FICTION
Agence Eliane Benisti – Fiction Frankfurt 2018
lorella belli literary agency
An absolutely gripping crime thriller with a massive twist
HER LAST BREATH
by Charlie Gallagher
Joffe Books, July 2018
Detective George Elms thought he’d seen it all, until he comes up against a serial killer Henry ‘The Bull’ Roberts. Henry Roberts had a type — young, blonde, attractive women. He is three years into a life sentence. Two of his victims were never found. Now, Henry Roberts is dying and he wants to make a deal. Move him to a secure unit by the sea and he will tell the police where the other victims’ remains are. The offer is accepted and Detective George Elms travels to the force who led the original investigation. He is the messenger. He finds a police force and a community still shattered. As he reviews the old case notes he also learns something else. Henry Roberts didn’t work alone. A woman goes missing who fits the profile of the other victims. The circumstances of her disappearance do too — she never made it from her commuter train to her car. Then a second woman disappears. George is convinced the cases are linked. Henry Roberts told him on his prison visit that two is better because, “you can make the other one watch.” Time is running out for George. He’s convinced that Henry Roberts knows who he should be chasing, but will he help before he takes his last breath? Or the women take theirs?
Charlie Gallagher has been a serving UK police officer for ten years. His books are a series of thrillers and, rather unsurprisingly, policing is central to the stories. The books are set in the fictional town of Langthorne.
For fans of Dorothy Koomson, Julie Cohen, Adele Parks, Liane Moriarty, Amanda Prowse, Harriet Evans
THE LAST TIME WE MET
by Carol Mason
Lake Union, October 2018
Fifteen years ago in the colourful bustle of Vietnam, Celine and Patrick met and shared four blissful days together. It felt like true love, but soon reality tore them apart and Celine moved on. But now, when she sees him unexpectedly on a busy London street, suddenly nothing else matters. As she deals with the mixed emotions of an amicable divorce, Celine becomes preoccupied with her daughter and the dating agency she founded—not least when her ex-husband, Mike, asks her to find him someone new. But now her path has crossed with Patrick’s again, is fate determined to pull them back together? Or is it Mike she really wants a second chance with? Because first love is hard to get over. But real love never lets you go.
Carol Mason is the women’s fiction author of three novels – “The Love Market”, “Send Me A Lover” and “The Secrets of Married Women”, all bestsellers in Canada, where she lives.
The latest fast-paced thriller by bestselling author Max Bentow
DER SCHMETTERLINGSJUNGE
(The Butterfly Boy)
by Max Bentow
Goldmann, July 2018
Berlin detective inspector Nils Trojan has already seen a lot, but when he is called to the scene of a crime in Berlin Kreuzberg he can hardly believe his eyes: the woman who has been murdered is lying naked on the bed and her back is decorated with the colourful picture of a huge butterfly. Only two days later a second murder is committed, and again the perpetrator leaves his bizarre work of art on the victim’s body. Trojan desperately tries to unravel the murderer’s cryptic message, but his adversary has long since entangled him in a perfidious game of cat and mouse. And Trojan knows only too well that he must understand the obsession that is driving the perpetrator on if he is to put an end to the gruesome killings …
Max Bentow was born in Berlin. After studying acting he performed at various theatres, and he has been awarded many prestigious prizes and stipends for his work as a dramatist. The crime novels he has hitherto written featuring the Berlin detective inspector Nils Trojan have all made the Spiegel bestseller lists.
Against all odds, Mimi becomes a photographer and finds not only her freedom but also the road to love …
DIE FOTOGRAFIN
(The Photographer)
by Petra Durst-Benning
Blanvalet, September 2018
Minna Reventlow, otherwise known as Mimi, has always been different from other women of her time. The year is 1911, and while other women are involved in their families and households, Mimi makes her dream come true. She travels around the country as a photographer and with her pictures loves giving people beauty, just like her uncle Josef, her big hero. When Josef is taken ill, Mimi moves to the tiny linen-weaving village to take care of him and temporarily take charge of his photography studio. For his sake she not only gives up her freedom but exposes herself to the villagers’ distrust. And when before long a man makes Mimi’s heart beat just that little bit faster she has to make a decision …
Petra Durst-Benning has been freelancing full time as a writer for ten years. All her novels have been Spiegel bestsellers and are available in numerous European countries. She is also a celebrated author in the US.
A series of ice-cold murders and a clue that seems to lead nowhere …
RACHEWINTER
(Winter Of Revenge)
by Andreas Gruber
Goldmann Paperback, September 2018
Several men in their prime, successful and well off, are gruesomely murdered – and although they live in different towns, they all met a mysterious dark-haired woman shortly before they died. Yet the woman remains a phantom, as even inspector Walter Pulaski in Leipzig and Evelyn Meyers in Vienna, who are both involved in the cases, have to admit. Unlike the police, they refuse to be discouraged, even less so when they realise that only together will they be able to solve the murder series. The perpetrator, however, is more cunning than they think – and is also playing his dangerous game with them …
Andreas Gruber, born in Vienna in 1968, studied at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and now works part-time for a pharmaceutical company. He has twice been awarded the Vincent Prize and three times the German Phantastik Prize.
What do we have left when everything we knew disappears?
MITTAGSSTUNDE
(Midday Hour)
by Dörte Hansen
Penguin, October 2018
The clouds are lying low over the geest as Ingwer Feddersen, 49, returns to his home village. There is something he has to make amends for. Grandmother Ella is in the process of losing her mind; Grandfather Sönke is steadfastly holding his ground in the village pub. He has seen better days, just like the whole village. When did this decline begin? In the 1970s, when after the land reform first the hedges and then the birds disappeared? When the large farms grew and the small ones died away? When Ingwer went to university, walking out on the old man and his guest house? Dörte Hansen has written a warm-hearted story about the disappearance of a rural world, of loss, parting and of beginning anew.
Dörte Hansen, born in 1964, learned several languages such as Gaelic, Finnish and Basque and was awarded a PhD in linguistics. She then turned to journalism, spent several years working as an editor for NDR and is now an author for radio and print. Her debut novel “Altes Land” was a major bestseller and has been translated into numerous languages.
Rights sold to: Czech Republic (Host), the Netherlands (HarperCollins)
Welcome back to Valerie Lane – we’re happy to have you here!
DAS WUNDERBARE WOLLPARADIES
(The Wonderful Wool Paradise)
by Manuela Inusa
Blanvalet, September 2018
Most of all Susan loves spending her time in her small wool shop. In Susan’s Wool Paradise, she knits and crochets wonderfully soft and cuddly things she not only sells but also gives away to the needy. What’s more, in Susan’s shop you can spend your time with others chatting and knitting over a cup of Laurie’s tea and some of Keira’s delicious chocolates. Her friends appreciate Susan’s generous heart and her equanimity, especially in this particularly cold winter. And while the outside world is stormy and snowy, inside Susan has a winter that will change everything …
Manuela Inusa, born in Hamburg in 1981, even as a child knew that she was going to be a writer one day. Her short stories, novels and more than thirty self-published novelettes have reached many readers.
The manor house – the story goes on
DAS GUTSHAUS – STÜRMISCHE ZEITEN
(The Manor House – Stormy Times Vol. 2)
by Anne Jacobs
Blanvalet Paperback, December 2018
The wedding bells are ringing on Dranitz estate. Franziska and Walter are at last united. Everything could be so wonderful if it weren’t for the children. Franziska and Walter wanted to bring the families together, but now strife rules the day. Can they influence fate or is it like that time when they were fleeing and during the dreadful days of the war when they were pawns in the hands of terrible circumstances? The memories haunt them – can they influence the course of fortune this time?
Anne Jacobs thrilled readers and took the bestseller lists by storm with her “Cloth Villa “trilogy. With THE MANOR HOUSE she is following in her own successful footsteps with her tale of an old stately home in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and the destiny of its inhabitants in dramatic times.
My Grandad, his head and the craziest time of my life
MARMELADE IM HERZEN
(Heart Full Of Jam)
by Hilly Martinek
Penguin, June 2018
Tilda’s life is running smoothly, and basically she has every reason to be contented. Yet sometimes she wonders what is stopping her from being really happy. All these thoughts become unimportant when she realises that her father is becoming increasingly forgetful. Fear puts out its tentacles in her direction – for she has been through all this once before: when her grandfather Amandus became ill with Alzheimer’s. And she suddenly sees the 11-year-old girl in her mind’s eye that she was then, full of courage, love and the spirit of adventure. That evening she browses through the diaries she wrote about this the saddest, craziest and most intensive time of her life. It all began when Granny died … A warm-hearted family story by the author of the film “Head Full of Honey”.
