Here at Solaris Towers we're starting to look ahead to next year's schedule, and over next few weeks we'll be in touch with some of our personal highlights from the coming year. So, what what better way to start than by returning to the 19th Century with the critically author of 2007's debut breakthrough novel The Somnambulist, Jonathan Barnes, for his latest foray into this past world....
Ladies and gentlemen, we introduce to you the greatest literary figure of our time: Matthew Cannonbridge.
Flamboyant Matthew Cannonbridge was touched by genius, the
most influential mind of the 19th century, a novelist, playwright, the poet of his
generation. The only problem is, he should never have existed, and recently
divorced 21st century don Toby Judd is the only person to realise something is
wrong with history.
Cannonbridge was everywhere: he was by Lake Geneva when talk
between Byron, Shelley and Mary Godwin turned to the supernatural; he was
friend to the young Dickens as he laboured in the blacking factory; he was the only
man of note to visit Wilde in prison. His extraordinary life spanned a century.
But as the world prepares to toast the bicentenary of Cannonbridge’s most
celebrated work, Judd’s discovery leads him on a breakneck chase across the
English canon and countryside, to the realisation that the spectre of Matthew
Cannonbridge, planted so seamlessly into the heart of the 19thcentury, might
not be so dead and buried after all…
***
Jonathan Barnes was born in 1979 and was educated in Norfolk and at
Oxford University, where he graduated with a first-class degree in English
Language and Literature.
His first novel, The Somnambulist, was published in 2007 and
his second, The Domino Men, in 2008. Between them they have been translated
into eight languages. He writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and The Literary Review and has contributed to the Arts pages of The Lancet. He is
a lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. He is also the author of
several full-cast audio dramas from Big Finish Productions, featuring
characters from Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein and Doctor Who.
His third novel, Cannonbridge, will be published in February
2015.
His blog - Pantisocracy - can be found at
http://jonathanbarnes.blogspot.co.uk/
***
As an extra bonus we also have not one, but two cover reveals for you, with our US (artist Erik Mohr) and UK (artist Pye Parr) covers:
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| US cover by Erik Mohr |
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| UK cover by Erik Mohr |
Have a favourite? Let us know know @SolarisBooks or in the comments section below!
