Short Books

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Short Books

Recently published

£12.99 / 302pp / 7th Mar 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-080-7 / UK & Commonwealth: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Ed Victor

Will Storr is a journalist, novelist and photographer. His features have appeared in numerous newspapers, including The Guardian, The Times and The Observer. He has been named New Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year. His critically acclaimed first book, Will Storr versus The Supernatural is published by Random House in the UK. Killian Lone is his first novel.

Will Storr

This is Killian’s confession – a strange tragedy of love, ambition and incredible food.

Killian Lone comes from a line of gifted cooks stretching back to the 17th century, and yearns to become a famous chef himself. When he starts an apprenticeship under Max Mann, the most famous chef in the country, he looks set to continue the family tradition. But the reality of kitchen life is brutal. Even his fellow apprentice Kathryn, who shows Killian uncharacteristic kindness, can’t stop him being sucked into the debauched and vicious world of 1980s fine dining, and gradually he is forced to surrender his dream. Then he discovers a dark family secret – the legacy of a long-dead ancestor who was burnt as a witch for creating food so delicious it was said to turn all who tasted it mad. Killian knows he can use this secret to achieve his ambitions and maybe, finally, win Kathryn’s affections. But is he willing to pay the price?

FICTION

THE HUNGER AND THE HOWLING OF KILLIAN LONE

Jordi Punti was born near Barcelona, Spain, in 1967 and is a writer, translator and a regular contributor to the Spanish and Catalan press. Punti is considered one of the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature. In 1998 his first book of short stories, Pell d’armadillo (Proa, 1998) won the Serra d’Or Critics’ Prize. Lost Luggage is his first novel.

We have the same memory. It’s very early. The sun has just come up. The three

of us – father, mother and son – are yawning sleepily. Mum’s made some tea or coffee, and we duly drink it. We’re in the living room, or the kitchen, as still and quiet as statues. Our eyes keep closing. Soon we hear a lorry pull up outside the house and then the blast of its horn. We’ve been expecting it, but still we’re startled by the roar and suddenly wide awake. The windows rattle. The racket must have woken up the neighbours. We go out to see our father off. He climbs into the truck, sticks his arm out of the window and attempts a smile as he waves goodbye. It’s clear he feels bad about leaving. Or not. He’s only been with us a couple of days, three at the most. His two mates call out to us from the cabin and wave goodbye too. Time passes in slow motion. The Pegaso sets off, lumbering into the distance as if it doesn’t want to leave either. Mum’s in her dressing gown and a tear rolls down her cheek, or maybe not. We, the sons, are in pyjamas and slippers. Our feet are freezing. We go inside and get into our still-warm beds, but we can’t go back to sleep because of all the thoughts buzzing round in our heads. We’re three, four, five and seven years old and we’ve been through the same scene several times before. We don’t know it then, but we’ve just seen our father for the last time. We have the same memory.

“A book as extraordinary as it is memorable. Jordi Puntí already belongs to the noble tradition of the great storytellers.” Rock de Lux

“A conjuring trick. Incomparable literature.” El País

“Lost Luggage is an astonishing literary artefact. Marvellous.” El Mundo

“A remarkable work of literary fiction that also manages to be unputdownable.” London Review of Books

£14.99 / 368pp / 4th April 2013 / Demy trade paperback with flaps / ISBN 978-1-78072-044-9 / World English: Short Books / Translation Rights: MB Agencia

FICTION

LOST LUGGAGE

Jordi Punti

Christof, Christophe, Christopher and Cristòfol are four brothers – sons of the same father and four very different mothers, yet none of them knows of the others’ existence. They live in Frankfurt, Paris, London and Barcelona and they unwittingly share the fact that their father, Gabriel Delacruz – a truck driver – abandoned them when they were little and they never heard from him again.

Then one day, Cristòfol is contacted by the police: his father is officially a missing person. This fact leads him to discover that he has three half-brothers, and the four young men come together for the first time. Two decades have passed since their father last saw any of them. They barely remember what he was like, but they decide to look for him to resolve their doubts. Why did he abandon them? Why do all four have the same name? Did he intend for them to meet?

Divided by geography yet united by blood, the “Cristobales” set out on a quest that is at once painful, hilarious and extraordinary. They discover a man who during thirty years of driving was able to escape the darkness of Franco’s Spain and to explore a luminous Europe, a journey that, with the birth of his sons, both opened and broke his heart.

