Eagle Books is very pleased to say that our upcoming(May) title, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, Julian Leatherdale’s wonderful historical fantasy adventure novel for middle-grade readers, is one of the Featured Books for the newly-launched United Publishers of Armidale website.
As well as details of the book, including buying links, on the page you will find some great activities and resources centred around the book. We invite you to check them out!
Exciting announcement!
Christmas Press(of which Eagle Books is an imprint) and fellow children’s books publisher, Little Pink Dog Books, are delighted to announce a brand-new joint initiative, United Publishers of Armidale, with the launch of a new website, www.unitedpublishersofarmidale.net, and associated social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The United Publishers of Armidale website features a number of books from each publisher, with free activities and resources to go with each, as well as information on each title. Activities and resources include audio and video presentations by creators, puzzles, quizzes, word searches, printable colouring pages, teachers’ notes, and more. The Featured Books page will be updated regularly with new, upcoming and backlist titles and their associated activities, while the About page gives information about the UPA partner publishers.
‘The idea behind United Publishers of Armidale is that in these difficult times, it makes sense for publishers, especially small, regionally-based publishers like us, to pool our efforts and resources in order to promote and showcase our books and help to support our creator communities, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Little Pink Dog Books on this,’ said Sophie Masson, co-director of Christmas Press. ‘But it’s also very much about supporting the wider community, especially children, their families, teachers and carers, by offering free resources and activities through a dedicated website.’
‘We are delighted to be partnering with Christmas Press in this new enterprise and we hope that everyone will have lots of fun discovering our featured books and the activities around them,’ said Kathy Creamer, co-director of little Pink Dog Books. ‘And we warmly thank our authors and illustrators for getting so enthusiastically behind the project and creating such fabulous and diverse activities for our readers.’
Books featured for the website launch are, for Christmas Press, middle grade historical fantasy novel, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, by Julian Leatherdale (out May 2020 in Eagle Books) and Australian Children Laureate Ursula Dubosarsky’s recent collection of plays, The Boy Who Could Fly and Other Magical Plays for Children(2019); and for Little Pink Dog Books, author-illustrator Trish Donald’s picture book Tissy Woo and the Worry Monsters(2018) and Parmesan, The Reluctant Racehorse, written by Jacqui Halpin and illustrated by John Phillips (2017).
Check it all out here.
On Saturday November 30 , 4pm-6pm, our latest title, Jenny Blackford’s fabulous The Girl in the Mirror, will be officially launched at MacLean’s Booksellers in Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW. The book will be launched by celebrated Newcastle-based illustrator Liz Anelli, and Jenny of course will be in attendance to sign copies of the book. All welcome!
This is a free event but you should register your interest in attending here.
To celebrate the publication of Jenny Blackford’s The Girl in the Mirror, and as part of our sponsorship of the 2019 Conference of the Historical Novel Society of Australasia, we are very happy to announce a giveaway contest in conjunction with HNSA for The Girl in the Mirror.
All details here.
Today is the official publication day of our latest Eagle Books title, Jenny Blackford’s gripping, spooky novel, The Girl in the Mirror.
Available in all good bookshops around Australia, The Girl in the Mirror is an enthralling mix of mystery, time slip and ghost story, with atmospheric cover and internal illustrations by Fiona McDonald, and we are delighted to have it on our list. Congratulations and happy publication day, Jenny and Fiona!
You can read more about the book here.
We are delighted to announce that today we’ve ordered a reprint of Simon Higgins’ fabulous novel, Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night. The book was first published in March, and has been so popular with readers, booksellers and librarians that we’ve run out of copies! Congratulations to Simon whose briliant storytelling skills have captured young readers’ imaginations, to Jenny Wang, whose beautiful cover and internal illustrations have really helped the book to stand out, and to our own design and editing team who worked tirelessly to produce this fabulous title!
And if you haven’t yet caught up with this wonderful book, we recommend you head over to your nearest bookshop and grab a copy now 🙂
We are delighted to announce that today is the official publication day of our newest Eagle Books title, Simon Higgins’ fantastic adventure novel, Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night!
Beautifully-written, excitingly-paced and with a deep understanding of one of the most interesting historical periods and fascinating cultures in the world, this is a superb novel that we are very proud to publish, with its beautiful cover and internal illustrations created by Simon’s wife, artist and animator Jenny(Yuxiao) Wang.
