Orion Rights Guide: Frankfurt 2022

The Orion Publishing Group

Frankfurt Rights

HIGHLIGHTS

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The

The

Against

Non-Fiction

Table of Contents

Contacts

Rebecca Folland, Group Rights Director

rebecca.folland@hachette.co.uk

Barney Duly, Orion Rights Director

barney.duly@hachette.co.uk

Territories: US, Germany, Spain

Flora McMichael, Senior Rights Manager

flora.mcmichael@hachette.co.uk

Territories: France, Italy, Netherlands, Nordics, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Portugal, Poland, Russia

Alice Cottrell, Rights Manager

alice.cottrell@hachette.co.uk

Territories: Korea, Japan, Eastern Europe, Baltics, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Arabic World, Rest of World

Fern McCauley, Head of Media Development

fern.mccauley@hachette.co.uk

Marie Henckel, Rights Assistant

marie.henckel@hachette.co.uk

Partner Agents

Bulgaria

Anthea Agency - katalina@anthearights.com

China and Taiwan

Big Apple Agency - vincent-lin@bigapple1-china.com

The Grayhawk Agency - grayhawk@grayhawk-agency.com

Czech Republic

Andrew Nurnberg Associates - nemeckova@nurnberg.cz

Hungary

Katai and Bolza Literary Agency - orsi@kataibolza.hu

Israel

The Israeli Association of Book Publishing - rights1@tbpai.co.il

Japan

The English Agency Japan - hamish@eaj.co.jp Tuttle-Mori Agency - ken@tuttlemori.com

Korea

Duran Kim Agency - duran@durankim.com

Eric Yang Agency - sueyang@eyagency.com

Romania

Simona Kessler International - office@kessler-agency.ro

Turkey

AnatoliaLit - amy@anatolialit.com

Orion June 2023

Editor: Sam Eades

Extent: 368

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Dutch: Meulenhoff Boekerij

French: Le Cherche Midi Editeur + Univers Poche

German: Blanvalet Verlag

Greek: Psichogios Publications

Italian: Planeta Libri

Polish: Dressler Dublin

Serbia: Evro Book

US: Dreamscape Media + Kensington Publishing Corp

Homecoming

Isabel Ashdown

Welcome to The Starlings... sun, sea and neighbours to die for.

Security, a sparkling sea view and the best kind of neighboursThe Starlings gated community has it all. Here, doors are left open, children run free, and at the heart of it all is the entrepreneurial Gold Family, who first dreamed up this aspirational vision of ‘Dorset’s Safest Community’. To the outside world the popular family appears glitteringly blessed... until an idyllic party takes a dark turn and one of their number is found slumped at the foot of the clocktower. Who knows what really happened? And what answers are harboured within the old building, the former Highcap Mother and Baby Home?’

A mesmerising, character-rich thriller with a long-buried secret vibrating at its core: this is Isabel Ashdown at her heart-stopping best, for readers who enjoyed Big Little Lies, Dr Foster or Little Fires Everywhere.

About the author:

With several critically acclaimed novels already to her name, Isabel Ashdown first burst onto the thriller scene in 2017 with her Amazon bestseller Little Sister. She has since seen two of her thrillers shortlisted in the prestigious Dead Good Reader Awards, and her dark family dramas continue to hook readers across the globe.

Orion March 2023

Editor: Sarah Benton

Extent: 224

Rights: World (excl. Spanish, Catalan and Italian)

The Official Playscript

The Mousetrap Agatha Christie

For 70 years, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has kept millions of people from every corner of the globe on the edge of their seats. This brand new edition of the world’s longest play will contain a new introduction, the official play script and exclusive material from the show’s archives.

As news spreads of a murder in London, a group of seven strangers find themselves in a remote countryside guesthouse. When a police sergeant arrives, the guests discover – to their horror – that a killer is in their midst. One by one, the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts. Which one is the murderer? Who will be their next victim? And can you solve this world-famous mystery for yourself?

This beautiful 70th anniversary edition will contain interviews, speeches and other fascinating insights into the making of this iconic play.

About the author:

Born in Torquay in 1890, Agatha Christie became, and remains, the bestselling novelist of all time.

She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The Mousetrap. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation.

Orion

March 2023

Editor: Celia Killen

Extent: 448

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Bosnian: Vreoca

Bulgarian: Era Media, Pergament

Chinese (Simplified): Tianjin

Huawentianxia Books

Chinese (Traditional): Business

Weekly

Croatian: Profil Knjiga

Czech: Millenium Publishing

French: Sontaine

German: Goldmann, Ullstein

Hungarian: Ulpius-Haz

Italian: 21 Editore MAUT, Neri Pozza, Sonzogno

Japanese: Shueisha

Korean: Woongjin Think Big

Lithuanian: Jotema

Dutch: A. W. Bruna, De Fontein

Norwegian: Vega

Polish: Hachette Polska

Portuguese (Brazil): Ubtrubseca

Portuguese: Presenca

Romanian: Leda

Serbian: Evro Book, Stylos

Spanish: Libros

Swedish: Ordbilder Media

Thai: WeLearn

Turkish: Inkilap Kitabevi Yayin San

Ukrainian: Family Leisure Club

US: The Overlook Press

The Last Highway RJ Ellory

The dazzling new mystery from award-winning Sunday Times bestseller RJ Ellory about a sheriff investigating his own brother’s murder in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Perfect for fans of Dennis Lehane, James Lee Burke and Brian Panowich.

Praise for RJ Ellory:

‘Beautiful and haunting... A tour de force’ MICHAEL CONNELLY

‘There aren’t nearly enough beautifully written novels that are also great mysteries... A Quiet Belief in Angels is one of them’ JAMES PATTERSON

‘Mesmerizing... The master of the genre’ CLIVE CUSSLER

‘A uniquely gifted, passionate, and powerful writer’ ALAN FURST

About the author:

R.J. Ellory is a critically acclaimed author whose novels include the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection and won the Nouvel Observateur Crime Fiction Prize.

Ellory’s novels have been translated into twenty-six languages, and he has won the USA Excellence Award for Best Mystery, the Strand Magazine Best Thriller 2009, the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime

Novel of the Year for A Simple Act of Violence, the St Maur Prize, the Avignon Readers’ Prize, the Livre de Poche Award and the Quebec Laureat. He has been shortlisted for a further thirteen awards in numerous countries, including four Daggers from the UK Crime Writers’ Association.

Despite the American setting of his novels, Ellory is British and currently lives in England with his wife and son. To find out more visit www.rjellory.com or follow him on Twitter @rjellory

Orion June 2023

Editor: Sam Eades

Extent: 416

Dutch: Luitingh Sijthoff

Black Fell

Mari Hannah

’He was met by a million stars against the night sky, a sight so beautiful it made him weep. If he were to die tonight there was no better view.’

When Detectives David Stone and Frankie Oliver are called to Kielder Observatory to investigate skeletal remains found inside a barrel dumped in the water, they learn they’re dealing with a death that happened decades ago.

But days later when another body turns up floating in Kielder Water, they realise this case is perhaps not as cold as they think.