WHIRLIGIG

Magnus Macintyre

Claypole is not ‘a large man’. He is a fat man. A fat man with thin limbs, like an egg with tentacles. And his life is not going well. He’s alone, idle and on the brink of a medical crisis when a childhood acquaintance makes him an offer he can’t understand, can’t talk about, and ultimately can’t refuse.

A week later, he finds himself in the wilds of Scotland, plunged into an eccentric community at war over a wind farm. He’s supposed to be a backer, but he has no idea what side he’s on, even though it may bag him a lot of money. All he wants is to look like a hero in front of the woman with the bright blue eyes who brought him here. To do so he must run the gauntlet of a family with many dark secrets, some dangerous hippies and their hallucinogenic potions, and the wilderness itself with all its threats and dangers.

Whirligig is a raucous, joyous, often poignant comedy about the redemptive power of the countryside. Written with peerless wit, it’s a timely fable that takes its place within the tradition of the great English comic novel. It’s The Wicker Man as told by P.G. Wodehouse.

£7.99 / 288pp / 4th April 2013/ B format paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-127-9 / World Rights: Short Books

FICTION

Magnus Macintyre grew up in suburban Oxford and rural Argyll, and read History at Jesus College, Cambridge. He has been a serial entrepreneur in magazine publishing, film, television, and wind farming, with varying degrees of success. Only once has he had a proper job, as managing director of the New Statesman. He now lives in Somerset with Lucie and their two children, and writes full time. Whirligig is his first novel.

‘Whirligig has an impressively immersive sense of wry, often brilliantly dark involvement. Its voice is strong and clear and fresh and rousing. Like a bagpipe.’ Jez Butterworth, author of Jerusalem

£12.99 / 304pp / 2nd May 2013/ Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-148-4/ World Rights: Short Books

A COMMONPLACE KILLING

Siân Busby

On a damp July morning in 1946, two schoolboys find a woman’s body in a blitzed churchyard in Holloway, north London. The woman is identified as Lillian Frobisher, who lived with her family in a drab, bomb-damaged house a couple of streets away. She had been strangled and left on a pile of rubble with her clothes and handbag apparently intact.

The police assume that Lil must have been the random victim of an ex-serviceman looking for a cheap thrill; but the autopsy finds no evidence of sexual assault and Divisional Detective Inspector Jim Cooper turns his attention to the victim’s private life.

How did Lil come to be in the churchyard – a well-known lovers’ haunt? If she hadn’t been raped, why was she strangled? Why was her husband seemingly unaware that she had failed to come home on the night she was murdered?

The facts of the case, as DDI Cooper unravels them, point to a postwar world of disillusionment, bitterness and emotional disturbance, one in which getting back to normal is proving to be far more difficult than the triumphalism and cheerful optimism of the news reels allows...

Siân Busby was an award-winning writer, broadcaster and film maker. She published four books, including The Cruel Mother, a memoir of her great-grandmother which won the Mind Book Award in 2004; and a novel, McNaughten, which was published to critical acclaim in 2009. She was married to the BBC Business editor, Robert Peston, and had two sons. She died in September 2012 after a long illness and will be much missed.

FICTION

BE YOUR OWN NUTRITIONISTRethink your Relationship with Food: Discover The True Art of Healthy Eating

George Cooper

Bombarded by fad diets and scary slogans telling you how to eat healthily and lose weight? Confused as to which of the hundreds of diet books out there is telling the truth? Be Your Own Nutritionist has the answers. Forget low-carb diets, superfoods, your five-a-day – there are no hard and fast rules about what to eat, when. A healthy diet varies from person to person and, most importantly, from place to place.

This is an exciting new take on nutrition – showing how factors such as climate, time, environment and emotional wellbeing should all affect the way we eat. Combining age-old traditions of healthy eating (did you know that the mid-Victorians had the best diet of any Britons before or since?) with modern scientific research, clinician George Cooper shows you how to ignore the fads and eat right for yourself. He explains in clear, easy terms exactly how your digestive system works (and why you need to know). He explains why raw food is sometimes bad for you; and how hot, spicy foods can mitigate against damp and cold.

Packed with easily-adaptable recipes and useful tips, this book is your indispensible guide to eating well, wherever you are.

George Cooper studied biological sciences at Oxford but developed a severe digestive illness during his studies. After receiving no benefit from conventional medicine, he looked to Chinese techniques, training in traditional Chinese medicine. He now runs a busy clinic in Bristol, offering acupuncture and nutritional advice. He also teaches at the University of Bristol Medical School and the College of Naturopathic Medicine.

