Like Bees to Honey

Published on 27 May by The Friday Project, Caroline Smailes' new novel Like Bees to Honey is available FREE, in full! You can read the entire novel through a tour of the blogosphere - each chapter has been posted on a different blog. This is a great example of how publishers can give readers content in interesting and innovative ways by embracing the possibilities offered by advances in digital media, and according to The Friday Project is a publishing first.

Lost Classic (1)

As a semi-regular feature, I will be selecting books which I think can qualify as 'lost classics'. Each book I pick will have been found as the result of foraging in second hand bookshops, must be relatively unknown, and a good read. I love buying books second hand - you can nearly always find something unexpected, and hopefully end up reading something you wouldn't otherwise have come across. My first 'lost classic' is Gone to Earth, by Mary Webb. Set in the Welsh borderlands, this is the story of a wild teenage girl named Hazel with an intense love for nature and her own freedom, who becomes caught between the attentions of two men, with tragic consequences. As John Buchan explains in the introduction, Hazel 'suffers because she is involved in the clash of common lusts and petty jealousies...she is a creature of the wilds, with no heritage in the orderly populous world'.

Penguin Classics RED

Penguin have just launched their new Classics RED series. Having partnered with (Product)RED, they are issuing newly designed classics, from the sales of which 50% of profits will go the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. I think the new covers look great, and it's refreshing to see a major publisher seeking to do more than merely bolster their own sales - especially so during an economic depression, and considering that publishing is not an industry which generates huge profits.

Jonathan Kellerman's Top 10 LA Noir Novels

A couple of months back, crime writer Jonathan Kellerman selected his Top 10 LA Noir Novels for the Guardian, focusing on the older generation of noir authors. He took  'LA noir' to cover southern California as a whole, saying:

'LA isn't a city, it's a concept which applies anywhere in the Golden State where nice weather abounds, a chasm yawns between the haves and the have-nots, and delusional blind ambition is habitually confused with work ethic and wisdom.'

As a huge Raymond Chandler fan I wanted to share this list, and also have it as a reminder to myself to read all these books!