LONDON
BOOK FAIR
2017
FICTION
Agence Eliane Benisti – Highlights Fiction LBF 2017 (PDF)
lbla
lorella belli literary agency
Lorella Belli Translation Rights list LBF 2017
For readers of Elizabeth Haynes, Sharon Bolton, Lucy Whitehouse and Louise Doughty
MY SISTER AND OTHER LIARS
by Ruth Dugdall
Amazon Publishing, May 2017
GIRL, INTERRUPTED (Susanna Kaysen) meets WE WERE LIERS (E. Lockhart) in this domestic noir crime novel, told from the unusual perspective of a teenage anorexic, where layers are pulled away until the family home is revealed as the most dangerous place of all.
What happens if you forget your own secrets?
Sam is 17, starving herself and longing for oblivion; Jena is 30, left brain-damaged and desperate to remember. This is the story of two sisters and the secrets and lies at the heart of their world.
Piecing Jena’s fragmented words together, sneaking looks into police evidence, Sam resolves to find her sister’s attacker. At any cost.
A chocolate box full of old photos forces her to speak and to remember. But this journey of discovery also means a loss of innocence for Sam, with devastating consequences.
MY SISTER AND OTHER LIARS is the bold first stand alone novel by the CWA award-winning novelist, Ruth Dugdall.
A dark sexy captivating suspenseful psychological thriller series
The PRETTY LITTLE DOLLS Series
by Ker Dukey
Digital Edition
PRETTY LOST DOLLS (#2)
November 2016
Until Benny missed his dolly who was lost, lost, lost.
He needed to find her and love her at any cost, cost, cost.
Not wanting him and his dolly to be alone, lone, lone.
He made plans to bring his dirty dolly, home, home, home.
I left my soul open.
I left my heart open.
I left the door open.
And he stole me.
Dillon…I’m sorry.
PRETTY STOLEN DOLLS (#1)
September 2016
Benny loves his pretty little dolls.
As long as they do exactly as they’re told.
When his favorite doll runs away…
despite the other doll promising to stay,
his heart becomes broken and he can’t help but cry.
He wants her back home or his pretty little doll must die…
Bertelsmann Fiction Spring 2017
The furious finale of the Woman of the Dead trilogy
TOTENRAUSCH
(Frenzy of Death)
by Bernard Aichner
btb, January 2017
The woman storming into the office of a Hamburg pimp is desperate. « I need passports for me and my two kids », she says. And: « If you help me I will kill someone for you. » It wouldn’t be the first time … Brünhilde Blum. Internationally wanted murderer. Loving mother of two daughters. On the run for months. She hopes to find peace of mind in Hamburg, wants to risk a new beginning – and, so it would seem, she very nearly does just that. Fitted out with a new identity and a little money, she lives with her daughters in a beautiful fisherman’s cottage on the Elbe and works for an undertaker. Everything is just fine. Until the day she has to pay for her new life – for the man she owes her new happiness to is demanding what she promised him. She is to kill someone for him. The only problem is that this person is someone she has grown extremely fond of …
Bernhard Aichner writes novels, audio plays and stage plays and has been awarded several literature prizes and scholarships for his works. His thriller Woman of the Dead was translated into numerous languages and was highly praised by the international press.
A compelling novel about five children fleeing homewards in 1945
DIE MAGERMILCHBANDE
(Max’s Gang)
by Frank Baer
Penguin Verlag, March 2017
April 1945: led by Maxe Milk, a group of Berlin school children sent to Pilsen wander through the turmoils of war in the direction of home – among defeated soldiers, colonies of prisoners and refugee treks, cross-country through woods and over fields, on foot, in freight trains, on trucks and horse carts. They see the dead by the side of the road, encounter American soldiers and people who have barricaded themselves in their homes and farms.
When at last they are back home in a Berlin of ruins and rubble, none of them find what they have been dreaming of during their long journey.
The modern classic available again at last.
Frank Baer, born in 1938, grew up in Würzburg, studied history and philosophy in Munich and then worked as a regular freelancer for various editorial desks at Bavarian broadcasting. Max’s Gang was his first novel and was made into a film for Bavarian television.
Good cop, bad cop, dead cop
SCHERBENNACHT
(Shard Night)
by Nicole Neubauer
Blanvalet Paperback, July 2017
A policeman’s murder shakes the Munich murder squad: Narcotics detective Leo Thalhammer has been shot with his own duty weapon.
Inspector Waechter and his colleague Brandl investigate in the heat of Munich, where street battles escalate and police cars burn. Over and over again the trail leads into the rank and file of the police force itself; in a special unit the investigators meet a wall of silence. The dead policeman was on the tracks of a scandal – hunted by his own demons …
Nicole Neubauer, studied English literature and law in Munich and London. After spending ten years working in a corporate law firm, she now freelances as an author, lawyer and editor. Her novels Cellar Child and Moor Fire, featuring Inspector Waechter, were both bestsellers.
“Sabine Thiesler is Germany’s uncrowned thriller queen” – MDR
NACHTS IN MEINEM HAUS
(At night in My House)
by Sabine Thiesler
Heyne, January 2017
Tom is a renowned artist and also wealthy and happily married. Everything is going perfectly for him – until one night something terrible happens in his house. In shock he flees to a village in the mountains of Tuscany.
What he initially thinks is paradise quickly turns into hell. Tom cannot stand the aloneness, feels caged in and persecuted. When he realises that there is nobody he can trust anymore, not even his friends, it is too late. He makes a fateful decision …
Sabine Thiesler, raised in Berlin, has been living in Tuscany for several years. She has worked as an actress, cabaretist and dramatic advisor, and is the author of numerous theatre pieces and screenplays for various television series. Her books are bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages.
He hates them, he hunts them, he kills them …
DIE SIEBEN FARBEN DES BLUTES
(The Seven Colours of Blood)
by Uwe Wilhelm
Blanvalet Paperback, July 2017
Three murders in three months. Three women. Three proclamations in which the murderer mentions seven « healings ». The Berlin police are under pressure. But then the murders come to an abrupt end and get forgotten – only public prosecutor Helena Faber is convinced that this was just the beginning.
When a year later a fourth woman is brutally murdered, Helena starts a hunt for the man who calls himself Dionysus and is a ruthless woman hater. It is not only the beginning of a race against time but also a fight for survival, for Helena herself has been targeted by the perpetrator. And Dionysus is not going to give up as long as she has not been « healed » …
The Silence of the Lambs meets Memento – a thriller that teaches you fear!
Uwe Wilhelm studied German and acting. Since 1987 he has been working as a screenplay writer, playwright and non-fiction author. He has written more than 120 screenplays for Bernd Eichinger, Katja von Garnier and Til Schweiger, to mention only a few.
Black Agency LONDON BOOK FAIR LIST
From a Granta « Best Young American Novelist » and author of The World to Come and A Guide for the Perplexed
#ETERNAL LIFE
by Dara Horn
W.W. Norton, 2018 (Manuscript due Summer 2017)
A woman traded her death away two thousand years ago to save her son’s life, and now must navigate the twenty-first century world with her ancient ex-lover still following her every move.
Dara Horn was chosen by Granta magazine as one of 20 “Best Young American Novelists” in 2007. Her first novel, “In the Image” received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize. Her second novel, “The World to Come”, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, was selected as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into eleven languages. Her third novel, “All Other Nights”, was selected as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and was one of Booklist’s 25 Best Books of the Decade.
Caskie Mushens 2017 LBF RIGHTS GUIDE – Final
A book that received 6-figure UK pre-empt and first foreign offer within 24 hours of submission
THE LIDO
by Libby Page
Orion, TBA
Set in present day Brixton, it tells the story of an unlikely friendship between 26 year old Kate, a young woman feeling lost and lonely in London and in life, and Rosemary, an 86 year old widow who is nostalgic for the past in a present day world she increasingly struggles to understand. Brought together by the imminent closure of the Lido they galvanise themselves, and eventually the local community they are part of, to fight against the overwhelming power of the Council and the financial cuts required. Slowly we hear Rosemary’s heartwarming story of growing up in Brixton, and how she found the love of her life, George, by the Lido all those years ago. And as the novel progresses so does the bond between Kate and Rosemary. Regardless if they win or not, each woman’s life will be changed forever by the love only true friendship can give.
Libby Page works in marketing and moonlights as a writer. She graduated from The London College of Fashion with a BA in Fashion Journalism before going on to work as a journalist at the Guardian.
Rights sold to: Denmark (GADs), Finland (Otava), Italy (La Nave di Teseo). Offer pending in Germany, Holland and Spain (auction)
Set in Victorian England, THE SILENT COMPANIONS follows Elsie, the most notorious patient in St Joseph’s asylum, as she recounts the events that led to her incarceration
THE SILENT COMPANIONS
by Laura Purcell
Bloomsbury (UK), Viking (US), October 2017
Elsie is newly widowed, sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband’s derelict country estate, The Bridge. She struggles to cope with her new position and the hatred of the superstitious local villagers, who believe the Bainbridge family ancestors dabbled in witchcraft. The accidental discovery of a two-hundred-year-old diary sets off a series of strange events that leave Elsie wondering what secrets her deceased husband’s family really were hiding. And why did they own so many unsettling, painted wooden figures? As Elsie recounts the slow encroachment of the silent companions, figures she believes to have been possessed, she experiences a wave of unwelcome memories. But which of these memories can she trust? For those around her believe a story very different to the one she is writing – a story of just what Elsie did to end up where she is. Will Elsie confront her demons and face what really happened to her – or is the truth too terrifying to accept.