Hilly Martinek was born in 1977. She and her husband Krystian together write scripts for the ARD television series Dream Hotel and others. She made a name for herself with the screenplay for the film “Head Full of Honey” (2014) which she wrote with the actor Til Schweiger based on her own experience with her father and his Alzheimer’s. HEART FULL OF JAM is her first novel.
The fortunes of two women. A family’s inheritance. The story of a passion
DIE SCHOKOLADENVILLA
(The Chocolate Villa)
by Maria Nikolai
Penguin, October 2018
Stuttgart at the beginning of the 20th century. As the daughter of a chocolate manufacturer, Judith Rothman leads a privileged life. She spends every free minute in the chocolate factory and develops all manner of ideas for new delicious treats. After all, she is determined that one day she will be in charge of the company. But Judith’s father has different plans and arranges an advantageous marriage for her – to a man Judith would never be able to love. This is when the charismatic Victor Rheinberger, who is intending to make a new life for himself in Stuttgart, comes into her life … The start of a new trilogy for all fans of “Downton Abbey” and Anne Jacobs’ “The Cloth Villa Saga”.
Maria Nikolai has written several non-fiction books and a historical novel. With THE CHOCOLATE VILLA she has woven together her passion for historical themes, tender love stories and chocolate to create an opulent family saga.
Browne & Miller Frankfurt 2018 Hot List FINAL
What if you could go back to the one moment that changed everything?
A SILENCE OF JUNIPER
by Nicole Baart
Atria Books, Spring 2020
Fan-favorite Nicole Baart explores this irresistible question in the electrifying dark tale of a small-town librarian forced to confront her memories of the brutal murders of her next-door neighbors the summer after she graduated from high school and consider the possibility that someone in her own family may be guilty of the crime. Fans of Gillian Flynn are sure to love Baart’s meticulously crafted and tension-ladenl, past/present-on-a-collision-course narrative as Juniper revisits her 19-year old self and a host of long-held secrets in her desperate attempt to identify a killer. A true page-turner!
Nicole Baart is the cofounder of a non-profit organization, One Body One Hope, and the author of nine novels including “You Were Always Mine” and “Little Broken Things”.
Caskie Mushens FBF rights guide 17.09
The new thriller by bestselling author Jessie Burton
UNTITLED NEW TITLE
by Jessie Burton
Picador, TBA
Rebecca Holden was a famous novelist, and is now a faded recluse, having won the Booker in 1982 and then stopped writing, retired from public life. Journalist Laura Simmons remembers her well, having grown up reading her books, and when she pitches a piece about Rebecca to the magazine she works for, she is shocked when Rebecca agrees to the interview. It quickly becomes apparent that Rebecca is interviewing her – in the belief that Laura wants to be her new assistant. Directionless and unhappy with her boyfriend, Laura says yes, on a whim, and agrees to help Rebecca with her new novel, her first work in thirty-two years. The more time Laura spends with Rebecca, the more she realises that Rebecca had her reasons for disappearing, reasons connected to her exgirlfriend, Elise Morceau, and to Elise’s husband. But what did Rebecca do? And is this book her swan-song, or her confession? Moving from 1980s Soho to present-day literary London, from the glamour of film sets in LA to the mundanity of a passionless relationship, Jessie Burton’s new novel is a clever literary thriller, which examines what it means to be a woman and an artist, looking at love, motherhood, and creativity in a page-turning read.
Jessie Burton studied at Oxford University and the Central School of Speech and Drama, where she appeared in productions of “The House of Bernarda Alba”, “Othello”, “Play” and “Macbeth”. In April 2013 her first novel, “The Miniaturist”, was sold at an 11-publisher auction at the London Book Fair.
Inspired by the true story of Marianne Grunfeld, a Jewish refugee from Silesia, Poland who lived undiscovered in Guernsey until she was betrayed to the Nazis and deported by them to Auschwitz, THE HIDDEN is a heart rending and provocative story of love, betrayal, shame and survival, casting light into the forgotten or unknown shadows of war
THE HIDDEN
by Mary Chamberlain
Oneworld, February 2019
Dora Simon is comfortable in her retirement, indulging her interests in gardening and music. Joe O’Cleary is content on the Jersey farm he helped rebuild with its owner, Geoffrey Laurent. But both their worlds are shattered by the arrival of Barbara Hummel, who is anxious to track down the identity of a mysterious woman whose photograph she found among her mother’s possessions. Forced to resurrect long-buried secrets, and confront a past they thought they would never revisit, Dora and Joe’s lives unravel – and entwine – in shocking and surprising ways. Back then, trapped in the Channel Islands under the German occupation in the Second World War, Dora, a Jewish refugee, conceals her identity; Joe, a Catholic priest, conceals a secret. The consequences of the lies both are forced to live are as unexpected as they are devastating.
Mary Chamberlain last novel, “The Dressmaker of Dachau”, sold to 18 countries, is an international bestseller. Mary is also the author of popular and academic histories of both Britain and the Caribbean. She is a graduate of the acclaimed Creative Writing MA at Royal Holloway, University of London.
CONCEPTION is the debut psychological thriller by Chris MacDonald, following a young mother whose one big mistake –sleeping with a father from her daughter’s nursery – threatens to destroy her life. It reads like Lullaby meets Fatal Attraction: with a hooky subject matter and upmarket writing
CONCEPTION
by Chris MacDonald
Harvill Secker, TBA
Naomi and her husband Charlie have left London with their daughter Prue and moved to the Kent coast to try to mend their marriage and conceive a second child. Unhappy in her relationship, in a moment of madness Naomi sleeps with another parent, Sean. She immediately regrets her decision, especially when she falls pregnant, with no idea if the baby is her husband’s, or Sean’s. Naomi is determined not to let a moment of weakness ruin the family she’s been imagining since childhood. But Sean has a very different plan for her. CONCEPTION is about the pitfalls of desiring the perfect life and how casual cruelty from the past can come back to punish you in the most terrifying way. The book shares DNA with books like Disclaimer and Apple-Tree Yard: it looks at how one split-second decision can change your life, and how parenting young children can change you into someone you no longer recognise.
Chris MacDonald has been a professional actor since 2010 and worked at the RSC. A graduate of the prestigious Faber Academy Course, his first play “Eye of a Needle”, about gay cases in the UK immigration system, played at the Southwark Playhouse to universally positive reviews.
A story that reminds us of the fragility of human existence and how simple acts of kindness can transform a person’s life
THE ALL NIGHT CAFE
by Libby Page
Orion, Spring 2020
Hannah and Mona are best friends. Having both braved the move to London in their twenties, they met when their dreams of breaking into the performing arts industry seemed attainable. Back then, their lives and futures appeared to be in sync but as years pass and time begins to take its toll, only one of them seems to be destined for success. Set in the 24-hour café that they both work in, Hannah is forced to confront the fact that her failing career, relationship and ambitions will soon no longer be issues Mona can relate to, and decide whether she will allow her growing jealousy to stand in the way of their friendship. As the door to the café swings open to let in characters from all over the neighbourhood, their own stories of ambition, love, loss and broken dreams are weaved into Hannah and Mona’s lives.
Libby Page’s first novel, “The Lido”, was a Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated in 23 foreign languages. Libby was named one of the New Faces of Fiction 2018 by The Guardian.
An espionage thriller to rival the very best, a high stakes game of cat-and-mouse, played in the shadows, which will keep you guessing every step of the way
A TREACHERY OF SPIES
by Manda Scott
Transworld, August 2018
An elderly woman of striking beauty is found murdered in Orleans, France. Her identity has been cleverly erased but the method of her death is very specific: she has been killed in the manner of traitors to the Resistance in World War Two. Tracking down her murderer leads police inspector Inès Picaut back to 1940s France where the men and women of the Resistance were engaged in a desperate fight for survival against the Nazi invaders. To find answers in the present Picaut must discover what really happened in the past, untangling a web of treachery and intrigue that stretches back to the murder victim’s youth: a time when unholy alliances were forged between occupiers and occupied, deals were done and promises broken. The past has been buried for decades, but, as Picaut discovers, there are those in the present whose futures depend on it staying that way – and who will kill to keep their secrets safe…
Manda Scott is an award winning author of thrillers. She has had allos international success with her best-selling historical fiction series “Boudica: Dreaming”.
