Books News

New from Penguin Press

By Jessica Schneider May 28, 2009, 10:55 GMT

A recent press release has just informed of some new titles, courtesy of Penguin Press.

Those titles include:

THE JUNIOR OFFICERS' READING CLUB: Killing Time and Fighting Wars By Patrick Hennessey

Published in hardback by Allen Lane, 25 June 2009, £16.99

For the first time in a generation British soldiers are once again fighting at close quarters, coming under sustained and vicious firepower, losing friends in some of the most violent fighting the modern army has endured. Yet the same soldiers also serve on international peacekeeping missions, or counter insurgency. Sometimes they do all three in the same country.

The Junior Officers' Reading Club is the story of how one of these soldiers was made, through the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst, into the war-pockmarked, gritty Balkans, out into the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan's Helmand Province, pinned down by the Taliban, living only from moment to moment. Written in spare and lucid prose, it describes with alarming vividness not only the frenetic violence of a soldier's life, but the periods of stifling and sometimes comic boredom, living inside an institution in a state of flux, an Army caught between a world that needs it and a society that no longer understands it.
 
 SINGLE MOTHER ON THE VERGE By Maria Roberts
Penguin Paperback Original Non fiction £6.99/ 2nd July

An engaging, surprisingly humorous yet hard-bitten memoir with heartbreaking and unexpected moments, Single Mother on the Verge is a seductive and extremely touching read.

While dealing with serious and difficult issues of domestic violence, single parenthood, and struggling to survive on a low income on a tough estate in Manchester, Maria makes it clear that these things don't necessarily turn one into a victim - women have a sense of humour about these things, and are ultimately resourceful. Tough times are part of the texture of life.

Maria Roberts is an original and fresh voice, and the sheer strength and texture of her observation - by turns wry and brutally honest, amused and despairing - won her the Manchester Literature Festival's Best Personal Blog Award.

 
Visit www.singlemotherontheverge.com for more info.