Laura Purcell lives is a former bookseller and she is working on a second novel for Bloomsbury, gothic chiller “The Corset”, which will be published in 2018.
Crown LONDON 2017 Rights Guide
Ben Jones, protagonist of the glowingly reviewed Never-Open Desert Diner, returns in a devastatingly powerful literary crime novel about parenthood, loss, and the desert in winter
LULLABY ROAD
by James Anderson
Crown, January 2018
Winter has come to Highway 117, a remote road through the Utah desert trafficked only by oddballs, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. So when local truck driver Ben Jones finds an abandoned, mute Hispanic child at a lonely gas station along his route, far from any semblance of proper civilization, he knows something has gone terribly awry. With the help of his eccentric neighbors, Ben sets out to help the kid and learn the truth. In the process he makes new friends and loses old ones, finds himself in mortal danger, and uncovers buried secrets far more painful than he could have imagined.
James Anderson is a graduate of Reed College, and received his MFA in creative writing from Pine Manor College. His short fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines, including The Bloomsbury Review, New Letters, Solstice Magazine, Northwest Review, Southern Humanities Review and others, and he previously served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Breitenbush Books. He is the author of “The Never-Open Desert Diner”.
A brilliantly atmospheric masterpiece that glows with the sparkling intensity of the Mediterranean sunshine
BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS
by Lawrence Osborne
Hogarth, July 2017
On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi, the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation with her family, to help this stranger, but are her motives borne of altruism – he is, by all appearances, a refugee – or a more selfish desire to bring some excitement into her life? As the two young women learn more about the man and his past, their own burgeoning friendship takes a darker turn, and when a murder occurs on the island, a private investigator arrives and forces them to determine where their true loyalties lie. In BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS, Osborne returns to the themes that made The Forgiven his breakout novel: the class tensions between wealthy white Europeans and the natives and immigrants who serve them, and the way a violent incident can cause reverberations both psychic and cultural that lay bare our own hypocrisies.
Lawrence Osborne is the critically acclaimed author of “Hunters in the Dark”, “The Ballad of a Small Player”, “The Forgiven” and “The Wet and the Dry”.
A twisty, compulsive new thriller featuring a deliciously devious unreliable narrator who will do anything to give her family a better life, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mother, Mother and Smashed
THE DRAMA TEACHER
by Koren Zailckas
Crown, Spring 2018
Gracie Mueller seems like an average person. Married, mother of two. Owns a house with her husband, Randy, in upstate New York. Life is balanced and (relatively) honest. But she has a lot to hide —she’s not even a US citizen—and when Randy’s failing career as a real estate agent makes finances tight, he leaves town for a better job, their home goes into foreclosure, and Gracie turns back to the creatively illegal lifestyle of her past to keep things afloat for her kids. After all, how many times can a woman lose everything? An expert in fake identities, she becomes Tracey Bueller, who later becomes Mariana DeFelice. She’s an architect and designer, a musician and an actress. After a deadly stint upstate when a friend asks too many questions, she leaves town for New York City, finding her way into the best school in Manhattan for her kids, where she gets a job as the drama teacher. But as she struggles to keep her web of lies spun taut and her secrets hidden, more questions about her past are raised. She never intended to be a cheat, a liar, a thief, or a killer; she just can’t afford for anyone to know what she’s done.
Koren Zailckas is an internationally bestselling writer, and has contributed to The Guardian, U.S. News & World Report, Glamour, Jane, and Seventeen magazine.
A gripping and thrilling new read from New York Times and Usa Today bestseller Marie Bostwick
THE PROMISE GIRL
by Marie Bostwick
Kensigton, March 2017
Once upon a time there were three child prodigies, known worldwide as the Promise Sisters. Joanie was the pianist, Meg the painter, Avery the writer. And their mother Minerva was the powerful force that propelled them to a painful fame. Fast-forward two decades: Perfectionist Joanie hasn’t touched a piano in years, surviving instead by designing historical costumes and gardens. A depressive Meg helps her husband Bernie run a low-profit construction business. Avery wistfully yet barely scrapes by on her gigs as a part-time mermaid and pyro technician. When Meg gets into a horrific car accident that wipes her memory, Joanie, Avery, and Bernie are unable to pay her astronomical medical expenses. Enter filmmaker Hal Seeger, who promises to pay the bills if the sisters star in his where-are-they-now documentary—a project that Minerva, desperate for a chance to get back into the public eye, is more than eager to push her estranged daughters into doing. But as the cameras start rolling, the Promise women’s secrets begin to rise to the surface—secrets that might bring this irreparably damaged family to the breaking point.
Marie Bostwick is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of novels about family, relationships, and women’s friendships.
A hilarious new novel from a bestselling author
NOIR
A Novel
by Christopher Moore
William Morrow, Spring 2018
Summer, San Francisco, 1947. Sammy Tiffin is tending bar when an enigmatic and comely dame named Stilton (a.k.a. Cheese) sidles in, followed by an Air Force general. The general needs a favor and he’s hoping Sammy’s the guy to get the job done. Turns out that the first flying saucer has just been spotted up by Mount Rainer and there’s been a mysterious crash in Roswell, New Mexico. Lured by the beauteous Stilton, Sammy must face his own dark secrets on the mean streets of the City by the Bay. Think Raymond Chandler meets Damon Runyon with more than a dash of Bugs Bunny. It’s all very, very Christopher Moore.
Christopher Moore is the author of fifteen previous novels, many New York Times bestsellers, including “Lamb”, A Dirty Job”, “Sacre Bleu”, “The Serpent of Venice” and “Secondhand Souls”.
A dark and twisty Rashomon-style narrative that maps the shadowy, perilous territory between childhood and adulthood, the fallibility of memory and the corrosive power of long-held secrets
GRIST MILL ROAD
by Christopher J. Yates
Picador, January 2018
The year is 1982, the setting an Edenic hamlet some 90 miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends—Patrick, Matthew and Hannah— are bound together by a single, terrible, and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves could never have predicted, the three meet again–with even more devastating results. Here is a triple helix of a story structure, a sharp-edged love triangle complete with an Atonement style revelation. Character-driven, gorgeously written and wrenching, GRIST MILL ROAD exposes the poisonous resentments, sexual longings, and reservoirs of violence that roil just below the orderly surface of small town life.
Christopher J. Yates’ first book “Black Chalk” was published by Harvill Secker in the UK, Picador in the US, Centrepolygraph in Russia, Eurasian in Taiwan, Ambo/Anthos in the Netherlands, and Baldini & Castoldi in Italy.
Ellenberg Rights Guide London 2017
Top-notch psychological suspense from women’s fiction author Whitney Gaskell launching the pseudonym Margot Hunt
BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
by Margot Hunt
Harlequin/Mira, Fall 2017
BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is a dark, domestic thriller that focus on a vivid, complex portrait of a contemporary woman and will capture readers’ imaginations.
This is a gripping novel that explores how powerful the friendships women form can be, and how devastating it is when those friendships fall apart.
Margot Hunt is the pseudonym for chick lit and women’s fiction author Whitney Gaskell, who has also published several Young Adult books as Piper Banks.
Epic, propulsive, and incredibly ambitious, THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY is a story about sacrifice and motherhood and the burden of expectation
THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY
by Cherise Wolas
August 2017
Joan Ashby grew up with one goal: to be a writer. No family, no distractions, all Joan needs is her writing. Her utter single-mindedness pays off: by age twenty-five she is the darling of the literary world, an international bestseller with the highest accolades to her name. Her writing is singular, dark and twisted, and Joan seems destined to fly even higher. So when she falls in love with a medical student, she makes him promise that he will never pressure her to have children, that he will let her write. But when Joan gets pregnant, the life she intended to lead spins away from her, and she finds herself in a Virginia suburb, raising two boys. She has made her peace with this—or at least that’s what she tells herself as she steals moments to write between school drop-offs and household chores. But she can never be ordinary, and her precocious young sons are raised with the burden of knowing that their mother is a once-in-a-generation talent. Two decades later, Joan’s sons are grown and she has finally completed her masterpiece, the novel she was always meant to write. But just as she is poised to reclaim the spotlight, an almost Shakespearean betrayal threatens to undo everything she has worked for.
THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY is Cherise Wolas’s debut.
Rights sold: Poland (Czarna Owca), UK (Borough Press/Harper Collins)
The Friedrich Agency LBF 2017 rights list
« A great suspense novel, and so much more. You won’t forget the heroic LeAnne Hogan—and the same goes for her dog! Not to be missed. »—Harlan Coben
THE RIGHT SIDE
by Spencer Quinn
Atria, June 2017
In this riveting new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, a deeply damaged female soldier home from the war in Afghanistan becomes obsessed with finding a missing girl, gains an unlikely ally in a stray dog, and encounters new perils beyond the combat zone.
Enthralling, suspenseful, and psychologically nuanced, THE RIGHT SIDE introduces one of the most unforgettable protagonists in modern fiction: isolated, broken, disillusioned—yet still seeking redemption and purpose—LeAnne takes hold of the reader and never lets go.