With Stone taking on the first body in Northumberland, Frankie has to fly to Iceland to investigate the second - but how are these two deaths connected? And how do they tie in to the murder of Frankie’s sister all those years ago?

About the author:

Mari Hannah is a multi-award-winning author, whose authentic voice is no happy accident. A former probation officer, she lives in rural Northumberland with her partner, an ex-murder detective. Mari turned to script-writing when her career was cut short following an assault on duty. Her debut, The Murder Wall, (adapted from a script she developed with the BBC) won her the Polari First Book Prize. Its followup, Settled Blood, picked up a Northern Writers’ Award.

Mari’s body of work won her the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017, an incredible honour to receive so early in her career. In 2019, she was voted DIVA Wordsmith of the Year. In 2020, she won Capital Crime International Crime Writing Festival’s Crime Book of the Year for Without a Trace. Her Kate Daniels series is in development with Stephen Fry’s production company, Sprout Pictures.

Crime & Thriller

Complicit

Winnie M Li

Complicit is a powerful, emotionally complex novel that is perfect for book clubs. When she was a young woman, Sarah Lai’s promising film career was derailed by a harrowing incident with a powerful man.

Now, 10 years later, when a journalist comes calling, she’s forced to confront her past. But as she recounts the film industry’s dark and sordid secrets, she begins to realize she has a few sins of her own to confess. Complicit is a gripping novel about gender, race, power, privilege and class, told with razor-sharp prose and effortless style.

Ask yourself, what would you have done?

Orion April 2023

Editor: Sarah Benton

Extent: 464

Rights: World

Rights sold:

Russian: Corpus

Italian: Newton Compton

German: Suhrkamp

US: Simon & Schuster

Previous Publishers:

Chinese (Simplified): Oriental Publishing House

Chinese (Traditional): DelightPress

Czech: Plus Publishing (Albatros)

Dutch: HarperCollins Holland

German: Arche Literatur

Icelandic: BBF-Utgafa Ehf

Italian: Newton Compton

Korean: Hangilsa

Spanish: Rey Naranjo

Swedish: Norstedts Förlag

USA & Canada: Polis Books

‘A must-read’ Stylist

‘Powerful’ Harriet Tyce

‘A spellbinding novel’ The Irish Times

‘Thrilling’ Heat

‘Compulsive’ John Marrs

‘Dazzling’ Chris Whitaker

‘Grippingly readable’ The Daily Mirror

‘A rollercoaster read’ Elle

About the author:

Winnie M Li is an author and activist. A Harvard graduate, she previously wrote for travel guide books, produced independent feature films, and programmed for film festivals. Driven by her own experience of rape, she founded Clear Lines, the UK’s first festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion, and began her PhD research at the LSE. She has an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in recognition of her work. Winnie lives somewhere in traveling distance of London, with her partner and

Orion February 2023

Editor: Emad Akhtar

Extent: 416 Rights: World

Rights Sold: Spanish: Futurbox Project German: Suhrkamp US: Pegasus

Previous Publishers: Dutch: Meulenhoff Boekerij French: Les Editions Eugen Ulmer German: Suhrkamp Verlag Greek: Metaixmio

Spanish: Atico de los Libros

Paris Requiem

From the Winner of the HWA Gold Crown for Best Historical Fiction

Chris Lloyd

Paris, September 1940.

After three months under Nazi Occupation, not much can shock Detective Eddie Giral. That is, until he finds a murder victim who was supposed to be in prison. Eddie knows, because he put him there.

The dead man is not the first or the last criminal being let loose onto the streets. But who is pulling the strings, and why?

This question will take Eddie from jazz clubs to opera halls, from old flames to new friends, from the lights of Paris to the darkest countryside - pursued by a most troubling truth: sometimes to do the right thing, you have to join the wrong side...

Based on eye-opening historical research, Paris Requiem is at once a riveting crime novel and a haunting portrait of life under Occupation, from the winner of the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award for best historical fiction.

Praise for Chris Lloyd’s Occupation series, featuring Detective Eddie Giral: ’Terrific ... Powerful stuff’ SUNDAY TIMES, Books of the Month

’A thoughtful, haunting thriller’ MICK HERRON

’Such a powerful and morally nuanced crime novel. Both a gripping murder mystery and a vivid recreation of Paris under German Occupation’ ANDREW TAYLOR

About the author:

Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia and stayed there for over twenty years, falling in love with the people, the country, the language and Barcelona Football Club, probably in that order. Besides Catalonia, he’s also lived in the Basque Country and Madrid, teaching English, travel writing for Rough Guides and translating. He now lives in South Wales, where he works as a Catalan and Spanish translator, and returns to Catalonia as often as he can.

’You have a choice which way you go in this war...’

Crime & Thriller

A Murder at the Castle

Chris McGeorge

The king is dead. And when the motive is succession, murder is a family affair...

During a violent snowstorm, the Royal Family gather at Balmoral Castle for a traditional Christmas together. Amid rumours that he plans to name a new successor, King Eric stands to make his traditional after-dinner speech. He sips from a glass of his favourite whisky- and drops dead.

Orion November 2022

Editor: Lucy Brem

Extent: 400

Rights: World Rights sold:

French: L’Archipel

Italian: Mondadori

German: Droemer Knaur

US: Putnam’s Sons

Previous Publishers:

Czech: Euromedia Group

Dutch: Luitingh-Sijthoff

French: Editions de L’Archipel

Presses du Chatelet

German: Droemer Knaur

Hungarian: Lettero Kiadó

Italian: Mondadori Libri

Japanese: Hayakawa Shobo

Lithuanian: Tyto alba

Russian: Azbooka-Atticus

Nowegian: Bladkompaniet

Polish: Insignis Media

Serbian: Evro Book

Slovak: Ikar a.s.

Spanish: Roca Editorial de Libros

Turkish: Marti Yayinlari

US: Putnam + Hanover Square Press

The king has been poisoned, and only one of the royals could have done the deed. Trapped by the raging blizzard, it is up to Eric’s beloved head chef, Jonathan Alleyne, to play detective and get to the bottom of this heinous crime.

Jon is determined to expose the truth, even if it puts him in grave danger, and threatens to shake the entire monarchy to its core...

About the author: Chris McGeorge studied MA Creative Writing (Crime/Thriller) at City University London where he wrote his first novel as his thesis. His interests are broad - spanning film, books, theatre and video games. He is a member of the Northern Crime Syndicate, a supergroup of writers from Northern England. He lives in County Durham with his partner and many, many animals.

He can be found on Twitter at @crmcgeorge.

Orion February 2023

Editor: Leodora Darlington

Extent: 320

Rights: Translation

US: Marsal Lyon

Previous Publishers:

Dutch: The House of Books

Italian: Newton Compton

Romanian: Litera

Russian: Eksmo

The Only Child Kayte Nunn

‘A taut, clever whodunit ... Kayte Nunn keeps the stakes high and the characters compelling, making for a fast, fresh, engrossing historical mystery!’ KATE QUINN

1949. It is the coldest winter Orcades Island has ever known, when a pregnant sixteenyear-old arrives at Fairmile, a home for ‘fallen women’ run by the Catholic Church. She and her baby will disappear before the snow melts.