£12.99 / 288pp / 3rd January 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-156-9 / World Rights: Short Books

NON-FICTION/HEALTH

£12.99 / 288pp / 3rd January 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-036-4 / World Rights: Short Books

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ROCKETSA Memoir

Jessica Fox

Three years ago Jessica Fox was living in Hollywood, an ambitious 26-year-old filmmaker with a high-stress job at NASA. Working late one night, craving another life, she was seized by a moment of inspiration and tapped ‘second hand bookshop Scotland’ into Google. She clicked on the first link she saw.

A month later, she arrived 2,000 miles across the Atlantic in Wigtown, on the west coast of Scotland, and knocked on the door of the bookshop she would be living in for the next month...

The rollercoaster journey that ensued – taking in Scottish Hanukkah, yoga on Galloway’s West Coast, and a waxing that she will never forget – would both break and mend her heart. It would also teach her that sometimes we must have the courage to travel the path less taken. Only then can we truly become the writers of our own stories.

Jessica Fox is a writer and film director. She has consulted for Harper Collins and was a resident storyteller and film director at NASA. Jessica’s films have been shown at both US and international film festivals. She heads Mythic Image Studios and divides her time between the US and the UK. This is her first book.

NON-FICTION/MEMOIR

This is a book for anyone who has ever thought “What if ?” A true story about a woman who dared to follow her dreams

THE PHYSICS OF FINANCEPredicting the Unpredictable: Can Science Beat the Market?

James Owen Weatherall

After the economic meltdown of 2008, many pundits placed the blame on ‘complex financial instruments’ like derivatives, and the physicists and mathematicians who dreamed them up. But a young academic named James Owen Weatherall quickly began to question this narrative. Were the physicists really at fault?

In this important and engaging book, Weatherall tells the story of how physicists came to Wall Street and how their ideas changed finance forever. Taking us from fin-de-siecle Paris to Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, from wartime government labs to Yippie communes, he shows how physicists successfully brought their science to bear on some of the thorniest problems in economics, from options pricing to bubbles. The trouble is that models – whether in science or finance – have limitations; they break down under certain conditions. And in 2008, sophisticated models fell into the hands of people who didn’t understand their purpose, and didn’t care. It was a catastrophic misuse of science.

The solution, as Weatherall argues, is not to give up on models; it is simply to make them better.

James Owen Weatherall is a physicist, philosopher and mathematician. He holds graduate degrees from Harvard, the Stevens Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Irvine, where he is presently an assistant professor of logic and philosophy of science. He has written for Slate and Scientific American.

£12.99 / 288pp / 7th Feb 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-139-2 / UK & CW: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Zoe Pagnamenta/United Agents

NON-FICTION/ECONOMICS

‘Even laymen can enjoy Weatherall’s sketches of eccentric theoreticians... He adeptly simplifies information for the uninitiated.’Publishers Weekly.

£12/ 288pp / 7th February 2013 / B format hardback / ISBN 978-1-78072-102-6 / World Rights: Short Books

THE ROMANTIC ECONOMISTA Story of Love and Market Forces

William Nicolson

‘I know that this sounds like a bit of a cliché, but really, it’s not you…’ His torturer was funny, talented, and unbearably beautiful. His mother had said she wanted him to marry her. And he had lost her in a personal best time of six weeks.

It was when he found himself being dumped like this yet again that William Nicolson decided something had to be done.

William is an economist, which means he is good at reducing an infinitely complex world into a set of clear, rational principles about the way people and markets behave. Unfortunately, he has never been able to replicate this in the world of romance. Girls confuse him.

In this book, he sets out to apply the rules of economics to his floundering love life. For a time, everything seems to be clearer. Want to play hard to get? Reduce your supply. Want a girlfriend? Find an undervalued asset. Why are all the good ones taken? That’ll be the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

But things don’t work out quite as he’d hoped. In fact, he finds himself more isolated than ever. It looks like economics doesn’t have all the answers after all. Not, that is, until John Maynard Keynes comes along....

William Nicolson is 25 years old, and has just started a job as a trainee solicitor at a City law firm. He studied Economics and Politics at Edinburgh University, and his love life, we’re pleased to report, has never been better.