Spencer Quinn is the author of eight bestselling “Chet and Bernie” mystery novels as well as the middle grade novels “Woof and Arf”.
THE FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE depicts a world where the threat of violence lurks in even the safest of spaces and sensitively explores the even greater emotional cost of living in its shadow
THE FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Doubleday, Summer 2018
In 1990s Bogotá the Santiago family lives in a gated community, safe from the drug-fueled violence devastating Colombia. Young sisters Chula and Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to this middle-class bubble, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hovers just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities as he in turn captures the attention of a nation.
The sisters enjoy a childlike yet morbid fascination with this just-out-of-reach danger, but when the family hires a live-in maid named Petrona from the city’s guerrilla-occupied slums, the outside world begins to creep closer. As a drought causes citywide power and water outages, car bombs kill little girls, presidential candidates are assassinated in front of horrified crowds, and grandmothers are caught in the crossfire between the warring guerrillas and paramilitaries. And in the Santiago home, teenage Petrona’s simple nature hides a dark secret that will eventually upend their lives.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born in Bogotá and holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. She is the 2014 recipient of the Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award in Nonfiction and was a 2015 fellow at the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto.
Gernert London 2017 Rights Guide
From the author of “We Are Called to Rise” comes a novel about the interconnected lives of four women in Las Vegas, each of whom experiences a life-changing moment at a classic casino nightclub
‘ROUND MIDNIGHT
by Laura McBride
Touchstone, May 2017
Spanning the six decades when Las Vegas grew from a dusty gambling town into the melting pot metropolis it is today, ‘Round Midnight is the story of four women—one who falls in love, one who gets lucky, one whose heart is broken, and one who chooses happiness—whose lives change at the Midnight Room. June Stein and her husband open the El Capitan casino in the 1950s, and rocket to success after hiring a charismatic black singer to anchor their nightclub. Their fast-paced lifestyle runs aground as racial tensions mount.
Mining the rich territory of motherhood and community, ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT is a story that mirrors the social transformation of our nation. Full of passion, heartbreak, heroism, longing, and suspense, it honors the reality of women’s lives.
Laura McBride teaches composition at the College of Southern Nevada. She is the author of “We Are Called to Rise.”
A mysterious murder in a dystopian future leads a novice investigator to question what she’s learned about the foundation of her population-controlled society
BANNERLESS
by Carrie Vaughn
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July 2017
Decades after economic and environmental collapse destroys much of civilization in the United States, the Coast Road region isn’t just surviving but thriving by some accounts, building something new on the ruins of what came before. A culture of population control has developed in which people, organized into households, must earn the children they bear by proving they can take care of them and are awarded symbolic banners to demonstrate this privilege. In the meantime, birth control is mandatory. Enid of Haven is an Investigator, called on to mediate disputes and examine transgressions against the community. She’s young for the job and hasn’t yet handled a serious case. Now, though, a suspicious death requires her attention. The victim was an outcast, but might someone have taken dislike a step further and murdered him?
Carrie Vaughn is the best-selling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most recent of which is the fourteenth installment. She is also the author of several other books, including the superhero novels “Dreams of the Golden Age” and “After the Golden Age”.
Moshe Sakal
Moshe Sakal is the writer of 5 Hebrew novels. In 2011, Sakal’s best-selling novel “Yolanda” was shortlisted for the Sapir Prize (the Israeli Booker). Sakal was awarded the title of Honorary Fellow in Writing by the University of Iowa, USA; the Eshkol prize for his work, and a Fulbright grant (the America-Israel Education Trust). He has published essays and opinion pieces in several major Israeli outlets (including Ha’aretz), as well as in Le Monde (France) and Forward (USA).
“When I started reading the novel My Sister by Moshe Sakal, I could not stop. I found in it things that I liked and which spoke to me very much. Almost all the characters in this book are both divided souls and merging souls, each character becoming one with another. And that is sophisticated and fascinating.”- Amos Oz
MY SISTER
MY SISTER tells the story of Neta and her relationships with her two younger brothers. She is single and longs to adopt a child from Russia. The youngest brother, Tomer, a brilliant and mysterious young man, earns money as a sperm-donor in Israel and in the USA, to help his sister raise the funds for adopting his future niece. The adopted girl, Nadia, becomes very attached to her young uncle—thanks to whom she was, in a sense, “reborn.” But things get complicated as Nadia grows up and begins to wonder about her biological father back in Russia. Tomer, on the other hand, is terrified by the thought of his many biological children. Nadia and Tomer each experience their separate crises of identity and find their ways to surprising resolutions.
The novel is narrated by the eldest brother, Lior, who has a very close relationship with his sister (“Sometimes you can’t tell where she ends and I begin”). He is married to a German woman, and has a strained relationship with his parents.
MY SISTER explores the different forms modern families can take, and looks at the ethical and practical questions related to sperm donation, and the ways in which new and different technologies impact today’s reproductive norms.
——————-
“Moshe Sakal’s novel “The Diamond Setter” is a wonderfully lovely book, gentle and poetic yet at the same time profound and topical…. It is my hope that this book will be translated into many languages and reach the readership it deserves.” -David Grossman
THE DIAMOND SETTER
In his pocket is a blue diamond known as “Sabakh,” which once belonged to European royalty and eventually wound up in the hands of the Turkish Sultan, who gave it to a beautiful Jewish singer with whom he was enamored. The diamond also plays a part in a love triangle that takes place in the novel’s past: a Jewish couple from Syria meets Laila, an enchanting young Muslim woman from Yaffo. Indifferent to their religious differences, they sustain a passionate romance throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, meeting regularly in a Lebanese resort town. In the summer of 2011, when Israel is rocked by a turbulent social protest movement, with tent camps set up around Tel Aviv and Yaffo, the diamond is still safe in the pocket of Fareed—who is none other than Laila’s grandson…
Moshe Sakal is the writer of 5 Hebrew novels. In 2011, Sakal’s best-selling novel “Yolanda” was shortlisted for the Sapir Prize (the Israeli Booker). Sakal was awarded the title of Honorary Fellow in Writing by the University of Iowa, USA; the Eshkol prize for his work, and a Fulbright grant (the America-Israel Education Trust). He has published essays and opinion pieces in several major Israeli outlets (including Ha’aretz), as well as in Le Monde (France) and Forward (USA).
A novel set in the mid-’90s on a college campus during the era of identity politics and the birth of third-wave feminism in which two houses—a popular fraternity and a group of radical feminists—go to war
THE RED WORD
by Sarah Henstra
Black Cat, January 2018
THE RED WORD is a campus novel like no other. When Karen arrives at university, she quickly enters the swim of social life, partying with new friends—particularly at a certain fraternity house. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus. She learns the fraternity is notorious, with several names featured on a list of date rapists compiled anonymously by female students. Despite continuing to party there and dating one of the brothers, she is equally seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surprise her by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of a charismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen’s social and intellectual lives grow ever more conflicted, ringleader housemate Dyann believes she has hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture, and the war between the houses will leave much greater collateral damage in its wake.
Sarah Henstra is a professor of English at Ryerson University. She is the author of the young adult novel “Mad Miss Mimic”, which was published by Penguin Canada. THE RED WORD is her first work of adult fiction.
From the critically acclaimed author Bradford Morrow, a literary quest novel that travels from Nazi-occupied Prague to turn-of-the-millennium New York as a young musicologist seeks to reunite the lost pages of a mysterious sonata manuscript
THE PRAGUE SONATA
by Bradford Morrow
Atlantic Monthly Press, October 2017
In the early days of the new millennium, worn and weathered pages of an original, partial sonata score—the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens—come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. To Meta’s eye, it appears to be an authentic eighteenth-century manuscript; to her discerning ear, the music rendered there is commanding, hauntingly beautiful, clearly the work of a master. But there is no indication of who the composer might be. The gift comes with the caveat that Meta attempt to find the manuscript’s true owner—a Prague friend the old woman has not heard from since the Second World War forced them apart—and to make the three-part sonata whole again. Leaving New York behind for the land of Dvořák and Kafka, Meta sets out on an unforgettable search to locate the remaining movements of the sonata and uncover a story that has influenced the course of many lives, even as it becomes clear that she isn’t the only one after the music’s secrets. Magisterially evoking decades of Prague’s tragic and triumphant history, from the First World War through the soaring days of the Velvet Revolution, and moving from postwar London to the heartland of immigrant America, THE PRAGUE SONATA is both epic and intimate.
Bradford Morrow is the author of seven previous novels, including “Trinity Fields” (Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), “The Diviner’s Tale”, and most recently, “The Forgers”, as well as a short story collection, “The Uninnocent”. He is the founding editor of Conjunctions and has contributed to many anthologies and journals.
Megan Abbott meets M.O. Walsh in Christine Lennon’s compelling debut novel about a group of friends on the cusp of graduating from college when their lives are irrevocably changed by a brutal act of violence
STRANGE WEATHER
Four Short Novels
by Joe Hill
William Morrow, October 2017
“Snapshot” is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap. A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump… and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in “Aloft.” On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails— splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world. In “Loaded,” a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.
Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels “The Fireman”, “NOS4A2”, “Horns”, “Heart-Shaped Box”, and the prize-winning story collection “20thCentury Ghosts”. He is also the Eisner Award-winning writer of a six-volume comicbook series, “Locke & Key”.
