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Headline turns to Paige Santschi's debut amid a flurry of global six-figure deals
Headline Review has acquired Into the Fragile Dark, a “sweeping love story” by debut author Paige Santschi as the book has sold into a further eight territories, including a brace of six-figure pre-empts.
Sherise Hobbs, publisher at Headline Review, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada for Into the Fragile Dark and an untitled second novel amid a “whirlwind”. The publisher will release it as a lead title in summer 2027.
The deal was negotiated by Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment, who had received her first “significant” six-figure pre-empt, for German rights, from dtv, within 24 hours of submission. It has since sold in a six-figure pre-empt to Clio Seraphim at Random House in North America, by Jenny Bent on behalf of Mushens. There have been additional pre-empts in Finland (WSOY), Holland (Boekerij) and Italy (Corbaccio), with other deals wrapped up in France (HarperCollins), Sweden (Lind) and Ukraine (Family Leisure Club).
Pitched as “in the vein of Where the Crawdads Sing and The Paper Palace”, Into the Fragile Dark is “a sweeping novel braiding past and present, about a woman haunted by the loss of her first love, whose life is thrown into turmoil when a mysterious young man who looks eerily similar to her childhood sweetheart shows up looking for work on her family’s apple orchard and thrusts her back into memories of one fateful summer, ultimately sending her on a journey of self-discovery – about love, life, grief, hope and the secrets that bind us to one another”.
Hobbs said: “This gripping, moving and atmospheric novel of secrets buried on an apple orchard in Upstate New York had us all spellbound. The story of a married woman fighting to hold on to her land and torn between the love of two different men also simmers with longing.”
Mushens called the book “an incredibly special novel – Paige is masterful at creating emotion and sweep. I cried my way through the final pages of the novel, and have been blown away by the instant response to this book”.
Santschi has a PhD in comparative literature from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York and previously taught writing and literature at UC San Diego and San Diego State University. She said she was “thrilled” to be working with Hobbs and Seraphim, “two incredible editors whose passion for the story was evident from the start”.
