Atlantic to publish new non-fiction work by Norman Ohler

Atlantic Books is to publish The Infiltrators: The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis by Norman Ohler, author of the international bestseller Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany.

Editorial director for non-fiction James Nightingale acquired UK Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights from Andrew Nurnberg of Andrew Nurnberg Associates. Atlantic will publish in hardback and ebook on 3 September 2020.

“Summertime, 1935. On a lake near Berlin, a young man is out sailing when he glimpses a woman reclining in the prow of a passing boat. Their eyes meet—and one of history’s greatest conspiracies is born,” reads the synopsis. “Harro Schulze-Boysen had already shed blood in the fight against Nazism by the time he and Libertas Haas-Heye began their whirlwind romance. She joined the cause, and soon the two lovers were leading a network of antifascists that stretched across Berlin’s bohemian underworld. Harro himself infiltrated German intelligence and began funnelling Nazi battle plans to the Allies, including the details of Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But nothing could prepare Harro and Libertas for the betrayals they would suffer in this war of secrets—a struggle in which friend could be indistinguishable from foe. Drawing on unpublished diaries, letters and Gestapo files, Norman Ohler spins an unforgettable tale of love, heroism and sacrifice.”

Ohler, who will be coming to the UK to support the book’s publication this autumn, said:

“The Infiltrators is the best true story I have ever told. I am thrilled that Atlantic will publish it in the UK.”

Nightingale added:

“The story of Harro and Libertas is at once inspiring and heart-breaking. Norman Ohler brilliantly pieces together their lives and reveals how they valiantly fought to defy and subvert the Nazi regime from within. Superbly researched, The Infiltrators is a thrilling and haunting read.”

Lot by Bryan Washington is shortlisted for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards

Lot by Bryan Washington has been shortlisted for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards.

Announced explosively on OprahMag.com, the finalists were selected by a panel of over 60 literary professionals from more than 1,000 book submissions from over 300 publishers.

Finalists will be celebrated and winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang the evening of Monday, June 8, 2020 in New York City.

Atlantic Books to publish ‘Maps of Desire’ by Eleanor Morgan

Atlantic Books is to publish Maps of Desire, a book that aims to truly understand the myriad forms of female sexual desire, by Eleanor Morgan. 

Maps of Desire, a book based on in-depth interviews with a diverse group about their desires, sexual pasts, presents and their fantasies, will progress the conversation about women’s intimate worlds. In the aftermath of #MeToo, stories about female desire and agency are being examined in a different light. But where are the books that move beyond white heteronormativity? Who is asking, in mainstream literature, what women who have sex with women want? Trans women who identify as heterosexual? Lesbians who fall in love with trans men? Bisexual women of colour? Are there common threads of female desire, like the exploration (and pushing) of power dynamics, or is lust too infinitely complex and idiosyncratic to be categorised?

Eleanor Morgan has written and interviewed extensively for numerous publications, including the Guardian, The Times and VICE. As well as being a writer and journalist she’s also training as a psychologist. Eleanor’s first book, Anxiety for Beginners: A Personal Investigation was published by Bluebird in 2016. Her second book, Hormonal: A Conversation About Women’s Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard, was published by Virago in July 2019.

Eleanor Morgan says:

‘I am so thrilled Atlantic saw potential in this book and the opportunity to move the discussion of female sexuality away from the straight, white woman as default. We codify so much through sex. I hope by giving a diverse group of women the opportunity to talk about their desires, sexual pasts, presents and fantasies, the finished book will help progress the conversation about women’s intimate worlds, with all the mess, pain and glory they involve. It’s time women controlled the narrative.’

Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher, says:

‘When Eleanor’s proposal dropped into my inbox it was thrilling to read something which represents a spectrum of sexualities in all their messy glory and myriad forms. Eleanor’s sensitivity, rigour and humour promise to make this an unmissable read in 2022.’

Maps of Desire by Eleanor Morgan will be published in hardback and eBook in January 2022.

Guy Arnold (1932 – 2020)

Intrepid explorer of Borneo, prolific author of more than 50 books and eccentric chef.