From nationally bestselling author Adrienne Sharp—author of The True Memoirs of Little K—a deeply felt and historically accurate tale of family, loss and love
ODDS OF SURVIVAL
by Adrienne Sharp
Harper, April 2018
Even as a little girl, Esme Silver took care of her charming ne’er do well father, Ike Silver, as he tried to rise through the ranks of the organized crime syndicate run by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. Fascinated by her Daddy and devoted to her showgirl mother, Dina Wells, Esme is often her father’s “date” at the racetrack, where she fetches hot dogs and stoops for cast off tickets (in case their drunken owners might have mistakenly dropped them). She’s also her mother’s foil when the beautiful would-be actress talks her way into meetings and screen tests with some of Hollywood’s greats. When Ike gets an opportunity to move to Vegas—to help open the Sands hotel, one of Esme’s “uncle” Benny Siegel’s prize projects—Esme, beautiful like her mother, attracts the eye of Nate Silver, one of the most powerful men on the Vegas Strip. Narrated by the twentysomething Esme, The Odds of Survival toggles between pre-WWII Hollywood and post-war Vegas, in which Jewish gangsters and movie moguls are often indistinguishable from each other. Esme’s voice —sharp, observant, with a quiet mordant wit—chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of her complicated parents as well as her own painful reckoning with love and life.
Adrienne Sharp is the critically acclaimed author of the story collection “White Swan, Black Swan” and the novels “First Love”, “The Sleeping Beauty”, and “The True Memoirs of Little K”. Trained as a ballet dancer from the age of seven at the prestigious Harkness Ballet in New York, among other places, she often writes about dance and its practitioners—like the mother and daughter in this story.
The history of a man of the law who must come to terms with the moral complexities of crimes committed by the people he loves most
EVERYBODY’S SON
by Thrity Umrigar
Harper, June 2017
During a terrible heatwave in 1991—the worst in a decade—ten-year old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days, without air conditioning or a fan. With no electricity, the refrigerator and lights do not work. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. Cutting his leg on the broken glass, he is covered in blood when the police find him. Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house less than three blocks away, nearly unconscious and half-naked. When she comes to, she repeatedly asks for her baby boy. She never meant to leave Anton—she went out for a quick hit and was headed right back, until her drug dealer raped her and kept her high. Though the bond between mother and son is extremely strong, Anton is placed with child services while Juanita goes to jail. The Harvard-educated son of a U. S. senator, Judge David Coleman is a scion of northeastern white privilege. Desperate to have a child in the house again after the tragic death of his teenage son, David uses his power and connections to keep his new foster son, Anton, with him and his wife, Delores —actions that will have devastating consequences in the years to come.
Thrity Umrigar is the author of six novels and the memoir “First Darling of the Morning”.
A novel of magical realism, reminiscent of Big Fish, about the surprising things that can happen when we let magic into our lives
BEASTS OF EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES
by Ruth Emmie Lang
Thomas Dunne, Winter 2017
« Ruth Emmie Lang’s prose has the earthy warmth of a campfire story, best enjoyed in the woods and under the stars. Her contemporary spin on the American folktale, Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, bristles with charm and curiosity, and its oddball hero, Weylyn Grey, will make you want to follow him into the forest.” — Winston Groom, author of “Forrest Gump”
The day that Weylyn is born is the largest snowstorm the world has ever seen. As he grows older, the legends follow him – he was raised by wolves, he can make trees grow, and he has the ability to stop tornadoes in their tracks. But the true magic is in the way that he transforms the lives of the lonely, the sad, and the loveless in small towns across the world. Meg Lowry: a schoolteacher who can’t have children; Bobby Quinn Jr: a small town mayor who has never succeeded in anything; Duane Fordham: a logger whose closest companion is his cow; Micah Barnes: a lonely boy who longs to be a magician, and Mary Penlore: a girl without a mother, who learns to live with wolves and falls deeply in love with a mysterious boy named Weylyn Grey. BEASTS OF EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES is a love story, but it is also a story about the ties that binds us together, and the power we have to transform our lives if we can only find the beauty hiding in plain sight.
Ruth Emmie Lang was born in Glasgow, Scotland but she currently lives in Columbus, Ohio. BEASTS OF EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCE is her first novel.
JABberwocky 2017 London Rights Guide
A New York Times-bestselling paranormal mystery series from blockbuster author Charlaine Harris
THE HARPER CONNELLY GRAPHIC NOVELS
by Charlaine Harris
Dynamite
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When Harper Connelly was child, she was struck by lightning, and ever since she’s been able to find the dead and to see the final moments of the dead person’s life. She scrapes together a living solving mysterious deaths for anyone who can pay, but the strangeness of her gift makes for a lonely life. Her step-brother and travel companion, Tolliver, helps to lighten the load. But when they show up in Sarne, Arkansas with a mandate to find a missing girl, things get personal—and Tolliver, for the first time, can’t help. Charlaine Harris originally wrote this series as regular novels, and then Dynamite picked it up to adapt to graphic novels. The first novel was adapted into three parts, and the second is just one graphic novel.
Charlaine Harris is the author of more than twenty novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling “Sookie Stackhouse” books, which are the basis for the Emmy Award-winning HBO series “True Blood”. Harris’s books have sold more than 36 million copies worldwide and are available in more then 35 languages. Her “Aurora Teagarden” mysteries have also been turned into TV movies by Hallmark, and her “Midnight, Texas” series is set to debut soon on NBC.
The next great epic fantasy series in the vein of Brandon Sanderson and Peter V. Brett, set apart by feminist undertones and its honest exploration of addiction and religious doubt
THE CHAOS QUEEN QUINTET
by Christopher Husberg
Titan Books
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DUSKFALL #1 |
DARK IMMOLATION #2 |
There are rumours in Ashta—a new religion is rising, and Cinzia, one-time Cantic priestess, has escaped the Holy Crucible. Fleeing from Navone, Cinzia travels with Knot, a man of many parts, and Astrid, the child-like vampire. They are gathering followers, but the murderous Nazaniin are still on their trail. Meanwhile, Winter is losing her grip on sanity, grappling with immense powers beyond her understanding. Where she goes, chaos and death follow.
Nebula Award–winning author Elizabeth Moon makes a triumphant return to science fiction with a thrilling new series featuring Kylara Vatta, the daring hero of her acclaimed Vatta’s War series
COLD WELCOME #1
The Vatta’s Peace Series
by Elizabeth Moon
Orbit, April 2017
Summoned to the home planet of her family’s business empire, space-fleet commander Kylara Vatta is told to expect a hero’s welcome. But instead she is thrown into danger unlike any other she has faced and finds herself isolated, unable to communicate with the outside world, commanding a motley group of unfamiliar troops, and struggling day by day to survive in a deadly environment with sabotaged gear. Only her undeniable talent for command can give her ragtag band a fighting chance. Yet even as Ky leads her team from one crisis to another, her family and friends refuse to give up hope, endeavoring to mount a rescue from halfway around the planet—a task that is complicated as Ky and her supporters find secrets others will kill to protect: a conspiracy infecting both government and military that threatens not only her own group’s survival but her entire home planet.
Elizabeth Moon has published twenty-seven novels, including Nebula Award winner “The Speed of Dark”, Hugo finalist “Remnant Population”, and the books of the enduring epic fantasy “The Legend of Paksenarrion”. She has published more than fifty short-fiction pieces in anthologies, magazines, and four short-fiction collections, most recently “Moon Flights” and “Deeds of Honor”.
A sweeping romantic fantasy set during the Belle Epoque, as a love triangle consumes two telekinetics
THE BEAUTIFUL ONES
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
St. Martin’s Press, October 2017
Antonina Beaulieu arrives in Loisail to mingle among high society in hopes of landing a suitable husband after her telekinesis has made her the subject of malicious gossip. Now she is ready to shed the past, but finds it increasingly difficult to conform to society’s ideals for women, especially when she falls for the telekinetic performer Hector Auvray. As their romance grows, and he teaches Antonina how to control her telekinesis, she believes marriage will follow. But she is unaware that he hides a devastating secret that will force her to confront who she really is and what she’s willing to sacrifice.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author the critically acclaimed novel “Signal to Noise” and the short story collection “This Strange Way of Dying”, which was a finalist for the Sunburst Award in Canada. She was a finalist for the Manchester Fiction Prize, and a recipient of the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Award for Best Emerging Writer. She has edited or co-edited seven anthologies, and is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, a Canadian press that specializes in horror and dark speculative fiction. “Certain Dark Things” is her second novel.
Johnson and Alcock LBF 17 Rights List
The much-anticipated follow-up to Close To Home, a tightly plotted, nail-biting novel in the new DI Fawley crime series sold at auction to Viking UK in a 3-book deal
IN THE DARK
by Cara Hunter
Viking, June 2018
In a respectable Oxford neighbourhood, an investment banker’s basement renovation goes wrong when a dividing wall collapses and the builders discover a young woman and a child held captive in the basement next door. The woman and child are hospitalised as harrowing details of their incarceration emerge: she has been held captive for over five years giving birth to her child in the basement, but neither are able to speak of their ordeal. It’s only when DI Adam Fawley hears about the case that a link is made between it and a case he was involved in many years before. Hannah Gardiner, a local journalist and her four-year-old son Toby went missing on Siddenham Clumps in an unsolved case that made headlines all over the country. Fawley always knew there was something else that was eluding them about the Gardiner case. And now he’s wondering if he might just have found it…
Cara Hunter studied English at Oxford returning to complete a doctorate on Samuel Richardson.