£12.99 / 288pp / 7th Feb 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-139-2 / UK & CW: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Zoe Pagnamenta/United Agents

NON-FICTION/MEMOIR

£16.99 / 224pp / 7th March 2013 / Colour illustrated crown quarto paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-112-5 / World Rights: Short Books

VEG STREETGrow Dinner on Your Doorstep (And Grow Your Community too)

Naomi Schillinger

A few years ago, Naomi Schillinger got together with her neighbours to start a community gardening scheme. Today, they live in a street in which no less than 100 residents have turned over their front gardens to growing their own fruit and veg: lettuces, leeks and beetroot in raised beds, teepees billowing with sweet peas and runner beans, rhubarb by the door...

Whether you live in a rented flat with a window box, a house with a front garden – if you have access to a bit of pavement or decide to reclaim some unloved or forgotten corner – there will be ideas in this book which will encourage you to have a go at growing your own fruit and veg (and flowers) throughout the year; and, in so doing, create your own mini Eden.

Naomi Schillinger is a journalist, photographer and professional gardener. Her blog, Out of My Shed, packed full of simple ‘how to’s’ and shared knowledge, gleaned from friends, colleagues and her fellow allotmenteers, has gained a huge following over the past few years. She lives with her husband in Finsbury Park.

NON-FICTION/GARDENING

TEN MILLION ALIENSA Journey Through Our Strange Planet

Simon Barnes

Life on planet earth is not weirder than we imagine. It’s weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we’re all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, ridiculous numbers of beetles, molluscs the size of a bus, the sexual gladiators of slugs, bdelloid rotifers who haven’t had sex for millions of years and creatures called water bears: you can boil them, freeze them and fire them off into space without killing them.

We’re all part of the animal kingdom, appearing in what Darwin called “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful”. Simon Barnes has brought us all together in a single breathtakingly audacious book, seeking not what separates us but what unites us.

To read Ten Million Aliens is to go white-water rafting through the entire animal kingdom. It is an intricately structured book that brings in deep layers of arcane knowledge, the works of Darwin and James Joyce, Barnes’s own don’t-try-this-at-home adventures in the wild, David Attenborough and Sherlock Holmes. It opens your eyes to the real marvels of the planet we live on.

Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief sportswriter for the Times. He is also a novelist, nature writer and horseman, and the author of a dozen books, including the bestselling How to be a Bad Birdwatcher and The Meaning of Sport (Short Books). He lives in Suffolk with his family.

£20 / 302pp / 7th March 2013 / Royal hardback / ISBN 978-1-78072-142-2 / UK & Commonwealth: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Capel and Land

NON-FICTION/SCIENCE

£12.99 / 288pp / 7th March 2013 / B format hardback / ISBN 978-1-78072-124-8 / World Rights: Short Books

I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO BE HAPPYThe Story of a Sixties Family

Rupert Christiansen

They married at St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in September 1948 – the groom, the ambitious son of the editor of the Express; the bride, the beautiful, somewhat rebellious daughter of an upstanding family from the provincial middle-middle class. A young man who was pushed forward by family expectation; a young woman pulled back...

In this poignant and perceptive portrait of his parents’ early marriage and catastrophically acrimonious divorce, Rupert Christiansen tells the story of a generation. With the narrative power of The Ice Storm and Revolutionary Road, he chronicles the experience not just of one particular class, but of an era, when the loosening of the stays on middle-class marriage precipitated a rollercoaster decade of heartbreak and loss.

Rupert Christiansen was born in London and educated at King’s College, Cambridge. He has written several books, including Prima Donna, Paris Babylon, The Visitors, Pocket Guide to Opera and The Complete Book of Aunts. He is currently opera critic and arts columnist for The Daily Telegraph, dance critic for The Mail on Sunday and a member of the editorial board of Opera magazine. He has contributed to many newspapers and magazines, including the Spectator, TLS, Harpers & Queen, Vanity Fair, New Yorker and Talk. In 1997, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the British judge for the Birgit Nilsson Prize.

£20 / 302pp / 7th March 2013 / Royal hardback / ISBN 978-1-78072-142-2 / UK & Commonwealth: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Capel and Land

NON-FICTION/AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Tom Cheshire read Classics at Cambridge University, where he won the John Stuart of Rannoch scholarship. He is assistant editor of the UK edition of WIRED and has written several cover stories. His work has also appeared in GQ, WIRED US and Italia, Condé Nast Traveller, and on BBC2. He has spoken at Chatham House, BAFTA and the Apple Store. He is 25-years-old and lives in London.

