Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets by Barry Gibbons

infiniteideas, £9.99 pbk - October 2006

Barry Gibbons the man formerly responsible for every Burger King on the planet has produced a startling and pithy book of thoughts from the otherside of the Fast Food Nation divide.

Everybody likes to take pot shots at the big fast food chains: they are making us fat, our children diabetic, exploiting labour and doing just about every evil thing that can't be pinned on Osama bin Laden.... however Gibbons says otherwise.Five Loaves is an hilarious defence of one of the most controversial industries on the planet written by the industry's rudest defender.

Serialisation rights, articles, interviews: all are possible... and desirable

Contact: adrian@raftpr.com for more information

AUTUMN SERIALISATION HIGHLIGHTS at RAFT PR

We have a fantastically strong list of books well suited to serialisation. These include:

Shirley Collins: America Over the Water. . This is Shirley's account of the journey she made through the American Deep South on the cusp of the Civil Rights era. The book is lyrical, moving and also an important social document. The Arts Council have funded the development of a stage show based on the book which is touring the UK this autumn.

Don Letts: Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers This is Don Letts autobiography of an extraordinary music and film-making career. Perfect for use during Black History Month - or any other month for that matter, with excellent photographic material available.

Pete Daly: 101 Movies to Avoid A collection of the movies that people have told you are exceptionally good, classics in their genre. So, you buy the ticket and settle down in great expectation, only to realise two hours later that the movie has been totally overrated! Well, fear no more. This informative and highly opinionated tome will save you from ever having to sit through another well-reviewed stinker again. It will steer you away from the pompous, the pretentious and the downright stinking wastes of celluloid that have for some reason become known as "classic movies". Funny but precise in its commentary, 101 Most Overrated Movies is the essential bible for film watchers who don’t want to be suckered into seeing an acclaimed classic during which they end up falling asleep.


Steve Shipside: Adventure Sports: 52 Brilliant ideas for Taking yourself to the limit

52 inspiring ideas for seeking thrills and spills in the most wild and wonderful sports. Including extreme ironing - great for health/travel/wellbeing supplements and magazines.

Short on time now but will post more title information tomorrow....

Translation rights for Murder in the Name of Honour by Rana Husseini have now been sold in the Dutch market to a major publishing house after a pre-emptive offer. Full details will be released shortly.

Existing Agenting Projects at Raft

Rana Husseini Murder in the Name of Honour. A ground-breaking investigation of the place of so-called Honour Crimes in the Middle East and internationally.

World English Language Rights sold to Oneworld, Oxford
Dutch Language Rights sold to Artemis & co, Amsterdam

Further Translation rights being handled by Raft: German, and Scandinavian languages

Other language territories contact Oneworld Publications

More information about Rana Rana Husseini's Web Site

Denise Tabar Green Zoned
A searing first-person account of the time young American Denise spends working in Baghdad. Denise is a military brat who went into Arabic and anthropology rather than following in the footsteps of her military relatives, but still ended up in the middle of a war zone. The book is a damning critique of the impact of US policy in Iraq. Manuscript complete. World Rights available.

Ruth Snowden Spinning the Web
A gorgeous amalgam of wise-woman-wisdom melded into a beautiful narrative and self-help work book from the Cumbrian poet and writer. Fresh and exhillerating. Sample chapters, synopsis. World Rights available. Ruth's Blog

Helen Fitzgerald The Little Girls
Turning the whole chick-lit genre on its head, Glaswegian-based, Australian-born writer Fitzgerald takes a bright and funny writing style but twists it into very dark and disturbing material in this story of sex, betrayal, abuse and murder... on a Highland camping holiday. Manuscript complete. World Rights Available

Dutch Language Rights sold to Wanda Gloude at Ambo|Anthos

Wendy Salisbury The Toy Boy Diet
The successful author of Move Over Mrs Robinson returns with a rude and rollicking memoir of a twenty-year toy-boy binge. Laced with raunchy asides this is a stunning and empowering read for the older woman. Possibly Britain's sexiest Granny, Wendy is a regular fixture in the media as a commentator on sexual mores. Manuscript Complete. World Rights available.


Sleepless in Sudan
This is an anonymous and insightful book based on the award-nominee Blog of the same name. Its author is a senior aid worker and the Blog deals with what it's like to be a very single woman in the midst of the world's worst humanitarian crisis - as well as looking at how the Sudanese government is behaving. It's heart wrenching and wryly observed.
Sample Material available. World Rights available.