The debut novel from bestselling author of “The Year Of Living Danishly”
GONE VIKING
by Helen Russell
Viking, June 2018
GONE VIKING is a smart, witty and very funny novel about going back to basics, Viking-style. Hannah Ray is a stressed-out workaholic who likes to be in control At All Times, but things are starting to slip in quite spectacular fashion. To recover her calm and her fight she is persuaded by her cheerful, outdoorsy sister to go on Viking Retreat. There, they must learn to live as nature intended – getting dirty, tired, hungry, and strong again – in order to repair mind, body and spirit. They’re joined by two strangers, each searching for meaning in their lives and trying to escape from their own demons. Hannah and her fellow wannabe Vikings embark on a series of extreme and absurd challenges, discovering more about themselves and each other with each new trial.
Helen Russell has written extensively about finding happiness Scandi-style in “The Year of Living Danishly”, which spurred international interest in the Danish concept of hygge. Icon have now sold 100K copies, and it continues to sell in 16 territories around the world. Her new non-fiction book “Leap Year: how to make big decisions, be more resilient and change your life for good” was published by Two Roads in December.
KTLiterary London 2017 Rights List
Police procedurals go supernatural in this gritty urban fantasy debut
GRAVEYARD SHIFT
by Michael F. Haspil
Tor Books, April 2017
Alex Menkaure, former pharaoh and mummy, and his vampire partner, Marcus, who was born in ancient Rome, once hunted evil vampires for UMBRA, a super-secret unit of the NSA. That was before the discovery of a blood substitute and a Supreme Court ruling allowed thousands of vampires to integrate into society. Now, Alex and Marcus are vice cops in a special police unit. They fight to keep the streets safe from criminal vampires, shape-shifters, blood-dealers, and anti-vampire vigilantes. When someone starts poisoning the artificial blood, race relations between vampires and humans deteriorate to the brink of anarchy. While the city threatens to tear itself apart, Alex and Marcus must form an unnatural alliance with a vigilante gang and a shape-shifter woman in a desperate battle against an ancient vampire conspiracy. If they succeed, they’ll be pariahs, hunted by everyone. If they fail, the result will be a race-war bloodierthan any the world has ever seen.
Michael F. Haspil is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, where he distinguished himself as an ICBM crew commander. After retiring from the military, he served as a launch director at Cape Canaveral. GRAVEYARD SHIFT is his first novel.
An atmospheric mystery in the vein of Kate Morton and Jennifer McMahon
THE DARKLING BRIDE
by Laura Andersen
Ballantine, Spring 2018
Twenty miles south of Dublin, Deeprath Castle broods in its shallow valley scooped out of the Wicklow Mountains. After a scandalous murder in 1992, the Gallagher family locked up their medieval home and walked away. But now the castle is being donated to the National Trust and must first be swept clean of its treasures—and its secrets. American-born Carragh Ryan jumps at the chance to catalog the castle library, hoping to find a long-lost Victorian manuscript. “The Darkling Bride” is rumored to have been destroyed by writer Evan Chase after the suicide of his Gallagher wife. Could it still be on the shelves of Deeprath’s library? Estate owner Aidan Gallagher and his family are forced to re-examine the crimes of 1992 when a cold case investigation is opened and a Dublin detective asks all sorts of uncomfortable questions…
Laura Andersen is the author of the critically acclaimed “The Boleyn Trilogy” and “The Tudor Legacy” trilogy.
From the author of “The Other Einstein” comes the mesmerizing story of love, power, and the woman who inspired a dynasty
CARNEGIE’S MAID
by Marie Benedict
Sourcebooks, January 2018
In the industrial 1860s, Irish immigrant Clara Kelly finds herself in desperate circumstances. Looking for a way out, she seeks employment as a lady’s maid in the home of the prominent businessman Andrew Carnegie. Soon, the bond between Clara and her employer deepens into love. But when Clara goes missing, Carnegie’s search for her unearths secrets and revelations that lay the foundation for his lasting legacy. With captivating insight and stunning heart, CARNEGIE’S MAID tells the story of one lost woman who spurred Andrew Carnegie’s transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world’s first true philanthropist.
Marie Benedict is a former New York City lawyer. She is the author of “The Other Einstein”, the story of Mileva Maric, Albert Einstein’s first wife and a physicist herself.
Dark, powerful, full of suspense and leading the reader on an unsettling journey with lead character Marion, this novel is “Grey Gardens” meets “Room”
THE VISITORS
by Catherine Burns
October 2017
Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother, John in a decaying Georgian townhouse on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to shut out the shocking secret that John keeps in the cellar.
Until, suddenly, John has a heart attack and Marion is forced to go down to the cellar herself and face the gruesome truth that her brother has kept hidden.
As questions are asked and secrets unravel, maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side.
Catherine Burns was born and raised in Manchester, studied at Trinity College Cambridge and then worked as a bond trader in the City of London for six years. Following a course at The Moscow Film institute, Catherine lectured in Film and Television Studies at Salford University.
A dark satire of an online world where there’s nowhere to hide – not even inside your own head
BROADCAST
by Liam Brown
August 2017
“The idea behind MindCast is simple. We insert a small chip into your skull and then every thought, every feeling, every memory is streamed live, twenty-four hours a day. Trust me – within a few months you’ll be the most talked about person on the planet.” When David Callow is offered the lead role in a revolutionary new online show, he snatches at the opportunity. Rapidly becoming a viral sensation, David is propelled to stratospheric levels of celebrity. However, he soon realises the downside of sharing every secret with the world. A prisoner to both his fame and his own thoughts, David seeks to have the chip removed, only to discover the chilling secret lurking at the heart of MindCast, and the terrifying ambition the show’s creator has for him.
Liam Brown is the author of “Wild Life” and “Real Monsters”. He is the lead singer and guitarist in the band Freelance Mourners.
Winner of the 2016 Luke Bitmead Bursary
ME, MYSELF AND THEM
by Dan Mooney
June 2017
Struggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has learned to live a bit differently. Both his friends are used to it – the only problem is his monstrous housemates. When his enigmatic ex-girlfriend comes back into his life, she threatens to shatter the finely crafted world around him.
As Denis begins to re-emerge from his sheltered existence and rediscover the person he used to be, things turn nasty, and he is forced to confront the demons that share not only his house, but also his head.
Dan Mooney is a 32-year-old writer and air traffic controller. An amateur filmmaker, with one of his short films broadcast on national TV, Dan has published three short stories with Silver Apples Magazine.
Lennon-Ritchie Agency Catalogue
Entrancing and richly imagined, THE SEED THIEF is a modern love story with an ancient history, a tale that moves from flora of Table Mountain to the heart of Afro-Brazilian spiritualism
THE SEED THIEF
by Jacqui L’Ange
Umuzi, August 2015
When botanist Maddy Bellani is asked to travel to Brazil to collect rare seeds from a plant that could cure cancer, she reluctantly agrees. Securing the seeds would be a coup for the seed bank in Cape Town where she works, but Brazil is the country of her birth and home to her estranged father. Her mission is challenging, despite the help of alluring local plant expert Zé. The plant specimen is elusive, its seeds guarded by a sect wary of outsiders. Maddy must also find her way in a world influenced by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies and the selfish motives of others.
Jacqui L’Ange is a Cape Town based journalist, scriptwriter, editor and author. Jacqui is the former books editor for Psychologies Magazine and former Deputy Editor and Books Editor of O – the Oprah Magazine, South Africa. She had a multi-national childhood in South Africa, USA, Germany, Brazil.
A deeply affecting and uplifting tale
THE GREAT AGONY AND PURE LAUGHTER OF THE GODS
by Jamala Safari
Umuzi, July 2012
Risto Mahuno’s agony is what happens to his sweetheart Néné, to his cousin, and to himself. In the east of the Congo, where the border with Rwanda is also the border between life and death, the boys are abducted and forced to become soldiers, the girls raped. Far too much happens for 15-year-old children. Néné is claimed by the warlord, Risto’s cousin killed, and Risto, his eyes already dead, is beaten to the brink. His fate flings him south, on a fraught journey by foot or whatever ride he can get, to Mozambique, where he arrives with even less of himself left. And yet the gods are laughing, for Risto’s journey back holds promise of love, peace and family.
Jamala Safari is a poet based in Cape Town. He was born and grew up in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. After arriving in South Africa, he taught himself English and graduated in Biotechnology from the University of the Western Cape. He currently works in the Corporate Social Investment wing of a South African corporate.
Twisty and mind-bending, it’s Whiplash meets The Talented Mr. Ripley
THE INSIDE-OUT MAN
by Fred Strydom
Umuzi, Fall 2017
Bent is a brilliant jazz pianist living gig-to-gig in a dark city of dead-ends. With no family, no friends, and plagued by unfinished visions of the past, Bent has resigned himself to a life of quiet desolation. Until the night wealthy and eccentric jazz-fan, Leonard Fry, offers Bent a Faustian deal. A deal unlike any other – an opportunity to start fresh, be someone new. An opportunity to swim from the island of his lost life, to question everything he knew about life and death, power and futility, and to go beyond the one terrifying boundary from which he can’t be sure he’ll ever return … the boundary of his own sanity.