Namwali Serpell’s electrifying debut, THE OLD DRIFT is the first novel ever to tell the story of Zambia from its very beginnings to the present day- and beyon
THE OLD DRIFT
by Namwali Serpell
Hogarth, March 2019
Namwali Serpell was born in Zambia in 1980 and now lives in California, where she is associate professor of English at UC Berkeley. Her writing has been featured in publications including Tin House, n + 1, McSweeney’s, The Believer, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Guardian.
In this compelling, heartwarming novel from New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick, one woman finds new purpose in a new phase of life…
HOPE ON THE INSIDE
by Marie Bostwick
Kensigton, March 2019
“Whatever comes your way, find the happiness in it.” Hope Carpenter received that advice from her mother decades ago. Now, with their four children grown, Hope and her husband, Rick, are suddenly facing an uncertain future, after a forced retirement strains both their savings and their marriage. Seeking inspiration and a financial boost, Hope gets a job teaching crafts to inmates at a local women’s prison. At first, Hope feels foolish and irrelevant, struggling to relate to women whose choices seem so different from her own. But with time, and the encouragement of the prison chaplain, she begins to discover common ground with the inmates, in their worries about their children and families, their fear of having failed those who need them. Just like her, they want to make something of themselves, but believe it might be impossible. Embarking on an ambitious quilting project, Hope and her students begin to bond. Together, piece by piece, they learn to defy expectations—their own and others’—and to see that it’s never too late to stitch together a life that, even in its imperfections, is both surprising and beautiful.
Marie Bostwick is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of novels about family, relationships, and women’s friendships.
Drawing inspiration from the author’s own terrifying experience of a raid on her home, Devi S. Laskar’s debut novel explores, in exquisite, lyrical prose, an alternate reality that might have been
THE ATLAS OF REDS AND BLUES
by Devi S. Laskar
Counterpoint, February 2019
When a woman―known only as Mother―moves her family from Atlanta to its wealthy suburbs, she discovers that neither the times nor the people have changed since her childhood in a small Southern town. Despite the intervening decades, Mother is met with the same questions: Where are you from? No, where are you really from? The American-born daughter of Bengali immigrants, she finds that her answer―Here―is never enough. Mother’s simmering anger breaks through one morning, when, during a violent and unfounded police raid on her home, she finally refuses to be complacent. As she lies bleeding from a gunshot wound, her thoughts race from childhood games with her sister and visits to cousins in India, to her time in the newsroom before having her three daughters, to the early days of her relationship with a husband who now spends more time flying business class than at home.
Devi S. Laskar’s work has appeared in Tin House and Rattle, among other publications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and is an alumna of The OpEd Project and VONA. Laskar is the author of two poetry chapbooks, and this is her first novel.
Ellenberg Agency Rights Guide Frankfurt 2018
A coming-of-age story about a human boy alone on an alien planet
ARKAD’S WORLDHER
by James Cambias
Baen, janvier 2019
Adventure and Excitement on an Alien World. Packed with exotic world-building and amazing characters, Arkad’s World is a rollicking adventure story about growing up and the things we share that make us human, from celebrated author James L. Cambias. Young Arkad is the only human on a distant world, on his own among beings from across the Galaxy. His struggle to survive on the lawless streets of an alien city is disrupted by the arrival of three humans: an eccentric historian named Jacob, a superhuman cyborg girl called Baichi, and a mysterious ex-spy known as Ree. They seek a priceless treasure which might free Earth from alien domination. Arkad risks everything to join them on an incredible quest halfway across the planet. With his help they cross the fantastic landscape, battling pirates, mercenaries, bizarre creatures, vicious bandits and the harsh environment. But the deadliest danger comes from treachery and betrayal within the group as dark secrets and hidden loyalties come to light.
James L. Cambias is a writer, game designer, and co-founder of Zygote Games. He has been nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the 2001 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The beginning of a gripping new series and the launch of a fabulous new character
SAVE ME FROM DANGEROUS MEN
by S.A. Lelchuk
April 2019
Nikki Griffin isn’t your typical private investigator. In her office above her bookstore’s shelves and stacks, where she luxuriates in books and the comfort they provide, she also tracks certain men. Dangerous men. Men who have hurt the women they claim to love. And Nikki likes to teach those men a lesson, to teach them what it feels like to be hurt and helpless, so she can be sure that their victims are safe from them forever. When a regular PI job tailing Karen, a tech company’s disgruntled employee who might be selling secrets, turns ugly and Karen’s life is threatened, Nikki has to break cover and intervene. Karen tells Nikki that there are people after her. Dangerous men. She says she’ll tell Nikki what’s really going on. But then something goes wrong, and suddenly Nikki is no longer just solving a case―she’s trying hard to stay alive.
Rights sold: Czech Republic/Euromedia, Germany/Piper, Russia/Eksmo, Spanish World/ PRH|Grijalbo, Sweden/Bokfabriken (two-book deal), UK/Simon & Schuster (two-book deal).
S.A. Lelchuk holds a master’s degree from Dartmouth College.
The animals have all begun to die. Soon we will be alone here
MIGRATIONS
by Charlotte McConaghy
Winter 2020
Franny Stone has spent her life beside the sea, obsessed with the birds that soar above it, preferring the wildness of currents and waves to anything humans have to offer. But as the world’s temperatures rise and wildlife begins to die off in devastating mass extinctions, her beloved birds disappear. Soon, even seagulls are a rare sight, and with funding drying up and the scientific community turning to more dire threats, Franny decides to take matters into her own hands. In remote Greenland, she finds the last flock of Arctic terns, which have the longest migration of any animal, and decides to follow them herself to the end of their route in Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto the Saghani, one of the only remaining legal fishing boats in the world, and with the salty, eccentric crew, embarks on a harrowing journey. As the Saghani fights its way south, the story of Franny’s life unspools: her mother’s disappearance, her lonely childhood, her passionate yet complicated marriage, and, finally, the savage loss that has driven her on this final migration. When the voyage turns ugly, fragmenting the crew, Franny fears the wildness within her—the thing she’s been running from, yet searching for, all her life—has finally caught up with her. Shatteringly beautiful in its evocation of the natural world, Migrations is an ode to the wild places and creatures threatened by climate change. But at its heart, it is a timeless story about the lengths we will go—to the edges of the world and back—for the people we love.
Charlotte McConaghy has written several novels including the science-fiction series The Cure and the romantic fantasy series The Chronicles of Kaya.
A gritty, suspenseful, and beautifully written debut novel from a Pushcart-nominated and award-winning author
THE NOBODY
by Liza Palmer
October 2019
If there’s one thing Joan Dixon knows about herself, it’s that she is a damn good journalist. But when she is laid off from yet another soon-to-be-shuttered newspaper, and even the soulless, listicle-writing online jobs have dried up, she is left with few options. Mid-thirties, single, living with her parents again, Joan decides she needs to reinvent herself. She goes to work as a junior copywriter at Bloom, a tech startup where her bosses are all a decade younger and the fridges are always stocked with snacks. Joan has a steady paycheck and a stable job for the first time in years. And after a decade of false starts, she even begins a real relationship with a co-worker. But once a journalist, always a journalist. When Joan accidentally uncovers what might be the biggest scoop of her life, will she throw away her new career for the sake of the story?
Liza Palmer is the author of “The F Word”.
Gernert Company Frankfurt 2018 Adults
From the widely praised author of Paris Was the Place – a shattering new novel that bravely delves into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage and motherhood
ELSEY COME HOME
by Susan Conley
Knopf, January 2019
When Elsey’s husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we’re done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling passionately for Lukas, the tall, Danish MC at a warehouse rave in downtown Beijing. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as painter, mother, and, especially, wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into desperate unhappiness. So, brochure in hand, she agrees to go and confront the ghosts of her past. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself but Elsey must risk tearing herself and Lukas further apart when she decides she must return to her childhood home–the center of her deepest pain–before she can find her way back to him. Written in a voice at once wry, sensual, blunt, and hypnotic, Elsey Come Home is a modern odyssey and a quietly dynamic portrait of contemporary womanhood.
