Posts Tagged ‘novel’
TLC is delighted that Tina Seskis’s debut novel, One Step Too Far, has been selected for the WH Smith train stations and airport outlets’ summer charts. When Tina Seskis sent her manuscript to TLC, it was read by TLC’s reader, Deborah Wright, who thought the novel was well-written and that it had commercial viability. After failing to find an agent for the novel, Tina decided to take the matter into her own hands and set up a publishing company to do it herself, which has so far yielded great success.
After a 20-year career in marketing and advertising, Tina wrote the novel over a two-month period in the summer of 2010. The novel is about Emily Coleman, who gets up one day and walks out of her life, leaving behind her marriage, her lovely son, and a beautiful home, for a life of complete uncertainty. Why she does this no one knows and One Step Too Far takes the reader through a journey of discovering Emily’s secret.
Tina has already written a second novel A Serpentine Affair, and is currently working on her third which is due for completion this year, which sees the coming together of a key character from each of the first two novels.
Click here for the author’s website or find review for Tina’s novel on Goodreads. You can also click here for an interview with Tina.
TLC wishes Tina the best of luck and we have chosen to exhibit an extract of Tina’s work for our June showcase.
This summer TLC reader Christopher Wakling offers two powerful novels, The Devil’s Mask, published by Faber in June, and What I did, published
by John Murray in August. The Devil’s Mask, is a thrilling story set in the commercial corruption of the Empire and the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade. What I Did, looks at the unseen consequences of a split second decision, about a childhood interrupted and the lengths we go to protect the ones we love. Although Wakling is mostly known for his thrillers, with these two novels Wakling clearly shows that he is equally capable of writing something that is dramatic as well as emotionally subtle and heartbreaking.
Click here to check out Wakling’s website and or see a video with Wakling talking about his book.
Suzanne Joinson, a former mentee who came to TLC through the Arts Council and Writers’ Centre Norwich, agented by Rachel Calder, has recently been at the heart of an exciting five-way auction for her new novel A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgari. Bloomsbury, which has bought world rights to the novel, will publish the novel in the UK, US, Germany and Australia in summer 2012.
The novel, written after she finished the TLC mentoring programme, tells the story of two sisters who travel to Kashgar in 1923 to set up a Christian mission, paralleled by the present-day story of a woman who returns to London after a long trip and finds a man sleeping outside her front door.
In the Bookseller article editorial director Helen Garnons-Williams says: “In Suzanne’s Joinson’s extraordinary novel, we have found the perfect book and the perfect author for Bloomsbury. This beautifully written and utterly captivating novel, with its characters who are all searching and fleeing and discovering and connected to each other in ways that they do not, at first understand—explores ideas of history and religion, inheritance and belonging with delicacy and empathy. We are thrilled to be publishing it.”
Click here to read the full story in The Bookseller. We are delighted on Suzanne’s behalf and wish her all the best of luck with her novel.
The final part of Julia Stoneham’s World War 2 trilogy, Alice’s Girls, was published in March 2011 by Allison & Busby. Set in rural England, the three novels follow the wartime experiences of Alice Todd, warden of a Land Army hostel, the ten girls in her care and the men who are drawn into their stories.Click here for more information about the book.
Before she established TLC in 1996, Rebecca Swift also worked as a book reviewer for The Independent. In one of her reviews, she takes a look at Jay Rayner’s novel, The Marble Kiss, published by Macmillan.
“This energetic, well-written first novel divides its narrative between a Tuscan hill town in the 15th century and 1980s Florence. As with Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, it juxtaposes an animated portion of history with the obsessive, often misguided efforts of interested parties in the present day to tell a ripping good yarn. It also raises deeper questions: Has humanity really changed in 500 years? What on earth is history?
Click here to read the entire review.