No Exit Press to launch new classics imprint

Crime and noir independent publisher, No Exit Press, has launched a new classics imprint noeXit2.

The new imprint plans for around four new titles a year featuring "Ace Double" editions (two books in one volume) from "iconic" authors dos-à-dos in an upside down and back to front style, known as tête-bêche. The new imprint will give titles "a new lease of life" in this format, according to No Exit Press, hoping to introduce its authors to new audiences while attracting authors to the list. It will launch this series with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler’s Severance / Intercourse on 5th December.

Severance was conceived from two facts: first, that the human head remains in a state of consciousness for one and a half minutes after decapitation. Second, in a heightened state of emotion, people speak at a rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by this, Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two vignettes each 240 words in length to capture the flow of thoughts that go through a person’s mind after their head has been severed. It imagines capturing the ultimate words of famous and invented figures, like Medusa, Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn, Jayne Mansfield, and a chicken, beheaded for Sunday dinner. 

On the flipside of the two-part volume, Butler addresses the question of what goes through the mind of a person while having sex, hoping to lay bare "flagrant, personal thoughts and feelings" of 50 couples in Intercourse.

No Exit Press managing director, Ion Mills, said of the new imprint: "As a big fan of the original Ace Doubles from the fifties and after a successful year with the Double CWA Dagger win, it seemed the right moment to launch (yet another) classics series with an (almost) original spin. Elsa Mathern has done another top job on design made all the more striking with the book’s sprayed edges."

Frances Teehan, campaigns manager at the publisher, said: "In concept, both Severance and Intercourse are absolutely brilliant. Together, in this fun format, they form a hilarious yet ingenious package which brings the dead back to life and the private to a provocative fore. We are set to have a lot of fun with this title and those upcoming in the noeXit2 series."

The series will continue in 2017 with Nik Cohn’s I Am Still the Greatest Says Johnny Angelo / King Death (February) and Hugo Hamilton’s Headbanger / Sad Bastard. 

Bill Beverly’s Dodgers (No Exit Press) won two gongs at the Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger awards in October.