News

Arcadia Books have bought the World English rights to two new titles by Joe Thomas from Will Francis at Janklow and Nesbit.

Brazilian Psycho is the fourth, and final part, in Joe Thomas’ São Paulo Quartet, which weaves crime fiction, high literary style, historical fact, and personal experience to record the radical tale of one of the world’s most fascinating, glamorous, corrupt, violent, and thrilling cities.

Two titles, Paradise City (2017) and Gringa (2018), have already been published in the UK. The third, Playboy, will be published in June of this year, with Brazilian Psycho due for release in Spring 2020.

Piers Russell-Cobb, publisher at Arcadia, said:

“Arcadia is proud to be the springboard for such talented young writers as Joe Thomas, whose genre-bending Sao Paulo Quartet dares to expose the gritty reality that tourists to Brazil don't get to experience first-hand.”

An occult history of São Paulo from 2003-2018, told through the lens of real life crimes, Brazilian Psycho reveals the dark heart at the centre of the Brazilian social-democrat resurgence and the fragility and corruption of the B.R.I.C. economic miracle; it documents the rise and fall of the left-wing – and the rise of the populist right, prefiguring and explaining the violent political divisions in Brazil, and on the international stage, in 2019. The city of São Paulo has historically rejected the left-wing and Brazilian Psycho reveals the lengths to which the city structures will go to do so.

Author Joe Thomas said:

“As in Playboy, I will interweave their stories with accounts of other Brazilians from all strata of society; ordinary people will form the background hum of the novel’s life.

I want Brazilian Psycho to be a blockbusting story resolutely of our times. Think James Ellroy’s American Tabloid, think Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, think Don Winslow’s The Power of the Dog, think Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, think Amores Perros and Tropa de Elite, and think a novel that both introduces and completes Paradise City, Gringa, and Playboy.”

The second title, Bent, is a new standalone crime novel set in 1960’s Soho, scheduled for publication in Spring 2021. It features Harold Challenor, a former SAS officer turned detective, who mediates between various factions of club owners and racketeers and cultivates informers.

As an SAS officer he was parachuted behind enemy lines in Italy and France, with tragic results, and the two narratives run in parallel throughout the series.

Will Francis, agent at Janklow and Nesbit, said:

“I love this book – it’s hard as nails, but wonderfully ironic and funny too. Joe is somehow able to take on David Peace and James Ellroy at their own game – his grimy 1960s copland, is just as brilliantly realised as theirs, but his characters live and breathe. He’s able to inhabit Challenor’s hardman milieu but also lets us peer around the corners at his frailties and vulnerabilities, and show us how men like Challenor and his enemies are also victims of their masculinity.”

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the first publication of Brixton Rock!

Written by the award-winning author Alex Wheatle, Brixton Rock tells the moving story of Brenton Brown, a mixed-race teenager living in a children's home during the 1960s Brixton race riots. Faced with the emotional turmoil of familial upheaval, Brenton battles to find his true identity amidst the chaos ensuing around him.

Brixton Rock was Alex's debut novel, and it was published to critical acclaim. Twenty years on, it remains as pertinent and powerful as it was upon publication.

Alex has written a number of other novels in the last twenty years, including Brenton Brown and Home Boys, which are published by Arcadia Books. He represents the charity English PEN, and in 2008 he was awarded an MBE for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

In his annual Review of the Year for GrandPrix+ magazine, David Tremayne was effusive about Toby Vintcent's latest novel, The Ringmaster.

Declared himself a 'big fan' of the Matt Straker series, Tremayne describes it as Vintcent's 'most ambitious [book] thus far.'

Restraining himself from spoiling the plot for future readers, Tremayne concludes:

'Sufffice it to say that Vintcent has done it again with a monster book that, heavy as it is, remains thoroughly credible and impossibly difficult to put down.'
 

Arcadia Books are pleased to announce the acquisition of UK & Commonwealth rights to an anthology of fiction, reportage and poetry. Giving voice to this most contemporary city there are 40 contributions including pieces by Duncan Campbell, Andrew O’Hagan, Jane Shilling, Helen Simpson, Ali Smith and a number of previously unpublished immigrants and refugees. Taken together, their stories portray the fabric of the city: its housing, its food, its pubs, its buses, even its graveyards. 

There are people working with deprived youth in city, from Kurdish activists, and from tenants’ groups, and with more than a third of the voices belonging to those not born in the UK, this anthology aims to reflect the fact that any city is the sum of its people. 

Memoir, reportage, history and several different genres of poetry spark off each other in challenging, invigorating and inspiring ways. Above all, this compelling anthology questions its citizens and draws on the rich mélange of people who inhabit today’s London, both lamenting the unequal way the city treats them and celebrating the vibrant urban life their co-existence delivers.

The anthology’s editor Claire Armitstead writes:

‘I'm thrilled that Tales of Two Londons is being published by Arcadia because, at this critical time in the UK's history, I feel that these voices need to be heard. Though often represented as a privileged city, London is actually a melting pot roiling with the best and worst of us - with anger, humour, hope and despair. By collecting a wide range of writing, from journalists, short story writers and poets, new arrivals as well as established authors, this anthology aims to offer a snapshot of our globalised society in all its complexity - and to demonstrate that a city is everything that exists in its citizens' heads. ‘

Piers Russell-Cobb, the publisher of Arcadia Books commented on the acquisition: ‘These stories connect all of us who live and work in London and make us appreciate the real bonds that connect us rather than the artificial which separate us.  We’re continuing our ethic in publishing edgy literary writing from wherever it hails.’