A story about being an outsider, first love and grief and a thought-provoking look at the uneasy relationship between power, celebrity and control.

I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL
by Hattie Williams
Orion, 2025
(via Mushens Entertainment)

London, 2010. Charlie is twenty-three, single and the new publicity assistant at the independent London publishing house Winden & Shane. Richard Aveling is fifty-six, married and the author that has defined his generation. For Charlie, the glamorous and urbane writer is a ticket into a world she doesn’t quite belong to – and a link to her late mother, who loved his work. But forced to hide their relationship from everyone she cares about, Charlie starts to realise that she might be in too deep. And when the success of his first book in years launches him to a new level of fame where all anonymity is lost, she realises that some secrets can’t stay secret forever.

Hattie Williams left education in her teens to pursue a career as a musician. She has toured Europe extensively, made three studio albums, and worked as a composer with her tracks still regularly featured on TV and streaming services across the world. In her mid-twenties she found herself working in publishing quite by accident, and an admin temping job turned into a twelve-year career in which she worked with some of the biggest authors in the world. She spends as much time in Iceland as she can, and books and produces the Iceland Noir Literary Festival which takes place in Reykjavík every November. Hattie lives in east London with her husband and young daughter.