You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Simon & Schuster has beaten three other publishers at auction to buy UK and Commonwealth rights to a debut literary thriller in a two-book deal worth six figures.
Managing director Ian Chapman bought Urban Waite’s The Terror of Living and Dead If I Don’t from Abner Stein on behalf of Nat Sobel.
The first of the two books will be published in spring 2011. It is set in the mountains north of Seattle, opening with a drug deal gone wrong and an ex-convict being chased by a hitman with a penchant for knives.
Chapman said: "The Terror of Living is a sensational debut. The quality of his writing is breathtaking. It is a long time since I have read anything quite so accomplished."
Francesca Main, commissioning editor for fiction, compared it to Cormac McCarthy. She said: "It’s in the way he writes about the landscape and people and what happens to them. It’s a non-stop thriller. The killer is a great character; he takes a hideous pleasure in what he does.
"It’s as well written, tense and gripping as any literary thriller. But it’s like Child 44 [published by S&S last year], it could go into the mass-market as much as it could be nominated for a literary prize."
S&S has also acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to two books by Swedish author Kristina Ohlsson. Publishing director Suzanne Baboneau bought Unwanted and a second as-yet-untitled novel from agent Niclas Salomonsson for a five-figure sum.
The book is about a little girl abducted during a train journey between Gotenberg and Stockholm. The train breaks down mid-journey and when a mother returns to the train after making a phonecall, her daughter is gone. The first book has been scheduled for publication in early 2011.