PRODUCT PREVIEW
elegant love story.
Raja Shehadeh
Palestinian Walks
Profile, £7.99, 21st,
9781861978998
How better to
learn about
the true nature
of Palestinian
life than by
walking its rugged landscape
in the company of this urbane,
objective and culturallyinformed
guide? A worthy
winner of the Orwell Prize
and deserving of a broader
readership.
Christopher Spry
Child C
Pocket, £6.99, 4th, 9781847391896
Misery memoir from one of the
victims of Eunice Spry, whose
shocking abuse of her foster
children gained massive tabloid
coverage last year.
Jo Hill
Naked
Headline Review, £6.99, 7th,
9780755318094
A misery memoir with a
voyeuristic twist provided by
the naturist camp setting.
SEPTEMBER
GIANTS
Maeve Binchy
This Year It Will Be
Different
Orion, £7.99, 4th,
9780752893761
The biggest title
in a month of
heavyweights,
Orion is
switching her to B-format
and will expect to sell 750,000
copies.
Stephen King
Duma Key
Hodder, £7.99, 4th,
9780340952214
Classic King, this should
continue the up-trend instigated
by Hodder’s reworking of his
jackets and take sales towards
400,000.
Jeffrey Archer
A Prisoner of Birth
Pan, £7.99, 5th,
9780330464062
Number one in hardback as
usual. His last paperback, False
Impression, has sold 400,000.
James Patterson
Double Cross
Headline, £7.99, 18th, 9780755330331
Another in his Alex Cross
series, with no let up in pace
and intrigue.
Khaled
Hosseini
A Thousand
Splendid Suns
Bloomsbury, £7.99, 1st,
9780747585893
At the time
of writing, it
seems quite
possible that sales of the trade
paperback will see the title
break the million barrier.
Cecelia Ahern
Thanks for the Memories
HarperFiction, £6.99, 15th, 9780007233694
Ahern moves to the pre-
Christmas period for the first
time. A Christmas-themed
hardback, The Gift, is released
simultaneously.
Polly Williams
A Good Girl Comes
Undone
Sphere, £6.99, 4th,
9780751539639
She sold 200,000
of The Rise and
Fall of a Yummy
Mummy and
although this is lacks her
previous book’s USP—this time
it’s independent-minded girl
confused by charms of macho
guy—Little, Brown’s stylish
packaging should remind her
fans that she’s a superior brand.
Tess Gerritsen
The Bone Garden
Bantam, £6.99, 8th,
9780553818352
Transworld is
modelling her
trajectory on that
of Lee Childs,
who of course
achieved a rare hardback and
paperback chart-topping double
earlier in the year. My reader
says there’s no let up in the
quality of bloodshed.
Elizabeth Noble
Things I Want My
Daughters To Know
Penguin, £6.99, 4th,
9780141030012
A costly
pearlescent
cover is a dead
giveaway of
the scale of the publisher’s
ambitions for her, and Penguin
is planning bespoke promotions
16 The Bookseller Autumn Paperback Preview | 6 June 2008 www.thebookseller.com
to emulate Hodder’s 200,000
sold of her début, The Reading
Group.
Henning
Mankell
Kennedy’s Brain
Vintage, £7.99, 4th,
9780099502760
Kurt Wallander,
played by
Kenneth
Branagh, makes
his broody début on the BBC
later in the year, but in the
meantime fans have this standalone
thriller which makes
a riveting read out of the
conspiracy theory that JFK’s
brain was removed after his
assassination.
Sadie Jones
The Outcast
Vintage, £7.99, 4th, 9780099513421
Middle-class manners in the
post-war home counties mask
dark secrets at the heart of
respectable society in this
outstanding début. It’s better
than McEwan at his best and
the Best Début win at the
Good Housekeeping Awards
will be the first of many prizes,
including perhaps the Orange
Broadband Prize for Fiction, for
which it is shortlisted.
Paul Torday
The Irresistible
Inheritance of
Wilberforce
Phoenix, £7.99, 4th,
9780753823156
60,000 hardback
sales of Salmon
Fishing in the
Yemen are an indication that
smart packaging and a catchy
title had almost as much to do
with its success as Richard
& Judy. My reader loved the
storytelling in reverse and said
it made her train journeys seem
frustratingly short.
BESTSELLERS
Joanne Harris
The Evil Seed
Black Swan, £6.99, 8th, 9780552775045
A reissue of Harris’ first-ever
title, out of print for 10 years.
The recent reissue of her
second, Sleep, Pale Sister, sold
six figures.
Conn Iggulden
Lords of the Bow
HarperFiction, £6.99, 1st, 9780007201761
The second in his well-received
Conqueror trilogy; the first sold
AUTUMN PAPERPACK PREVIEW
130,000 and the conclusion,
Bones of the Hills, comes out in
hardback at the same time.
Susan Lewis
Missing
Arrow, £6.99, 4th,
9780099492344
Lewis is following
the market trend
with a grittier
aspect to her
romantic dramas
and sales are climbing as a
result.
J G Ballard
Miracles of Life
HarperPerennial, £8.99, 1st, 9780007272341
Advanced prostate cancer
means that this fascinating
autobiography may well be
be the last book from one of
Britain’s most distinctive and
distinguished writers.
Jack Sheffield
Mister Teacher
Corgi, £7.99, 22nd, 9780593057865
The sequel to Teacher, Teacher,
which sold more than 40,000
copies. An encouraging
20,000 sold in C-format plus
supermarket support indicates
a much bigger hit this time.
James Cobb
Robert Ludlum’s The
Arctic Event
Orion, £6.99, 18th,
9780752882109
Matt Damon’s
Bourne breathed
new life into what
used to be known
as the airport thriller and Orion
is keeping the Ludlum brand
alive by pitching for a younger
readership.
Philip Roth
Exit Ghost
Vintage, £7.99, 4th,
9780099516088
Reviews were
mixed and
hardback sales
half those of
Everyman. I
struggled with the device of
imaginary scenes rendered in
dramatic form, but the passing
of Zuckerman makes this
an event—a literary Deathly
Hallows perhaps!
Lyn Andrews
Days of Hope
Headline, £6.99, 4th, 9780755331970
Headline claim that sales of
100,000 made her last, Far
From Home, 2007’s biggest
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.