Bitter Lemon Press boasts a bumper season for bestselling female crime writers

Independent publisher Bitter Lemon Press has published plans for the autumn season, revealing a stellar line up of bestselling female crime writers. The publisher, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has always been proud of its reputation for representing writers from many different parts of the world, but this is the first time that they have published three such talented, successful women all in one season.

Kicking off the programme in July will be Patricia Melo, Brazil’s most celebrated crime writer, whose new novel The Body Snatcher is a story of drug dealing gone wrong, police corruption and macabre blackmail. Described by Cosmopolitan Brazil as ‘an explosive mixture of dread, greed and corruption’, the book is a mesmerising mix of conspiracy, sex, betrayal of the living and desecration of the dead, and also a ruthless portrait of contemporary Brazil. Patricia Melo is an author and playwright born in Sao Paolo in 1962, but is now living in Switzerland. Her novels Lost World, The Killer, In Praise of Lies and Inferno were published in English, by Bloomsbury, to rave reviews. In 1999, Time magazine included her among the fifty "Latin American Leaders for the New Millennium." Her works have also been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. The Body Snatcher will be translated by Clifford E. Landers, who has previously translated novels by Rubem Fonseca, Jorge Amado, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, and Paulo Coelho.

Esmahan Aykol’s atmospheric Divorce Turkish Style will be published in September. This will be the third in the murder mystery series featuring Kati Hirschel, the crime bookstore owner and accidental investigator. The first two books – Hotel Bosphorus and Baksheesh – were also published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, and have been published in Turkish, German, French and Italian as well. Set in Istanbul, Divorce Turkish Style is a feminine take on mystery stories, and Kati Hirschel is a funny, feisty and sexy heroine who, as usual, gets involved in a case that is none of her business. Bestselling author Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She lives in Istanbul and Berlin. During her law studies she was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations, and then, after a stint as a bartender, she turned to fiction writing. The new book will be translated by Ruth Whitehouse who has worked as a violinist and translator in Ankara. Her translations of shorter work have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Finally, in January, Bitter Lemon Press are delighted to be publishing South America’s bestselling crime writer, and winner of the Clarin Prize, Claudia Piñeiro. Her new novel, Betty Boo, is set in contemporary Buenos Aires, and is the story of an intelligent and sensitive woman seeking to save her career, and love life, but caught up in the spiral of a large scale criminal cover-up. This is Claudia Piñeiro’s fourth novel and was made into the film Betibú which was recently screened at the London Film Festival. It follows on from the success of Crack in the Wall, Thursday Night Widows, and All Yours, all published by Bitter Lemon Press in the UK and the US. The translator of Betty Boo, Miranda France, is the author of two acclaimed volumes of travel writing: Don Quixote's Delusions, a Cervantean tour through the Spanish psyche; and Bad Times in Buenos Aires, which explores the psychological condition of sullen resignation and impotent rage the Argentinians refer to as ‘bronca’. She has also written the novel Hill Farm and translated Claudia Piñeiro’s other novels into English.

Publisher and co-founder of Bitter Lemon Press, Laurence Colchester, said: “We are very proud to bring these three women crime writers from Brazil, Turkey and Argentina to English speaking readers. It is part of our mission as an independent press to introduce new voices from abroad and here, in the autumn season of 2015, are three of the most successful women writing in the crime genre today. We are delighted to represent them.”

For further information, please contact Alex Hippisley-Cox on 020 8488 3764 or email her at ahipcoxpr@btconnect.com

More information about Bitter Lemon Press can be found on their website.  You can also follow them on Twitter @bitterlemonpub. They can also be found on Facebook.

BITTER LEMON PRESS LTD, 47 WILMINGTON SQUARE, LONDON, WC1X 0ET www.bitterlemonpress.com

Books to look forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

Tito Ihaka, the unkempt, overweight Maori cop was demoted to Sergeant due to insubordination and pigheadedness. He investigates the unsolved killing of 17 year old girl at an election night party in a ritzy villa near Auckland. Ihaka is also embroiled in a very personal mystery. A freelance journalist has stumbled across information that Ihaka's father Jimmy, a trade union firebrand and renegade Marxist, didn't die of natural causes. The stories weave themselves into an exciting climax in an atmosphere of political manoeuvring and intrigue surrounding the USA's confrontation with New Zealand over its anti-nuclear stance. Fallout is by Paul Thomas and is due to be published in March 2015.

Tin Sky is by Ben Pastor and is due to be published in April 2015.  Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major Martin Bora is still serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. At a time when weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldier's daily fare, Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity is not marred by the horrors of war. Two Russian generals in his custody die within twenty-four hours of each other. Everything appears to exclude the likelihood of foul play, but Bora begins an investigation, a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come much too close for comfort.

The novel is set in the Pantanal,the Brazilian lowlands bordering Bolivia. One bright Sunday on the banks of the Paraguay River, the narrator witnesses the fatal crash of a small ‘plane. He finds a kilo of cocaine in the dead pilot's backpack which he pockets . Thus begins a long slide into corruption. When the crash site is located several days later, the pilot's body is missing. Our hero gets involved in a busted cocaine deal and ends up owing a Bolivian drug gang so much money that blackmailing the wealthy family of the dead pilot seems to be the only way out. The family secretly agrees to pay serious money to recover the body of their son. Our hero doesn't have the pilot's body so someone else's will do. Or so he thinks.  The Body Snatcher is by Patricia Mello and is due to be published in June 2015.

Behind God’s Back is by Harri Nykanen and s due to be published in January 2015. There are two Jewish cops in all of Helsinki. One of them, Ariel Kafka, a lieutenant in the Violent Crime Unit, identifies himself as a policeman first, then a Finn, and lastly a Jew. Kafka is a religiously non-observant 40-something bachelor who is such a stubborn, dedicated policeman that he's willing to risk his career to get an answer. Murky circumstances surround his investigation of a Jewish businessman's murder. Neo-Nazi violence, intergenerational intrigue, shady loans – predictable lines of investigation lead to unpredictable culprits. But a second killing strikes closer to home, and the Finnish Security Police come knocking. The tentacles of Israeli politics and Mossad reach surprisingly far, once again wrapping Kafka in their sticky embrace.