2013 Frankie Gray has come to the island for the summer, hoping for one last shot at reconnecting with her teenage daughter, Izzy, before starting a job as a deputy sheriff.

They are staying with her mother, Diana, at The Fairmile Inn, soon to be a boutique hotel, but when an elderly nun is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and then a tiny skeleton is discovered in the grounds of the house, Frankie is desperate for answers.

At once an evocative, unsettling tale of past misdeeds and a crime thriller that will have you reading with your heart in your mouth, The Only Child is compulsively addictive storytelling from the bestselling author of The Botanist’s Daughter.

About the author: Kayte Nunn is the author of six novels, including the international bestsellers The Botanist’s Daughter, The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant, The Silk House and The Last Reunion. Kayte’s novels are available worldwide in English, and have been translated into ten languages.

Born in Singapore, raised in the US and the UK, she now lives in Northern NSW, Australia.

Orion April 2023

Editor: Celia Killen

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Bulgarian: Bard

Czech: BB/art

German: Rowohlt

Greek: Mallaris Paedia

Hungarian: Gold Book

Indonesia: PT Pustaka Alvabet

Italian: Newton Compton Polish: Vesper

Portuguese (Brazil): Record

Russian: AST

Spanish: Debolsillo PRH

Turkey: Altin Bilek

The Treason of Sparta

Pre-order the brand new book from the master of historical fiction

Christian Cameron

Book 7 in The Long War series from the master of historical fiction, Christian Cameron.

When the dust settled and the blood dried after the Battle of Plataea, Greeks might have thought that their freedom was secured. But before the corpse of the Great King’s general was cold, Athens and Sparta began to bicker over dividing up the spoils.

After an autumn of victory, it’s a long cold winter among the burned cities and destroyed shrines of Greece, and a hungry spring. And when Arimnestos goes to sea to cruise the Persian-held coasts, he finds that Persia is still not beaten... and that old alliances are now fraying.

Is the impossible true? Would the Spartans rather see Athens destroyed than Persia defeated? And who will save the cities of Ionia from the Great King’s wrath?

It’s the spring of 478BCE, and the Long War isn’t over yet.

About the author:

Christian Cameron is a writer and military historian. He participates in re-enacting and experimental archaeology, teaches armoured fighting and historical swordsmanship, and takes his vacations with his family visiting battlefields, castles and cathedrals. He lives in Toronto and is busy writing his next novel.

Orion January 2024

Editor: Sam Eades

Extent: 304

Rights: US

The Excitements CJ Wray

Josephine was a Wren who drew maps for D-Day, while Penny was an officer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. In their late 90s, they’re in huge demand - rolled out at every memorial service and WW2 anniversary, and popping up on red sofas and at literary festivals all over the country. Journalists and producers love them, as does the Great British Public. Despite their age, they’re still in great nick - sprightly and sparky, and always up for whatever the next excitement might be. And now they’re off to Paris to receive the Légion D’Honneur for their part in liberating France.

The sisters have fond memories of the City of Light and of August Samuel, a young Jewish man they met there in 1939. August died fighting for the Resistance, while his mother and sister disappeared after the notorious Vel d’Hiv Roundup. Penny believes they were denounced by their Parisian neighbours for the sake of a priceless emerald ring.

Penny has always been cagey about her war effort. Under her FANY cover, she was actually an SOE agent, risking her teenage life in France alongside the likes of Violette Szabo and Odette Sansom. After the war Penny found a more lucrative application for the skill set she’d acquired - as a very successful international jewel thief. Now the Samuel family’s looted jewels have resurfaced in an auction to be held in Paris on the day of the sisters’ investiture. Can a much loved and much decorated (but frankly ancient) veteran, dressed exclusively by M&S, avenge her old friends, and pull off one last daring heist?

About the author:

CJ Wray is the pseudonym of a Sunday Times bestselling author with more than forty books to her name. Raised in the west of England, she studied psychology before embarking on a portfolio career that has seen her selling kitchens, editing erotica, interviewing an armed robber and impersonating a princess.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

David M. Barnett

Orion June 2023

Editor: Sam Eades

Extent: 304

Rights: World

Previous Publishers: Bulgarian: Kragozor Chinese (Simplified): Booky Chinese (Traditional): Sheng-Hsiu

Czech: Beta Dobrovsky

French: Jean-Claude Lattes

German: Ullstein

Italian: Sperling and Kupfer Portuguese (Brazil): Record Portuguese (Portugal): HarperCol lins Ibérica

Russian: AST Spanish: HarperCollins Ibérica

This is the story of Gayle and Martin, who fall in love over the course of ten years- over a yearly visit to a tiny, isolated island off the Welsh coast.

Gayle is a teacher and each year she brings her class to the island to see the local flora and fauna, from sea birds to playful seals. Martin, the island’s caretaker and only human resident, lives in and maintains the lighthouse, which opens to the public for just this one day a year.

Gayle is effervescent but feels trapped, while Martin is lonely and isolated. As their love slowly builds over time, they both yearn for the annual field trip where they can finally see each other... Until one year Gayle doesn’t come back, and Martin has to leave his island hideaway to find her.

A romantic, tender love story, perfect for fans of Mike Gayle and Rachel Joyce.

About the author:

David Barnett is an author and journalist based in West Yorkshire. After a career working for regional newspapers he embarked upon a freelance career writing features for most of the UK national press. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed Gideon Smith series of Victorian fantasies, published by Tor Books, and teaches journalism part-time at Leeds Trinity University. David was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1970 and is married to Claire, also a journalist. They have two children, Charlie and Alice.

How do you find love when you have the loneliest job in the world...?

Orion July 2023

Editor: Sam Eades

Extent: 320

Rights: US

Translation: United Agents

Ever After Kate Eberlen

Ever After is the compelling story of two strangers falling head-overheels in love on holiday in sun-drenched Italy and what happens after they return to the reality of their day-to-day lives in London. Alternating between the perspectives of Tess and Gus, the novel explores the conflicts and challenges of new love and old loyalties, passion and duty, logic and belief, with readers racing to find out if the couple can or can’t be together.

About the author:

Kate Eberlen grew up in a small town thirty miles from London and spent her childhood reading books and longing to escape to the big city. She worked in theatre, publishing and teaching before becoming a mother and writing novels. Kate now lives in London.

Orion August 2022

Editor: Rhea Kurien

Extent: 368

Rights: World

Previous Publishers: Hungarian: Muvelt Nép Könyvkiadó

What Happens in Dubai Sophie Gravia

THE TOP TEN AMAZON BESTSELLER

Everyone’s favourite Glaswegian girl is back!

After having her heart well and truly broken, Zara Smith is more interested in fun than forever. But she’s starting to wonder if she’s slept with every (somewhat) eligible bachelor in Glasgow... and if there’s such a thing as too much fun?!

With competition ramping up in Glasgow, Zara and her friends at Individualise can’t pass up an opportunity to promote their aesthetics clinic - especially not when it involves an all-expenses-paid quick getaway to Dubai! It’s THE summer destination for the sexy, rich and famous. Cue sun, sand and disastrous flirtations for everyone. But it’s okay because once they get back to Glasgow, what happens in Dubai stays in Dubai, right?

