A Sip of Claret News | The Christmas Wrap-up

2nd December 2024

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

Welcome to our final newsletter of the year, containing our annual wrap-up of what’s happened here at Claret Press in 2024. It’s a pretty exciting time to be a publisher of stories that deal with politics and issues of the day (this is not necessarily a good thing). Nonetheless, we have much to celebrate. We only publish a few books a year and we’re passionate about each and every one of them. So, without further ado:

Our first book of the year was Those Absent On the Great Hungarian Plain by Jill Culiner. A literary travelogue/memoir of her residency in post-Cold War Hungary and the search for its vanished community of rural Jews, we were delighted to see it win the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biographies/Memoirs 2024. The CJLA judges praised Those Absent as 'vivid, sympathetic but ultimately unsparing', and others 'A fascinating literary journey'.

Poor Table Manners by Steve Sheppard was our second title of the year. Book 3 in the comedy thriller Dawson and Lucy series saw our heroes teaching proper manners with unexpected twists and turns – and the occasional stumble over a dead body in Cape Town. Accolades included 'Frenetic and huge fun', replete with 'sophisticated goofiness' and praise for Steve as a 'gifted comic writer'.

Our third and final release was Operation Ark by Sunday Times bestseller Pen Farthing. This was a big milestone for us, with coverage from LBC, Private Eye, the BBC and much more. For good reason too - this was the gripping memoir of the most controversial figure from the Afghanistan Evacuation, whose story caught global headlines. Ricky Gervais called it 'heroic' and The Daily Beast 'a damning indictment of foreign policy failures'. Pen’s bravery and honesty stands in stark relief to those who stood against him. We’re proud to have brought his story to the public.

Our 2023 historical fiction title Daisy Chain by Justine Gilbert was also shortlisted for the prestigious Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2024. The fictionalised memoir of President Franklin Roosevelt’s secret wife Daisy Suckley, written by a relative who knew her, was also a winner of the Page Turner Awards 2022 and Winner of the Historical Fiction Company Silver Medal 2022. Needless to say, we wholeheartedly agree that 'Justine Gilbert is a master storyteller' (Historical Fiction Company).

Looking ahead, we've signed on three exciting new authors for 2025. We'll have more news to share, including cover reveals, extracts and more, but for now here's our current line up:

Mark Griffin is a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst, actuary and EMT. Working as a Chief Risk Officer, he has been responsible for not just analysis, but also serving as the corporate incarnation of cop, investigator and crime reporter. He lives in New York State with his family and their rescue dog Ollie. We're excited to publish his debut novel The Mortality Thief, a sharp thriller where the devil is in the details.

S. C. Gordon is a Liverpool-based author, poet, and journalist. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in various anthologies. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature. We were immediately captivated by her historical fiction thriller set in 1946 London, inspired by the real-life clashes between Oswald Mosley-led fascists and anti-fascist forces in the immediate aftermath of World War II. A Monster in the Ash will be out next year

Harry Whitehead is a novelist and director of the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester, where he also directs the annual free lit-fest, Literary Leicester. His literary debut The Cannibal Spirit (Penguin) was praised as 'a unique work, compelling, complex, thought-provoking and impressive' (Quill & Quire). We were hooked by White Road, his gritty, sophisticated eco-thriller set in the High Arctic

In other news, Clapham Publishing Services, our self-publishing and editorial services arm, has thrived this year. Highlights include helping a son self-publish his father's memoir in simultaneous English/Italian (harder than it sounds) and seeing one of our clients we'd edited have her manuscript accepted by a big literary agency.

We were also delighted to have Operation Ark adapted into an audiobook by Raconteurs Audio, which was wonderfully brought to life by Kerry Hutchinson. Congratulations to the ten winners of our free Audible giveaway of Operation Ark -all the winners will be contacted directly via contact@claretpress.com over the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled!

Finally, we've started up two livestream series on our YouTube channel: Adaptations and Conversations, which runs the second Tuesday of every month, and the more occasional Ask the Author. For more details on both upcoming events, see the end of the newsletter.

As always, we remain deeply grateful for your support. We wish you a happy holiday, good reading, and the very best for 2025.

The Claret Press Team

The Claret Press Christmas Sale is now on! Whether award-winning page turners, eye-opening travelogues, captivating historical fiction or insightful memoirs, there’s a Claret Press book for you and your loved ones - and now at a very reasonable discount too.

The sale covers all our print titles, including our 3-for-2 deals like our Travelogue Bundle and the complete Dawson and Lucy series.

As always, our ebooks can be bought from our shop as well.

Every purchase from our shop means that we and our authors earn a higher percentage. So, if you'd like to directly support our small but mighty indie press, click on the link below.

Shop

On Sunday 1st December, Claret Press publisher Katie Isbester attended the Oxford Indie Book Fair. Bigger and better than ever, with several thousand visitors passing through the doors, we were thrilled to have our very own Pen Farthing give an opening talk about Operation Ark. We were also joined by the ever brilliant Steve Sheppard.

Once again, a huge thank you to Sylvia Vetta, Claret Press author of Brushstrokes in Time and founder of the Oxford Indie Book Fair, for another successful fair.

In our next livestream of Ask the Author, where we speak with our authors about their writing and more, we'll be in conversation with Denis MacShane.

Denis MacShane was the former Minister for Europe under Tony Blair's government, and author of multiple works including the prescient Must Labour Always Lose?, which asks why Labour is so keen on fighting internal battles. Polly Toynbee praised it as 'full of insights'. Why not why ask him yourself about the future of the Labour government, and our future relations with Europe and the USA?

Join the conversation on Tuesday 3rd December 2024, 7pm-8pm.

The link to watch the livestream on YouTube is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax9B65U4m_U

We're excited to share the next episode in our new online series Adaptations and Conversations, in which Katie Isbester (Publisher) and her friend Michelle discuss books, their adaptations to film, TV and theatre, and answer your comments.

We’re doing the sweet romance, The Bishop’s Wife by Robert Nathan, which must be the oddest love triangle ever: a man of the cloth, a beautiful wife in search of joy, and the Archangel Michael. Which one will she choose? She’s not even sure herself.

The link to the YouTube livestream is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcU7guqKCRo

We hope to see you there.