As of Friday 1st July 2016, Gunnar Lie & Associates no longer represent Carlton Books.

Unfortunately we will no longer be able to process Carlton orders or claims.

Please send any future correspondence to Owen Hazel: ohazell@carltonbooks.co.uk 

Download excel order form

9781785650550          £7.99          B-Format PB          320pp

Patricia is a witch who can communicate with birds. Laurence is a mad scientist and inventor of the two- second time machine. As teenagers they gravitate towards one another, sharing in the horrors of growing up weird.

When they later reconnect as adults, Laurence is an engineering genius living in near-future San Francisco, trying to escape a planet falling apart with technological intervention.

Meanwhile, Patricia, a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the magically gifted, works alongside her fellow magicians to secretly repair the earth’s ever growing ailments.

As they each take sides in a cataclysmic war between science and magic, Laurence and Patricia find themselves trying to make sense of life, sex and adulthood on the brink of the apocalypse.

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is a sublime and dazzling blend of literary fiction and SFF, already being favourably compared by Anders’ contemporaries to the works of Ursula le Guin, David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel and Lev Grossman. A beautiful coming of age story with Dahl-esque wit, set in a future that could be just around the corner. Anders has crafted a poignant love story that transcends time to explore the universal relationship we have with nature, and each other.

Charlie Jane Anders is the editor-in-chief of io9.com, the extraordinarily popular Gawker Media site devoted to science fiction and fantasy. Her Tor.com story “Six Months, Three Days” won the 2012 Hugo Award and was subsequently picked up for development into a NBC television series. She has also had short fiction published by Tin House, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and McSweeney’s. ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is her debut novel.

Five years ago, in January 2011, Nosy Crow published its first book, and the following month, we published our first app.

So we’re five years old!

It felt scary and daring and exciting to have started a publishing company.

But we were clear in what we wanted to do.

We wanted to create books and apps that were child-focussed: we always have in our minds the child or children at whom a particular book is aimed, not to limit its audience, but to make sure that we have a real reader in our heads when we are shaping, packaging and positioning anything we publish.

We wanted to create books and apps that were parent-friendly: we always have in our minds the adults – usually parents, sometimes teachers and librarians – that we are speaking to when we blog or use social media.

Five years on, it still feels a bit scary and daring and exciting, and we’ve published:

• 238 books
• 17 multimedia apps
• 96 straight eBooks
• 60 audio books (as part of our Stories Aloud free downloads initiative)
• 38 enhanced iBooks

Many of these books and apps have won prizes, and, as a business, we’ve won multiple industry awards and small or new business awards.

Our awards shelf today.

We finished 2015…

• With a turnover of over £5 million. We are now the 15thbiggest publisher of children’s/YA books in the UK, measured using Nielsen data based on sales to consumers out of bookshops. In 2015, £1 in every £100 spent on children’s books in the UK was spent on a Nosy Crow book. Our books aren’t only sold in the UK though: around half our sales come from outside the UK, and we’ve sold rights in 28 languages.
• The winner of awards as diverse as the Blue Peter Best Story Award (for Pamela Butchart’s The Spy Who Loved School Dinners) and FutureBook’s Best Children’s Digital Book award (for our app, Snow White) to the Independent Publisher’s Guild’s Digital Marketing Award and Young Independent Publisher of the Year Award (for Tom Bonnick)
• In contact with people. We relaunched our website, and had 250,000 unique users (up 10% on 2015) and 928,000 page views (up 8% on 2015) from pretty much every country in the world. We have 34,752 Twitter followers and 5,379 Facebook likes. We ran a programme of masterclasses for aspiring children’s book writers and launched a series of illustrator salons.
• Having supplied hundreds of thousands of copies of Open Very Carefully to reception class children via Book Trust’s BookTime giving scheme
• Donating £30,000 for WarChild after selling 6,000 copies of Refuge within 2 weeks of publication

Our awards shelves after five years of publishing

Catherine Stokes joins Nosy Crow as Head of Sales and Marketing in January 2015. Since then our Sales and Marketing team has grown to five people and our UK sales have increased by 58%.