When Guy Arnold was asked at a party what he was going to do when he left Oxford University, he drew languidly on a cigarette while his eyes fell on a map of the world and rested on Borneo. He announced to the room that he was going to explore the island’s hitherto uncharted interior.

He was as good as his word. In 1955 he led an expedition of four Oxford graduates to the unmapped Usun Apau Plateau and along the Plieran River in the north of Borneo. Sheer escarpments and plunging gorges rendered the volcanic plateau almost inaccessible. Arnold navigated it by canoe and foot, living among the nomadic Penan people and collecting folk tales. Guides were bribed with tobacco, such was their reluctance to enter an area where half an hour’s rainfall on the river could be fatal.

Arnold’s account of the adventure, Longhouse and Jungle, was the first of more than 50 books he wrote. The most acclaimed was Africa: A Modern History (2005), a tour d’horizon of the continent since the Second World War over 1,100 pages. Corruption, civil wars,coups, genocide, one-party states,poverty, famine — not to mention young nation states being used as proxies in the Cold War and the “neocolonialism”of the World Bank and the IMF— all came under the scrutiny of Arnold’s pen as he anatomised Africa’s often sad quest for self-determination. “I felt there was room in the market for a big single-volume history of postwar Africa and its emergence from the colonial yoke,” said Toby Mundy, Arnold’s publisher at Atlantic Books. “It’s exactly the subject most writers would run screaming from. Guy, to my utter amazement, was thrilled.”

Stern of face, but with a gallery of comical expressions and rather bulging eyes, Arnold had his own place in the narrative. As a young educationist he had advised Kenneth Kaunda, president-elect of what would soon be independent Zambia in 1964.

After founding a National Youth Service in Zambia, Arnold soon left, believing that such services should be run by Zambians. By then he had caught malaria. He convalesced at the Zambian home of Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, the soldier and politician, who treated the life-threatening disease with red wine.

In 1968 Arnold replaced the Rev Michael Scott as director of the Africa Bureau, which had been established in 1952 by Scott and David Astor to lobby the British government on behalf of Africans who had been mistreated in their home nations. Scott, allegedly under pressure from the British Foreign Office and the CIA (both donors to the bureau), had been trying to persuade Kaunda and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania to open dialogue with South Africa and Rhodesia. Arnold put a stop to such notions, insisting that it was not the right time to speak to what were still repressive, white-supremacist regimes.

Guy Arnold was born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1932. His father, George Arnold, was a dashing young naval officer and First World War veteran who had been quietly pensioned out of the navy in 1925 after “blotting his
copybook” and thereafter worked in a succession of gardening and maintenance jobs. His mother, Margaret Shaw, was the daughter of a prosperous businessman in the North West.

Guy’s early years were happy, but punctuated by his father’s drinking bouts, which tended to consume all the household’s money. After his mother died of an asthma attack in 1943, Guy boarded at Kingham Hill School in the
Cotswolds — it would later form the backdrop of an acclaimed quartet of novels, the Coppinger Chronicles, written by Guy’s brother Bruce.

Guy completed his education at Chipping Norton grammar school, and after National Service in the army, took up a place St Peter’s College, Oxford, to study history. An excellent debater, he prospered in the Oxford University Conservative Association and was voted in as president for the Hilary term of 1955. Arnold, along with his fellow Oxford Conservatives Michael Heseltine and Julian Critchley, canvassed for the Tories at the gates of a Barrow-in-Furness shipyard before the 1955 general election in what was then a marginal seat.

Like Heseltine and Critchley, who would go on to have long careers in Westminster, Arnold had ambitions to become an MP, but soon realised that he would be unable to follow party dogma. For five years from 1958 Arnold taught in Canada, first at Pickering College in Ontario and then at Ryerson University in Toronto. He travelled widely through the British Commonwealth with his young charges.

As a child he had loved the books of GA Henty, the Victorian novelist and war correspondent whose work celebrated the British Empire. His experience on the ground dispelled such hidebound romanticism. He later said that seeing the way indigenous people were treated in colonial settings made him determined to support independence of African territories, united by an equitable Commonwealth.