Jon S Fink
An acclaimed novelist and scriptwriter - Jon has a number of exciting new projects in development including two new novels. His last novel, Woke Up Laughing was published by Vintage in paperback in the UK.

Previous works include:
If He Lived
Long Pig
Further Adventures


Various rights for translation and English language are available. Jon's new novel A Storm In The Blood set around the dramatic events of the Sidney Street Siege in 1911 when a group of Latvian revolutionaries became the focal point of a huge armed siege from the police. It has great resonance for contemporary politics and sample material is available. Some background info on the siege can be found HERE

Shirley Collins America Over the Water
Shirley Collins has a devoted following as one of the greatest voices to come out of the 1960s folk revival, but before she made her name as a singer she made an extraordinary journey from Hastings on the English Channel to the American Deep South on the cusp of the civil rights era. Travelling as assistant and lover of McCarthy-exile Alan Lomax, they went through the Southern States recording some of the most extraordinary music ever heard. From Black victims of the segrationist laws to poor white hillbillies, this jouney gave us Mississippi Fred McDowell, the sound of the chain gangs on Parchment Farm State Penitentiary, and definitive voices since sampled by everyone from Moby to Tangle Eye. The book is evocative, powerful and superbly written, interlaced with Shirley's own childhood story growing up in a working class, communist family in the Second World War. World English Rights Sold: SAF Publishing: Translation Rights Available.
Shirley Collins is also touring a show based on the book, funded by the Arts Council England Autumn 2007

www.shirleycollins.co.uk

Nina Antonia The Prettiest Star, Whatever Happened To Brett Smiley
Nina Antonia, biographer of the New York Dolls and eminent music journalist, spins an alluring tail of her own life overlapping the glitter encrusted wake of Brett Smiley - a Glam Rock wannabe, protege of rock svengali Andrew Loog Oldham who burned, fizzled and nearly died in 1974 without releasing a track. Nina's biographical adventure is a quest to find out "whatever happened to Brett Smiley" and is a bitter-sweet documentary of dashed hopes and wasted talent that reads as a modern parable for the self-destructive tendancies of the music business. It has a happy ending - sort of!. World English Rights Sold: SAF Publishing: Translation Rights Available.

SAF Publishing
Raft handles translation rights sales for the innovative music and culture publishers - see their website for information about other SAF titles: www.safpublishing.com

Jeremy Reed: Orange Sunshine - Jeremy's stunning collection of 60s focussed poems has just received a major profile piece in the Independent on Sunday written by Gary Lachman. Some wonderful quotes in it especially Jeremy's exceptionally acidic comments about Andrew Motion.

Rana Husseini: Murder in the Name of Honour

We've also done the first major deal for our new agenting division - press release text below

31st July 2006

Rana Husseini
Murder in the Name of Honour – signed by Oneworld

Oneworld Publications has signed Rana Husseini's hard-hitting and controversial examination of honour killings: Murder in the Name of Honour, to be published in May 2007. Oneworld has acquired World English and a range of translation territories from Adrian Weston at Raft for an undisclosed sum, although Juliet Mabey, Editorial Director of the Oxford-based independent, has confirmed that it is the highest advance they have paid to date for a title.

Jordanian Rana Husseini is one of the world's most influential investigative journalists and has won many awards for her pioneering work on honour crimes. Murder in the Name of Honour combines powerful narratives of some of the most disturbing instances of so-called honour crimes with a call for traditional and Islamic societies to reform from within, particularly in relation to the position of women. Rana's voice is one of the most convincing to emerge from the Middle East in recent years - Murder in the Name of Honour represents 15 years of cutting-edge, risk-taking writing.

Mabey states "we're incredibly excited to have signed Rana, having long admired her work in this area. Murder in the Name of Honour is extremely timely and is a title with huge trade potential, which we believe will be an agenda-setting book for years to come. It's also very significant that this is a book that comes from within Middle Eastern society and that Rana writes as a Moslem woman. We'll be investing heavily in this book with dedicated publicists and marketeers in key territories, launching it simultaneously in Britain, North America and Australia to coincide with a documentary on Husseini’s involvement in exposing the Norma Khouri story that is being broadcast internationally in the Spring.”

Adrian Weston states, “Rana’s the first author signed to our new agenting division and I’m really delighted to have placed her ground-breaking book with a publisher who is so enthusiastic about the project.”

For more information contact
Adrian Weston at Raft on 01273 730 070
Juliet Mabey at Oneworld on 01865-310597


More on this on the Books That Matter Blog

More on Rana Husseini