More Brontë Mysteries

Great news for fans of The Brontë Mysteries series by Bella Ellis, According to The Bookseller,

Hodder & Stoughton has acquired two more books in The Brontë Mysteries series by Rowan Coleman, who will continue to publish the books under the pen name Bella Ellis.

Editorial director Melissa Cox acquired British Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Hellie Ogden at Janklow & Nesbit UK.

In the series, Coleman imagines the Brontë sisters as "detectors" trying to solve local crimes before their literary careers are established. Two books in the series have already been published by Hodder & Stoughton, The Vanished Bride (2019) and The Diabolical Bones (2020).

The third book, The Rise of the Red Monarch, will be published in autumn 2021 and will be set as the sisters’ poetry collection has been published to great acclaim, but poor sales. Anne receives a letter from her friend Lydia Robinson, who recently eloped with Harry, a young actor. Following her disinheritance, the couple have been living in poverty in London and Harry has got himself into danger after ‘losing’ something valuable that he was meant to deliver to a criminal gang. Harry has gone missing, and Lydia has a week to return what her husband stole, or he will be killed. The sisters agree to help Lydia, beginning a race against time to save Harry’s life – and coming face to face with a terrifying adversary whom even the toughest of the slum-dwellers are afraid of, The Red Monarch.

Cox said: "Working on the Brontë Mysteries has been a complete joy and career highlight – Rowan’s Brontë expertise brings such a believable quality to these utterly satisfying mysteries. They’re the perfect read for Brontë fans and cosy crime readers alike and I am so happy to say that we’ll be publishing more books in the series."

Coleman said: "Seeing The Vanished Bride and The Diabolical Bones being so brilliantly published by Hodder is one of the happiest and proudest moments of my career, so I’m thoroughly delighted to be adding two new novels to the Brontë Mysteries series, and look forward to the series going from strength to strength, guided by Melissa Cox and the talented Hodder Fiction team." (Tamsin Hackett)

Fine Books & Collections reports on a recent auction:

 Tennants Auctioneers’ Books, Maps, Manuscripts and Photographs Sale on 18th November saw impressive results. Whilst the sale took place behind closed doors with no public viewing, online bidding facilities and extra imaging provided by Tennants helped the sale exceed the pre-sale estimate and achieve a 94% sold rate. [...]

Top lots of classic fiction included a first edition, second issue of Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall from 1848, which sold for £5,400, and a third edition of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography from 1848, which sold for £3,600.

Here are the details for Jane Eyre and here the details for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The New York Times' By the book interviews author Robert Macfarlane.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Whisper it, then, and promise you won’t tell anyone else — “Jane Eyre.” Oh, and “Sense and Sensibility.” And “Anna Karenina.” And “War and Peace.” Is that enough? Have I embarrassed myself enough?

Firstpost features writer Howard Jacobson:

Women were not only his first and primary audience, but also his caregivers and guardians back home, as he was raised by his mother, grandmother, and maternal aunt. "My whole life has been an attempt to have those three women, and in fact all women in the world, laugh at me as those three women did," he says.

It perhaps, then, comes as no surprise that the man has been greatly influenced by the likes of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, whose humour and worldview seep into his often wry, ironic and tongue-in-cheek writing. But he chides himself for being "less amusing", almost boring about comedy than anybody else on the planet, despite having had significant experience with it. (Arshia Dhar)

Colin Murray decided to dedicate his late night BBC Radio 5 Live show to the power of books following a  report which found more people were reading books than ever before. As part of the show, people from the worlds of TV, literature, politics, theatre and law chose some of the books which made an impact on them, including

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Chosen by Baroness Warsi, Conservative member of the House of Lords.

She says: “I’ve chosen Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë which I first read as a teenager. It felt raw and wild both in the emotions expressed and the landscape that was presented as untamed. And of course the association of both Emily Brontë and the setting in Yorkshire, my home county, also made it very personal.”

Stylist looks into mental health issues during lockdown.

I’m not the only one experiencing this kind of mood fluctuation during lockdown 2.0. Indeed, as Stylist’s digital editor-at-large Kayleigh Dray tells me, she spends most of her days trying to keep up with her ever-changing emotions.

“I am, essentially, the modern-day equivalent of Jane Eyre’s Bertha in the attic of late, all eccentric murmurs, wild sobbing, and unnatural goblin-laughter,” she says. “I think it comes from spending so much time alone and indoors, to be honest – everything feels more extreme on my emotions because they’re rawer than ever, so the highs are vertigo-inducing and the lows are… well, they’re really bloody low.”

She continues: “One minute, I’ll be giggling over a meme I’ve spotted on Instagram. The next, I’ll be sobbing over a Christmas advert and wondering when life will be normal again. Within minutes, I’ll be feeling warm and cosy and happy as I chat to someone on the phone. And then I’ll be raging about the computer crashing and all of my work disappearing into the soulless void. It’s exhausting!” (Lauren Geall)

In the Irish Examiner, an anonymous Irish teacher discusses why music is much needed in schools.

My child is beyond lucky to have a primary teacher who shares his love of music in the classroom. My son was taught by two passionate teachers last year who happened to be musicians. They encouraged children to play instruments at the back of their room. It reminded me of the time my lecturer in UCC played 'Wuthering Heights' on a record player in the lecture hall. Pure magic.