PRESS RELEASE: JOFFE BOOKS ACQUIRES OSTARA PUBLISHING

Jasper Joffe, CEO of leading independent publisher Joffe Books, has acquired Ostara Publishing from previous owner Andrew Cocks for an undisclosed sum. 

Joffe Books will be taking over the Ostara list of approximately 120 titles. They will publish new editions in late 2022 and 2023, with Joffe’s laser-like focus on marketing and design relaunching the books to a whole new gamut of readers.

Award-winning crime writer, former Ostara consultant editor and Shots columnist Mike Ripley has been approached to write new introductions to the Ostara Classics. 

Kate Lyall Grant, Joffe Books Publishing Director: “Ostara has a well-deserved reputation for the superlative quality of its crime list, and with Joffe Books’ commercial success and expertise in the digital market, we think this is the perfect fit to reach a widespread new readership for these fantastic books. We will be staying true to the spirit of Ostara, and keeping the Ostara name, branding the books as ‘Joffe Books presents Ostara Classics.”

Andrew Cocks: ‘Regrettably I am no longer in a position to publish new books and give my existing titles the attention they deserve in an fast-developing publishing environment. I am delighted to have found in Joffe Books a kindred spirit to take over the Ostara list of authors and truly believe that Joffe will give the Ostara authors the opportunity to reach new readers and prosper. It has been a privilege to have been involved with all these books and I could not have wished for a better home for them.’

In 2019, Joffe Books acquired the Robert Hale backlist from Crowood Press, reissuing and revitalizing the sales of authors including Roger Silverwood, Frances Lloyd, David Hodges and Bill Kitson. These authors’ books now regularly feature in the Top 100 UK Kindle chart. The overall sales of ex-Hale titles have increased over tenfold since the acquisition.

About Joffe Books

Founded in 2014, Joffe Books is proud of its history of innovative publishing. Thanks to the unflagging passion and dedication brought by everyone in Team Joffe, we have built a reputation for crafting great books for readers, long-term relationships with authors and agents, and fleet-footed marketing. We are now the largest independent publisher of e-books in the UK. In 2021, Joffe sold over 3 million books across crime, mystery, thriller, romance and historical fiction (and another 6 million through Kindle Unlimited). Joffe was shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The Joffe Books Prize aims to increase the diversity of voices in crime writing. 

www.joffebooks.com

For more info contact Ostara@joffebooks.com

 

Top Notch Thrillers via the Talented Mr Ripley

So as August fast approaches, many of us think about our summer vacation, and what to pack for our reading. I was delighted to receive and update from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Mr Ripley.

What we have in store from Ostara Publishing looks intriguing, and recommended by Ostara’s Thriller Consultant. Though I’m still giggling about his SORRY I HAVEN’T A CLUEDO from Crimefest, which is archived HERE

So here are two books worth exploring -

The Man Who Would Be Bond

When hard-as-nails sailor-turned-gun-runner-turned assassin for the sinister Department K John Craig made his fictional debut in 1964 in The Man Who Sold Death, he was immediately touted as a replacement for James Bond, James Munro’s novel appearing less than three months after the death of Ian Fleming.

The Man Who Sold Death was an instant success, being reprinted five times in hardback before becoming a best-selling paperback in 1966. Three more ‘John Craig’ novels followed, and all were hugely successful in America where John Craig and James Munro are perhaps better remembered than in the UK.

By 1967, John Craig had been replaced in his creator’s affections by another ruthless killer who was to become an iconic character of British television and of spy fiction, when Munro, under his real name of James Mitchell (1926-2002), created Callan. All five Callan novels and two collections of short stories are also published as Top Notch Thrillers.

The Man Who Sold Death garnered rave reviews, the New York Times calling it ‘An intrigue that really spins and sparks excitement’ and the Daily Express enthused: ‘A successor to Bond who is as tough and exciting to women as the original.’

The Swinging Sixties Turn Sour

The companion Top Notch reissue for August also introduced a new hero – known only as ‘Raven’– who put his own very cynical slant on the Swinging Sixties London scene, its rich and fashionably dissolute elite and the growth, on an industrial scale, of the trade in heroin.

First published in 1970, The Diamond Hook was the first novel to feature the enigmatic private eye ‘Raven’ by James Quartermain, the pen-name assumed by playwright, artist and illustrator James Broom-Lynne (1916-1995) who as a designer created some famous dust-jackets in the 1960s for, among others, the racing thrillers of Dick Francis and Adam Diment’s legendary debut, The Dolly Dolly Spy.

The Diamond Hook is a tough, brutal, uncompromising story of revenge, opening in London’s fashionable clubland and climaxing in the Dordogne region of France. The central plot-line has the damaged hero Raven forcibly turned into a heroin addict but still intent on solving his ‘case’; a trope famously used five years later in the film French Connection II.

For further information on Top Notch Thrillers:

www.ostarapublishing.co.uk