Although he became increasingly liberal-minded, Arnold had seen enough on his travels to have developed a dim view of human nature, a pessimism tempered by a sardonic, sometimes black, sense of humour.

After completing his work for Kaunda in 1964, Arnold drove the 7,150 miles from Zambia to Britain in a Land Rover. When the engine gave out on remote desert tracks he would rely on the kindness of passing strangers to help him to find the nearest mechanic.

Arnold rented a flat in Marylebone, central London. It would be his home for the next 53 years between many adventures, which included riding across Turkey on a donkey in the late 1980s and, when he was in his late seventies, circumnavigating the coast of the Baltic states while rereading Homer’s Iliad. Among Arnold’s varied oeuvre were The Last Bunker: A Report on White South Africa Today (1976) and The International Drugs Trade (2005).

His only constant companions in life were a succession of frenetic cats. He did, though, host lavish dinner parties, at which the only inviolable rules were that the debate was fierce and the wine good as well as plentiful. Arnold would cook unaided — sometimes seven courses for more than 25 guests. Some of his methods were eccentric. He once soaked a haunch of venison in Coca-Cola for 48 hours, insisting that it was the best way of tenderising the meat.

In later years he lectured on international affairs at the University of Surrey, where he would posit bombastic views about how global powers should respond to the world’s problems and invite allcomers to challenge him. He was particularly scornful of any notion of a “special relationship” between Britain and the US. In one of his final books, America and Britain: Was There Ever a Special Relationship? (2014), he dismissed the concept as a “sickness in the body politic of Britain that needs to be flushed out”. While researching the book he had tried to interview a number of former foreign secretaries, but was turned down. He claimed that proved his point.

One of his best travel books retraced the journey of George Borrow, a British author who travelled across the Catholic Iberian peninsula in 1835 and distributed Protestant bibles. There was something in the singular, madcap adventure that Arnold identified with. In his book In the Footsteps of George Borrow: A Journey Through Spain and Portugal (2007) Arnold described attempting to walk a stretch of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, but in the wrong direction. When a pilgrim told him that he was going the wrong way, Arnold replied firmly: “It’s my way.”

Guy Arnold was born on May 6, 1932. He died of complications arising from dementia on January 4, 2020, aged 87.

Corvus strikes two-book deal with Catherine Ryan Howard

Corvus Publishing Director Sarah Hodgson has acquired UK & Commonwealth (excl. Canada) rights in two new titles by Irish Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Howard from Jane Gregory of David Higham Associates.

Ryan Howard’s third novel, Rewind, reached number two in the Irish Times original fiction chart last autumn, and will appear in paperback in May. Her debut, Distress Signals, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey/New Blood Dagger and her second novel, The Liar’s Girl, was nominated for a Best Novel Edgar. The first novel in this new deal, As Told To, will be published in autumn 2021, following The Nothing Man this August.

The Nothing Man tells the story of Eve Black, a survivor of a serial killer who has turned her obsessive search for his identity into a bestselling true crime book. Jim Doyle, part-time supermarket security guard, has just got his copy. As both Jim and the reader make their way through Eve’s book, we see Jim’s rage grow – because he is the Nothing Man, and he knows Eve is getting dangerously close to the truth. He has no choice but to stop her before she reveals it.

Catherine Ryan Howard says:

‘The team at Corvus are fantastic to work with and I’m delighted that our relationship will continue for at least two more books. We’ve been together since my debut, Distress Signals, and I appreciate the faith they’ve shown in me and my writing. I’m excited to see what the future holds.’

Jane Gregory says:

‘I am so pleased that we have agreed a new deal with Catherine’s new editor at Corvus, Sarah Hodgson.  Catherine is an extremely talented crime writer whose reputation is building and I know Corvus will do all they can to help Catherine reach her full potential.’

Sarah Hodgson says:

‘I could not be more delighted to have secured two further novels from the hugely talented Catherine Ryan Howard. With every novel she manages to come up with a fresh take on the thriller genre, and she goes from strength to strength with each book she writes. I have no doubt that As Told To and its follow up will continue this trajectory and cement Catherine’s position as a linchpin of the Corvus list.’