Warning: this is NOT a romcom. It’s dating in the 21st century and Sophie Gravia is about to give you all the toe-curling, cringe-worthy, laugh-out-loud details.

’Hilarious, filthy and totally relatable’

’I love love loveddd this book. Had me laughing out loud to myself one minute and crying the next’

I was getting bored reading the same old romantic story lines. This book is real, it’s hilarious, and it’s the perfect follow on from A Glasgow Kiss!’

’It was THAT good that I read for 8 hours continuously to get it finished, couldn’t put it down’

About the author: Sophie grew up in a town just outside Glasgow and has always had a love for the English language. At a young age, she found herself writing funny stories or poems to friends and family for special occasions, and after high school she undertook a performing arts diploma, flourishing in her creative writing class. Sophie now works full time as a nurse in a busy city hospital.

A Gentleman Never Tells

Jodi Ellen Malpas

The second book in the sexy, scandalous and utterly unputdownable new regency series, Belmore Square, from million-copy bestselling author Jodi Ellen Malpas, perfect for fans of Bridgerton by Julia Quinn.

Frank Melrose is on the cusp of taking his father’s printing business global – the last thing he needs is the distraction of any woman, let alone the dazzling Taya Winters. He’s under pressure from the newspaper to unmask the mysterious highwayman causing havoc in Belmore Square, but his infuriating clashes with Taya keep slowing him down. What’s more, he’s sure that the highwayman is right under their noses – and that exposing their identity will end not only his story, but ruin his family, too…

Orion August 2023

Editor: Charlotte Mursell

Extent: 336

Rights: World Rights Sold:

US: Grand Central

Previous Publishers:

Czech: Albatros

Hungarian: Muvelt Nép Könyvkiadó

Polish: Insignis

Romanian: Litera

Serbian: Laguna

Spanish: Planeta

US: Grand Central

About the author:

Number One New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Jodi Ellen Malpas was born and raised in England where she lives with her husband, her boys and Theo the Doberman. She has now sold over a million copies of her books worldwide and is published in more than twenty-five languages.

P.S. Come to Italy Nicky Pellegrino

When Belle started writing to Enrico, she certainly wasn’t looking to fall in love! Everything about his life in southern Italy is so different to hersbut somehow, across half the world, a magical friendship forms. And so, when Enrico signs off one of his messages, P.S. Come to Italy, Belle decides to follow her heart!

Orion March 2023

Editor: Charlotte Mursell

Extent: 368

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Bulgarian: Art Eternal

Dutch: De Fontein

Estonian: Eesti Raamat

German: Lübbe

Greek: Harlenic Hellas

Hebrew: Aryeh Nir

Hungarian: Lettero Kiadó

Lithuanian: Sofoklis Publishers

Norwegian: Cappelen Damm

Polish: Proszynski Media

Portuguese (Portugal): ASA

Russian: Eksmo

About the author:

Nicky Pellegrino was born in Liverpool and spent childhood holidays staying with her father’s family in southern Italy. When she started writing fiction, it was the memories of those summers in Italy that came flooding back and flavoured her stories.

Nicky now lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her husband, dogs and horses. A former magazine editor, she combines work as a freelance journalist with writing number one bestselling novels, including Under Italian Skies, A Dream Of Italy and A Year At Hotel Gondola. Her books sell around the world and have been translated into numerous languages.

’The ultimate escapist read!’ VERONICA HENRY on To Italy, with Love

Can you fall in love with someone you’ve never met?

Orion March 2023

Editor: Sanah Ahmed

Extent: 336

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

German: Heyne Verlag

Russian: Eksmo

The Boathouse by Stepping Stone Bay Helen Rolfe

Sun, sand and secrets at the bay!

As a kid, Nina O’Brien spent all her summers at her grandparents’ cabin by the beach at Stepping Stone Bay. Long, sunny days full of fun and laughter with her best friends, Leo, the boy from the boatyard next door, his older brother, Adrian, and local girl Maeve - and, as Nina grew older, the magic of falling in love with Leo. But one summer night changed everything, and those glorious days came to an abrupt end for them all.

Twelve years later, Nina must return to the bay to renovate the old cabin and pass it on to a new owner. But her plan to get the job done and get out isn’t quite as simple as she thinks because Leo still lives in the cabin next door and not only that, he works at his family’s boathouse right there in the bay. As they begin to work through their differences and what happened all those years ago, will Nina really be able to walk away from him twice?

Maeve has finally returned home to face the past. Her eleven-year-old son, Jonah, loves the sea, has no fear when it comes to the water, unlike Maeve who is terrified of it. But she knows she can’t keep Jonah away from the sea or the truth forever because sooner or later her secret will be out...

A heartwarming and uplifting story about second chances and facing the secrets of the past. Perfect for fans of Philippa Ashley, Holly Martin and Ali McNamara.

About the author: Helen Rolfe writes contemporary women’s fiction and enjoys weaving stories about family, friendship, secrets, and community. Characters often face challenges and must fight to overcome them, but above all, Helen’s stories always have a happy ending

Gollancz

October 2022

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 336

Rights: World

Previous Publishers: Russian: Eksmo

Family Business Jonathan Sims

JUST ANOTHER DEAD-END JOB. DEATH. IT’S A DIRTY BUSINESS.

When Diya Burman’s best friend Angie dies, it feels like her own life is falling apart. Wanting a fresh start, she joins Slough & Sons - a family firm that cleans up after the recently deceased.

Old love letters. Porcelain dolls. Broken trinkets. Clearing away the remnants of other people’s lives, Diya begins to see things. Horrible things. Things that get harder and harder to write off as merely her grieving imagination. All is not as it seems with the Slough family. Why won’t they speak about their own recent loss? And who is the strange man that keeps turning up at their jobs?

If Diya’s not careful, she might just end up getting buried under the family tree. . .

About the author:

Jonathan Sims is a writer, performer and games designer whose work primarily focuses on the macabre, the grotesque, and the gentle touch of creeping dread. He is the mind and the voice behind acclaimed horror podcast The Magnus Archives, high octane space-cabaret

The Mechanisms and some of your favourite nightmares. He lives in Walthamstow with the two best cats and an overwhelming backlog of books that he really should get round to.

Gollancz

July 2022

Editor: Marcus Gipps

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Okay Then That’s Great Susannah Wise

For several months Marnie, a middle-aged poet and mother, has experienced sightings of her long-dead identical twin sister, Perdita, across London. As a consequence, and due to her crippling writer’s block, she has sought the help of octogenarian Harley Street shrink, Schlap, to work through her problems. Not least her repeated dreams of being a man.

Schlap has problems of his own though, having recently suffered a silent stroke which has affected his memory. Or is he more aware of reality than Marnie herself?

Marnie’s long-suffering partner and their three teenage kids are not helping matters, either. Neither is Marnie’s bohemian Alpha-course attending mum, her diabetic chef dad, nor the inquisitive family dog. Perhaps Marnie’s encounter and blossoming friendship with a woman who she thinks is the living embodiment of long-dead author Katherine Mansfield will provide the key to unlock her mind.Will Marnie’s writing be liberated from its prison? Is she losing her mind? Will the price she has to pay be bigger than the sum of its parts? And does the previous sentence even make sense? All will be revealed...

