Penguin Ambassadors 2008
The Penguin Ambassadors for 2008 are
Jane Johnson
Rachel Johnson
Lauren St John
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Jane Johnson
is the author of Crossed Bones. She has spent the best part of twenty years working her way up the publishing ladder, from editorial secretary at George Allen & Unwin to Publishing Director at HarperCollins UK. In her time she has been the publisher of JRR Tolkien, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, George RR Martin, Stephen King and Peter Straub, Terry Goodkind, Robin Hobb, Michael Marshall, Stuart MacBride and Sam Bourne.
In 2005 she started a novel based on a family legend which told how in the 17th century a female ancestress was stolen out of a Cornish church by Barbary pirates and sold into the North African white slave trade. Research in the UK proved that the extraordinary story was true: so she turned her attention to making a research visit to Morocco.
The result is Crossed Bones, published by Penguin in hardback in April 2008. In the course of her research in Morocco, she met and married her husband, and she now divides her time between Morocco and London, whilst continuing her work as Publishing Director for HarperCollins.
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Rachel Johnson
is a newspaper columnist and journalist for The Sunday Times. She is married to Ivo Dawnay and lives with her three children in London and Somerset. She is the author of Notting Hell. Shire Hell was published in Spring 2008 by Penguin Books as an original paperback.
Shire Hell
Mimi and Ralph and their three children have moved to the Dorset countryside, a place without a world class deli in spitting distance, a place to get away from the awful competitiveness of London life, where no one cares what you wear, where there are no politics to speak of, and you can get away from exhaust fumes. Right? Totally wrong. There’s Californian turned aristo Cath Cobb’s organic farm shop in the Tithe barn; there’s the perennial battle of Boden versus Lulu Bryanston’s chic vintage Clash tee shirt; there’s the knotty controversy if the wind farm and the right green politics, not to mention the fact that in order to have any social life you have to drive miles and miles (and then not drink when you get there).
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Lauren St John
is the author of The White Giraffe and Rainbow's End. She was born in Gatooma, Rhodesia, now Kadoma, Zimbabwe. After studying journalism in Africa, she moved to London, where she was for many years golf correspondent to the Sunday Times. She is the author several books on sport and music, including Hardcore Troubadour: The Life & Near Death of Steve Earle. Her award-winning children's novel, The White Giraffe, is being adapted into a movie by Walden Media. Her memoir of growing up in Zimbabwe, Rainbow's End, is published by Penguin in Spring 2008.
Rainbow's End
Rainbow’s End is the name of the Rhodesian farm where Lauren St John lived from the age of eleven to seventeen, and experienced Zimbabwe achieve independence. When she and her family moved there in 1978 at the height of Rhodesia’s civil war, it was the site of a recent massacre. Despite this terrifying heritage and the knowledge that the same could happen to her family at any time, Rainbow’s End, was a paradise for a child. There was a giraffe called Jenny at the bottom of the garden, herds of wildebeest and impala, and endless landscapes for Lauren to explore on her beloved horses. Yet underlying this idyll was the war, which was never very far away. Lauren’s soldier-father was committed to the Rhodesian war and the blinkered white attitudes of the time, and when Zimbabwean independence was achieved in 1980 Lauren had to re-examine all of her values…
Jane Johnson
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Rachel Johnson
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Lauren St John