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Simon & Schuster has bought rights to a debut novel set in Regency London and the beginning of the slave trade in the 16th century.
Editorial director Mike Jones bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from James Gill at United Agents. The book, The English Monster by Lloyd Shepherd, will be published in 2012.
The novel opens with the real life Ratcliffe Highway Murders of 1811 in Wapping. A teenager, out buying oysters, returns to the house of the family she works for to find them murdered. The book then shifts to 1564, where a newlywed man befriends a young Francis Drake and comes to realise they are travelling to Africa to take part in the beginnings of the slave trade.
Mike Jones said: "It is a brilliant historical thriller and an incredible debut. It is extraordinarily atmospheric, authentic, and rich with historical detail and depth of plot. It combines elements of the historical novel, the police procedural and the imagined worlds of the horrific and fantastical - with a rock-solid sense of character-driven logic, and always with a wonderfully inventive verve and originality."
James Gill said: "Lloyd's Monster is the most amazingly assured and thrilling debut I have read in a very long time, and we're delighted it has found its home with Mike and the team at S&S."
Shepherd has spent the past 12 years in various digital positions in senior management at Yahoo, the Guardian, Channel 4 and the BBC. He was previously a journalist.