Atlantic to publish Andrew Parker’s ‘The Line of Sight’

Atlantic Books has won a six-way auction to publish Andrew Parker’s The Line of Sight: How Vision Shapes Our Lives, “a sweeping and urgent story about the way we see”.

Publishing director for non-fiction Mike Harpley acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from Richard Pike at C&W. The Line of Sight: How Vision Shapes Our Lives will be published in hardback and e-book in September 2021.

The synopsis reads: “As our most dominant sense, sight governs how we evolved, how we behave, and nearly everything we create. In The Line of Sight, acclaimed biologist Andrew Parker tells its epic story across millions of years of evolution, to reveal vision’s long and lasting influence on the human mind.”

Atlantic said of the title:

“First revealing the secrets of how we learned to see, the construct of colour, and the evolutionary innovations we still carry with us today, Andrew Parker goes on to show vision’s key role in the development of human consciousness, emotion, language and even the way that we perceive time. Finally, the book will show how by understanding this crucial sense, we can better inform future decisions about healthcare and wellbeing, the learning environments we build, the brands that inspire us, the way that we work, and the technology we create.”

Based on decades of scientific research and filled with insightful human case studies and stories from the natural world, The Line of Sight “tells a sweeping and urgent story about the way we see and how it has come to define us,” the publisher said.

Parker is a research fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford and is a world-leading expert on the science of vision. He has given the prestigious annual physics lecture at Stanford University and has previously been recognised as one of the top eight scientists in the UK by The Royal Institution.

Harpley said:

“Every few years you read a proposal that completely reshapes how you view humanity. This is one of them. From optical illusions to why we associate red with anger, this book is chocked full of both compelling narrative and ‘aha!’ factoids that will make perfect dinner party fodder. A testament to Andrew’s incredible scientific career, this beautifully written book will fascinate readers for years to come.”

Parker added:

“I couldn’t be happier that I will be working with Atlantic and with Mike. I knew immediately that we were on the same wavelength, and our connection should bring further colour to the real-life stories in this book and make clearer their enlightening common denominator – vision.”

Allen & Unwin to publish bedtime stories for grown-ups

Allen & Unwin has snapped up Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups by Kathryn Nicolai in a seven-way auction, with rights sold in nine international territories. 

Senior editor Kate Ballard bought UK Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights in conjunction with publisher Kelly Fagan at Allen & Unwin Australia from Meg Wheeler at Westwood Creative. Nothing Much Happens will be published in hardback and eBook by Allen & Unwin in Autumn 2020.

Developed from Nicolai’s successful podcast of the same name, Nothing Much Happens offers sleep-challenged grown-ups of all ages “a suite of charming and soothing stories that take place in and around a small fictional city and which focus on small, sweet moments of joy”, reads the synopsis. “Each story invites us to identify with unnamed, gender-neutral first-person narrators who recount their days. We can imagine ourselves visiting the local cider mill in the autumn. Watching the tree-lighting in the park with friends in the winter. Stealing lilacs from an abandoned farm in the spring. There are stories that celebrate nature and revel in the joy of being home alone. Putting our ducks in a row with a day of quiet chores and a freshly baked loaf of banana bread. Closing the bookshop at the end of the day, opening the bakery, getting lost in the shelves of the library, and picking out the best of the end-of-summer tomatoes at the farmer’s market.”

Ballard said:

“As a perpetual seeker of quality sleep and a fan of reading to unwind, the idea of bedtime stories for adults really appealed – but it was only when I started reading that I fully appreciated the unique qualities of this deceptively simple collection; Kathryn’s short, sensory tales manage to evoke the distinct comforts offered by each of the four seasons to lull her reader to sleep (or back to sleep) in a wholly original way, transporting us to a place of calm through her gentle prose. This book feels quite different from anything else on the market and my colleagues and I can’t wait to share it – the perfect addition to bedsides the world over!”

Atlantic Books wins six-way auction for The Insect Crisis

Atlantic Books has won a competitive six-way auction to publish The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World by Guardian journalist Oliver Milman.

