So excited to hear this news from two of our members (Abbie Headon and Chris McCrudden) go you two!!!!!

Abbie Headon (pictured), Commissioning Editor at Prelude Books, has made her first acquisitions for the publisher, signing up three new series to the Farrago humorous fiction imprint.

Farrago has established itself over the past two years as one of the new breed of publishers looking beyond traditional bookshelf categories and using current online marketing techniques to establish direct connections with readers. As well as promoting ebooks and audio, Farrago also makes its titles available in print to the book trade, via Macmillan Distribution.

Pete Duncan, Publisher at Prelude, started Farrago (‘fiction to make you smile’) to bring humorous fiction directly into readers’ lives. The imprint has already seen great success with the republication of classic series including the Miss Seeton mysteries by Heron Carvic and Hamilton Crane, the Flaxborough novels by Colin Watson and The Bandy Papers by Donald Jack.

Headon, who has been working for Prelude since April 2017, is developing a programme of fresh new fiction voices for the Farrago list, and has acquired world rights for three series, each starting with two titles.

Magical Mystery Paws (July 2018) by Mandy Morton continues the adventures of Hettie Bagshot and the No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, following five previous titles in this cosy mystery series published by Allison and Busby. In this latest addition to a series described by P. D. James as ‘Original and intriguing... a world without people which cat lovers will enter and enjoy’, punk star Patty Sniff, a troupe of Irish dancers and would-be magician Magical Mystery Paws set off on the Summer of Fluff tour – but their set list includes murders alongside the magic and music.

Chris McCrudden’s Battlestar Suburbia (Sep 2018) is the first in a series of comic science fiction adventures, set in a dystopian space future in which humans have become an underclass of cleaners for a society of sentient machines. As AI begins to play an ever-greater role in our own daily lives, this tale of a power-crazed smartphone, a brave breadmaker with an unexpected secret in her proving drawer and a disaster-prone battery top-up salesman called Darren is an adventure for our times.

The third new signing for Farrago is a mathematical mystery series by Jonathan Pinnock, author of Mrs Darcy Vs the Aliens and prize-winning short story collection Dot Dash. In The Truth About Archie and Pye (Sep 2018), Tom Winscombe, a junior PR executive with a severely blotted copybook, finds himself investigating the mysterious deaths of mathematical geniuses the Vavasor twins, in a tale involving the Belorussian mafia, internet conspiracy theorists and a cat called μ.

The opening titles in all three series will be published in ebook, paperback and audio, and promoted through the book trade and direct to the Farrago mailing list of humorous fiction lovers. For more information, contact Abbie Headon on abbie@preludebooks.co.uk or Pete Duncan on pete@preludebooks.co.uk.

Follow @farragobooks on Twitter and see our full range of current titles at www.farragobooks.com.