Mar 26 2019
More than 1,300 writers including Kerry Hudson, David Nicholls, Sally Rooney, Michael Rosen and Val McDermid have backed a campaign for Waterstones booksellers to be paid the living wage.
The support follows a petition from staff at Waterstones, signed by more than 6,000 people, which calls on the book chain’s managing director, James Daunt, to pay booksellers a starting living wage of £9 an hour, or £10.55 for the Greater London area...
...In an open reply to Hudson, Daunt said the writers were “preach[ing] to the converted”, but that the book chain could not yet afford a pay increase, two years after returning to profit. .... “If you raise the bottom level really significantly, then everybody all the way up the company has to go up, and then we go bust, which isn’t very helpful ... If we were to move to a significantly higher starting rate, then we would have to take that money from our more experienced booksellers, or cut costs in another dramatic way. We’re simply not profitable enough to wave the magic wand and shower gold all around.”
The House on Biscayne Bay
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As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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