“There exist few families in the world of exploration who have had a vision more vast, ambitious and creative.” – Neil Armstrong

Auguste Piccard was ten miles high, the first human to enter the stratosphere, in a balloon he had designed and

built himself. Writing calculations in his notebook, he was working out whether he would return to earth alive.

Some hours earlier, and a few minutes after take off from Augsbourg in Bavaria at 3.53 in the morning of May 26, 1931, Piccard had heard a whistling sound. An electrical insulator had broken off and the pressurised cabin – the very first of its kind – was leaking oxygen. At two and a half miles up, his assistant Paul Kipfer had reported: “We are at 2½ miles and there is still an equal pressure inside and outside the cabin.” Piccard, dismayed to find the airtight aluminium cabin he had designed was nearly as leaky as a traditional wicker basket, set about patching the hole, so that they might avoid suffocation. Little by little, the whistling grew

feebler, until the pair had never been so glad of silence. The problem was solved, for now.

Piccard could observe the stratosphere for the first time in human history: “The beauty of the sky is the most poignant we have seen,” he wrote in the log book, in a neat and organised hand. “It is sombre, dark blue or violet, almost black.” But he didn’t have long to reflect; Kipfer and Piccard soon made “a very unpleasant discovery”: the valve to release gas from the balloon was broken. If the gas could not escape, the balloon could not descend. At 9.56am, six hours after take off, Piccard noted in his logbook: “We are prisoners of the air.” “I do not know of any case of a balloon not coming down,” he told Kipfer. “The only question is where, and when.”

£20 / 288pp / 4th April 2013 / Royal hardback / ISBN 978-1-78072-089-0 / World Rights: Short Books

THE EXPLORERSHow Three Generations of One Family Went Higher, Deeper and Further than Anyone Before

Tom Cheshire

Meet the Piccards. Swiss, all over six foot five, with high foreheads and leonine hair. Great uncle Jules helped build the first hydroelectric power plant in the world. Grandfather Auguste went higher than any man before him, to the edge of space, in a balloon he designed himself. And when his twin brother Jean-Felix bettered his record, Auguste constructed his own submersible and went deeper than any man before. He held the deepest dive record, posthumously, for decades – until film director James Cameron finally beat him in 2012.

Auguste’s grandson Bertrand wanted to escape the family name and became a psychiatrist. He then became the first person to circumnavigate the world in a balloon. Now, like his grandfather, he’s building his own vehicle: a solar-powered plane to fly across the globe non-stop.

It might make it look like the Piccard family coasted on breakthrough after breakthrough. But they won their achievements as private individuals, without government support. And they were frequently ridiculed for their efforts (it was years before Nasa adopted both Jean-Felix’s and Bertrand’s techniques).

This is a remarkable story, not just about the extraordinary achievements of a family, but about the power of the individual to spur innovation, even when the consensus is against you.

NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHY

FRIENDFLUENCEThe Hidden Ways in which Friendships Shape Our Character and Life Chances

Carlin Flora

Did you know that having good friendships makes you cleverer, richer, and healthier? Increasingly, research shows that the single most important factor in a well-lived life is not our jobs, our families, our health or wealth – it’s the breadth and depth of our friendships. Good friends can be our main source of moral support, midwives to our dreams, and generous suppliers of love, humour and understanding. As Virginia Woolf put it, “Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I go to my friends.”

In this revelatory, entertaining and touching book, Carlin Flora argues that it is our friendships – far more than our family or education – that make us who we are. Tracing the hidden ways in which friendships mould and structure our characters and life chances from infancy to old age, Flora draws on personal anecdotes, scientific research, and accounts of famous friendships (from those of Picasso and Matisse to the band U2) to show us how to make friends, how to stay friends and, crucially, how to be good friends. In doing so, she says, we will not only grow as human beings, but will live longer, happier lives.

Carlin Flora was a features editor and writer for Psychology Today. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, Showbiz Tonight, Fox News, NPR, and BBC News.

£12.99 / 302pp / 2nd May 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-142-2 / UK & Commonwealth: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Marsh

NON-FICTION/SOCIAL SCIENCE

MR GIGOne Man’s Search for the Soul of Live Music

Nige Tassell

Roadie. DJ. Promoter. Reviewer. Punter. Nige Tassell’s adult life has been defined by live music. It’s the fabric of his being, his bloodline, his DNA. He is Mr Gig. Or at least he was.

