with the world at large? Is freedom of thought an illusion, or
a possibility worth striving for? Hebden Bridge-based writer and musician
Richard Bunzl addresses some of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical
questions. Published by Rudolf Steiner Press and to be launched Sunday
8th June at the Rudolph Steiner centre, Macpelah.
The Scent Trail: A Journey of the Senses - Cecilia
Lyttleton (£7.99)
Follows one woman's journey across the
world as she explores the magic and history behind the ingredients of her own
bespoke perfume. Sold well in hardback and now out in Bantam paperback. The
author lives in Hebden Bridge.
British Orchids: A Site Guide - Roger Bowmer
(£12.99)
A handy reference to the locations of the 51 species
of wild orchid native to the British Isles; each one is covered individually,
with a brief description of its habitat and natural history, and an explanation
of its botanical name, with two colour photographs, and artworks provide
details of specific points of interest. A full listing of sites gives national
grid references for easy location, and there are complete listings of the
relevant Wildlife Trusts responsible for each site. The author lives in
Littleborough.
Galaxy British Book Awards
2008
Book of the Year and Author of the
Year: On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan -
£6.99
Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year:
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini -
£11.99
Children's Book of the Year: Horrid Henry & The
Abominable Snowman - Francesca Simon - £4.99
Newcomer of the Year: What Was Lost - Catherine
O'Flynn - £8.99
Popular Fiction Award: The Memory Keepers Daughter-
Kim Edwards - £7.99
All the above are in stock at The Book Case. We'll wait for the
paperbacks on the others.
The Daily Mail Book
Club
May's Book of the Month is
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (£7.99). In 1792 the
Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped,
unforgiving London, jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution.
Their neighbour is the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. The Book Case
will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of
this month's recommended title.
June: Singled Out by Virginia
Nicholson (£8.99)
July: Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)
LITERARY QUIZ:
another great quiz to intrigue and delight, from
Betsey and
Geoffrey Parker - this month it's on
Song
in literature. To find it online, click here:
http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on
Wind
in Poetry, click
here.
And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on
any theme to make a literary quiz, please
email them in!
NEW TITLES
May's hardback novels include Doris Lessing
and Ismail Kadare, and amongst paperbacks, we'll have
Alexander McCall Smith, William Trevor, Matthew Kneale, Barry Pilton,
an archaeological dig, a camel bookmobile, a Venetian glassblower, the Great
Hunger and a thriller set in the
1930s .
Reissued are Dumas (including the
little-known Last Cavalier), two Dostoyevskys,
Turgenev, "East Lynne" ("Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him, from
henceforth!"), lots of Wodehouse, two WWII novels
and a Daphne du Maurier.
Click
here
for the full list.
Non-fiction:
- Martin Parr, North Manchester architecture and
the world's work in photos in Art, Architecture and Photography
- Stalin, the Mitford sisters, a Highland shepherd, Kathleen
Ferrier, a North Yorkshire policeman and Ranulph Fiennes
in Biography
- revenge tragedies, Mike
Leigh and Shakespearean graphic
novels in Drama
- global warming and energy issues in
Environment
- River Cafe in Food
- Lots in Games, Hobbies and
Pastimes including being idle, QI, spiffing
stuff for boys, dads and grandads to do, card games,
poker, tractor-spotting, computers for the
aged and games and rhymes of
yesteryear
- a 17th-century Flower Book in Gardening
- Europe as a geographical niche, Caesar's Civil War, Tacitus's
Histories, Dancing in the streets, a history of the railways, Lawrence of
Arabia and Andrew Marr on
Modern Britain in History
- recovering from a stroke, potty-training, being
an atheist, finding yourself, Buddhist psychology, a 19th-century Russian
peasant following St Paul's advice, Little People
and becoming clairvoyant in
MBS
- the 2008 Proms, the brain and Music
- wild food, orchids and paintings of
birds in Nature
- Plato and
Descartes in
Philosophy
- Ovid, Petrarch, 30 poets reading their work on
DVD and why Poetry matters
- Al Gore on Blind Faith, Alastair Campbell on Tony Blair,
Tariq Ali on Venezuela, disaster capitalism and
the worst Politics ever
- Brian Clough and the original rules of
cricket and football in Sports
- picture cards for communication, an elemental journey, Kabul
to Chiapas, British Festivals, a scent trail, travelling with Herodotus, the
Aran Islands, speaking Polish and new guides to England,
Greece, Scotland, Canada, Egypt and Georgia, Armenia &
Azerbaijan in Travel
- and a stuck whale, Captain Underpants, Milly-Molly-Mandy,
archaeology detectives, Young Bond and a new
Michelle Magorian in Children's
books
For a fuller listing, click here:
http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
What
you've been buying:
APRIL 2008's
bestsellers at The Book Case
Peter Thomas’s
history of Hebden Bridge and area is back at number one at The Book Case, with
three other books of immediate local interest, and three more Yorkshire or
Northern ones. A novel, a sheep identification book and a couple plus their
whippet on a narrow boat in the south-eastern USA make up the diverse
remainder.
1. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter
Thomas, £5.99. Back at the top, this illustrated history of the
town and area, showing how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press
publication by a well-known local author.
2. Milltown Memories:
the Upper Calder Valley Captured on Camera, £2.50-£2.80.
We’re now selling back issues of this well-illustrated quarterly journal
featuring aspects of local history and old photographs, and they’re going
well!
3. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the
Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison, £12.00 at
The Book Case. Lovely illustrated hardback by local author and journalist
Andrew Bibby who walks the route of the Pennine Watershed exploring its
history, ecology, geography and culture, with photos by ex-HB photographer and
author John Morrison.
4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered
mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5.00. Now permanently in our
bestseller list, this well-researched and illustrated history of watermills in
the area.
5. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks, £7.99.
Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think and is devoid of
scruple or self-pity. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations
lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. Daily Mail Book of the
Month.
6. Know Your Sheep - Jack Byard, £4.99.
Colour photographs of and notes on the 41 breeds of sheep most likely to be
found on British farms. There can’t be an unlogged sheep in the district
by now. Tractors following soon!
7. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy
Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. Our first
publication still selling well, reporting on the textile workers of West
Yorkshire in 1849, with lots of graphic detail and interviews. Royd
Press.
8. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95.
The exciting 1968 locally-based children’s classic about the Cragg Vale
Coiners. The second in our Tales from the Tops series, "Ned Carver in Danger",
about the a boy who joins the Halifax Luddites for the 1812 assault on a mill,
is just out. Royd Press.
9. Pies and Prejudice - Stuart
Maconie, £6.99. Entertaining love letter to the North, finding
out where the cliches end and the truth begins. Hebden Bridge gets a
mention!
10. Narrow Dog to Indian River - Terry Darlington,
£12.99 at The Book Case. The couple who took their whippet to
Carcassonne by narrow boat are now in the south-east of the USA, navigating
their English narrowboat from Carolina to Florida.
Best wishes from your
local independent bookshop,
The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden
Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email:
bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
"No form can hold down what a novel can do because once
within its walls, its borders are open."
Robert Colls, "England's history boy"
(Melvyn Bragg) in Prospect, May 2008.