Fred Strydom is a radio and television writer and producer living in Johannesburg. He studied Film and Media at the University of Cape Town and was a member of the Cape Comedy Collective. Fred has published short stories in South African literary journals. His debut novel was “The Raft”.
Andrews McMeel – London Rights Guide_2017
Explore the daily struggles and humor of family life with Lunarbaboon. He’s just like any other dad–but vaguely hairier because he’s half man/half moon monkey
LUNARBABOON
The Daily Life of Parenthood
by Christopher Grady
April 2017
LUNARBABOON shares life’s parenting moments from the perspective of a 30-something dad/husband/chaos survivor. Together with the savvy, laid back Mom, wild child Moishe, baby Matilda, and a former Julliard student (their cat), Lunarbaboon must navigate the family and social dynamics of everyday life. Ranging from the hilarious (defeating closet monsters with a “stun” blaster that offers surprising facts about bears, Mars, and cats) to the sweet (the gray scale-to color transition out of depression at the touch of a loved one), this collection explores the bonds within a family and all the characters who bring both order and chaos to life. LUNARBABOON’s perfect meld of crabby humor and moments of impactful honesty give these comics a wide range and distinctive voice that’s both comical and sincere.
Christopher Grady is an elementary school teacher by day and cartoonist by night. He is the creator of the wildly popular Web comic Lunarbaboon.
For the Mendel Media catalogue LBF 2017, please use our contact form
Joanna Blalock née Middleton, the world’s first female forensic detective—along with her companion, a pathologist called Dr. John Watson, Jr.—delves into a murder and cover-up which involves the highest level of British aristocracy
THE DAUGHTER OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
by Leonard Goldberg
Thomas Dunne, March 2017
Joanna is the product of a one-time assignation between the now-dead Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, the only woman (or person) ever to outwit Sherlock. Joanna’s lineage is a secret because she was given up for adoption at birth, just after her natural mother’s death. She was raised as Joanna Middleton, the adopted daughter of a childless physician and his wife. But Joanna obviously inherited her biological father’s and mother’s deductive genius. She marries Dr. John Blalock, a respected surgeon from an aristocratic family. But John dies during a cholera epidemic and Joanna is left to raise their son, Johnnie, in a world of wealth and privilege. While on a stroll, she and her son witness Charles Harrelston plunge to his death under suspicious circumstances. Joanna and her son are visited by the now-elderly Dr. John Watson, the old colleague of Sherlock Holmes, and his son Dr. John Watson, Jr. They have been asked by the Harrelston family to investigate the apparent suicide…
Leonard Goldberg is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of, among other works of fiction, the Joanna Blalock series of medical thrillers. His novels, acclaimed by critics as well as by fellow authors, have been translated into a dozen languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide.
Park LM Rights List – March 2017
Combining the pathos and offbeat humor of Anne Tyler’s THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST with the small-town, bibliophilic charm of Gabrielle Zevin’s THE STORIED LIFE OF A.J. FIKRY, HARRY’S TREES is a character-driven novel about traumatized widower Harry Crane and the 11 year-old girl who sets him on a feverish road to redemption
HARRY’S TREES
by John Cohen
Mira, Summer 2018
Thirty-eight year old Harry Crane is a life-long tree lover working as an analyst in the treeless USDA Forest Service office. Devastated by the recent loss of his beloved wife, the unwelcome news of an obscenely large legal settlement sends him careening to a remote forest tract in north-eastern Pennsylvania where he is determined to end it all. But when fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined little girl named Oriana, his plans are unceremoniously derailed. Oriana, too, has lost someone close to her, but in a the magical, wilful world of her reckoning, Harry is the key to finding her way back to him, and she won’t rest until she’s healed them both. Oriana won’t be alone in her efforts, however. Somehow, in the tiny town of New Milford, PA, a cast of unlikely participants—from ancient librarian Olive Perkins, to sleazy realtor Stu Giptner, to hulking, tongue-tied dairy farmer Cliff Blair and hapless, guilt-ridden Ronnie Wilmarth—will each play a role in the biggest sensation ever to descend upon the Endless Mountains…a golden, mythic lottery that will fulfill Oriana’s wildest dreams and forge a new life for the stricken, treeloving Harry Crane. Life, it turns out, is the strangest fairy tale of all.
Jon Cohen, a former critical care nurse, is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE MAN IN THE WINDOW and MAX LAKEMAN AND THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER. He has also written numerous screenplays for Fox, Warner Bros. and Sony, and is the co-writer on Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg.
A young Supreme Court law clerk finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a serial killer in this breathtaking thriller #1 New York Times bestseller James Patterson called « as authentic and suspenseful as any John Grisham novel. »
THE OUTSIDER
by Anthony Franze
Minotaur Books, March 2017
Things aren’t going well for Grayson Hernandez. He just graduated from a fourth-tier law school, he’s drowning in student debt, and the only job he can find is as a messenger. The position stings the most because it’s at the Supreme Court, where Gray is forced to watch the best and the brightest–the elite group of lawyers who serve as the justices’ law clerks–from the outside. When Gray intervenes in a violent mugging, he lands in the good graces of the victim: the Chief Justice of the United States. Gray soon finds himself the newest–and unlikeliest–law clerk at the Supreme Court. It’s another world: highbrow debates over justice and the law in the inner sanctum of the nation’s highest court; upscale dinners with his new friends; attention from Lauren Hart, the brilliant and beautiful co-clerk he can’t stop thinking about. But just as Gray begins to adapt to his new life, the FBI approaches him with unsettling news. The Feds think there’s a killer connected to the Supreme Court. And they want Gray to be their eyes and ears inside One First Street. Little does Gray know that the FBI will soon set its sights on him.
Anthony Franze is a lawyer in the Appellate and Supreme Court practice of a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm, and a critically acclaimed thriller writer with novels set in the nation’s highest court.
St. Martin’s Press_London 2017
“My favorite Katherine Center ever” – Jenny Lawson
HOW TO WALK AWAY
by Katherine Center
Saint Martin’s Press, Winter 2018
Margaret Jacobson has a bright future ahead of her, with a handsome boyfriend and a promising career, until an accident on what should be one of the happiest days of her life takes it all away. In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing family secrets, heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.
Katherine Center is the author of five bittersweet comic novels about love and family, including “The Bright Side of Disaster” and “The Lost Husband”.
Rights sold: Israel (Miskal), Italy (Piemme), Netherlands (De Boekerij), UK (Pan Macmillan)
“…a harrowing, ripped-from-the-headlines story of lives altered in the blink of an eye, once again proving her eloquence and dexterity as an author.”—Mary Kubica
RUST & STARDUST
by T. Greenwood
Saint Martin’s Press, Summer 2018
Based on the life of Sally Horner, whose story inspired Nabokov’s Lolita, Rust & Stardust is the fictionalized account of Sally’s abduction and the following twenty-one-month cross-country journey. Told from Sally’s point of view, the novel explores her heart breaking ordeal as she survives the mental and physical abuse, while also showing the repercussions of the kidnapping on her family, her friends, and those she encounters along the way. This is not only a heart-pounding literary thriller, but also a lyrical and kaleidoscopic portrait of a family.
T. Greenwood is an award-winning author of eleven novels.
The stunning sequel to Hart’s most beloved book, “The Last Child”
THE HUSH
by John Hart
Thomas Dunne Books, July 2017
It’s been ten years since the shattering events that changed Johnny Merrimon’s world and shocked his North Carolina town. Johnny now lives a secluded life in the woods near Hush Arbor, avoiding the spotlight that still shines on him. Johnny is struggling to save his land from lawsuits and asks his best friend Jack, who now works at a prestigious law firm, for his help. As they dig into the history of Hush Arbor, old secrets rise from the grave and death follows. Johnny becomes the prime suspect and Jack, forever in Johnny’s debt, works to save him. But even Jack has questions.
John Hart is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, “The King of Lies”, “Down River, “The Last Child”, “Iron House”, and “Redemption Road”. His novels have been translated into thirty languages and can be found in more than seventy countries.
“An absolute rocket” – Joe Hill
THE FORGOTTEN GIRL
by Rio Youers
Thomas Dunne Books, June 2017
Twenty-six year old Harvey Anderson likes his peaceful life, but everything he knows is turned upside down when he is abducted and beaten up by a group of thugs working for a sinister man known as “The Spider.” They are searching for Harvey’s girlfriend, Sally Starling. But Harvey has never heard of Sally. He learns that Sally has the unique ability to selectively erase a person’s memories, an ability she has used to delete herself from Harvey’s mind. Long ago Sally erased The Spider’s memories, too—everything that made him human—and in the process stole all but a shred of his once formidable psychic power. And there is nothing he won’t do to get it back. As Harvey recovers from his beating, he discovers that Sally left him with one partial memory—a dancing girl in a blue dress. Harvey soon realizes that he feels something for Sally, even if he has no idea who she is…
Rio Youers is the British Fantasy Award–nominated author of “End Times” and “Point Hollow”. His short fiction has been published in many notable anthologies, and his novel, “Westlake Soul”, was nominated for Canada’s prestigious Sunburst Award.
