You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Rogers, Coleridge & White has Christos Tsiolkas’ new novel Barracuda, which charts a talented swimmer’s rise and fall (Atlantic in UK, Hogarth in US). Agent Peter Straus will be selling rights to English Mothers, a début novel from Alison Stevens about a brutal child murder. In non-fiction, Hisham Matar’s The Return, describing Libya post-Arab Spring, is with Viking in the UK and Random House US. Allen Lane and Penguin India will simultaneously publish Ramachandra Guha’s Gandhi Before India, following the iconic figure’s early life. Doubleday has US rights.
David Higham Associates is tapping into an international craze with Growing Up Gangnam Style by Euny Hung, a memoir and analysis of South Korea and its culture (with S&S in the UK, Picador US). More non-fiction comes from Philip Short’s new biography, Mitterand: A Study in Ambiguity. DHA also has a second thriller from Rachel Abbott, The Back Road. Her first book was a Kindle bestseller. A YA novel comes from Edward Hogan, with new book The Messengers described as “thrilling and disturbing”. Biblical by “Author X” is a high-concept thriller about a global epidemic of mass hallucinations.
A M Heath is bringing an erotic choose-your-own-adventure novel, A Girl Walks Into a Bar by Helena S Paige (with Little, Brown in UK and William Morrow in US). Tobias Hill’s What was Promised is a generation-spanning look at three London families. Claire Kendal’s stalker thriller The Book of You has been bought by HarperCollins in the UK, US and Canada, as well as 17 translation markets. In non-fiction, A M Heath is offering Booker-shortlisted Deborah Levy’s essay Things I Don’t Want to Know, as well as The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield, a coming-of-age memoir about a Deep South funeral home.
Hanbury Agency has tennis player Jimmy Connors’ autobiography,The Outsider (with HC in UK and Transworld in US) and philosopher Roman Krznaric’s Empathy, about using the emotion for social change, to be delivered to Rider in June. In fiction, Judith Lennox’s historical novel of post-war Britain, The Turning Point, has gone to Headline in the UK, while Anna Caltabiano’s The Seventh Miss Hatfield, the first of a trilogy, is with Gollancz.
Curtis Brown has Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam (Bloomsbury in UK, sold in US and Canada, Germany, Greece, Holland and Norway). It is also bringing novels by Tom Rob Smith (The Farm, with S&S in the UK and Grand Central US) and Lisa Jewell (The House We Grew Up In, Century in the UK). Journalist Claire Hajaj’s Ishmael’s Oranges, set amid the Israel/Palestine conflict, has sold to Blanvalet in Germany.
Darley Anderson has a YA title already pre-empted by Headline: Dominion by John Connolly and Jennie Ridyardis the first in a trilogy about the earth’s resistance to alien invaders. Boy in the Tower, a début by Polly Ho-Yen, aimed at 9+ readers, tells of giant plants attacking a London tower block (RHCB in UK). Faber has signed the first in a new series, Broken Dolls by James Carol, featuring a criminal profiler who is the son of a serial killer. Meanwhile, House of Dolls by David Hewson sees ex-policeman Pieter Vos tracking a missing girl (Macmillan in UK).
Furniss Lawton has sold two books to Headline in the UK: A Heart Bent Out of Shape is a novel about a forbidden relationship by Richard and Judy Book Club winner Emylia Hall (with Mira in US, rights also sold in Germany); and All the Things You Are by Clemency Burton-Hill is about a high-flying woman forced to rebuild her life. The agency is also bringing Nairobi-set crime novel Hell’s Gate by Richard Crompton (W&N in UK, FSG in US, deals in France, Germany and Italy). Meanwhile, Room of Doors by Dave Logan is the first of a fantasy trilogy (Quercus in UK).
Lutyens & Rubinstein has a new novel from Booker-longlisted Ned Beauman, Glow (Sceptre in the UK), plus Mary Lawson’s Canada-set Road Ends (Chatto in UK, Random House Inc in US, and deals in Canada, Italy and France) and Rebecca Hunt’s Antarctica-set Everland (Fig Tree in UK and RH US). The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway is another novel set in foreign climes, this time split between Maine and the Solomon Islands (Atlantic in UK, Grove Press in US).
