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Picador is giving a new look to one of its most acclaimed literary stars, Edward St Aubyn, by reissuing his Patrick Melrose novels with a unified jacket style.
The five books in the sequence, which all feature self-destructive Patrick Melrose as he struggles variously with addiction, his family and his past, are Never Mind; Bad News; Some Hope; Mother's Milk; and At Last. The latter, the final book in the series, was released in hardback in May last year. All will be released as £7.99 paperbacks on 12th April, with each bearing a single quote of recommendation from other authors, including Alan Hollinghurst, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith, Alice Sebold and Maggie O'Farrell.
Editorial director Kate Harvey said: "It's an exciting moment. At Last is the culmination of the Patrick Melrose novels, and it seemed right to repackage the entire sequence at this point, and to publish the first three books—previously collected as Some Hope—individually, as they had first appeared."
She called the series "one of the most important cycles in contemporary fiction", and said the strong reviews of At Last on its hardback publication were "both an accolade we want to celebrate and a key opportunity to bring Edward to a wider readership. This repackage is all about communicating beauty and quality—the sense that if you haven't read St Aubyn yet, you've missed something essential. I firmly believe he is at a tipping point."
Senior designer Stuart Wilson said the novels, focusing on "one family's complexities", lend themselves to "cover imagery of clarity and detail. I wanted to achieve a clean look, and also covers that convey movement and the sense of an ending or beginning."