Non-Fiction
María Blanco
How to Learn Spanish
How to Learn Spanish is a comprehensive guide for students of Spanish. It teaches powerful language learning principles and strategies for:
Expanding and memorising vocabulary.
Setting up good pronunciation habits.
Learning grammar effectively.
Optimising the development of speaking, writing, listening and reading.
Selecting appropriate resources and incorporating fun language learning activities.
Setting language learning goals and action plans.
The principles and strategies are informed by current research into language learning, cognitive psychology, and educational neuroscience, as well as the author’s more than 20 years experience as a teacher.
FORMAT
Easy to read: written in simple and clear colloquial English (no technical terms).
Inspirational: it includes real-life stories of language learning challenges and successes.
Dual coding design: explanations of key principles and strategies supported by illustrations.
Action oriented: students are helped to reflect on their language learning strategies, needs and goals, in the sections titled “What about you?”
Genre: Spanish Language Learning
Extent: 96 pp
Original Printing: POD & E-book
Rights Available: Worldwide PB.
Audience: Huge potential readership - there are 9 million students studying Spanish as a foreign language in the USA, a key unexploited market. Timely topic as blended learning is a current trend. Fills a key market gap in applying the strategies and principles for language-learning specifically to Spanish. The author, a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Westminster, is a specialist in language learning strategies and a highly experienced speaker, leader and coach who has a comprehensive knowledge of the market. A clear opportunity for distribution in airports and transport hubs used by English speakers. Recommend a reprint in a small format (pocket gem size) and relaunch.
Alison Murdoch
Bed 12
What do you do when the most important person in your life is about to die?
Who can help you?
How do you keep going?
When Alison Murdoch’s husband catches viral encephalitis and falls into a life-threatening coma, everything changes. Bed 12 is a survival guide to the world of acute medicine, and a poignant and darkly comic account of what it’s like to fight for someone’s life. Over the course of a summer, machines beep and clatter, medical staff come and go, and family and friends of varying beliefs offer well-intentioned advice. For someone unfamiliar with hospitals, death and dying, the insights of Buddhism assume a greater relevance than ever before. This book is an astute, profound and uplifting insight into how to cope with despair, heartache and the unknown.
‘The object of my concern-or rather the entire focus of my current existence-is now lying in Bed 12.’
‘Riveting.’
Dr Bob Grove, former Chief Executive, the Centre for Mental Health.
‘Bed 12 is a love letter to the NHS, and the everyday acts of kindness that keep it afloat … it needs to be widely read.’
Dr Phil Hammond – NHS doctor, writer, broadcaster and comedian.‘A fascinating and inspiring read for anyone who has experienced the serious illness of a friend or relative, or who wonders about their own mortality.’
Professor Clare Gerada MBE‘This is a miraculous story told with great humanity.’
The Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO DD FSA, Bishop of London (1995-2017)‘A remarkable achievement. Bed 12 contains so much from which those of us providing intensive care could and should learn. ’
Richard Beale, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust‘It should be on the reading list for all nurses and doctors.’
Dr Bob Grove, former Chief Executive, the Centre for Mental Health
‘A powerfully moving book revealing the healing power that resides within the minds and hearts of each one of us.’
Thupten Jinpa, principal English translator to the Dalai Lama
Genre: True Story
Extent: 176 pp
Dimensions: 138 x 216 mm
Original Printing: PB, UK only
Rights Available: Worldwide PB
Audience: Opportunities for tapping into the global mind, body, spirit sector and podcast or audio-book serialisation. The author has extensive connections in the UK and USA to the Buddhist community. Recommend a relaunch focusing on the spiritually uplifting dimension of the story. Would work very well as an audio book or serialised via podcast.
Stefan Gillow-Reynolds
The Wisdom of Love in The Song of Songs
Dr Gillow Reynolds argues for a unique interpretation of this sensual and mysterious poem, long considered the most important book of the Hebrew Scriptures but nowadays relatively unknown. The Wisdom of Love in the Song of Songs brings cohesion and context to the disparate mystical, academic and secular interpretations of the Song, shedding new light on, and insight into, one of the greatest love poems of all time.
‘ … A tour de force, The Wisdom of Love in the Song of Songs deserves to be read by all who are willing to have their hearts and minds stretched and enlarged … A book for scholars and for a more general readership, it will be a great help in bringing the Song back to life today…written with passion – heart and soul – like the Song itself.’
Graeme Watson, author of The Song of Songs: A Contemplative Guide
‘The Wisdom of Love in the Song of Songs is a beautifully enigmatic biblical text – St Augustine called it ‘a puzzle’ – that jumps alive in Stefan Gillow Reynolds’ close reading. A text usually met in fragments at weddings is presented here as a new whole in a fresh commentary with theological and psychological insight. Dream, erotic story or mystical revelation, or all three? The merging of the different forms of love yields new insight into the divine and human affair.’
Laurence Freeman, The Tablet, Books of the Year
Genre: Theology
Extent: 392 pp (illustrated, black & white & colour illustrations
Original Printing: HB (UK only)
Dimensions: 216 x 138 mm
Rights Available: Worldwide PB. Significant untapped potential in the US where in biblical studies is the largest in the world.