The first book about psychoanalysis to be laugh-out-loud funny; a charming, hilarious tangle of art, grief, memory and the mundane details of everyday life. Wise’s Marnie will win your heart - whether or not she wants it is another matter entirely - Emma Szewczak, author of The Offset

An exploration of grief and what it means to loose ones grip on reality wrapped around a hilarious portrait of a vivid and dysfunctional family. I ripped through this unusual, interesting and delightfully off-kilter novel - Kate Sawyer, author of The Stranding

About the author:

Susannah Wise is an actor and writer who grew up in London and the Midlands. A childhood spent outdoors inspired her love of nature and tree climbing. The death of her father in 2015 was the catalyst for This Fragile Earth. His preoccupation with astronomy and the beauty of the night sky formed the jumping-off point for the story. Susannah studied at the Faber Academy, graduating in September 2018, during which time she wrote a second, more peculiar novel. Both books have been longlisted for the Mslexia prize. She lives in London with her partner and son.

Literary Fiction

Unfinished Business Michael Bracewell

UNFINISHED BUSINESS focuses on an ordinary suburban office worker, fundamentally weak but always keeping his eyes fixed on some horizon where a heightened, romantic, better world must surely exist. Faced with the regular stuff of life - work, aspiration, marriage, age, divorce, bereavement - his ordinary plight is sharpened, becoming increasingly urgent. Having lived in a modern condition, confusing pleasure with happiness, wanting the dream to deliver, what do you do when you notice the shadows begin to lengthen on the lawn?

White Rabbit

January 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 208

Rights: Translation

About the author:

Michael Bracewell is the author of six novels and two works of nonfiction including Saint Rachel, Perfect Tense, Remake/Remodel, and England is Mine.

His writing has been published in The Faber Book of Pop and a selection of his writings on art and culture, The Space Between was published in 2012.

He has written widely on modern and contemporary art, most notably about the work of Bridget Riley and Richard Hamilton on the occasion of recent exhibitions of their work at The National Gallery, London. Also on the art of Damien Hirst and Gilbert & George for the Tate Gallery, London.

His most recent publications include the Introduction to a new edition of Oscar Wilde’s classic essay, ‘The Critic As Artist’.

Phoenix July 2023

Editor: Francesca Main

Extent: 352

Rights: US

Translation: Jo Unwin Literary Agency

Previous Publishers: Chinese (Simplified): Zhejiang People’s Publishing House

Ordinary Time Cathy Rentzenbrink

‘There are already three of us in this marriage. I’m not sure there is room for a fourth...’

Anna is a reluctant Vicar’s wife. She loves her family and tries hard to do her duty, but a certain restlessness persists. These days, her husband only likes talking to God and her son hardly talks at all.

When her brother asks for help, Anna travels from Cornwall to be with him in London. And then she meets Alex, and a new world unexpectedly opens up. Anna knows what the older women of the parish would sayshe’s made her bed and now she has to lie in it. But temptation is easier to avoid than it is to resist . . .

The wise, moving and funny new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink, Ordinary Time is an unforgettable story of the trials and sacrifices of everyday life; one that asks big questions about marriage and friendship, forgiveness and salvation, and the path of true love.

About the author: Cathy Rentzenbrink grew up in Yorkshire, spent many years in London, and now lives in Cornwall. She is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Last Act of Love, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, and the acclaimed memoirs A Manual for Heartache and Dear Reader. Everyone Is Still Alive is her first novel.

Literary Fiction

Man-Eating Typewriter Richard Milward

‘A major talent’ Irvine Welsh

White Rabbit

March 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 544

Rights: US

Translation: Lewisohn Literary Agency

Set at the fag-end of the 60s at the moment when Swinging London is starting to take on a darker hue in the wake of Charles Manson’s murders, and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy Piccadillybased publisher of pulp fiction, Man-Eating Typewriter is an homage to the great oulipo experiments in fiction. It is the story of a psychopath called Raymond Novak and his untimely demise told entirely in ‘polari’ - a language developed and used mainly amongst the metropolitan homosexual community in the time when being gay was still a criminal offence. From a love affair with a Barbary Ape on the Rock of Gibraltar to erotic cabaret in Paris and unreliable adventures with Madam Ovary, Raymond’s mother in the bombed-out ruins of Blitzed London, Man-Eating Typewriter is an act of seductive sedition by a writer with unfathomable literary talent and chutzpah. Wild, transgressive, erotic, offensive and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and misunderstood for decades.

About the author: Richard Milward’s debut Apples was published in 2007 to critical acclaim and turned into a celebrated play. He has also written Ten Storey Love Song and Kimberley’s Capital Punishment which were also both adapted for the stage. Kimberley’s Capital Punishment picked as a Time Out Book of the Week and heralded as one of The List’s Best Books of 2012. Apples is a cult classic.

W&N

May 2023

Editor: Federico Adornino

Extent: 288

Rights: US

Translation: SalmaiaLit Agency

This Wound Full of Fish Lorena Salazar

In this dazzling and moving debut, Lorena Salazar takes us to the heart of the Colombian jungle and shows us, with an enveloping and addictive prose, sorority in its purest form and the brutal contrasts of human nature’ Fernanda Melchor, author of Hurricane Season

’A novel of breathtaking landscapes and an accurate portrait of mothers’ fears, and of violence, always latent, like a wild beast lurking in the dark’ Pilar Quintana, author of The Bitch

In the city of Quibdó, a mother and her child embark on a canoe trip down the mighty Atrato River, the only route that allows them to penetrate the thick Colombian jungle.

The journey is long, slowed down by several stops. As the small boat proceeds along the river, surrounded by mangroves, the mother tells a fellow passenger the story of how the little one came into her life and why the two of them are travelling along the Atrato. But as the boat advances, the mother’s anxiety grows: she would rather not arrive, or turn around altogether.

And in a country at war with itself, there is often something dark lurking in the shadows - something much more devastating that a family reunion.

’A brilliant debut novel’ Vogue

About the author:

Lorena Salazar (Medellin, 1992) is a Colombian publicist and writer. When she was nine her family moved to the city of Quibdó. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the Escuela de Escritores (Madrid, 2020). She has published short stories in the magazine La Rompedora, and the ebook for children La Calle Rosada, (IDARTES & Fundaci—n Cucœ) where she narrates what happens in a street of Chocó, Colombia.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Gollancz

March 2024

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 384

Rights: US

Translation: Fuse Literary

Kavithri Aman J. Bedi

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

A vibrant, action-packed and empowering South Asian fantasy epic. An underdog story like no other - Kavithri will remind you of Arya Stark, Fang Runin or Gideon the Ninth. Kavithri is the first title in a planned duology.

Meet Kavithri. Outcast. Underdog. Survivor.

Kavi is a Taemu. Her people, once feared berserkers and the spearhead of a continentspanning invasion, are the dregs of Raayan society. Their spirits crushed. Their swords broken. Their history erased.

