Sam Lee kicks off Cornerstone 2020 showcase

Mercury-nominated folk singer and author Sam Lee kicked off Cornerstone's 2020 showcase last night with a live performance. 

Authors including Pandora Sykes, Neil Blackmore and Maggie Brookes were among the line-up of authors at the packed showcase at The Union Club in central London.

Cornerstone m.d. Susan Sandon highlighted the 2020 list publishing between January and July next year. She said: "Tonight's event is intended to showcase the superb array of new, or in some instances new to us, voices publishing across our list next year. Nine of the books featured tonight are novels, two non-fiction, and it's tremendous to have all our authors here. There are three books that are not finished yet but I have read eight of the books you will hear about tonight and I feel so passionately about them. We are so fortunate to be publishing such brilliant writing."

Lee, whose biography The Nightingale (Century) will publish in March 2020, treated guests including Rhiannon Cosslett (the Guardian), Debo Amon and Bea Colley (The Southbank Centre), Alison Finch (BBC Radio 4), Declan Ryan (TLS), Ciaran Berminghan (BBC Radio 4 Open Book), Alice Kemp-Habib (Sunday Times Style), Jonathan McAloon, Becky Burgum (Elle) and Suzi Feay, to an a cappella rendition of ‘Lovely Molly’.

In a showreel, 11 Cornerstone authors (who were all in attendance) introduced their work and answered questions varying from 'what would you take to a desert island?' to 'what is the song of your childhood?'. 

Cornerstone imprint Hutchinson snapped up How Do We Know We’re Doing it Right? by Sykes in an 11-way auction in June. The collection of essays by journalists and The High Low podcast host will be published in July 2020. Describing her collection in three words. She said: "Curious, broad and contemporary." 

Brookes, whose novel, The Prisoner’s Wife will be published by Century in May 2020, said it is "a tale of love and friendship and courage, hope and despair". Set during the Second World War, it is based on a true story. Asked what she would take to a desert island, she said: "Although there are may novels I love, it's poetry that nurtures me so I would have to take a collection of all my favourite poems. If I really missed having a novel to read, I would just have to write one. 

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle (Hutchinson) by Blackmore will be published in June 2020. He said: "This is book about two brothers sent on the Grand Tour by their social-climbing mother to meet powerful and fashionable new friends and instead they meet the intoxicating Mr Lavell who unravels their plans."

Eley Williams, author of The Liar's Dictionary (William Heinemann, July, 2020), said the idea for her book "came out of thinking around how we interact with dictionaries. Are they monolithic, static, immutable, slightly restrictive tomes that command respect? What happens if one considers the dictionary as something more unstable?"

Asked if she could live in any time period, she said: "I would probably like to visit 1755. Dr Johnson bent over his dictionary of the English language. I would like to see him drafting that." 

Winner of the inaugural #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize Hafsa Zayyan said her novel, We Are All Birds of Uganda (#Merky Books, July 2020), features a dual narrative and follows the story of South Asian man, Hasan, living in post- Second World War Uganda through to expulsion of South Asians in Uganda in 1972. The other half, set in modern day Britain, is narrated by a second generation Ugandan Asian immigrant, Sameer.

Anika Scott with Finding Clara (March 2020) about a German woman being hunted as war criminal in post-war Essen, Germany and Andrew Hunter Murray's The Last Day (February 2020) set in a world whose rotation ground to a halt 30 years ago, will both be published by Hutchinson. 

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby will be published by Century in January 2020 and follows the story of Jane Austen's sister Cassandra as she returns to the village of Kintbury 23 years after the death of her famous sibling. Asked which character in the novel she relates the most to, she said: "I most relate to Cassandra Austen who is the Miss Austen of the title, who was a very good woman to whom we owe a lot and has never been given the credit she is due."

Asked for her favourite Austen novel, "That's a hard one. Persuasion. Or possibly Emma or Persuasion. Persuasion. Emma." 

The Silent Treatment (Century) by Abbie Greaves will be published in April 2020. It tells story of Frank and Maggie a couple who been married for 40 years but who haven't spoken for the last six months. Asked what cocktail she would be, Greaves said: "A whisky sour. Short and strong." 

Tish Delaney's Before My Actual Heart Breaks will be published by Hutchinson in July 2020. Discussing the inspiration for the novel, she said: "I wanted to portray my experience of being brought up in a rather lively border town in Northern Ireland at the heart of the Troubles and I thought an intense, problematic love story set right at the heart of those times would be a good way of doing that and I wanted to get across the richness of rural life that carries on despite the bombs and bullets." 

Asked for the song of her childhood, she chose Louis Armstrong' What A Wonderful World, saying: "It has it all - green trees, blue skies, rainbows, people treating each other decently. All the precious things which should never be taken for granted. Also, it brings the house down at karaoke which is a very useful life skill."