Sheil Land Associates has Melvyn Bragg’s novel Grace and Mary, with Sceptre in the UK. It is selling foreign rights to Chris Ewan’s Safe House, an e-book bestseller for Faber. Graham Hancock’s Magicians of the Gods has been snapped up by Hodder in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the US. English language rights are available for H by Sarah Burton, the fictional memoir of a 17th-century courtesan. In non-fiction, the agency has Martin Windrow’s memoir of living with a tawny owl, The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar (Transworld in UK and FSG in US).
Conville & Walsh is bringing The Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes, about a teacher whose troubled students take their lessons on tragedy to heart (Atlantic in UK). Meanwhile, Bloomsbury in the UK, US and India has signed Rogue Elephant by Simon Denyer, a study of modern-day India. The title is currently on submission. Also on offer is L’étoile et la Vieille from French opera director Michel Rostain, the story of an ageing starlet and a little-known director coming together for a final show (Editions Kero in France).
Andrew Lownie’s hot books include Thinking in Numbers by mathematical savant Daniel Tammet, billed as an “engaging, eclectic, deeply personal exploration of all things numerical”. It has sold to Hodder in the UK, and to publishers in the US, Japan, Korea, Spain and France. Five Days that Shocked the World by Nicholas Best takes in five days at the end of the Second World War which saw the execution of Mussolini and the suicide of Adolf Hitler (Osprey in UK, and sold in the US, Italy, Poland, China, the Czech Republic, Finland and Turkey). The Spy Who Loved by Clare Mulley is a biography of Second World War secret agent Christine Glanville.
WME London’s Simon Trewin is agenting “vivid” short story collection Snow in May by Kseniya Melnik (Fourth Estate in UK, Holt in US). Prayers for the Unusual, a novel about modern Mexico by Jennifer Clement, has been pre-empted by Chatto in the UK and Hogarth in the US, and sold in 14 countries—Elizabeth Sheinkman is agenting. The agency is also bringing novel Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux (Faber in UK, FSG in US); auctions are currently closing in Germany and Italy for Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper, sold to Fig Tree in the UK in a five-way auction.
Mulcahy Associates is representing Vivienne Westwood’s “unfettered” memoir, a collaboration with social historian Ian Kelly. In fiction, the agency is selling rights in a “starkly evocative” novel, Red Sky in Morning by Paul Lynch (Quercus in UK, L,B in US, Albin Michel in France). Laetitia Rutherford is bringing the second novel from Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing (Cape in UK, Pantheon in US, and Actes Sud in France).
Ed Victor Literary Agency’s thriller The Kill List by Frederick Forsyth will be published by Putnam in the US and Transworld in the UK in September 2013, with multiple international deals done. Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter is a début novel which tackles the questions we have about war in the modern age (Two Roads in UK, Knopf in US, Dutch and Japanese rights sold). Also on offer is Breakfast with Lucian by journalist Geordie Greig, a portrait of artist Lucian Freud written by his close friend (Cape in UK, FSG in US, rights sold in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). Ten Steps to Smarter Decisions in a Confusing World by Noreena Hertz (HarperCollins in US and UK) will also be on offer.
Luigi Bonomi Associates is bringing US-set thriller Killing Season, the first in a series by début author Mason Cross. Orion has world rights, with German rights sold at auction. TV presenter Richard Madeley’s début novel Someday I’ll Find You is with S&S UK, with foreign rights handled by ILA. The agency is bringing two properties by David Gibbins—a novel that ties into SEGA’s Total War game franchise, Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (world rights with Macmillan); and Pharoah, a new Jack Howard adventure, (Headline in UK, Bantam in US). YA novels include crime tale Carnaby by Cate Sampson and thriller Dangerous Girls by Abigail Hass (both S&S UK).
Felicity Bryan Associates has sold UK rights in Wake by Anna Hope, set over five days in 1920, to Doubleday following a seven-way auction (also US, German, Spanish and Danish deals). World English rights to The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss, a YA novel about a girl coping with her mother’s death, are with S&S, with foreign rights sold in Germany and Italy. Tim Harford returns with The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, on macroeconomics (L,B in the UK, Riverhead in the US and Woongjin Think Big in Korea).