Editorial Director for Non-Fiction Mike Harpley acquired the UKBC (ex. Canada) rights from Sally Holloway at Felicity Bryan Associates on behalf of Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency. Audio rights were acquired by Harriet Poland of Audible, and rights have also been sold in the US, Japan, and the Netherlands.

There are over 1 million known species of insects and collectively there are 10 quintillion of them buzzing and crawling around the Earth. However, a large number of studies show that their numbers are seriously on the wane – with a third of the world’s insect species already endangered, from bees to butterflies. This terrifying and compelling book will show how without insects, our lives would never be the same again. A third of the food stuffs we eat would no longer be viable. Many birds and fish would just disappear. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, this book will highlight why we need to wake up to the next big environmental crisis.

Oliver Milman has been a Guardian journalist for seven years, firstly in Australia and now in the US as their environment correspondent. He was raised in Bedfordshire and this is his first book.

Mike Harpley comments:

‘On speaking to him, Oliver’s enthusiasm for the subject is infectious. As soon as I shared the proposal at Atlantic, everyone was engrossed and begging me to buy it. It’s timely, well written, and important. But it’s also not all doom and gloom: I loved learning more about the idiosyncrasies of these wonderful creatures as well. I can’t wait to publish it.’

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World will be published in hardback and eBook in February 2022.

Atlantic releases eBook-only short story series

Atlantic Books has released the first four of a series of short stories as ebooks, across all eBook platforms. Each story will be free to download for a different week in September, after which they will be 99p each.

These digital shorts will bring together established authors, award nominees, and new voices from the Atlantic fiction list. The shorts will dare readers to see the world critically, with awe, laugher, and empathy. This project will connect readers to the bold new voices of our time, to stories that capture the human condition and challenge us to see the world differently.

The first four stories are:

• A Lesson in Englishness by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (author of the Orwell Prize for Fiction shortlisted House of Stone).
• Unnatural by Ruth Gilligan (author of Irish bestseller Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan)
• Life Lessons by Stefan Merril Block (author of The Story of Forgetting and Oliver Loving)
• Hail Chimp by Robbie Arnott (author of Flames, currently on the Not the Booker shortlist)

Atlantic has put together a digital marketing campaign that will run across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to support the series, aimed at both established fans of the authors’ work and potential new fans.

Senior Editor James Roxburgh says ‘Atlantic Fiction is dedicated to giving our authors space to try different forms and to reach new audiences. The short-story project is an expression of our ongoing support and advocacy of our authors – not just for each book that they write, but for what they might create in between.’

Atlantic Books to publish ‘Apocalypse How?’ by Sir Oliver Letwin

Atlantic Books is to publish a book on the risks of convergent technology by former Cabinet Minister Sir Oliver Letwin MP.

Editorial Director Mike Harpley acquired World Rights (including audio) from Toby Mundy at Toby Mundy Associates. Apocalypse How?: Technology and the Threat of Disaster will be published on 5 March 2020.

As technology governs ever more of our lives, we have become dependent on a complex network of interlinked systems. But what if a part of this network fails or is deliberately hacked? Former UK government minister Oliver Letwin looks ten years into the future and imagines just that. Reliant on the internet, automated electric cars, voice-over IP, GPS, and the internet of things, if the national grid collapsed, law and order would follow as multiple systems fell over like dominoes. Urgent and ingenious, this book asks how we can become more resilient to such black-swan events – and if we place too much faith in technology to always have the answers.

Sir Oliver Letwin is MP for West Dorset. He has been an academic at Cambridge and Princeton universities, an investment banker and a cabinet minister at the top of the UK government. He lives in West Dorset and London.

Mike Harpley comments:

‘Oliver is man of vast intelligence and experience. Under David Cameron, he was tasked with investigating the resilience of our infrastructure. He has been in room during top COBR crisis meetings and knows better than anyone about the threats to modern society. Half fictionalised parable and half prescient analysis, this highly original and gripping book reads like a thriller and is a vivid warning of what will happen if we don’t take threats to our infrastructure seriously.’