The new thriller from the acclaimed author of “Two Days Gone”
THE BONE’S EMBRACE
by Randall Silvis
January 2018
A year after the gruesome homicide case in which Ryan DeMarco put a bullet through the heart of the madman who killed his only friend’s family, he can’t face another day on the force. Now, heading out on an extended road trip with Jayme, his former colleague and current girlfriend, DeMarco is ready to let his old wounds heal. But when the pair arrives in Jayme’s tiny hometown for her grandmother’s funeral, they’re quickly recruited to help solve a long-dead case involving the skeletons of seven …
Randall Silvis is the author of over a dozen novels, one story collection, and one book of narrative nonfiction. His essays, articles, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous online and print magazines. His novel “An Occasional Hell” was adapted for a major motion picture released across Europe and the Americas. His work has been translated into 10 languages.
Sterling Lord LBF2017 Rights Guide
With excellent pacing and characters to die for, Jennifer Bosworth is a thrilling new voice in crime fiction
THE DARK ROAD
by Jennifer Bosworth
Grand Central, Spring 2018
In THE DARK ROAD, we meet Olivia “Liv” Hendricks, a washed-up reality TV detective who decides to set up a new career for herself as a real-life private investigator. Liv asks her fans to crowdfund her in a scheme where the highest bidder can tell her what to investigate. She will post daily videos of her progress to keep her fans tantalized and satisfied. Liv is convinced it’s a safe bet to make some quick money and an easy way to resurrect her reputation in the industry, but when an infamous horror movie director, Jonas Kron, is ready to throw cash at Liv to solve a mystery surrounding six missing girls, a different and darker game is about to begin. Drawn in by the money and the mystery’s similarity to her own sister’s disappearance decades ago, she takes the case. Liv soon finds herself on the same single stretch of road outside a small California town called Stone’s Throw where the abduction of the young women took place. In the quaint tourist town, Liv is introduced to a spectrum of characters: from the plain-seeming but sexy hotel porter, to the almost-too-helpful owner of an animal sanctuary, to animal-mask-wearing teenagers, to girls wanting to die on camera; and soon it’s clear that someone is watching, or filming, Liv’s every move. Through social media, someone is leaving breadcrumbs for Liv to follow. And the Internet is eager to watch her every move—perhaps even at the cost of the heroine’s own life.
Author and screenwriter Jennifer Bosworth grew up in a small town where there was nothing to do but read and get into trouble. She did plenty of both, which led her to a career writing about people who get in trouble.
An uproarious romantic comedy about a charismatic gambler who loses everything and sets off on a misguided quest (based on a misremembering of how The Great Gatsby ends) to win back his ex-wife
SWIMMING WITH BRIDGEPORT GIRLS
by Anthony Tambakis
Simon & Schuster, July 2017
Ray Parisi is in trouble. Fired from his anchor job at ESPN after one too many public humiliations, Ray is holed up in a motel and in dire need of a break. His ex is engaged and shacking up with another guy in his old house, a Cambodian bookie wants to kill him, and he’s wanted by the New York State Police. A few days before the Fourth of July, he unexpectedly receives an inheritance from his long-lost father, and it seems like all of his problems might be solved. Determined to get his life back together, Ray hatches an imaginative but highly suspect plan to win back his wife, dashing from Connecticut to Las Vegas to Memphis in an attempt to secure his future before the past runs him down.
Anthony Tambakis is the recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction writing and a renowned screenwriter. He is currently adapting the 1961 novel and film “The Hustler” for Broadway and penning the screenplay for SWIMMING WITH BRIDGEPORT GIRLS, his first novel.
Is it possible to be happy?
THE HAPPINESS MACHINE
by Katie Williams
Riverhead, Summer 2018
THE HAPPINESS MACHINE is a novel-in-stories set in a near-future San Francisco. The chapters follow Pearl and her work as a technician for the Apricity company, which has invented a machine that suggests life changes that will make a person happy. Some of the suggestions are innocuous, like eat more tangerines or adopt a dog, while others are more extreme, like divorce your wife or amputate the tip of your right index finger. The machine’s precision is heralded as almost 100% effective for those who follow its advice. Meanwhile Pearl’s teenage son Rhett, who suffers from anorexia and has been hospitalized as a result of his eating disorder, frustratingly refuses to take the Apricity. Pearl’s husband and Rhett’s father has left them for a romance with a younger woman, and Pearl is struggling. Along with other fascinating characters including a horror movie star famous for screaming, and one of the execs at the Apricity corporation who receives odd advice about his management style, the book asks us as readers what it takes or us to be happy. And is it really possible?
Katie Williams is the author of two young adult novels, THE SPACE BETWEEN TREES and ABSENT (both published by Chronicle Books). Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, Best American Fantasy, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Williams earned her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas at Austin. She teaches writing and literature at Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Jeremy Chambers’ new novel, SUBURBIA, is a revelation—a coming-of-age drama about the end of innocence set in a hidden world of paling fences and fragrant lawns, amid the flickering light of memory and desire
SUBURBIA
by Jeremy Chambers
September 2017
The clouds cracked open and pale sunlight flooded the grass. Cassie looked upwards to face the warming rays, her eyes closed, her face illuminated and her hair golden in the light. The clouds moved and the shadows returned.
Roland lives with his parents, Graham and Joyce, and his younger sister, Lily, in the golden light of an outer suburb—Glenella. He dreams of escaping, of finding an intoxicating life somewhere else.
He is fascinated by Cassie Noble, the daughter of local car dealer, Reg, and his brash wife, Colleen. But when Darren Wilson moves into the neighbourhood with his Triumph motorcycle, everything begins to change.
Jeremy Chambers’ first novel, “The Vintage and the Gleaning”, was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and The Colin Roderick Award and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Quebec Booksellers’ Award. His short fiction has appeared in Griffith Review, Higher Arc, Review of Australian Fiction and The White Review.
TWO STEPS FORWARD is about the challenge of walking a great distance and working out who you really are. It’s about the people you meet along the way, and those left behind. Most of all, it’s about taking chances and learning to love again
TWO STEPS FORWARD
by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist
October 2017
Zoe, a sometime artist, is from California. Martin, an engineer, is from Yorkshire. Both have ended up in picturesque Cluny, in central France. Both are struggling to come to terms with their recent past—for Zoe, the death of her husband; for Martin, a messy divorce. Unsure of what the future holds, each sets out alone to walk hundreds of kilometres along the Camino: the Way, the centuries-old pilgrim route to Santiago, in northern Spain. Walking the Camino changes you, it’s said. It’s a chance to find a new version of yourself. But can these two very different people find each other? In this smart, funny and romantic journey, Zoe’s and Martin’s stories are told in alternating chapters by husband-and-wife team Graeme Simsion (author of the international bestseller The Rosie Project) and Anne Buist (author of the Natalie King thrillers).
Graeme Simsion is a Melbourne-based novelist and screenwriter. The combined sales of “The Rosie Project” and “The Rosie Effect” are over four million copies worldwide. His most recent novel is “The Best of Adam Sharp”.
Anne Buist is the Chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and has twenty-five years of clinical and research experience in perinatal psychiatry. She is the author of two Natalie King mysteries, and has published ten erotic romance-suspense novels under the pseudonym Simone Sinna.
Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are drawn into separate investigations that hold disturbing—and deadly—complications for their own lives in this powerful mystery in the bestselling series
GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS
by Deborah Crombie
William Morrow, February 2017
When the body of a young woman dressed all in white is found in a tranquil London park, Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Inspector Gemma James embarl on an investigation that’s both disturbing and deadly. GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS is the newest title in this intelligent British mystery series in the tradition of Elizabeth George and P.D. James.
Deborah Crombie is a New York Times bestselling author and a native Texan who has lived in both England and Scotland. She is the author of 16 previous novels featuring Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James. Her books are multi-award winning and nominated, as well as New York Times Notables.
An exciting new series featuring woman-on-the-run Elizabeth Miles—from the beloved national bestselling author of the Gaslight Mysteries
CITY OF LIES
(Counterfeit Lady Mystery Series)
by Victoria Thompson
Berkley, November 2017
Every woman plays a part—but some are more dangerous than others… Like most women, Elizabeth Miles assumes many roles; unlike most, hers have made her a woman on the run. Living on the edge of society, Elizabeth uses her guile to relieve so-called respectable men of their ill-gotten gains. But brutal and greedy entrepreneur Oscar Thornton is out for blood. He’s lost a great deal of money and is not going to forgive a woman for outwitting him. With his thugs hot on her trail, Elizabeth seizes the moment to blend in with a group of women who have an agenda of their own. She never expects to like or understand these privileged women, but she soon comes to respect their intentions, forming an unlikely bond with the wealthy matriarch of the group whose son, Gideon, is the rarest of species—an honest man in a dishonest world. Elizabeth knows she’s playing a risky game, and her deception could be revealed at any moment, possibly even by sharp-eyed Gideon. Nor has she been forgotten by Thornton, who’s biding his time, waiting to strike. Elizabeth must draw on her wits and every last ounce of courage she possesses to keep her new life from being cut short by this vicious shadow from her past.
Victoria Thompson is the Edgar and Agatha Award–nominated author of the Gaslight Mysteries and numerous historical novels.
The Whalen Agency London Book Fair
An epic love story based on the Butterfly Effect principle
CHASE THE BUTTERFLIES
by Monica James
November 2017
CHASE THE BUTTERFLIES follows two broken people who battle against all odds and find love…in this lifetime…and the next.