Susan Conley is the author of the novel Paris Was the Place and The Foremost Good Fortune, a book that won the Maine Literary Award for memoir. Born and raised in Maine, her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares.
The first entry in a clever, lighthearted mystery series—a delightful blend of Agatha Christie and Peter Mayle—set in modern Provence
DEATH IN PROVENCE
by Serena Kent
HarperCollins, January 2019
For years, Penelope Kite put her unfaithful ex-husband and her ungrateful stepchildren first. Since taking early retirement from her job in forensics at the Home Office in England, she’s been an unpaid babysitter and chauffeur for her grandchildren. Now, she’s going to start living for herself and it’s love at first sight when Penelope sees Le Chant d’Eau—the stone farmhouse tucked high in the hills above the Luberon valley, complete with a garden, swimming pool, and sweeping mountain vistas. Though her dream house needs major renovations, Penelope impulsively buys the property and moves to St. Merlot. But Penelope’s daydreams of an adventurous life in Provence didn’t include finding a corpse floating face down in her swimming pool…
Serena Kent is the nom de plume of Deborah Lawrenson and her husband Robert Rees. They met at Cambridge University and pursued completely different careers, she in journalism and fiction; he in banking and music.
The fiction debut from the LA Times bestselling author of “What We See When We Read” – a novel of ideas set in a mysterious institute in the desert
SAME SAME
by Peter Mendelsund
Vintage, February 2019
In the shifting desert sands on the outskirts of a Middle Eastern city sits a mysterious Institute, where Fellows in every field of knowledge and endeavor under the (inhospitably hot) sun work on Projects and give Discourses(TM) and dedicate themselves to copying, cloning, replicating, and reproducing a world to which none of them seem to have any intention of returning. Same Same is Percy Frobisher’s account of his tenure as a Fellow at the Institute, and his attempt to realize—or is it simulate?–his own audacious Project. Imagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real — so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself—Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist, and to create… and a future that may not be far off.
Peter Mendelsund, is a designer and writer.
Grove Atlantic 2018 Frankfurt Rights List
From award-winning, New York Times Notable author Leila Aboulela, BIRD SUMMONS is a haunting, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and religion, faith and culture collide
BIRD SUMMONS
by Leila Aboulela
Grove, Winter 2020
Salma, Moni and Iman are embarking on a road trip to the highlands to pay homage to Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first British woman convert to Islam to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. The women are looking for more than a holiday. Each wants to escape her life; each wants an answer. Salma came up with the idea for the trip. Born in Egypt, she moved to Scotland for love, giving up her right to practice medicine. Now a successful masseuse, married to David and bringing up their children, she feels that she still has to make an effort to belong. And when her old boyfriend Amir starts messaging her, she is tempted to risk the life she has worked so hard to build. Moni has been caring for her son Adam, who has disabilities, for five years and is reaching her breaking point. Her husband wants them to join him in Saudi Arabia, but Moni is reluctant to uproot her son, taking him to a country where his condition will render him an outcast. Iman, the youngest of the three, in her late twenties and on her third husband, is burdened by her beauty. Treated like a pet by her lovers and friends, she longs to be alone and free. On a remote hillside in Inverness, each woman is visited by the Hoopoe, a sacred bird who comes with fables from Muslim literature and Celtic folklore, forcing the women to question how much they have sacrificed in the name of love.
Leila Aboulela is the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her novels include “The Kindness of Enemies”, “The Translator”, “Minaret”, and “Lyrics Alley”, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages.
In the 25th mystery in the bestselling Richard Jury series by MWA Grand Master Martha Grimes, an unlikely trio of detectives teams up to solve three puzzling murders on the coast of Cornwall
THE OLD SUCCESS
A Richard Jury Mystery
by Martha Grimes
Atlantic Monthly Press, August 2019
When the body of a French woman washes up on a wild inlet off the Cornish coast, Brian Macalvie, divisional commander with the Devon- Cornwall police, is called to inspect the scene. Who could have killed this beautiful tourist? The only visible footprints nearby belong to the two little girls who found her. While Macalvie stands stumped in the Scilly Islands, inspector Richard Jury—twenty miles away on Land’s End—is at the Old Success pub, sharing a drink with the legendary former Criminal Investigation Department detective Tom Brownell, a man renowned for solving every case he undertook—well, nearly every case. Bronwell discloses that there was one he missed once. In the days following the mysterious slaying of the Parisian tourist, two other murders are called in to Macalvie and Jury’s teams: first a man is found dead in his Devon estate, then a holy duster turns up murdered at the Exeter Cathedral in Northhamptonshire. As the three detectives seek to draw the connection between these three murders, Macalvie and Jury feel reassured by having Bronwell as their consultant, the man who has never been wrong. Except for that one he missed.
Martha Grimes is the bestselling author of more than thirty books, twenty-five of them featuring Richard Jury. She is the recipient of the 2012 Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award.
A gripping portrayal of tumultuous times, and a thrilling story of love, courage and deception
DINNER WITH THE DISSIDENTS
by John Tesarsch
Affirm Press, August 2018
It is 1970, and cracks are appearing in the Soviet Union as it struggles to quell dissident voices. Censored at home, the Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn is lauded in the West for exposing the underbelly of communism, and is rumoured to be writing his most damaging work yet. The Kremlin is worried; Solzhenitsyn must be stopped. The KGB turns to Leonid Krasnov, an aspiring young writer. They promise to make him Moscow’s new literary star if he will infiltrate Solzhenitsyn’s inner circle and report back on what the great author is hiding. At first Leonid complies, but when he falls in love with Klara, a brilliant dissident cellist, his allegiances waver. By then he is already enmeshed in a plot more sinister than he could ever have imagined. Many years later, Leonid is living a reclusive life in Canberra under an assumed name. Haunted by his past, he seeks one last, desperate chance to make amends.
John Tesarsch was born and raised in Melbourne. He has degrees in law and musicology, and has worked as a barrister and a solicitor. His debut novel, “The Philanthropist”, was published in 2010.
The first in a new adult fantasy series from USA Today bestselling author Danielle L. Jensen
THE BRIDGE KINGDOM
by Danielle L. Jensen
Audible Originals, October 2018
Lara is a ruthless princess and spy, who will stop at nothing to defeat her enemies and save her nation. Not even when her betrothed, King Aren, turns out to be a kind, handsome, and fair ruler. Not the monster she believed him to be. Caught in a web of secrecy and betrayal, Lara must decide where her true loyalty lies. King Aren’s advisers believe his new wife to be a spy, and yet he accepts the marriage to keep the fragile peace treaty between the two kingdoms. But Lara is not who he expected her to be, and he finds himself captivated by the rebellious princess. Torn between duty to his nation and love, Aren unexpectedly falls for the biggest threat to his country.
Danielle L. Jensen is the USA Today bestselling author of “The Malediction” series. She lives with her family in Calgary, Canada
Rights sold in Poland (Galeria Ksiaszki)
A fast-paced dystopian thriller set in a world where humans have all become allergic to other humans
SKIN
by Liam Brown
2019
Following the outbreak of the plague that makes humans allergic to touch, the only way for life to continue is for all the survivors to live in hermetically sealed rooms, only communicating through the internet and never having contact with another person ever again. We experience this new life from the first-person perspective of Angela, a working mother whose monotonous working life feels as though it has barely changed… if it weren’t for the insane loneliness and the creeping dread of the disease outside her door. One day, however, Angela’s routine existence is unsettled when she spots a mysterious stranger walking through town without so much as a dust mask for protection. A stranger who is apparently immune to the disease and, more importantly, doesn’t trigger a reaction in others. A man who, as impossible as it seems, it might be safe to touch. By presenting a vision of a future that is at once preposterous yet somehow chillingly plausible, it forces us to question what it is that makes us human, and whether human connection is truly possible without physical contact. The novel is brilliantly paced, flashing back and forth between the grim, monotonous present and the rising horror of the scenes from the outbreak of the disease. It’s hard to choose but my personal favourite scene involves a visit into a virtual sex dungeon with the protagonist’s husband, exploring her horror, perhaps not at the sexual acts themselves, but at the participants’ willingness to abandon their own realities for the sake of fantasy…
Liam Brown is a hugely talented young British author whose writing has been shortlisted for several prestigious awards, including the Luke Bitmead Bursary (2014), Guardian Not the Booker Prize (2015, 2016), Bare Fiction Prize (2015) and Grist Prize (2016). SKIN is his forth novel after the acclaimed REAL MONSTERS, WILD LIFE and BROADCAST.
