Hachette India releases the cover for The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, along with updated cover copy.

July 3, 2012 /India PRwire/ -- Published worldwide in the English language on 27th September 2012 in hardback (Rs 850). When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

A big novel about a small town, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults. It is the work of a storyteller like no other.

The Casual Vacancy

512 pages

ISBN 9781408704202 (hardback) price Rs 850

Barry Fairbrother's surname was incorrectly given as Fairweather in our original press release. This was Little, Brown's error and we are correcting it now.

Source: Press release distribution via India PRwire

Notes to Editor

J.K. Rowling is the author of the bestselling Harry Potter series of seven books, published between 1997 and 2007, which have sold over 450 million copies worldwide, are distributed in more than 200 territories, translated into 73 languages, and have been turned into eight blockbuster films. She has also written two small volumes, which appear as the titles of Harry's schoolbooks within the novels. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages were published by Bloomsbury Children's Books in March 2001 in aid of Comic Relief. In December 2008,The Tales of Beedle the Bard was published in aid of the Children's High Level Group, and quickly became the fastest-selling book of the year.

As well as an OBE for services to children's literature, J.K. Rowling is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, France's Légion d'Honneur, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and she has been a Commencement Speaker at Harvard University USA. She supports a wide number of charitable causes through her charitable trust Volant, and is the founder of Lumos, a charity working to transform the lives of disadvantaged children.

Hachette India is the Indian arm of the UK's largest general books publisher, Hachette UK, which is made up of companies like Headline, Hodder & Stoughton, Little, Brown, Octopus, Orion, Chambers-Harrap, Piatkus, Hodder Education including Arnold, and Hachette Children's Books; with legendary imprints like John Murray, Everyman, Gollancz, Orbit, Abacus, Sceptre, Virago, Business Plus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Cassell, Hamlyn, Bounty, etc.; and brands like John Grisham, Asterix, Enid Blyton, Horrid Henry, Stephen King, Steve Berry, Jeffery Deaver, Jodi Picoult, Alexander McCall Smith, Gregory David Roberts, Mathew Reilly, Martina Cole, James Patterson, Robert Ludlum, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh (in the UK), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Lavanya Sankaran, to name a few.

Hachette India commenced operations in 2008 and began its local publishing programme in May 2009 with Amit Varma's My Friend Sancho, the highest selling fiction debut of the year. This was followed by such books as Manjit Kumar's Quantum (shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009) and Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters. The Children's books division got off to a great start as well with the bestselling The Mahatma and the Monkeys. The year that followed saw the publication of several bestselling titles includingTurbulence by star Samit Basu,Third Best by Arjun Rao and a spate of non-fiction leads like 24 Akbar Road,The Absent State, The Red Market, Travelling Diva by celebrity chef Ritu Dalmia, and the country's first Yearbook for Children. Hachette India publishes general, literary and commercial fiction, children's and reference books as well as non- fiction, covering memoirs, self help, travel, history, business, popular culture, lifestyle and sport.

Hachette UK is a part of Hachette Livre France, the dominant market leading publisher in France. The Hachette group is itself owned by the Lagardre group which has as parallel subsidiary groups the world's number 1 magazine publisher in Hachette Filippachi, (Paris Match, Elle magazine, etc.), Sports management companies, distribution and retail businesses (Relay and Newslink brands in Europe and Asia Pacific) and joint-ventures in the aviation sector (best known for Airbus).

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