booktrade.info

Thursday 2nd September

Press Release: Moves and Promotions
Penzler Joins Corvus

Posted at 7:37AM Wednesday 18 Nov 2009

Otto Penzler Books will operate as a subsidiary imprint of Atlantic's Corvus list, publishing 6 to 10 new titles pa in crime fiction, espionage and thrillers. The first titles will be published in the autumn of next year. Lead title in the new list will be Lou Manfredo's debut novel RIZZO'S WAR, which Penzler describes as the most exciting discovery of the last decade. Set in a Brooklyn police precinct, the novel explores, through the lives of veteran detective Joe Rizzo and his ambitious young partner, the byzantine procedures and grubby politics, the trading of favours, and the grey areas between practice and malpractice, which form the real basis of modern police work. Along with other glowing reviews, RIZZO'S WAR comes with a powerful endorsement from David Simon, creator of THE WIRE.

Scheduled for the Christmas season is AGENTS OF TREACHERY, a landmark 400 page anthology, edited by Penzler himself, of stories from the world of espionage. The contributors include Charles McCarry, Lee Child, Stella Rimington, Dan Fesperman and Robert Wilson. A number of the stories are of novella length, and none has been previously published elsewhere.

Penzler's arrival at Corvus re-unites him with the company's Associate Publisher, Anthony Cheetham. "Otto and I first worked together at Random House UK on the Mysterious Press list, where he provided my basic training in crime fiction. More recently Otto helped to found the Quercus trade list, and was the first to champion Stieg Larsson. But we're definitely saving the best for our third collaboration."

Otto Penzler is the founder/ owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, recipient of an Edgar Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America, and General Editor of the long-running annual anthology series,  BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES. In the USA Otto Penzler Books are published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.