But Kavi has a dream and a plan. She will do whatever it takes to earn a place at the secretive mage academy, face the Jinn within its walls, and gain the power to rise above her station and drag her people out of the darkness.

Except power and knowledge come at a cost, and the world no longer needs a Taemu who can fight. So they will break her. Beat her down to her knees. And make her bleed.

But if blood is what they want, Kavi will give them blood. She will give them violence. She will show them a berserker’s fury.

And she will make them remember her name.

About the author:

Originally from India, Aman J. Bedi lived in Thailand for several years, was a foreign exchange student in Chicago, and has backpacked across South Korea. He’s worked in bubble-tea shops, as a reader/writer for students with disabilities, as a research assistant, and after completing a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Canterbury, settled in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he now lives with his wife and ex-racing greyhound. His debut adult fantasy, Kavithri, draws on modern Indian history as well as his own upbringing in the region.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Principle of Moments

Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

‘The Principle of Moments is my favourite kind of grand space opera where anything can happen and usually does at great speed’ Ben Aaronovitch, author of the Sunday Times bestselling Rivers of London series

For fans of Becky Chambers’ spacefaring family, V.E. Schwab’s magical London and N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy comes a sensational adventure across time and space.

Gollancz

July 2023

Editor: Marcus Gipps

Extent: 432

Rights: World

Asha Akindele lives in a future gripped by oppression, just one more human forced to assemble weapons for a war they’ll never win. Then she discovers she has a sister imprisoned by Emperor Thracin and is forced to make a choice: remain a slave, or escape and risk everything.

With the help of time-traveller Obi, who just wants to return to London, 1811, and his almost-boyfriend Prince George, Asha must travel through the stars to save a sister she’s never met - and in doing so save worlds.

About the author: Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson is a science-fantasy writer, co-founder of the organisation Impact of Omission, and a student, currently pursuing a BA in English Literature and Classical Studies. Winner of the inaugural Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award in 2020, her writing is invariably about Black people dismantling space empires, travelling through time, and saving the world - often simultaneously.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Hopeland Ian McDonald

Hopeland is not a nation. It is not a cult. It is not a religion.

Hopeland is a community. It is a culture. It is a family.

When Raisa Hopeland, determined to win her race to become the next electromancer of London, bumps into Amon Brightbourne - tweedsuited, otherworldly, guided by the Grace - in the middle of a London riot, she sets in motion a series of events which will span decades, continents and which will change the world.

Amon falls in love in that moment of chaos, but being loved by him can have a cost. And while Raisa has Hopeland, Amon has a family of his own, and they have their own secrets.

Gollancz

February 2023

Editor: Marcus Gipps

Extent: 640

Rights: Translation

US: The Zeno Agency

Rights Sold:

Polish: Wydawnictwo MAG

Previous Publishers:

Bulgarian: Altera

Chinese (Simplified): Beijing

Imaginist Time Culture

Chinese (Traditional): Rye Field

Croat: Vorto Palabra

Czech: Triton

French: Éditions Denoël

German: Heyne

Greek: Brainfood Publishing

Hungarian: Gabo

Italian: Mondadori

Japanese: Tokyo Sogensha

Korean: Woongjin Think Big Co.

Polish: MAG

Portuguese (Brazil): Darkside

Portuguese (Portugal): Edições

Gailivro / LeYa

Romanian: Nemira

Russian: AST

Serbian: Laguna

Spanish: Ediciones B

Turkish: Egitim

US: The Zeno Agency

From rioting London to geothermal Iceland to the climate-struck islands of Polynesia, from birth to life to death, from tranquillity to terror to joy, Raisa’s journey will encompass the world. But one thing will always be true.

Hopeland is family.

About the author: Ian McDonald was born in Manchester in 1960. His family moved to Northern Ireland in 1965. He now lives in Belfast and works in TV production. The author of many previous novels, including the groundbreaking Chaga books set in Africa, Ian McDonald has long been at the cutting edge of SF. Rivers of Gods won the BSFA award in 2005, Brasyl won in it in 2007 and The Dervish House in 2010.

Fantasy

Eversion Alastair Reynolds

Eversion is a superb, original Gothic SF novel. A small group of intrepid explorers are in search of a remote and mysterious artefact. It’s a wellfunded expedition, well organised, which is lucky as they’re sailing north of Bergen on the schooner Demeter, searching for a narrow inlet which will lead them to a vast uncharted lake - and their goal

Until disaster strikes.

Gollancz

March 2022

Editor: Gillian Redfearn

Extent: 304

Rights: World Rights Sold:

French: Belial

Estonian: Fantaasia

US: Orbit

Romanian: Nemira

Finnish: Otava

Previous Publishers:

Bulgaria: Iztok-Zapad

Chinese (Simplified): Booky

Czech: Triton

Estonian: Fantaasia

Finnish: Otava

French: Belial

German: Heyne

Hebrew: Opus

Hungarian: Gabo

Italian: Mondadori

Japanese: Hayakawa

Lithuanian: Eridanas

Polish: MAG

Portuguese (Brazil): Record

Romanian: Nemira

Russian: Azbooka-Atticus

Serbian: Laguna

Spanish: La Factoria de Ideas

Swedish: Ordbilder Media,

Turkish: Liber Plus

US: Orbit

Doctor Silas Coade wakes from disturbing dreams, on the steamship Demeter, in pursuit of an extraordinary find almost too incredible and too strange to believe, secreted within a lagoon in the icy inlets of Patagonia. But as they come in sight of their prize he and the crew see they are not the first to come so far: there is a wreck ahead, and whatever ruined it may threaten them as well--

Shaking off his nightmares, Doctor Silas Coade joins his fellow exploders on the deck of the zeppelin Demeter and realises something has already gone dangerously wrong with their mission. If any of them are to survive, then he will have to take the exploration - and their lives - into his own hands . . .

About the author: Alastair Reynolds was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. He stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer. Revelation Space and Pushing Ice were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Diamond Dogs and Century Rain were all shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award and Chasm CityI won the British Science Fiction Award.

You can learn more by visiting www.alastairreynolds.com.

Gollancz

September 2023

Editor: Gillian Redfearn

Extent: 488

Rights: World Rights Sold:

US: Orbit

Also in this series:

November 2017

Extent: 528

Rights: World

Rights Sold:

Russian: Azbooka-Atticus

Romanian: Editura Trei S.r.l

Italian: Gruppo Editoriale Fanucci

Spanish: La Factoria de Ideas

Czech: Triton

Finnish: Otava

German: Penguin Random House

Polish: Wydawnictwo MAG

US: Orbit

& Fantasy

INSPECTOR DREYFUS EMERGENCY SERIES Alastair Reynolds Machine Vendetta

Panoply is a small, efficient police force, dedicated to maintaining the rule of democracy among the ten thousand disparate city states orbiting the planet Yellowstone.

Ingvar Tench was one of Panoply’s most experienced operatives. So why did she walk alone and virtually unarmed into a habitat with a vicious grudge against her organisation?

As his colleagues pick up the pieces, Dreyfus must face his conscience. Four years ago, when an investigation linked to one of his most dangerous adversaries got a little too personal, Dreyfus arranged for Tench to continue the enquiry by proxy.