For fans of literary fiction
THE RECKONING
by Clár Ní Chonghaile
October 2018
‘I have a story to tell you, Diane. It is my story and your story and the story of a century that made the world. When we reach the end, you will be the ultimate arbiter of whether it was worth your time. You will also sit in judgement on me.’
In a cottage in Normandy, Lina Rose is writing to the daughter she abandoned as a baby. Now a successful if enigmatic author, she is determined to trace her family’s history through the two wars that shaped her life. But Lina can no longer bear to carry her secrets alone, and once the truth is out, can she ever be forgiven?
Clár Ní Chonghaile grew up in An Spidéal, County Galway, but has spent the last 20 years working as a reporter and editor in Spain, France, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Kenya. Her debut novel, “Fractured”, was published by Legend Press in 2016.
Levine Greenberg Rostan Frankfurt 2018
A dark psychological suspense for fans of “The Last Mrs. Parrish”, “The Wife Between Us” or “The Couple Next Door”, a lonely suburban Chicago housewife finds her life entangled with the new family that moves in across the street, at the same time she becomes convinced that someone is watching her
MRS. MILLER AND THE OTHER MRS. MILLER
by Allison Dickson
Putnam, August 2019
Phoebe Miller is convinced she’s being watched. What she can’t figure out is why. She’s the most boring person on earth, as far as she can tell. Unhappily married, a housewife drowning herself in Chardonnay (and okay, pints of ice cream), she has never made friends with the neighbors, hasn’t worked in years, barely leaves her house these days. But the inconspicuous blue sedan – which is exactly what makes it conspicuous in this neighborhood – is always there. Wyatt doesn’t believe her, but he hasn’t listened to her in forever so what else is new? Enter the Napiers. A doctor, his wife, and their handsome eighteen-year-old son move into the house across the street at almost the same time the car appears, providing Phoebe with a new reason to complain about marriage, her first friend in a long time, and a ridiculous crush, respectively. A crush she would never act on, of course, because although Jake is legal, he’s her best friend’s son. But no one knows better than Phoebe that promises were made to be broken, everyone has secrets, and secrets always come out. Don’t they? Who’s in that blue car, anyway?
Allison M. Dickson is the author of two published novels from shuttered small press Hobbes End, soon to be re-released by Local Hero: horror-thriller “Strings”, and the dystopian epic, “The Last Supper”, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. She also has published nearly two dozen short stories covering both speculative and realistic realms, both independently and in various anthologies and magazines like Apex. Her independently-produced Colt Coltrane series, featuring a detective and his robot sidekick in 1940s Los Angeles, has become a regular fixture at local comic conventions.
From New York Times bestselling author Bryan Reardon comes a modern Cain and Abel story with dangerous consequences
THE PERFECT PLAN
by Bryan Reardon
Dutton, Summer 2019
Liam Brennan teeters on the edge. Early one morning, he snaps, kidnapping an up-and-coming political operative: a young woman who works for Drew Brennan, Liam’s older brother and the upstart candidate in a heated gubernatorial race. This sudden, vicious attack appears to be the beginning of an unthinkable spiral. But when it comes to the Brennan brothers, nothing is what is seems. To the rest of the world, Liam is the troubled problem child who grew up to be his brother’s enforcer while Drew has always been the perfect son, the charismatic leader who became a rising political star with his charming and beautiful wife, Patsy, by his side. Now, as Liam tries to stay one step ahead of the authorities and his brother, every passing minute provides a deeper glimpse into the brothers’ past, long hidden behind a picture-perfect suburban veneer. With the threat of the truth surfacing, Liam and Drew are driven toward one final, desperate act.
Bryan Reardon is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel “Finding Jake” (Morrow, 2015), which was a selection of The Mystery Guild and received rave reviews in Marilyn Stasio’s crime column in the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus, among others. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Bryan worked for the State of Delaware for more than a decade, starting in the office of the governor.
MacKenzie Wolf_Rights Guide_FBF 2018
America lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of March 2020. This is the final, authorized report of the government commission charged with investigating the calamity
THE 2020 COMMISSION REPORT ON THE NORTH KOREAN ATTACKS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES
A Speculative Novel
by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 2018
“The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report on the findings of the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by law by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the next three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared for combating a nuclear adversary and safeguarding U.S. citizens. Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did they appreciate the dangers of provoking the country’s ruler with social media posts and military exercises? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea’s accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation?
Jeffrey Lewis, PhD, is a columnist for Foreign Policy and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Also a former director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and former executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, he is the publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation.
A new thriller from a writer who’s been compared to Michael Crichton, Alfred Hitchcock, Raymond Chandler, Blake Crouch, and David Cronenberg takes us to the most menacing core of California’s upper crust, a class of billionaires with more money than they could spend in eternity
BLOOD RELATIONS
by Jonathan Moore
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2019
Lee Crowe is a disbarred California attorney with anger management issues, now turned undercover private investigator extraordinaire for either side of the law willing to pay his price. Equal parts fearless and relentless, Lee digs, taking surreptitious pictures, taping damning conversations, tracking his targets like a laser beam, finding that fatal hidden weak spot and soon enough, witness are changing their stories in court, drug kingpins are walking and rich pin-striped lawyers are cashing in. But the case of Claire Gravesend is quite unlike any job Lee has worked – a beautiful young blonde woman dropped from a seemingly great height to her death on a smashed luxury automobile…
Jonathan Moore is the author of five books. Before completing law school in New Orleans, he was an English teacher, a bar owner, a raft guide, a counselor at a Texas wilderness camp for juvenile delinquents, and an investigator for a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C.
Award-winning author Brad Parks delivers « a perfect piece of entertainment » (Steve Berry), a deliciously tense novel of thrills, twists, and deceit that will keep readers riveted
THE LAST ACT
by Braid Parks
Dutton, March 2019
Struggling stage actor Tommy Jump knows he has to stop chasing applause and start chasing greenbacks. But then he’s offered the role of a lifetime: $150,000 for a six-month acting gig. With a newly pregnant fiancée depending on him, it’s an opportunity he can’t refuse, even though the offer comes from the strangest employer imaginable: the FBI. The feds won a small victory when they arrested Mitchell Dupree, a banker who has spent the past four years laundering money for New Colima, one of the deadliest cartels in Mexico and a major supplier of crystal meth in the US. But Dupree has documents that could lead to arrests of high-ranking members of New Colima, including their fearsome leader, El Vio…if only he’d tell the FBI where they are. Using a false name and backstory, Tommy will enter Dupree’s low-security prison as a felon and get close to the banker in the hopes that he’ll reveal the documents’ whereabouts.
International bestselling author Braid Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes.
DAVID BALDACCI
David Baldacci made a big splash on the literary scene with the publication of his first novel, ABSOLUTE POWER, in 1996. A major motion picture adaptation followed, with Clint Eastwood as its director and star. In total, David has published 27 novels, all of which have been national and international bestsellers; several have been adapted for film and television. His novels have been translated into more than 45 languages and sold in more than 80 countries; over 110 million copies are in print worldwide. David has also published four novels for children. He has received numerous accolades for his writing; most recently, he was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame and received the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.
Detective Amos Decker discovers that a mistake he made as a rookie detective may have led to deadly consequences
UNTITLED AMOS DECKER #5
Grand Central Publishing, Spring 2019
Amos Decker and his FBI partner Alex Jamison are visiting his hometown of Burlington, Ohio, when he’s approached by an unfamiliar man. But he instantly recognizes the man’s name: Meryl Hawkins. He’s the first person Decker ever arrested for murder back when he was a young detective. Though a dozen years in prison have left Hawkins unrecognizably aged and terminally ill, one thing hasn’t changed: He maintains he never committed the murders. Could it be possible that Decker made a mistake all those years ago? As he starts digging into the old case, Decker finds a startling connection to a new crime that he may be able to prevent, if only he can put the pieces together quickly enough…
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The first book in a new thrilling series!
