Our fantastic new e-newsletter has been brilliantly conjured by the wonderful Suzanne Riley!.. Click here to have a read and peek at our exclusive e-version of Dave Shelton’s THE STAKEOUT, brought to you by GOOD DOG, BAG DOG superstars, Bergman & McBoo! If you’d like to sign up to our monthly newsletter, just click here to register and join the DFB gang for bundles of exclusive treats and previews!! We’ll be back with further insider news and tales from the DFB office early next week – but until then, enjoy the weekend!!!

Now that the summer holidays are  giddily rolling by, it seems that everyone is talking about various trips and travels.. And, luckily for me (but perhaps not for you), I’m fresh back from 2 weeks holiday myself! I managed to pack a lot of different activities, friends and locations in, so let me be the first to roll out the dreaded holiday pics…….. (sorry)

My first stop was 10 days in SW France, at the edge of a small town, in the middle of nowhere between Caracassonne and the Pyrenees. Here is a view from the converted attic where I slept – which, only 5 years ago had a family of Screech owls living in it!! Who still perch and hunt nearby..

I heard the owl at night, but didn’t catch a glimpse! Our other neighbours were a field of sunflowers, my favourite..

 I then came home to celebrate my birthday, for which I received many treats – including a tea submarine, a banana cake with pink icing and some beautiful ‘Moomin’ treats!

..I could go on forever, but don’t worry – I won’t! Cos I’m not the only person who’s been talking about their holidays – John Boyne was on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday morning on the MacAulay & Co. Show, talking about his new children’s book, and… holiday destinations! This is a special interview previewing his appearance at Edinburgh Book Festival, where he’ll be talking about his new fairytale, NOAH BARLEYWATER RUNS AWAY. 

You can listen in here for John’s tips on lesser-known holiday towns, aswell as news and thoughts about his upcoming book !.. (His interview is 20mins in).

But beware, there are more where those holiday snaps came from….

Advance copies of the next three DFC Library books are in, and we’re so excited we just had to show them off:

And here are all six DFC Library books in all their glory, in pride of place on the office mantelpiece:

Beautifully produced and packed full of stunning artwork and brilliant stories. Irresistible!

Hello! Lauren the publicist here, I am crashing the DFB blog to add some photos and videos from The Mistress of the Storm launch.

It was a fantastic location and a beautiful day, a hair-whipping, skirt-blowing day (I un-glamorously had to chase my plastic fork and bits of rocket salad as they flew down the promenade at lunchtime…) The ice-cream coloured beach huts were idyllic, I was very envious of the owners sitting outside on their deck chairs.

.

The Sailors Reading Room was perfect, but i have to say the cakes and scones stole the show each perched on pretty little cake stands and surrounded by pink bubbles. Hannah very kindly agreed to be filmed, to record these objects of beauty, here she is with cake-cam:

cake cam

Melanie also did a lovely piece explaining the significance of the launch location:

Mel

After a too-short two hours, i was whisked back to the train station by a very friendly cabby who spent the entire journey telling me what he’d do if he was made Prime Minister tomorrow. Don’t ask.

The double doors into the Reading Room

The sun blazed, there was pink fizz and homemade cake and we were surrounded by pictures of sailors and fishermen, model ships and sea-faring treasures  – we could almost have been in Wellow itself.

Lots of friends and family joined Melanie to celebrate and she was kept busy signing books and talking to children (including three girls wrapped in towels, straight from the sea!)

Melanie and her publicist, Lauren.

Melanie performing her author duties

I was pleased to meet Phil Daws (centre), bookshop manager extraordinaire.

 Later we headed round the corner to the Nelly, for Adnams beer, fish and chips and a last blast of evening sunshine.

It was an amazing weekend, and our only disappointment was missing nearby Peasenhall’s annual Pea Festival – it’s not until next weekend!

Yesterday, Andy Mulligan, author of TRASH*, and his agent, Jane Turnbull, came to visit us at DFB. Here they are, sitting at David’s table with a copy of the very red book proof:

Andy has just got back from the Philippines, and although we’ve been exchanging emails about his book for months, this was the first time we’d actually met (I’d already disappeared home for Christmas last time he came to visit). 

We had lunch in Jamie’s Italian, which is dangerously close to our office. Jane had asparagus risotto (which looked way more professional than my attempt at the same recipe last week) and Andy let us try his chocolate and espresso tart (which was just as awesome as Jamie’s menu promised).

Here’s a sneak preview of the TRASH jacket, in pride of place on my notice board:

And a proper image so you can admire Richard Collingridge’s stunning artwork:

 We hope Andy and Jane will be coming for lots more lunches!

*Coming soon, the book David calls our “thriller from Manila”.

OUT NOW! The paperback edition of Margo Lanagan’s TENDER MORSELS – one of the most illuminating and heartbreaking novels I have read in the last, ooh, about thirty-eight years.

When I read Margo’s short story ‘Singing my Sister Down’  from her collection BLACK JUICE (which someone else  published, grrr), I nearly fell off my chair. Here was a writer who was just so skilled at storytelling but also managed to blast the whole young adult genre out of the water – the story was/is beautiful, terrifying, empathetic and wise. I recently had lunch with her lovely agent, Jill Grinberg,  much of which was spent simply sighing  in awe at  what a wonderful writer Margo is.

I urge ANYONE  (above perhaps fourteen years old, before any Daily Mail journalists start hyperventilating) to read this book now. It’s extraordinary and gripping and beautiful. And not only TENDER MORSELS -  there’s a wealth of thrilling worlds in Margo’s collections of short stories, BLACK JUICE, RED SPIKES and WHITE TIME. If every secondary school in the land had copies of Margo’s books… well, forget Fabio, there just might well be a Literary World Cup.

PS: this really isn’t supposed to be a raving-about-all-our-books-blog-because-surely-by-publishing-in-the-first-place-we’re-showing-we-love-them blog (you’re right, bookwitch). But sometimes you just can’t help it.

Today is Farmers’ Market Day in Oxford, something we always get excited about here at DFB. But even more exciting than freshly-baked doughnuts and local honey, today is also Publication Day for Mistress of the Storm, our brilliant new debut novel from ML Welsh.

Huge congratulations from all of us to Melanie, who has written a wonderful, wind-swept story filled with adventure, magic, sailing and quite possibly the scariest grandmother in children’s literature! Perfect for children aged nine and up, Mistress of the Storm is real classic storytelling – think Swallows and Amazons and Joan Aiken. But Melanie writes with a distinctive, compelling voice that is just hers, and the result is a charming, warm, thrilling novel that we’re very proud to be publishing.

Melanie has already been hard at work promoting her book, spending two days doing school events with her local Waterstone’s (special thanks to Phil Dawes), where they’ve sold over 70 copies of the book so far. She’ll be doing a signing at Waterstone’s Bury St Edmunds on the morning of Saturday 10^th July, so if anyone’s passing through sunny Suffolk, do pop in. I can’t wait for the launch, which is taking place in the perfect venue – the Sailors’ Reading Room in Southwold. And there’s going to be tea and cake too! More on that soon – we’ll definitely be posting pictures.