In using her - even though he had his reasons - did Dreyfus also put her in the line of fire? And what does Tench’s misadventure tell him about an enemy he had hoped was dormant?

January 2018

Extent: 416

Rights: World Rights Sold:

Italian: Mondadori Libri SpA,

Czech: Triton

Finnish: Otava,

US: Orbit

Gollancz

Editor:

Extent:

Bulgarian:

French:

German:

Italian:

Polish:

Russian:

THE AGE OF BRONZE TRILOGY

Miles Cameron

About the author:

Christian Cameron is a writer and military historian. He participates in re-enacting and experimental archaeology, teaches armoured fighting and historical swordsmanship, and takes his vacations with his family visiting battlefields, castles and cathedrals. He lives in Toronto and is busy writing his next novel.

Against All Gods

The tyranny of the gods is absolute, and they are capricious, malevolent and almost all-powerful, playing cruel games with the fates of mortals for their own ends . . .

A vibrant and powerful epic set against an alternate Bronze Age, this tale of gods, men and monsters, conspiracy and war, is a rich, compelling and original read from a master of the historical and fantasy genres. The people caught up in toils of the gods are merely trying to survive. Victims of vicious whims, trapped by their circumstances or pushed beyond what the mortal frame can bear, a handful of god-touched mortals - a scribe, a warlord, a dancer and a child - are about to be brought together in a conspiracy of their own.

A conspiracy to reach the heavens, and take down the corrupt and aging gods . . . who are already facing troubles of their own . . .

An epic that draws on a wide variety of myths and legends, gods and heroes, this new trilogy is a must read for fans of Dan Simmons and Madeline Miller alike.

The second title: Storming Heaven will follow in July 2023, and the final instalment: Breaking Hell will be released in July 2024.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

INSCAPE TRILOGY Louise Carey

Downfall Book 3

THE SAFETY OF INTECH’S RESIDENTS IS PARAMOUNT. INSURRECTION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

Tanta and Cole may have stopped the mass murder of InTech’s residents, but the cost was severe. Despite their efforts, Harlow 2.0 - the update to InTech’s mind-based operating system - fed out. Now its citizens are compliant zombies, and Tanta and her crew are trapped underground.

Gollancz

July 2023

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 400

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

French: Librairie L’Atalante

All except for Fliss, who has no system to update. She alone can go outside, and it’s Fliss the crew are relying on to help get them out.

For only then can they dismantle the damage Harlow 2.0 has done. If Tanta, Cole and InTech’s residents are to truly be free, it needs to be destroyed. But Tanta knows that task will put her on a collision course with the corporation that raised her, her oldest friends, and the woman who was once her soulmate.

And this last mission might ask more of her than she’s able to give.

About the author:

Louise Carey is a fantasy and science-fiction author. She has co-written two novels for Gollancz, The City of Silk and Steel and The House of War and Witness, as well as a graphic novel, Confessions of a Blabbermouth, for DC Comics. She co-runs the Dungeons & Dragons blog Tabletop Tales. Louise lives in Welwyn Garden City with her partner.

Also in this series:

July 2021

Extent: 432

Rights: World

July 2022

Extent: 400

Rights: World

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Landing Mary Gentle

THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE MEANT TO BE OBEYED.

Aeris Warren-Finch is NASA’s Acting Director of the New Earth Object Lab, overseeing the transit of a large unidentified object past Earth’s orbit. She’s trained and worked all her life for this. She couldn’t be more ready.

But the object changes trajectory. What was one object becomes three, seven, nineteen. Nineteen different modules land across the planet.

Gollancz

March 2023

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 432

Rights: Translation

US: Maggie Noach Literary Agency

When the nearest module creates a dome and leaves Aeris stranded within its confines, she’s left to wander in search of safety. But things are stranger than she could have guessed, and she soon discovers she’s not the only one wandering the alien landscapes under the domes.

Alongside her 105-year-old great-grandmother, a displaced imam, the President of the United States and her bodyguard, Aeris must find a way home before they run out of water, food and ideas.

The question is: when every direction reveals new and strange geographies, which way is the right way to go?

About the author: Mary Gentle is one of the world’s most acclaimed writers of fantasy and SF, winning the BSFA Best Novel Award for Ash: A Secret History. She has a number of academic degrees, including an MA in War Studies, and has hands-on experience of sword-fighting and armour, amongst many other useful talents. She lives in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

Celestial M.D. Lachlan

1977. THE SPACE RACE IS FAR FROM OVER.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Gollancz

September 2023

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 336

Rights: World

Previous Publishers: Bulgarian: Bard Chinese (Simplified): Tianjin

Huarwentianxia Books

Chinese (Traditional): Popular Press

Family

Dutch: Luitingh-Sijthoff

French: Flammarion

German: Heyne Indonesian: Kantera

Polish: Proszynski

Russian: Family Leisure Club

Ziggy Da Luca is a linguist recruited by NASA for reasons she can’t quite fathom. After seeing the video they’ve intercepted, it becomes clear her work is far more central to their plans than she realised.

Sent to the moon to investigate a hatch discovered by the Russians, Ziggy faces challenges she’s never trained for. Seen by some as a liability, she must contend with her own crew as well as the Russian cosmonauts, as everyone races to uncover the hatch’s mystery.

What she finds there is beyond anything she could imagine. The future of humankind could be changed for ever. The only question is whether she’ll make it home to tell her story.

About the author: M.D. Lachlan is the pseudonym of a successful mainstream fiction and non-fiction writer. A one-time stand-up comedian, he also writes for the Guardian. He was born in Coventry and now lives with his wife and children in Brighton.

Gollancz

August 2023

Editor: Brendan Durkin

Extent: 432 Rights: US

Translation: DHH Literary Agency

THE DYING SQUAD SERIES Adam Simcox

About the author:

Adam is a London-based filmmaker who’s shot commercials for brands such as McLaren, Primark and Vice, and music videos for Britpop veterans as well as fresh on the scene alt-country stars. He began his film career by writing and directing three features: the first sold to Netflix; the second and third won awards and critical acclaim at festivals worldwide. A graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course, The Dying Squad was Adam’s debut novel.

The Ungrateful Dead Book 3 A MISSING DETECTIVE

Detective Joe Lazarus is missing. The Dying Squad are on the case, but following reports of his sighting, signs suggest he may have fallen back into his criminal ways.

A DEATH IN A NIGHTCLUB

A new drug is taking the world by storm. Spook allows the living to see the dead, but its effects are often fatal. The Dying Squad’s visit to a Berlin nightclub quickly turns their search into an entirely more sinister case.

TWO WORLDS COLLIDE

Because the invention of Spook has another purpose. One that’s been decades in the planning. Two worlds are on a collision course - the living and the dead’s - and the Dying Squad must summon all their investigatory cunning to stop a plot that could change people’s (after) lives for ever.

Also in this series:

July 2021

Extent: 368

Rights: US

Translation: DHH Literary Agency

August 2022

Extent: 432

Rights: US

Translation: DHH Literary Agency

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Victoriocity

Chris Sugden and Jen Sugden

Even Greater London, 1887.