LONG ROAD TO MERCY
Atlee Pine #1
Grand Central Publishing, November 2018
#1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci introduces a remarkable new character: Atlee Pine, an FBI special agent assigned to the remote wilds of the western United States. Ever since her twin sister was abducted by a notorious serial killer at age five, Atlee has spent her life hunting down those who hurt others. And she’s the best at it. She could be one of the Bureau’s top criminal profilers, if she didn’t prefer catching criminals in the vast wilderness of the West to climbing the career ladder in the D.C. office. Her chosen mission is a lonesome one–but that suits her just fine. Now, Atlee is called in to investigate the mutilated carcass of a mule found in the Grand Canyon–and hopefully, solve the disappearance of its rider. But this isn’t the only recent disappearance. In fact, it may be just the first clue, the key to unraveling a rash of other similar missing persons cases in the canyon…
A captivating mosaic of stories set in a small town where no act is private and the past is never really past
HUNTER’S MOON
by Philip Caputo
Henry Holt, Summer 2019
HUNTER’S MOON is set in Michigan’s wild, starkly beautiful Upper Peninsula, where a cast of recurring characters move into and out of each other’s lives, building friendships, facing loss, confronting violence, trying to bury the past or seeking to unearth it. Once-a-year lovers, old high school buddies on a hunting trip, a college professor and his wayward son, a middle-aged man and his grief-stricken father, come together, break apart, and, if they’re fortunate, find a way forward. Hunter’s Moon offers an engaging, insightful look at everyday lives but also a fresh perspective on the way men navigate in today’s world.
Philip Caputo is the author of “A Rumor of War”, “The Longest Road”, and “Some Rise By Sin”.
When darkness closes in―he’s your last, best hope. Evan Smoak returns in Gregg Hurwitz’s #1 international bestselling Orphan X series
OUT OF THE DARK
(Orphan X #4)
by Gregg Hurwitz
Minotaur Books, January 2019
Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets―i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan’s past is catching up to him. Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan’s mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the Program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States…
Gregg Hurwitz the New York Times bestselling author of thrillers, including “Hellbent”. Critically acclaimed, his novels have graced top ten lists and have been published in 22 languages. He is also a New York Times bestselling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel and DC. Additionally, he’s written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios, and written, developed, and produced television for various networks.
St. Martin’s Press_Frankfurt 2018
INTERFERENCE: the sequel to Sue Burke’s « Semiosis »!
INTERFERENCE
by Sue Burke
Tor Books, October 2019
In the sequel to Sue Burke’s epic SF debut, “Semiosis”, the colonists and a team from Earth confront a new, implacable intelligence. Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers has arrived from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission. But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known. Stevland is not the apex species.
Sue Burke has worked as a reporter and editor for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and this is her second novel. She is a Clarion workshop alumnus and has published over thirty short stories. Burke also worked extensively as a literary translator.
From the author of “Not Her Daughter” (film rights optioned by Argent Pictures)
BECAUSE YOU’RE MINE
by Rea Frey
St. Martin’s Griffin, August 2019
A child needs a mother most of all. But what happens if that mother disappears? Single mother Lee has the daily routine down to a science: shower in six minutes; cut food into perfect squares; never leave her autistic son, Mason, in someone else’s care. She’ll do anything—anything—to keep his carefully constructed world from falling apart. Do anything to keep him safe. But when her best friend Grace convinces her she needs a small break from motherhood to recharge her batteries, Lee gives in to a weekend trip. Surely forty-eight hours away from home won’t hurt anyone? And Noah, Mason’s handsome, bright, charismatic tutor—the first man in ages Lee’s even noticed—is more than happy to stay with him. Forty-eight hours later, Lee is dead—leaving Grace as his guardian. But not all is as it seems. Noah may be more than who he claims to be. Grace has a secret—one that destroyed Lee the night of her fatal accident. And as the dominoes begin to fall and the past comes to light, perhaps it’s a good thing Lee is gone after all.
Rea Frey is an award-winning author of nonfiction books. « Not Her Daughter » was her debut novel.
The sweeping, romantic new novel from the internationally bestselling author of “The Map that Leads to You”
SEVEN LETTERS
by J.P. Monninger
St. Martin’s Press, October 2019
From the internationally bestselling author of “The Map that Leads to You” comes a sweeping romantic novel about love, family, and discovering the true meaning of home. The Blasket Islands are the heart of Ireland. Once populated with some of the most famous Irish writers, they are now abandoned, filled with nothing but wind and silence. Kate Moreton, a PhD student at Dartmouth, is in Ireland to research the history of the Blaskets, not to fall in love. She has a degree to finish and a life back in New Hampshire that she is reluctant to leave. But fall in love she does, with both the wild, windswept landscape and with Ozzie, an Irish-American fisherman with a troubled past who shares her deep, aching love for the land. Together, they begin to build a life on the rocky Irish coast. But when tragedy strikes, leading Kate on a desperate search through Europe, the limits of their love and faith in each other will be tested.
J.P. Monninger has published novels for adults and teens and three works of nonfiction.
The second heart-pounding novel from award-winning author Joanna Schaffhausen
NO MERCY
by Joanna Schaffhausen
Minotaur Books, January 2019
In this heart-pounding follow-up to the award-winning “The Vanishing Season”, police officer Ellery Hathaway is on involuntary leave from her job because she shot a murderer in cold blood and refuses to apologize for it. Forced into group therapy for victims of violent crime, Ellery immediately finds higher priorities than “getting in touch with her feelings.” For one, Ellery finds herself in the desperate clutches of a woman who survived a brutal rape. He is still out there, and his victim beseeches Ellery for help in capturing her attacker. Ignoring all the warnings, Ellery starts digging around in everyone’s past but her own—a move that, at best, could put her out of work permanently, and at worst, could put her in the city morgue.
Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, skills developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She is also the author of “The Vanishing Season”.
The most inventive debut of 2018, this clever, mind-bending murder mystery will leave readers guessing until the very last page
THE 7 ½ DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE
by Stuart Turton
Sourcebooks Landmark, September 2018
At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed. Again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend. But nothing and no one are quite what they seem. Deeply atmospheric and ingeniously plotted, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a highly original debut that will appeal to fans of Dean Koontz’s Ashley Bell and Agatha Christie.
Stuart Turton is a freelance journalist who lives in West London with his wife. Stuart is not to be trusted—in the nicest possible way. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is his first novel.
From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a sharp, funny, emotionally powerful novel that urgently asks : How do we rebuild and break free from the painful legacies of the past?
ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS
by Jami Attenberg
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2019
Agent: Doug Stewart
“If I know why he is the way he is then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman, strong-headed lawyer, loving mother, and daughter of Victor Tuchman—a power-hungry real estate developer and, by all accounts, a bad man. Now that Victor is on his deathbed, Alex feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who he is and what he did over the course of his life and career. She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra. As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her life with Victor—one full of ups and downs, one she worked hard to keep from careening out of control. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado in LA, and Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown in New Orleans. Dysfunction is at its peak. And as each family member reckons with Victor’s dark past, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children. ALL THIS CAN BE YOURS is a piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man; it shows how abuses of power can infect a family for generations and what it takes to—maybe, hopefully—make things right again. In her signature “sparkling prose” (Marie Claire) and pitch-perfect wit, Jami Attenberg tackles a necessary subject for our age, as we reckon with the past and forge onward.
Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up. She has contributed essays about sex, urban life, and food to The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Lenny Letter, among other publications.
A bookish Sweetbitter set on the beach, The Last Book Party is the perfect smart, fun, summer read
THE LAST BOOK PARTY
by Karen Dukess
Henry Holt, July 2019
Agent: Doug Stewart
In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen, languishing in a low-level publishing job after growing up in the shadow of her brilliant brother, jumps at the chance to attend an exclusive party at the Cape Cod home of the New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie Sanderson. Dazzled by the party and the hosts’ artist son, Franny, Eve is determined to find her way back into this literary milieu where she feels recognized as the writer she aspires to be. Her naive quest leads to a summer job as Henry’s research assistant out on the cape in the town of Truro. It also leads to a contentious relationship with Franny’s secretive childhood friend, the up-and-coming novelist Jeremy Ex, and an illicit love affair. By summer’s end, Eve feels older and wiser. But at Henry and Tillie’s annual Labor Day costume party, the exclusive and famed “Book Party” where attendees dress as literary characters, Eve discovers that nothing is as it seems, and that she may have single-handedly destroyed years of tradition with a few seemingly casual decisions made in the middle of an otherwise magical summer.