Structured around the four stages of a butterfly’s life cycle to represent growth and change – key factors in the main characters’ story – this book is highly original. And the chemistry between the characters leaps off the pages.
This novel reminds of TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE meets GHOST meets THE SIXTH SENSE… It’s mysterious and heartfelt, fresh and contemporary.
Monica James spent her youth devouring the works of Anne Rice, William Shakespeare, and Emily Dickinson. When she is not writing, she is busy running her own business in Melbourne, Australia, where she lives with her wonderful family and menagerie of animals. She is currently working on her next novel “Beyond the Roses”. Monica James is the bestselling author of ten books, self-published in the U.S, U.K., Australia, Canada and published by Heyne in Germany, Hugo & Cie in France, Kinneret Zamora in Israel, Planeta in Portugal, and Art Eternal in Bulgaria.
Wolf Literary Catalog_LBF 2017
A page-turning psychological thriller in the vein of Megan Abbot’s “You Will Know Me”
BENEATH THE SKIN
by Caroline England
Mase/Avon, October 2017
‘Antonia, Antonia. My name is Antonia.’ It’s been her name for many years. But sometimes, like tonight, she forgets. Antonia has a secret. A secret so dark and so deep that she can barely admit it to herself. Instead, she treats herself to Friday night sessions of self-harm while her husband David is at the pub, and her best friend Sophie is drinking too much wine a few doors down. Nobody close to her knows the truth about what the teenage Antonia saw all those years ago. No-one, that is, except her mother. But Candy is in a care home now, her mind too addled to remember the truth. Antonia is safe. Isn’t she? The lies start small. They always do. But when the tightly woven story you’ve told yourself begins to unravel, the truth threatens to come to the surface. And then what’s going to happen?
Caroline England is a former divorce lawyer who is based in Manchester. Her short fiction has appeared in various literary magazines.
A long-lost Icelandic adaptation of the classic gothic novel Dracula, co-written with Bram Stoker himself
POWERS OF DARKNESS:
The Lost Version of Dracula
by Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson
Overlook Press, February 2017
Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery: In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Ásmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker’s world-famous 1897 novel “Dracula”. Called “Makt Myrkranna” (literally, “Powers of Darkness”), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Ásmundsson hadn’t merely translated “Dracula” but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally re-worked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker’s “Dracula”. Incredibly, “Makt Myrkranna” has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now.
Bram Stoker (1847–1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel “Dracula”, which has been translated into over 30 languages worldwide.
Valdimar Ásmundsson (1852–1902) was an Icelandic translator, poet and publisher.
A Don Quixote-esque story of exile and pilgrimage, love and obsession
CALL ME ZEBRA
by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, February 2018
Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn’t fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are Zebra’s only companions—until she meets Ludo. Their connection is magnetic; their time together fraught. Zebra overwhelms him with her complex literary theories, her concern with death, and her obsession with history. He thinks she’s unhinged; she thinks he’s pedantic. Neither are wrong; neither can let the other go. They push and pull their way across the Mediterranean, wondering with each turn if their love, or lust, can free Zebra from her past?
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of “Fra Keeler” (Dorothy, A Publishing Project). She is the recipient of a 2015 Whiting Writers’ Award, a MacDowell Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Catalonia, Spain. She has lived in Italy, Spain, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S.A..
Writers HouseLondon 2017 Rights Guide
From the author “mistress of noir”
GIVE ME YOUR HAND
by Megan Abbott
Little, Brown and Co., Spring 2018
Coming on the heels of her bestselling YOU WILL KNOW ME (“Shocking and perfect”—New York Times Book Review. “Exceptional”—Paula Hawkins), Megan Abbott’s GIVE ME YOUR HAND is a gripping psychological thriller about two women, brilliant scientists and former classmates, reunited years later in a high-stakes laboratory, where their professional competition is intensified by a dark secret they share.
Megan Abbott is the award-winning author of eight novels, including THE FEVER and DARE ME. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Guardian, and The Believer.
From the author of the national bestseller ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING
WATCH ME DISAPPEAR
by Janelle Brown
Spiegel & Grau, July 2017
Olive, a lovely, introverted, eccentric girl is a junior in high school mourning the loss of her eco-conscious, stay-at-home loving mom. Her father, Jonathan, a tech magazine editor and all around good guy drinks while awaiting the closure that a body and a death certificate will bring. But then Olive starts having waking dreams–hallucinations?–in which her very vibrant mother urges the girl to look for her, and Olive begins to believe that Billie is still alive and in trouble. Jonathan believes the trauma and anxiety of losing her mother is making Olive ill, until he uncovers a secret that that compels him to consider that Billie may not be dead after all and sends him on his own quest for the truth–about Billie, their marriage, and whether it is ever truly possible to know another person fully, even those we love the most.
Janelle Brown is the author of the nationally bestselling ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING, published in May 2008 by Spiegel & Grau. An essayist and journalist, her writing appears regularly in Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications.
A thoughtful and entertaining page-turner that will leave its indelible mark on your heart. or all of those who equate holidays with warm feelings of spending time with family there are equal number of those who feel dread and remorse, resentment and defenses girded up for recrimination
START WITHOUT ME
by Joshua Feldman
Morrow, Fall 2017
Adam is a former musician and recovering alcoholic who is home for Thanksgiving for the first time in many years. Surrounded by his parents and siblings who love him and have seen him at his worst—he can’t shake the feeling that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll always be the one who can’t get it right. Marissa is a flight attendant whose marriage is strained by simmering tensions over class and ambition. Heading to her in-laws for their picture-perfect holiday family dinner, her anxiety is intensified by the knowledge she is pregnant from an impulsive one-night-stand. In an airport restaurant on Thanksgiving morning, Adam and Marissa meet. Over the course of this day fraught with emotion and expectation, these two strangers will form an unlikely bond as they reckon with their family ties, their pasts, and the choices that will determine their way forward.
Joshua Feldman’s first novel, “Book of Jonah” met universal acclaim and has been published in more than 10 countries.
Marked with the poignancy of time passing and of choices made and not made, TIME’S A THIEF is a love letter to New York, and a beautiful, sad, funny first novel
TIME’S A THIEF
by B.G. Firmani
Doubleday, May 2017
Francesca « Chess » Varani is a bright, canny, but vulnerable Barnard freshwoman from a working-class background in the New York City of the mid-eighties. She strikes up a volatile friendship with drama-queen classmate Kendra Marr-Löwenstein and is draw into the orbit of her Salingeresque, glitteringly dysfucntional family. After graduation, when Chess moves into the Marr-Löwenstein townhouse in the Village as a secretary/girl-of-all-work to the soignée literary intellectual Clarice Marr (think Susan Sontag but dressed in Chanel) and falls in love with Clarice’s troubled son Jerry, she receives the sentimental education and emotional roughing-up New York bestows on all of its new arrivals.
B.G. Firmani is a graduate of Barnard and Brown. Her short fiction has been published in Bomb Magazine, Kenyon Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.
“Lexi Freiman is a savage writer, hilarious and brilliant, and in ZIGGY, she has reframed the traditional coming-of-age story, tackling identity politics with irreverence and acid wit. This is a daring book, thrillingly of our moment.” —Emma Cline, author of THE GIRLS
ZIGGY
by Lexi Freiman
Ecco, TBA
Ziggy Klein (named after the gender-bending icon David Bowie) has a lot on her mind. It’s confusing for any girl living in a culture where the opposition leader might pinch the female Prime Minister’s bum; where your mum might demand your dad tie her up but stay connected to his heart chakra; where girls at your school assembly perform racy dance routines to the theme song from Schindler’s List, and your best friends seek fame as feminists with perfect asses. Fifteen-year-old Ziggy is dealing with her late-blooming, yet burgeoning sexuality and, simultaneously, dawning adulthood. But do not be mistaken—this is no ordinary coming-of-age story. It’s literary satire at its most dexterous, capturing and commenting on many elements of the zeitgeist—intersectional feminism, technology’s effects on teen culture, gender and sexual politics, race, and political correctness—with the one-two punch of Ziggy’s teenaged perspective and Freiman’s sharp wit.
Lexi Freiman is a fiction editor at George Braziller, a publisher in New York, and a recent Columbia University MFA grad. She was a Center for Fiction Writing Fellow in 2013 and has published in The Literary Review.
From the brilliant and incisive author of “Mislaid”-”a writer of extraordinary talent and range” (Jonathan Franzen) whose “capacity for inventions is immense” (BookForum)-comes a new collection of her earliest work: two wildly funny novellas (Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats and European Story for Avner Shats) available in one compact volume
PRIVATE NOVELIST
by Nell Zink
Ecco, October 2016
Years ago, Nell Zink resolved to write a book for her friend, the Israeli novelist Avner Shats,that would mirror his remarkable style. Unable to read his Hebrew, she was forced to start from scratch. Now, this tongue-in-cheek homage is available to Nell’s growing readership for the first time, accompanied by a second dazzling and imaginative work that breathes-at Shats’s request-the perfumed air of the Old Europe and stars a figure very much like Shats. Demonstrating the hallmarks of Zink’s unique talent, PRIVATE NOVELIST is an intimate look into this ac-claimed novelist’s early work that will please her coterie of admirers and further burnish her lustrous reputation.
Nell Zink is the author of the internationally sold “Mislaid” and “Wallcreeper”.
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