Third Man Books First Novel: The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers
Third Man Books is thrilled to announce that it will be the exclusive US publisher of Benjamin Myers’ celebrated historical novel The Gallows Pole (2017), slated for a winter 2019 release. The novel, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historic fiction and is on its fifth print run in the UK, received global acclaim for its portrayal of the “coining” gangs of 1760s Yorkshire.
Myers, the first UK author to ink a publishing deal with TMB, said:
“It’s a long way from Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire to Nashville, Tennessee, but I’ve long been a fan of Third Man Records and their exciting new literary wing, Third Man Books, too. Jack White and his pals have been using their success in the best possible way: by pumping resources back into underground culture. When they got in touch out of the blue to ask ‘What have you got?’ I jumped at the chance to work with them. The Gallows Pole has been an underground, word-of-mouth independent success in the UK, and in Third Man Books (Winter, 2019) it feels like it has found the perfect home in the US.”
“We love everything about this book, how it was written and Mr. Myers himself,” Third Man’s Ben Swank said. “One of our many pre-occupations is mini-universes created by real artists, and with The Gallows Pole Ben Myers has crafted a living breathing landscape of time and place haunted with ghosts and rich with larger-then-life characters re-born straight from real (bloody) history. We couldn’t be happier to have Myers, our very first UK author, on Third Man Books, and we’re delighted to bring this beast of a novel to American shores.”
“Atmospheric alt-crime at its best.” – NME
“A roaring furnace of a novel. In telling a big story about a small place, Benjamin Myers portrays social upheavels which have a sharp contemporary echo, as well as bringing to light a little-known and fascinating fragment of rural English history…he meets the challenge for every author of historical fiction – bringing alive the past and speaking forcefully to the readers of today” – judges comments of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 (winner)