With a background in newspaper and magazine journalism, Karen Dukess has spent the last eight years as a speechwriter on gender equality at the United Nations. She lives in Pelham, New York and is excited to write many more books.
In the vein of Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves, Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood, and Magda Szabo’s The Door, Morningside Heights is an epic novel about love and loyalty, privilege and faith
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
by Joshua Henkin
Pantheon, March 2020
Agent: Doug Stewart
Morningside Heights tells the story of Pru Steiner, an Orthodox Jew raised in Ohio, who, in 1975, falls in love with Spence Robin, MacArthur winner and the youngest art historian ever to receive tenure at Columbia. Her career derailed by an early marriage to a powerful and acclaimed man, Pru settles into an ambivalent domesticity, raising their daughter Sarah. Spence, meanwhile, has been keeping a secret: an earlier marriage, which produced a son, Arlo, with whom he’s no longer in touch. Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The great art historian can’t focus. Still in his fifties, he becomes taciturn and forgetful. With their daughter in medical school in California, Pru must face his illness on her own. Arlo, now a wealthy venture capitalist with access to a promising experimental drug, has gotten back in touch. Pru, meanwhile, is struggling for money. She can’t afford Ginny, the domestic aide who takes care of Spence. And she has met a man at a caregiver’s class and the threat of romance looms. Spanning time zones and decades, Morningside Heights tells the story of a marriage enduring through adversity, and how ties of blood, long frayed, persist in the face of misfortune.
Joshua Henkin is the author of the novels Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book; Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book; and The World Without You, which was named an Editors’ Choice Book by The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and was the winner of the 2012 Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction and a finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award. He directs and teaches in the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.
In The Vexations, Horrocks orbits the inimitable life of the legendarily peculiar composer Erik Satie, who would compose the Trois Gymnopédies when he was just 21 in 1888
THE VEXATIONS
by Caitlin Horrocks
Little, Brown, Summer 2019
Agent: Jim Rutman
Melancholy, atmospheric, and heartbreakingly beautiful, composer Erik Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies have wound their way into modern music from film scores to jazz interpretations. They are, as Caitlin Horrocks writes, “wallpaper that can make you cry.” In The Vexations, Horrocks orbits the inimitable life of the legendarily peculiar composer Erik Satie, who would compose the Trois Gymnopédies when he was just 21 in 1888, as an alienated and alienating young pianist in a Parisian music hall. Satie was friends with Debussy and collaborated with Picasso, but lived alone in a squalid flat that no other person visited for 25 messy years. Horrocks is not interested in sculpting a monument to an artist we would eventually revere, but rather in tracing the fine, often pained lines of a life spent battling and balancing sincerity and provocation, the mandates of popularity versus creative singularity, and how the people around a creative force contend with a presence that may or may not be genius.
Caitlin Horrocks is author of the story collection This Is Not Your City, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Tin House, One Story, and other journals and anthologies. Her awards include the Plimpton Prize and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony. She is the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review and teaches at Grand Valley State University, and occasionally in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Text Publishing Frankfurt Rights Guide 2018
A bestseller in Israel, AT NIGHT’S END is a compelling story of family and love, friendship and fatherhood
AT NIGHT’S END
by Nir Baram
translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
January 2020
Yonatan wakes in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city. He knows he came to participate in a literary festival that is long over, so why is he still there, and how long has he been in this bed? As he attempts to reconstruct his lost days, he learns that he told people at the festival that his best friend Yoel has died—but he knows that his friend is still alive. As Yonatan roams the city streets in a fevered daze, he thinks back on his friendship with Yoel. As children, the boys made up stories together; as adolescents, they fell in love with the same girl. But when the fantasy worlds they created invaded real life, and a peculiar yellow fog engulfed the neighborhood, their childhood is overwhelmed by tragedy. And as their journeys diverge over the decades, Yonatan comes to realise that the imaginary world of their early days may fade, but it never vanishes.
Nir Baram was born in Jerusalem in 1976. He is the author of five novels, including “Good People”, which was translated into English for the first time in 2016. His books have been translated into more than ten languages and received critical acclaim around the world. Jessica Cohen is a British-Israeli-American translator. She shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for translating David Grossman’s 2014 novel “A Horse Walks into a Bar”.
ROOM FOR A STRANGER is a story about difference and compassion, a moving and complex portrayal of an improbable friendship
ROOM FOR A STRANGER
by Melanie Cheng
May 2019
The boy who greeted her on the doorstep was holding a large cardboard box. There were a duffel bag and another box at his feet. Today was only a first meeting, and yet the young man standing before her looked ready to move in. Helpless, Meg introduced herself and ushered the boy inside. Since her sister died, Meg has been on her own. She doesn’t mind, not really—not with Atticus, her African grey parrot, to keep her company—but after her house is broken into by a knifewielding intruder, she decides it might be good to have some company after all. Andy’s father has lost his job, and his parents’ savings are barely enough to cover his university tuition in Melbourne. If he loses his student visa, he’ll have to go home to Hong Kong—and that’s just not an option he wants to consider. If Andy wants to graduate, he’ll have to give up his student flat and find a homeshare. Living with an elderly Australian woman is harder than Andy has expected, and soon he’s struggling with more than his studies.
Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. In 2016 she won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for her collection of stories, “Australia Day”, which also won the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction.
The latest gripping story in the Wyatt thriller series kicks off in Sydney and unfolds on the beaches of Newcastle
KILL SHOT
by Garry Disher
December 2018
Some people just work better alone. Wyatt’s one of them. He’s been getting by on nice quiet little burglaries—one-man jobs—when he gets wind of something bigger. A corporate crook, notorious Ponzi schemer, set to face court and certain jail time. He’s about to skip bail the oldfashioned way: on a luxury yacht with a million dollars in cash. Wyatt thinks it sounds like something he should get into. There’s just one problem—he’s not alone.
Garry Disher grew up in South Australia and now lives on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. He is the author of more than forty titles—fiction, children’s books, anthologies, textbooks, and the Wyatt thrillers. Garry Disher has won numerous awards, including the German Crime Prize (twice) and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction in 2007 and 2010. In 2018, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ned Kelly Awards.
From the award-winning, bestselling author of “Addition” and “Nine Days”, a superbly crafted and captivating literary mystery about a lost book and a secret love
THE FRAGMENTS
by Toni Jordan
November 2018
Inga Karlson died in a fire in New York in the 1930s, leaving behind three things: a phenomenally successful first novel, the scorched fragments of a second book—and a literary mystery that has captivated generations of readers. Nearly fifty years later, Brisbane bookseller Caddie Walker is waiting in line to see a Karlson exhibition featuring the famous fragments when a charismatic older woman quotes a phrase from the Karlson fragments that Caddie knows does not exist. Caddie is electrified. Jolted her from her sleepy, no-worries life in torpid 1980s Brisbane she is driven to investigate: to find the clues that will unlock the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century.
Toni Jordan is the author of five novels. The international bestseller “Addition” was a Richard and Judy Bookclub pick and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. “Fall Girl” was published internationally and has been optioned for film, and “Nine Days” was named in Kirkus Review’s top 10 Historical Novels of 2013. “Our Tiny, Useless Hearts” was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize 2017.
Writers House Frankfurt Adult 2018 Rights Guide FINAL
Perfect for fans of “We Were the Lucky Ones”, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” and “The Alice Network”, Anita Abriel’s THE LIGHT AFTER THE WAR, a true story based on the author’s mother survival during the war, is a sweeping tale about one woman who discovers love for the first time, only to lose it shortly after succumbing to its hold. But, it is amid unbearable heartache and with the strength of friendship, that Vera finds the courage to build a new life and face her family’s tribulations during and after WWII
THE LIGHT AFTER THE WAR
by Anita Abriel
Touchstoner, January 2020
It is 1946 when two young Hungarian refugees arrive in Naples. Cautious and disciplined in nature, Vera Frankel is determined to start anew with her best friend, Edith Ban, amidst the loss of their parents and everything they loved before the war. They escaped from a train headed for Auschwitz and were hidden by farmers until the end of the war. Now, they want to be far from Hungary. Their only hope for survival in this new land comes in the form of a letter of recommendation from an American general to an American captain at the United States embassy. What Vera doesn’t realize, however, is that love awaits her…and she will find it with the handsome captain, Anton Wight. Vera’s search for a better life without persecution will eventually take her and Edith to Ellis Island, Venezuela and Australia.
