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The House of Marvellous Books
Tucked away in a near-derelict library in the centre of London, The House of Marvellous Books is a publishing house on the brink of financial disaster. With assistant Ursula asleep at her desk, head publisher Gerard going health and safety mad, and chief editor Drusilla focused on finding a supposedly priceless but famously missing manuscript, there is hardly anyone left to steer the ship.
Young Mortimer Blakeley-Smith, junior editor, charts the descent of the House in his logbook as it lurches from one failure to the next. Will mysterious Russian buyers, lurking in the wings, finally sink the ship? Or will Drusilla find the legendary Daybreak Manuscript and save the day?
Fairlight Books, Oxford
Published: 19/05/2022
ISBN: 9781914148095
RRP: £14.99
Format: Hardback
About Fiona
Fiona Vigo Marshall was educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She started her writing career at a local newspaper in south London before moving to Mexico City, where she covered news and features for the daily English language newspaper The News, of the Novedades group.
On returning to London, Fiona worked as a publisher and freelance writer. Her short stories and poems have been published in a variety of outlets including Ambit, Fiction, Ink Sweat & Tears, OpenPen, Orbis, Phantom Drift, Prospect Magazine, The London Journal of Fiction, and The Royal Society of Literature Review.
Her short story The Street of Baths won the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize in 2016. Other stories have been commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize and in the Bridport Prize. Her story The Marvellous Book, published by Phantom Drift, Portland, Oregon, in 2017, was Pushcart Prize nominated. She was a finalist in the Reeds in the Wind international literary competition, Sardinia, 2021, in honour of Grazia Deledda, with the short story Koffi and Mouchette.
Her new novel The House of Marvellous Books is published by Fairlight Books, May 2022. Her first novel Find Me Falling was published by Fairlight Books, March 2019.
Find Me Falling
Shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2020
She bought a house where you can hear the sea, murmuring on the edge of consciousness…
Bonnie, a traumatised concert pianist, finds refuge at the edge of England, in a cliff-top house haunted by memories and broken dreams. When Dominic, a road sweeper who is visited by neurological hauntings of his own, gives Bonnie a ring he finds on the beach, elemental forces are unleashed that neither is able to control.
‘The beautiful, vibrating prose pulls the reader into the magical shifting universe and doesn’t let go until the very end.’
SOPHIE VAN LLEWYN
‘Marshall’s evocation of eerie alternate realities stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.’
DR SALLIE BAXENDALE, Consultant Neuropsychologist, UCL London
Short Stories
Click on each title to read...
The Street of Baths
Revisiting the past in Barcelona.
Winning entry of the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize 2016, Prospect Magazine
Nine Empty Rooms
A mother and daughter view a hotel for sale - but what does vacant possession really mean?
Chicago Literati