Surface
Olivier Norek
translated from the French by Nick Caistor
Police capitaine Noémie Chastain has everything: a coveted position in Paris, a devoted team and a loving partner. On a dawn raid in a grimy Parisian banlieue, in an instant, she loses it all. Shot by the drug dealer she was about to arrest, she is left with serious scars on her face and deeper damage to her psyche.
Pushed out of her job in Paris by superiors concerned that her disfigurement would damage team morale, abandoned by her boyfriend, she is posted to a police department that serves six sparsely populated communes in the back of beyond. Her brief: to report back on the police department and give head office an excuse to close it altogether.
But when the body of a child floats to the surface of the man-made lake that hides the buried past of the village of Avalone, Capitaine Chastain is forced to take the chance to prove her worth and win back her job in Paris. To solve the case, she must lead a team more used to tracking down stolen combine harvesters – handsome Lieutenant Valant, the mayor’s son; ex-drug squad Brigadier Bousquet; and green local boy “Bambi” – through the twists and turns of what has become a murder investigation and uncover the secrets that have haunted the village for twenty years.
Royal hardback · 320pp · £18.99 · ISBN 978-1-9195033-3-2 · 03.ix.2026
For Future Generations
by Simone Veil
Translated from French by Ruth Diver
19th November 2026
SIMONE VEIL had an extraordinary life and a lasting legacy. She survived Auschwitz as a teenager and was the first female President of the European Parliament. Remembered in France today for championing the Loi Veil, which decriminalised abortion, and advancing women’s rights as Health Minister, she is buried in state in the Panthéon.
In For Future Generations, Veil speaks to French university students on international cooperation, globalisation and the role that younger generations must play in ensuring that there will never be another Holocaust. Her words resonate even more strongly today than when they were first spoken. Her belief in Europe is a crucial part of her legacy and an important reason for reading this book.
A-format flapped paperback · 176pp · £12.99 · ISBN 978-1-9195033-9-4
Ageing
by Elke Heidenreich
Translated from German by Charlotte Collins
15th October 2026
No-one wants to die young, but nobody wants to get old. Elke Heidenreich, having reached a certain age, has made it her mission to debunk some of our persistent myths about ageing in a witty and life-affirming book. It does not set out to be a self-help text: it is rather a wise essay on the author’s life and experience as a writer, literary critic, journalist and television presenter. She has read widely and here shares the wisdom of her favourite philosophers, historians and authors.
Both a literary text and a self-help book, drawing on texts from literature, philosophy and history to make salient points about enjoying life during the ageing process.
B-format flapped paperback · 128pp · £12.99 · ISBN 978-1-9195033-7-0
The Girls with the Pale Blue Eyes
by Kam Majd
February 2026
With echoes of John le Carré’s The Night Manager, a gripping, high-octane thriller set in Afghanistan, about two sisters caught in a global conspiracy in which truth, loyalty, and survival collide across some of the world’s most dangerous landscapes.
Set during the chaotic final weeks of the 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan, The Girls with the Pale Blue Eyes follows twenty-four-year-old Jessie Niles, who flies to Kabul in search of her mother, a missing war correspondent. What begins as a desperate rescue mission explodes into something far more dangerous: a conspiracy involving child labor in poppy fields, drug smuggling, a ruthless warlord, and unscrupulous U.S. intelligence officers who will kill to protect their secrets.
In pursuit of her mother, Jessie learns a shocking truth: she has a thirteen-year-old half-sister named Arya. Now together, the sisters become targets in a terrifying chase across the war-torn country. Carrying the only proof of the trafficking and corruption their mother uncovered, and made conspicuous by their pale blue eyes, the girls must survive against overwhelming odds. Wherever they go they will draw unwanted attention and be at mortal risk — even before the warlord puts a colossal price on their heads. Spanning from Kabul to Jalalabad to the lawless poppy fields, The Girls with the Pale Blue Eyes tells a riveting story of sisterhood, courage, and the cost of truth in a world built on silence.
B-format flapped paperback · 128pp · £12.99 · ISBN 978-1-9195033-7-0
Penguins and People
Marcel Haenen
translated from the Dutch by Alice Tetley-Paul
“Penguins and People is a book of profound beauty, movingly written, delightful, hilarious, and historically fascinating” De Tijd
It should come as no surprise that a man who holds the official title of “penguin editor” at a major Dutch newspaper has a particular love for penguins. Marcel Haenen has travelled the world to reconstruct the story of humanity’s relationship with penguins, consulting experts and meeting penguins around the globe. Penguins and People is not only a love letter to the world’s favourite flightless bird, but also an urgent call to action in the face of a collapsing climate.
Demy hardback, with map and colour/black & white illustrations · 320pp · £22.00 · April 2027