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John Murray has snapped up a new novel from Tigers in Red Weather author Liza Klaussmann in a “strong” six-figure deal following a five-way auction.
Publisher Jocasta Hamilton acquired British and Commonwealth rights to This is Gonna End in Tears from Caroline Wood at Felicity Bryan Associates. It will be published in July 2022.
“Over the long summer of 1984, Olly, Miller and Ash try to work out what happened to the people they were and the plans they had,” the blurb reads. “Growing up they were best friends, as teenagers they drove to LA, lived in a ramshackle place on the beach in Malibu and set up a successful record label. It took them three years to start tearing everything apart.
“Now they are 40 and back living on the East Coast in the tidal island of their youth. Miller feels like she is disappearing, her husband Ash is having an affair and Olly’s career is over. They’re so consumed with their love, losses and longing and the possibility of a redemptive third act, they barely notice what’s happening between Miller’s son, his best friend and the girl next door.”
The New York-born author’s debut Tigers in Red Weather and second novel Villa America were published by Picador in 2012 and 2015 respectively. She studied English and creative writing at Columbia University before doing an MA in creative writing at Royal Holloway 10 years later.
Klaussman said: “This is Gonna End in Tears has been more than five years in the making, and the contrails of heat and longing of that time are written across the pages of the novel. So, I’m absolutely thrilled to call John Murray home—their passion for it has been astounding, clear-eyed, nervy. Specifically, Jocasta’s gimlet eye, her incomparable style, and instinctive sense of the inner workings of a novel made it such a natural choice and such a continuing delight. I know our relationship will only continue to inspire and enrich my writing.”
Hamilton commented: “This is exactly the kind of totally absorbing novel—replete with love, loss and longing—that makes a holiday. The rhythm of the writing and the atmosphere is seductive, the messy emotional love triangles are totally believable, and it builds to a genuinely surprising and devastating climax. This is gonna be a major bestseller for us next summer.”