A decade ago, Mr Gig hung up his backstage pass and headed off to raise children in rural isolation. Now, with house renovated and kids domesticated, he turns back to face the music and barely recognises his former love. The astronomical ticket prices. The sea of mobile phones obscuring the view. The once-iconic venues selling naming rights to drinks companies…

On a mission to rekindle his passion for live music, Nige embarks on a round-Britain trip – from super-sized arena shows to tiny folk festivals, from blacker-than-black death metal gatherings to brightly coloured ’80s pop revivals – in an attempt to get his groove back. Along the way, he finds himself the recipient of a Michael Eavis practical joke, scoffs his way through Elbow’s backstage banquet, endures a near-death experience en route to a festival on a remote Hebridean island, and even goes gladioli shopping with a Smiths tribute band.

Will Nige fall back in love with live music? Can he make peace with middle age? And will he ever again be able to rightfully call himself Mr Gig?

£8.99 / 302pp / 2nd May 2013 / B format paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-161-3 / World English: Short Books / Translation Rights: MBA

Nige Tassell is a music journalist whose writing has appeared in The Word, Q, The Guardian, The Sunday Times and New Statesman among others. He lives with his family in the Mendip Hills in Somerset. Mr Gig is his first book.

£12.99 / 302pp / 2nd May 2013 / Demy trade paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-142-2 / UK & Commonwealth: Short Books / Foreign Rights: Marsh

NON-FICTION/CULTURE

‘Mr Gig is a sweet and tender paean to a very particular lost love, the live gig, and a wise and witty account of how one man set about rekindling that youthful romance.’ Stuart Maconie, author of Cider with Roadies

BIRDS IN A CAGEGermany, 1941. Four PoW Birdwatchers. The Unlikely Beginning Of British Wildlife Conservation

Derek Niemann

Soon after his arrival at Warburg PoW camp, British army officer John Buxton found an unexpected means of escape from the horrors of internment. Passing his days covertly watching birds, he was unaware that he, too, was being watched. Peter Conder, also a passionate ornithologist, had noticed Buxton gazing skywards. He approached him and, with two other prisoners, they founded a secret birdwatching society.

This is the untold story of an obsessive quest behind barbed wire. Through their shared love of birds, four PoWs overcame hunger, hardship, fear and stultifying boredom. Their quest would draw in not only their fellow prisoners, but also some of the German guards, at great risk to them all.

Derek Niemann draws on original diaries, letters and drawings, to show how Conder, Barrett, Waterston and Buxton were forged by their wartime experience into the giants of postwar wildlife conservation. Their legacy lives on.

Derek Niemann is the editor of the RSPB’s children’s magazine and has written several books on nature and conservation for young readers. He lives in Bedfordshire with his family.

Fou r POW bi rdwatcher sT he u nl ikely b egi n n i ng

o f Br i t i sh wi ld l i fe co n s e r vat io n

D E R E K N I E M A N N

Wa rbu r g, ge rma n y, 1 9 4 1

includes rare

original material

‘The most gripping and

illuminating tale of a hidden side of PoW life in

WWII.’Toby Little

‘A wonderful story... gives you that warm feeling

that a shared love of Nature conquers all.’John Beard

In association with the RSPB

£8.99 / 288pp / 2nd May 2013 / B format paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-136-1 / World Rights: Short Books

NON-FICTION/HISTORY

£8.99 / 288pp / 2nd May 2013 / B format paperback / ISBN 978-1-78072-136-1 / World Rights: Short Books

FICTION

A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE Charles ChadwickB format hardback 978-1-906021-40-5

