A story about being an outsider, first love and grief and a thought-provoking look at the uneasy relationship between power, celebrity and control.
I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL
by Hattie Williams
Orion, 2025
(via Mushens Entertainment)
London, 2010. Charlie is twenty-three, single and the new publicity assistant at the independent London publishing house Winden & Shane. Richard Aveling is fifty-six, married and the author that has defined his generation. For Charlie, the glamorous and urbane writer is a ticket into a world she doesn’t quite belong to – and a link to her late mother, who loved his work. But forced to hide their relationship from everyone she cares about, Charlie starts to realise that she might be in too deep. And when the success of his first book in years launches him to a new level of fame where all anonymity is lost, she realises that some secrets can’t stay secret forever.
Hattie Williams left education in her teens to pursue a career as a musician. She has toured Europe extensively, made three studio albums, and worked as a composer with her tracks still regularly featured on TV and streaming services across the world. In her mid-twenties she found herself working in publishing quite by accident, and an admin temping job turned into a twelve-year career in which she worked with some of the biggest authors in the world. She spends as much time in Iceland as she can, and books and produces the Iceland Noir Literary Festival which takes place in Reykjavík every November. Hattie lives in east London with her husband and young daughter.
Two years ago, thirty-year-old receptionist Millie Chandler had her heart spectacularly broken in public. Ever since, she has been a closed book, vowing to keep everything to herself – her feelings, her truths, even her dreams – in an effort to protect herself from getting hurt again.
June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin.
Meirionydd, 1783. Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital. The only job he can find is as a physician in the backwaters of Wales where he can’t speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife, and the villagers treat him with bewildering suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.
Surviving on the streets of World War II London alone certainly hasn’t been easy, but Nimble Nottingham has perfected the art of going it alone—and that’s just how he likes it. The only friend he needs is his beloved dog, Winnie. To pass the time between rolling blackouts and bombs falling through the air, Nim spends his days fence-climbing, roof-jumping, and gargoyle-perching…that is when he’s not scrounging for food to stave off the ever-present hunger the war has brought to London.