Tom Bonnick and Kate Wilson at the IPG Awards in March 2015

Assembling the Nosy Crow stand at the Bologna Book Fair in March

Paula Harrison receives a Golden Egg to celebrate sales of one million copies of The Rescue Princesses books

Thomas Flintham and Pamela Butchart (right) with Katie Thistleton at a Hay Festival event celebration of the Blue Peter Book Awards in May

Tracey Corderoy and Steven Lenton at the launch of Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam: The Cat Burglar, in July

Philip Ardagh signing copies of The Grunts at the Edinburgh Festival in August

Cupcakes for the Nosy Crow Masterclass in September

David Solomons at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival in September

Sam Usher and Irving Finkel researching Refuge at the British Museum in October

The Nosy Crow stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October

Nosy Crow staff exchanging Secret Santa presents at the office Christmas lunch in December

In 2016, we will publish 95 books, most of which will be simultaneously published as ebooks, and a handful of innovative multimedia apps. There are brilliant debuts; a household name or two; and many, many authors and illustrators whose work we’ve been nurturing since we started.

We’ll launch our first list with the National Trust, and our first book – a tie-in with the forthcoming blockbuster Sunken Cities exhibition – with The British Museum.

We couldn’t have done any of this without our authors, illustrators, paper-engineers and other creative collaborators, who are as talented and hardworking as they are fun to work with. We couldn’t have done it without the booksellers, online retailers, librarians and publishers outside the UK who have found our books and apps engaging and attractive and just right for the people they sell or lend books to. And we couldn’t have done it without every single person who’s bought or borrowed a book or app to share with a child, who, in turn, we hope has enjoyed that book or app as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.

Thank you.

Now we are five!

Peggy Porschen has won the Cake Masters Award for Best Book 2015 for Cakes in Bloom.  

Peggy picked up her glitzy glass gong at at the awards ceremony in Birmingham on Saturday. Her book, Cakes in Bloom, is a true masterclass in making exquisite sugarcraft flowers. 

9781849493734          £25          280 x 240mm          224pp          HB

Cakes in Bloom is a celebration of Peggy’s skill, style and experience and the first time that she has shared her repertoire of incomparable sugar blooms with her legions of fans.  The ultimate reference and inspiration for sugar crafters, this book reflects Peggy’s mastery of a breath-taking array of flowers, creatively used on a variety of cakes.  Peggy demonstrates a broad range of techniques, embracing all the basics as well as the particular skills needed to make each individual flower.  As with all her creations, Peggy’s cakes are as good to eat as they are to look at, so there are signature recipes for delicious cakes and fail-safe fillings.

Peggy reveals the secrets to making more than 30 gorgeous life-like flowers, from roses, peonies and pansies to cherry blossom, orchids and poppies. The range of 24 cakes includes miniature cakes, large cakes and tiered cakes, demonstrating the simplest use of a single flower as well as inspired combinations of blooms.  The wealth of ideas and variations includes a wide range of occasions from birthdays, anniversaries and weddings to simple but special tea-parties.

Gunnar Lie & Associates are exhibiting at Frankfurt Bookfair: Hall 6.2, Stand B53.

If you or a representative from your company are attending the bookfair, come to our stand to view a large selection of books from our publishers, flick through a catalogue and chat with a friendly member of the GLA team.

Gunnar Lie & Associates stand at Frankfurt Bookfair 2014

Adult colouring books have never been so popular, from a form of relaxational therapy to a simple way to pass the time on your commute to work, adult colouring books are the ‘in’ thing!

Take your mind away from the stresses of modern life and indulge your creativity with the following selection of colouring books for adults:

Download the order form

Download digital material

Watch the book trailer here

Watch the film trailer here

See when the film is in cinemas near you here