To whet your appetite for Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night, we are thrilled to present this lively and atmospheric trailer, created by Crane Animation and scripted and narrated by Simon Higgins. Enjoy!
We are delighted to reveal the gorgeous cover of our upcoming Eagle Books release, Tomodachi: The Forest of the Night, by acclaimed author Simon Higgins, which will be released in March. This fabulous adventure novel, set in 16th century Japan, has a fabulous cover to match, as you can see! The illustrator is the very talented Jenny(Yuxiao) Wang, who as well as being a wonderful artist, is the CEO of Crane Animation in China–and also happens to be Simon’s wife! Design is by Authors’ Elves.
Below you can see the front cover, as well as the full cover, front and back.
We are delighted to announce that we have acquired novelist, scriptwriter and playwright Julian Leatherdale’s first novel for children, The Phantasmic Detective Agency, via the Selwa Anthony Author Management Agency.
The Phantasmic Detective Agency is an original, inventive and gripping fantasy adventure novel for readers aged 10+, set against the backdrop of pre-Great War Europe, when the modern world is being born: gas lamps giving way to electric lighting, horse-drawn carriages to motor cars, spiritualism and superstition to technology and science. But there is always room for magic…
The Phantasmic Detective Agency will be published by Eagle Books in March 2020.
About the book:
London, Christmas Eve, 1911.The world is changing fast: giant warships, aeroplanes with bombs, spies and assassins, fear of war with Germany. The cosy lives of Lily and Leopold Keeler and their famous stage magician father Edmund Keeler are about to be torn apart by secrets, espionage and monstrous creatures from the shadows.
Trapped in their stuffy Edwardian childhoods, the Keeler siblings pine for adventure. Lily (14) dreams of being Britain’s first woman detective while Leopold, known as ‘Leo’, (15) would love to be a pilot, the newest kind of hero. They both envy their eccentric uncle Alfred, a brilliant and notorious Sherlock Holmes-like paranormal detective who uses his deductive powers and esoteric equipment to solve mysteries from the world of spirits and mythical beasts.
When their uncle’s performance of a Christmas Eve shadow-puppet play of Little Red Riding Hood unexpectedly releases the hungry spectre of the Shadow Wolf, Lily and Leo will get more adventure than they ever bargained for.
But Shadow Wolf proves to be only the first mystery in a conspiracy that threatens to destroy the Keeler family, as Lily and Leo witness their parents, Edmund and Alice, vanish for real in the middle of their latest spectacular magic act. So they turn to their eccentric uncle to keep them safe and solve the mystery of their parents’ disappearance.
From the Royal Naval dockyards of Plymouth to the bone-stacked catacombs of Paris, Uncle Alfred and his two apprentice detectives, Lily and Leo, confront eerie creatures and blood-chilling danger as they are chased by a ruthless spy-ring determined to harness the dark forces of Magick as weapons of war. As Lily struggles with her refusal to believe in shadow-wolves and ghosts and her brother Leo takes terrible risks to impress their eccentric uncle, the Keeler children find moments of great courage and inspired cleverness, as they try to solve the mysteries in Uncle Alfred’s casebook with plenty of clues and spine-tingling intrigue along the way.
About the author:
Julian Leatherdale is a novelist, scriptwriter and playwright. His theatre work includes four comedy cabarets, two musicals (Alex in Videoland and The Golem of Prague), a monologue for Breaking Bread and the black comedy The Man Who Became Santa. He wrote animation scripts for children’s TV with SquareZero, London and researched and co-wrote two Film Australia-ABC TV history documentaries The Forgotten Force and Return to Sandakan. His adult historical fiction novels are Palace of Tears (A&U, 2015 and HarperCollins Germany, 2016) and The Opal Dragonfly (A&U, 2018), with The City of Shadows (A&U) forthcoming in 2020. He lives in the Blue Mountains with his family.
The Phantasmic Detective Agency is his first children’s novel.
Congratulations to our author Sophie Masson, whose YA historical crime novel, Jack of Spades, which Eagle Books published last year, has been longlisted in the YA category of the 2018 Davitt Awards, which are run by Sisters in Crime. It’s great news!
Eagle Books 