BENNY & SHRIMP Katarina MazettiB format paperback 978-1-906021-36-8

CRIMSON CHINA Betsy TobinB format paperback 978-1-907595-22-6

ICE LAND Betsy TobinB format paperback 978-1-906021-34-4

THE DAYS OF JUDY B Rose HeineyB format paperback 978-1-906021-35-1

MCNAUGHTEN Sian BusbyB format paperback 978-1-906021-88-7

OPHELIA IN PIECES Clare JacobDemy trade paperback 978-1-907595-14-1

SEVEN DAYS ONE SUMMER Kate MorrisB format paperback 978-1-907595-27-1

THE HARLOT’S PRESS Helen PikeDemy trade paperback 978-1-907595-40-0

THE BASKERVILLE LEGACY John O’ConnellA format hardback 978-1-907595-46-2

THE HOUSE ON PARADISE STREET Sofka Zinovieff B format paperback978-1-78072-091-3

THE LAST DAY OF TERM Francis GilbertDemy trade paperback 978-1-907595-51-1

THE TROUBLE WITH ALICE Olivia GlazebrookDemy trade paperback 978-1-907595-15-8

THE WHITE LIE Andrea GilliesB format paperback 978-1-78072-090-6

WE ALL RAN INTO THE SUNLIGHT Natalie Young 978-1-907595-41-7

NON-FICTION

A BOOK OF HEROES Simon Barnes B format paperback 978-1-904095-19-6

AMO, AMAS, AMAT... AND ALL THAT Harry Mount B format paperback 978-1-906021-15-3

A RAGE FOR ROCK GARDENING Nicola Shulman B format paperback 978-1-904095-47-7

A ROMANOV FANTASY Frances WelchDemy hardback978-1-904977-71-1

A SEASIDE PRACTICE Dr Tom SmithB format paperback 978-1-906021-23-8

AN ALMOST ENGLISH LIFE Miriam GrossB format hardback 978-1-78072-099-9

AN INSOMNIAC’S GUIDE TO THE SMALL HOURSYsenda Maxtone Graham 978-1-78072-113-2

AND SHE LAUGHED NO MORE Stephen Foster B format paperback 978-1-906021-62-7

A WONDERFUL LITTLE GIRL Siân BusbyB format ppbk 978-1-904095-70-5

BRITAIN’S ROTTENEST YEARS Derek WilsonB format hardback 978-1-906021-58-0

BROWN’S BRITAIN Robert PestonRoyal paperback 978-1-904977-36-0

BIRDWATCHING WITH YOUR EYES CLOSEDSimon Barnes B format hardback978-1-907595-47-9

CALAMITIES & CATASTROPHESDerek Wilson B format pbk978-1-907595-45-5

CAN WE PLAY YOU EVERY WEEK? Max Velody B format ppbk 978-1-906021-74-0

CHAMFORT Edited by Douglas ParméeB format hdbk 978-1-904095-62-0

CHANGE THE WORLD FOR A FIVER 210mm x 196mm paperback 978-1-904095-96-5

CHANGE THE WORLD 9-5 210mm x 196mm paperback 978-1-904977-48-3

COOKING FOR CLAUDINE John BaxterB format paperback 978-1-907595-12-7

DEAR GRANNY SMITH Roy Mayall Cut down A format ppbck 978-1-906021-97-9

DINNER WITH CHURCHILL Cita StelzerB format paperback 978-1-78072-038-8

DREAMING IN CHINESE Deborah Fallows 129x192mm hardback 978-1-906021-55-9

FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE Jane Fearnley-WhittingstallRoyal hardback 978-1-904977-76-6

SHORT BOOKS CLASSICS

FOR THE LOVE OF LETTERS John O’ ConnellB Format Hardback 978-1-78072-109-5

FRANCE ON TWO WHEELS Adam RuckB format papeback 978-1-907595-72-1

GOING BUDDHIST Peter J. ConradiB format paperback 978-1-904977-01-8

GRAVEN WITH DIAMONDS Nicola Shulman Royal hardback 978-1-906021-11-5

HAVE A NICE DAY Justin WebbB format paperback 978-1-906021-70-2

HOW TO BE A BAD BIRDWATCHER Simon Barnes B format paperback 978-1-904977-05-6

HOW TO BE DANISH Patrick KingsleyA format Hardback 978-1-78072-133-0

HOW TO BE WILD Simon BarnesB format paperback 978-1-904977-97-1

HOW TO GET THINGS REALLY FLAT Andrew Martin B format paperback 978-1-906021-71-9

I TOLD YOU I WAS ILL John O’ConnellB format paperback 978-1-904977-44-5

I’M A TEACHER GET ME OUT OF HERE! Francis Gilbert B format paperback 978-1-904977-02-5

IRIS MURDOCH – A WRITER AT WAR ed. Peter Conradi Royal hardback 978-1-906021-22-1

IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME Charlotte HigginsB format paperback 978-1-906021-59-7

