Bitter Lemon Press Fall Female Crime Writers List

This press release just crossed my desk. I haven't read any of the books yet, but I can't wait! They all appeal to me. I love International Mysteries, and these have the added bonus of being by female authors. O.K. I may be prejudiced about that. The first title grabbed my fancy because it's by a Brazilian writer, and will be translated by the same person who translated Rubem Fonseca's novels. Fonseca is a favorite of mine. Of all the books written by these authors, I have only read Claudia Piniero's Thursday Night Widows, but I look forward to reading her new mystery--and the rest of the crime fiction on the Fall list. I also trust Bitter Lemon Press. Love their books.

So, to the publicists and publishers out there, eblasts do work!

Independent publisher Bitter Lemon Press has announced their autumn publishing program, revealing a stellar line-up of bestselling female crime writers. The publisher, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has always been proud of its reputation for representing writers from many different parts of the world, but this is the first time they have published three such talented, successful women all in one publishing season. Bitter Lemon is distributed by Consortium Books in the U.S.A.
 
Kicking off the list in September 2015 will be Patricia Melo, Brazil’s most celebrated crime writer, whose new novel The Body Snatcher is a story of drug dealing gone wrong, police corruption and macabre blackmail. Described by Cosmopolitan Brazil as "an explosive mixture of dread, greed and corruption", this book is a mix of conspiracy, sex, betrayal of the living and desecration of the dead, and also a ruthless portrait of contemporary Brazil. Patricia Melo is an author and playwright born in Sao Paolo in 1962, now living in Switzerland. Her novels Lost World, The Killer, In Praise of Lies and Inferno were published in English by Bloomsbury to rave reviews. In 1999, Time included her among the fifty "Latin American Leaders for the New Millennium." Her works have also been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. The Body Snatcher will be translated by Clifford E. Landers, who previously translated novels by Rubem Fonseca, Jorge Amado, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, and Paulo Coelho.

Best-selling Turkish author Esmahan Aykol’s atmospheric Divorce Turkish Style follows in October 2015. This will be the third in the murder mystery series featuring Kati Hirschel, the crime bookstore owner and accidental investigator. Kati Hirschel is a funny, feisty and sexy heroine who, as usual, gets involved in a case that is none of her business. When the wife of a wealthy industrialist is found dead in her beautiful Istanbul apartment, Kati suspects murder and begins her maverick investigation. The first two books – Hotel Bosphorus and Baksheesh were also published by Bitter Lemon Press, and have been published in Turkish, German, French and Italian. Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey, and lives in Istanbul and Berlin. During her law studies she was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender, she turned to fiction writing. The new book will be translated by Ruth Whitehouse whose translations of shorter works have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
 
In February 2016, Bitter Lemon Press will publish South America’s bestselling crime writer, and winner of the Clarin Prize, Claudia Piñeiro. Her new novel, Betty Boo, is set in contemporary Buenos Aires, and is the story of an intelligent and sensitive woman seeking to save her career and love life, while caught up in the spiral of a large-scale criminal cover-up. This is Claudia Piñeiro’s fourth novel and it was made into the film Betibú which was recently screened at the London Film Festival. It follows Crack in the Wall, Thursday Night Widows, and All Yours, also published by Bitter Lemon. The translator of Betty Boo, Miranda France, is the author of two acclaimed volumes of travel writing: Don Quixote's Delusions and Bad Times in Buenos Aires. She has translated Claudia Piñeiro’s previous novels into English.

Publisher and co-founder of Bitter Lemon Press, Francois von Hurter, said: “We are very proud to bring these three women crime writers from Brazil, Turkey and Argentina to English speaking readers this autumn. It is part of our mission as an independent press to introduce new voices from across the globe. We are delighted to publish three of the most successful women writing in the crime genre today.”

Jacques Chessex: R.I.P.

The Swiss writer Jacques Chessex, 75, died October 9 from an apparent heart attack. He was the first non-French citizen to win France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The precise, sometimes austere beauty of his prose often contrasted with the way he used it to delve into stories of hidden cruelty, crime or passion.

While he was respected within Switzerland as a poet, painter and essayist, as well as a novelist, his penchant for revealing the darkly uncomfortable truths beneath the pristine surface of Swiss society found him more than once at odds with the communities in which he lived. His neighbours in the Swiss village of Ropraz were offended by his 2007 novel Le Vampire de Ropraz, published in Britain as The Vampire of Ropraz by Bitter Lemon Press in 2008 (US April 2009), which examined a 1903 miscarriage of justice when a local stable boy caught violating animals was convicted of a series of brutal murders. Chessex wove elements of genre fiction into his portrayal of a backward and repressed society trying to cope with modern criminal horror. But he made the crimes themselves seem an almost inevitable outgrowth of Swiss rural isolation, Calvinist repression, and intense social jealousy.

His most recent novel, Un Juif Pour L'Exemple, investigated the 1942 killing of a Jewish cattle trader by Swiss Nazis in Chessex's home town of Payerne, and became a national cause celebre in a country still uncomfortable with the true character of its neutrality during the second world war. Bitter Lemon plan to publish it, entitled A Jew Must Die, in February next year (US May 2010).

Chessex won the Goncourt in 1973 for his novel L'Ogre, published in English translation as A Father's Love in 1975. Detailing a brutal father-son relationship, it drew heavily on his own experience. Chessex was born in Payerne, where his father was a secondary school principal and strict disciplinarian. He was also an etymologist, from which may have sprung Chessex's love of precision in his poetry and prose. Chessex attended elementary school with the son of the Nazi at the centre of Un Juif pour L'Exemple, then studied at the Jesuit College St Michel in Fribourg, where, aged 17, he founded a poetry magazine, Pays du Lac (Lake Country). His first book of poetry, Le Jour Proche (The Next Day), was published in Geneva in 1954. At Lausanne University he wrote his dissertation on Francis Ponge, the poet and essayist.

The pivotal moment of Chessex's life was the trauma he felt after his father killed himself in 1956. After three more collections of poetry, his first novel, La Tête Ouverte (The Open Head, 1962) won the Schiller prize; the recognition helped him co-found the literary magazine Ecriture in 1964. Still, he followed in his father's footsteps, and taught French literature at Lausanne's Gymnasium. A

After the success of L'Ogre, which opens with the death of its protagonist, a teacher's father, he settled in Ropraz, and produced more than 80 books, including 31 novels or other fictions, 28 volumes of poetry, including Les Aveugles du Seul Regard, which won the Prix Mallarmé in 1994, and a number of children's books, one of which, Marie et le Chat Sauvage, was published in English as Mary and the Wild Cat in 1980. In his 60s he began painting, receiving a number of major exhibitions in Switzerland. He occupied a central position within the French-speaking Swiss cultural world, active as a critic and essayist, and was awarded the Prix Jean Giorno for his life's work in 2007.

Chessex collapsed during a lecture at the Municipal Library in Yverdon les Bains, discussing a play adapted from his 1967 novel La Confession du Pasteur Burg (The Confession of Pastor Burg), an intense work dealing with the conflict between desire and repressive institutions and laws. He had just been asked to comment on the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski.

Married three times, he is survived by his companion Sandrine Fontaine, and two sons, François and Jean. A new novel, Le Dernier Crâne De M De Sade (The Last Skull of M De Sade), is due to be published early next year.

Jacques Chessex, writer, born 21 March 1934; died 9 October 2009

From the Guardian via Bitter Lemon Press.