Anita Abriel was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. She graduated from Bard College and attended UC Berkeley’s Masters in English and Creative Writing Program.
New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder returns with an explosive new thriller about a female judge and the one personal misstep that could lead to her–and her family’s–undoing
JUDGMENT
by Joseph Finder
Dutton, January 2019
It was nothing more than a one-night stand. Juliana Brody, a judge in the Superior Court of Massachusetts, is rumored to be in consideration for the federal circuit, maybe someday the highest court in the land. At a conference in a Chicago hotel, she meets a gentle, vulnerable man and in a moment of weakness has an unforgettable night with him. They part with an explicit understanding that this must never happen again. But back home in Boston, it becomes clear that this was no random encounter. The man from Chicago proves to have an integral role in a case she’s presiding over–a sex-discrimination case that’s received national attention. Juliana discovers that she’s been entrapped, her night of infidelity captured on video. Strings are being pulled in high places, a terrifying unfolding conspiracy that will turn her life upside down. But soon it becomes clear that personal humiliation, even the possible destruction of her career, are the least of her concerns, as her own life and the lives of her family are put in mortal jeopardy. In the end, turning the tables on her adversaries will require her to be as ruthless as they are.
Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen previous novels. Finder’s international bestseller Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include “Paranoia” and “High Crimes », which both became major motion pictures.
The No.1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy returns with an electrifying tale of friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town
CEMETERY ROAD
by Greg Iles
William Morrow, March 2019
When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age eighteen, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington D.C. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol—and perhaps even to Washington. More disturbing still, Marshall’s high school sweetheart, Jet, has married into the family of Max Matheson, patriarch of one of the families that rule Bienville through a shadow organization called the Bienville Poker Club. When archeologist Buck McKibben is murdered at a construction site, Bienville is thrown into chaos. The ensuing homicide investigation is soon derailed by a second crime that rocks the community to its core…
Greg Iles has spent most of his life in Natchez, Mississippi. His first novel, “Spandau Phoenix”, was the first of fifteen New York Times bestsellers, and his “Natchez Burning” trilogy continued the story of Penn Cage, the protagonist of “The Quiet Game”, “Turning Angel”, and #1 New York Times bestseller “The Devil’s Punchbowl”. Iles’ novels have been made into films and published in more than thirty-five countries. He is a member of the lit-rock group “The Rock Bottom Remainders”.
A literary courtroom thriller about a mother accused of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son
MIRACLE CREEK
by Angie Kim
Sarah Crichton Books, April 2019
In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine—a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community. Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night—trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges—as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.
Angie Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. Her stories have won the Glamour Essay Contest and the Wabash Prize in Fiction, and appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Southern Review, Sycamore Review, The Asian American Literary Review, and PANK.
From the acclaimed author of “Christodora” comes an accessible and timely novel that’s at once a classic American immigrant family saga, a detailed account of international journalism in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, and a deeply moving meditation on family, nation, violence, vulnerability and what it means to be a survivor of a trauma and a stranger in a new world
CORRESPONDENTS
by Tim Murphy
Grove Atlantic, August 2019
Set in Lebanon, the Boston area, Baghdad, Damascus, Washington, D.C., and, finally, southern California, CORRESPONDENTS follows Rita Khoury, a hard-edged, perfectionistic American journalist, and Nabil al-Jumaili, her Baghdadi interpreter, a man whose sexuality threatens to put him into danger, as they navigate Iraq after the American invasion of 2003. Surrounding them is a spectacular cast of supporting characters. There are the members of Rita’s sprawling, Boston-area Irish-Lebanese family and Nabil’s middle-class Sunni-Shiite Baghdad family, including an ambitious cousin desperate to leave Iraq and take Nabil with her. These dynamic families’ relationships mirror one another throughout the book, culminating in a final section as heart-stopping as it is suspenseful, as both Rita and Naboo find themselves with impossible choices in the face of forces out of their control, which also challenge readers to interrogate where their deepest sympathies lie, and why. This immersive, suspenseful novel spans the twentieth century to tell the story of America’s legacy of immigration, both a century ago and in recent decades. CORRESPONDENTS also provides an unflinching look at America’s vexing role in the contemporary world and the tragic consequences of its actions. It is uniquely ripe for the literary and political zeitgeist.
Tim Murphy has reported on HIV/AIDS for twenty years, for such publications as Poz magazine, where he was an editor and staff writer, Out, Advocate, and New York magazine, where his July 2014 cover story on the new HIV-prevention pill regimen PrEP was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Magazine Article. He also covers LGBT issues, arts, pop culture, travel, and fashion for publications including the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Details, and Yahoo! Style.
In the tradition of Room and The Lovely Bones, an unforgettable young girl goes on a road trip adventure through the American south with her dad—but what they’re leaving behind is as important as what lies ahead
MOON DADDY
by Michelle Sacks
Little, Brown, June 2018
Dolly is 7 years old. Her number-one all-time most-best friend is her stuffed horse, Clemesta. One sunny Saturday morning, Dad sweeps them both up into his arms and carries them off on a week-long road-trip adventure. Destination: the most special place ever! The first days on the road are incredibly exciting. Dolly has never been allowed to miss school, or gone on a cross-country trip, or had Dad all to herself. They stop along the way for milkshakes and shopping sprees and a theme park. They get to sleep in motels, eat junk food, and watch cartoons on TV. But as they get farther from home, Clemesta begins to whisper things in Dolly’s ear. Things like, “We need to eat some vegetables,” and “When do we get to see Mom?” As much as Dolly doesn’t want to spoil the adventure, even she has to admit that things aren’t quite right. Dad is acting strange, and sometimes scary, and he seems to think that someone might be following them.
Michelle Sacks‘ first short story collection “Stone Baby” was published by Northwestern University Press in 2017 and her novel “You Were Made For This” by Little, Brown in June 2018 (translated in 8 languages). Her earlier writing has been published in African Pens and New Contrast, and by Akashic Books. Born in South Africa, Michelle holds a master’s degree in literature and film from the University of Cape Town.
A dark but transcendent debut novel
QUICKENINGS
by JoAnne Tompkins
Riverhead, TBA
In Port Furlong, a sleepy town in Washington state, two teenage boys are found dead in a grisly murder-suicide. Weeks later, a mysterious pregnant girl walks out of the woods and into the lives of the victim’s—and the killer’s—families. In a story that spans the profound depths of tragedy, brutality, and redemption, QUICKENINGS explores the “why” of lives that are torn apart—and, at the edges of human forgiveness and humility, drawn back together again. “Quickenings” refers not only to the first signs of life felt in pregnancy, but to the manifestation of God that moves a Quaker to break silence. This exquisitely written novel is a study of our fundamental sameness, how we all yearn for connection and must constantly find new ways to engage with life, love, and the things that are out of our control. Though the characters and the world they inhabit are deeply flawed, they display remarkable emotional depth, revealing the best and worst of humanity.
JoAnne Tompkins’ fiction and nonfiction have appeared in journals such as High Country News, Fine Linen, Pitkin Review and Stratus: Journal of Arts and Writing. She received her MFA from Goddard College in 2017. In researching this novel, she spent a month living at a Quaker residential and learning community. During her first career as a trial lawyer, judicial officer and mediator, she mediated hundreds of sex abuse cases involving the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese and other archdioceses, as well as against other major institutions such as the Boy Scouts and Big Brother.
Two generations of an American family come of age—one before 9/11, one after—in this wildly original novel from the “intellectually restless, uniquely funny” (New York Times Book Review) mind of Nell Zink
DOXOLOGY
by Nell Zink
Ecco, Spring/Summer 2019
Pam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivals—a daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the ‘90s wane, the three friends share in one another’s successes, working together to elevate Joe’s superstardom and raise baby Flora. On September 11, 2001, the city’s unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Flora’s family will have no choice but to look to the past—both to examine wounds that have never healed, and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten. At once a biting takedown of today’s political climate and a touching invocation for humanity’s goodness, Doxology offers daring revelations about America’s past and possible future that could only come from Nell Zink, one of the sharpest novelists of our time.
Nell Zink is the critically acclaimed author of “Nicotine”, “Private Novelist”, “Mislaid”, and “he Wallcreeper”. Her writing has appeared in n+1 and Harper’s. She lives in Germany.