JEREMY & AMY Jeremy KeelingB format paperback 978-1-907595-18-9

KEEPER Andrea GilliesB format paperback 978-1-906021-99-3

LOWLIFE Jeremy ClarkeB format hardback 978-1-907595-51-6

MADCAP Tim Willis B format pbck 978-1-904095-50-7

MIND THE GAP Ferdinand MountB format paperback 978-1-904977-32-2

MY NATURAL HISTORY Simon Barnes B format paperback 978-1-907595-28-8

NIGEL DEMPSTER & THE DEATH OF DISCRETION Tim Willis B format paperback 978-1-907595-25-7

NOTES ON THEM AND US Justin WebbDemy hardback 978-1-907595-43-1

ONCE MORE WITH FEELING Rupert Christiansen B format hardback 978-1-906021-16-0

OLD BOYS’ NETWORK John Rae164 x 256mm paperback 978-1-906021-93-1

ONE TO NINE Andrew HodgesB format paperback 978-1-906021-26-9

OUT OF THE WOODS Will CohuB format hardback 978 -1-904977-83-4

SEASONAL SUICIDE NOTES Roger Lewis 129x192mm hardback 978-1-96021-76-4

STEVE: UNWANTED Steve WalkerDemy trade paperback 978-1-907595-65-3

SUCCESS AGAINST THE ODDS Brett WigdortzB format paperback 978-1-78072-130-9

SUPERLATIVES The Superlatist150x190mm 978-1-78072-110-1

TEACHER ON THE RUN Francis Gilbert B format paperback 978-1-904977-55-1

TEACH YOUR GRANNY TO TEXT 280 x 214 mm paperback 978-1-406320-71-8

THE CRUEL MOTHER Siân Busby B format paperback 978-1-904977-06-3

THE CONUNDRUM David OwenA format hardback 978-1-78072-105-7

THE FATHER’S BOOK Elma Van Vliet232 x 170mm hardback 978-1-906021-69-6

THE GIRLS’ EMPIRE 198x152mm hardback978-1-906021-17-7

THE GOOD GRANNY COMPANIONJane Fearnley-Whittingstall198 x 152mm paperback 978-1-906021-66-5

THE GOOD GRANNY COOKBOOKJane Fearnley-Whittingstall164 x 256mm paperback 978-1-906021-44-3

THE GOOD GRANNY GUIDE Jane Fearnley-WhittingstallB format paperback 978-1-904977-70-4

THE HORSEY LIFE Simon Barnes B format paperback 978-1-906021-94-8

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ETON Nick Fraser B format paperback 978-1-906021-27-6

THE J.M. BARRIE LADIES’ SWIMMING SOCIETYBarbara J. Zitwer B format pb 978-1-78072-040-1

THE LAST RESORT Douglas RogersDemy paperback 978-1-906021-91-7

THE MEANING OF SPORT Simon Barnes B format paperback 978-1-904977-85-8

THE MIDLIFE MANUAL John O’Connell & Jessica Cargill-Thompson198x152mm hdbck 978-1-907595-05-9

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WALK IN THE WORLDJohn Baxter Cutdown B paperback 978-1-78072-043-2

THE MOTHER’S BOOK Elma Van Vliet 232x170mm hardback 978-1-906021-09-2

THE POCKET BOOK OF GOOD GRANNIESJane Fearnley-Whittingstall Cutdown B format HB978-1-907595-50-9

THE RUSSIAN COURT AT SEA Frances Welch B format hardback 978-1-906021-78-8

THE SOCIAL ANIMAL David BrooksRoyal paperback 978-1-907595-44-8

THE WISDOM OF DONKEYS Andy Merrifield B format paperback 978-1-906021-37-5

WALKING OLLIE Stephen FosterB format paperback 978-1-904977-88-9

WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP? Deborah Hutton Cut down B format pbck 978-1-906021-56-6

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN? Tom Carver B format pbck 978-1-906021-92-4

WORKING THE SYSTEM Francis Gilbert Demy trade pbck 978-1-906021-75-7

CHILDREN’S FICTION

THE AWFUL TALE OF AGATHA BILKESiân Pattenden B format paperback978-1-904977-51-3

CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH HITLER Emma CraigieB format paperback 978-1-907595-20-2

OPERATION WARD 10 Siân Pattenden B format paperback978-1-904977-89-6

PARIS MATCH Siân Pattenden B format paperback 978-1-906021-30-6

RUBIES IN THE SNOW Kate Hubbard B format paperback 978-1-906021-64-1

CHILDREN’S NON-FICTION

THE BOY WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS Andrew Billen B format hardback 978-1-906021-82-5

THE WHO WAS... SERIES B format paperbacks

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