The Bookseller.com

5th July 2008

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Conville and Walsh assistants sell first novels

08.04.08 Benedicte Page

Robert Dinsdale and Susan Armstrong, assistants to Patrick Walsh and Clare Conville respectively, have between them sold three first novels in their own solo deals, each for a "good five-figure" sum.

Dinsdale has sold Elliott Hall's The First Stone at auction to John Murray's Kate Parkin in a three-book deal. The novel is set in an alternative New York controlled by evangelists and features an Iraqi private investigator.

Meanwhile Armstrong has sold world rights to Bodleian librarian Ali Shaw's The Girl with the Glass Feet to Sarah Castleton at Grove Atlantic, a novel described as "on the edge of Susanna Clarke".

Armstrong also sold Justine Kilkerr's first novel Advice for Strays, about a young woman revisiting her childhood imaginary friend, a lion, to Ellah Allfrey at Jonathan Cape.

Benedicte Page Rights deal Conville and Walsh