The newly-formed Fleet and Entwhistle Investigations are struggling to get off the ground, despite the successes that brought them together. No-one seems to take them seriously, but their big break will come soon. Definitely. Probably.

Meanwhile, police are baffled by a series of impossible bank robberies, where nothing is stolen. There is no trace left, and nothing to connect them.

Could the mysterious kidnap of a man from Blackfriar’s Bridge hold the key?

Gollancz

November 2023

Editor: Claire Ormsby-Potter

Extent: 352

Rights: World

About the authors:

Chris and Jen Sugden are the creators of Victoriocity, a comic sci-fi detective thriller podcast set in a reimagined Victorian past in which the city of ‘Even Greater London’ has grown to encompass the entire lower half of England. Their new novel is a further adventure inspired by the podcast.

Yorkshire natives, Chris and Jen met as undergraduates at the University of Oxford. They now live in Oxfordshire.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The First Murder On Mars

Sam Wilson

A page-turning SF mystery thriller with big ideas at its heart –perfect for fans of The Martian and The Expanse

This is the story of the first human being born on Mars: Rose Fuller. She saw a better future than the one we were given and gave her life to build it.

It’s a story about Dylan Ward, a woman who grew up in the frontier of human existence and misses it every single day.

It’s a story about a man who went missing, and the man who wants to find out what he knew.

Orion January 2024

Editor: Emad Akhtar

Extent: 320

Rights: World

It’s a story about what makes us human – and how we might live once we leave our home.

This is the story of the first murder on Mars.

About the author:

Sam Wilson is a writer and director living in Cape Town, South Africa. When he isn’t writing science fiction, he’s the show-runner of the hit animated series Jungle Beat. His debut novel, Zodiac, was translated into 5 languages.

Gollancz

August 2023

Editor: Gillian Redfearn

Extent: 672

Rights: World

Also in this series:

January 2021

Extent: 544

Rights: World

& Fantasy

THE COMMON TRILOGY Jeremy Szal

About the author:

Jeremy Szal was born in 1995 and was raised by wild dingoes, which should explain a lot. He spent his childhood exploring beaches, bookstores, and the limits of people’s patience. He’s the author of over forty science-fiction short stories, many of which have been translated into multiple languages. He was the editor for the Hugo-winning StarShipSofa until 2020 and has a BA in Film Studies and Creative Writing from UNSW. He carves out a living in Sydney, Australia with his family. He loves watching weird movies, collecting boutique gins, exploring cities, cold weather, and dark humour. Stormblood was his debut novel.

Wolfskin Book 3

Vakov Fukasawa is a Reaper. An elite soldier injected with a dangerous drug called stormtech: the DNA of a genocidal alien race, the Shenoi. It makes him stronger, faster, more aggressive. At a price.

A price that, if the House of Suns cult and the dangerous Shenoi alien race behind it, isn’t stopped, all of humanity will have to pay.

July 2022

Extent: 672

Rights: World

Gollancz

February 2023

Editor: Gillian Redfearn

Extent: 832

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Bulgarian: Studio of A

Croat: Stanek

Czech: Triton

Dutch: Luitingh-Sijthoff

French: Bragelonne

German: Heyne

Greek: Minoas

Italian: Fanucci

Polish: Amber Portuguese (Portugal): Presença

Russian: Eksmo

THE DARKWATER LEGACY TRILOGY Chris Wooding The Shadow Casket Book 2

A BAND OF REBELS. A TRAITOR IN THEIR MIDST. A REVOLUTION ABOUT TO BEGIN.

It’s been three years since Aren seized the Ember Blade. Three years since they struck the spark they hoped would ignite the revolution. But the flame has failed to catch. The Krodans have crushed Ossia in an iron grip of terror. The revolution seems further away than ever.

Far in the north, the Dawnwardens seek to unite the fractious clans of the Fell Folk and create a stronghold from which to retake their land. But even if they can overcome the danger of treachery from within, they still have to contend with the dreadknights. Only the druidess Vika can resist these near-unstoppable foes, and there’s only one of her.

But what if there was a weapon that could destroy the dreadknights? A weapon of such power it could turn the tide? A weapon that, if it fell into the wrong hands, might mean the end of all hope?

The Shadow Casket has returned from out of the past, and it will save or damn them all.

The first title, The Ember Blade, was published in 2018. The final volume in the trilogy will follow The Shadow Casket.

About the author:

Chris Wooding is a full time, award-winning novelist, a YA novelist, and a professional script writer for film and TV. He has travelled extensively, plays bass and guitar (and has recorded several albums) and his novels have been published all over the world. He has penned the Braided Path trilogy, a standalone novel (The Fade) and the Tales of the Ketty Jay series for Gollancz, all of which were critical and commercial successes. Chris Wooding lives in Kent, and you can learn more at www. chriswooding.com.

Gollancz

February 2023

Editor: Marcus Gipps

Extent: 352

Rights: World

& Fantasy

The Collarbound

Rebecca Zahabi

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER

‘A fast-paced, riveting read, with writing that leaps off the page and one of the most compelling magic systems I’ve encountered in years, this is a must for fantasy fans!’ Natasha Ngan, Girls of Paper and Fire

A MAN MARKED BY MAGIC. A WOMAN MARKED BY HER PAST.

On the other side of the Shadowpass, rebellion is brewing and refugees have begun to trickle into the city at the edge of the world. Looming high on the cliff is The Nest, a fortress full of mages who offer protection, but also embody everything the rebellion is fighting against: a strict hierarchy based on magic abilities.

When Isha arrives as a refugee, she attempts to fit in amongst the other mages, but her Kher tattoo brands her as an outcast. She can’t remember her past or why she has the tattoo. All she knows is that she survived. She doesn’t intend to give up now.

Tatters, who wears the golden collar of a slave, knows that this rebellion is different from past skirmishes. He was once one of the rebels, and technically, they still own him. He plans to stay in the shadows, until Isha appears in his tavern. He’s never seen a human with a tattoo, and the markings look eerily familiar . . .

As the rebellion carves a path of destruction towards the city, an unlikely friendship forms between a man trying to escape his past and a woman trying to uncover hers, until their secrets threaten to tear them apart.

The Collarbound hooks from the opening page and will appeal to fans of magical, brink-of-war settings, like that of The Poppy War and The City of Brass.

About the author: Rebecca Zahabi is a mixed-heritage writer. She started writing in her home village in France at age 12 - a massive epic which set out to revolutionise feminism. Since then, she has slightly re-jigged her expectations of what she can achieve with a keyboard and a blank page. Her first YA book was shortlisted for the Northern Writers’ Award in 2019. Her adult debut, The Collarbound, was longlisted for The Future Bookshelf program at Hachette UK before being acquired by Gollancz.

Non-Fiction

Trapeze

September 2022

Editor: Anna Valentine

Extent: 288

Rights: World Rights Sold:

Finnish: Kustannus Jalava

Polish: Insignis

Hebrew: Modan

Hungarian: Athenaeum

Romanian: SC Publica

Estonian: Tanapaev

Dutch: Prometheus Ukrainian: Vivat

Serbian: Vulkan

Previous Publishers:

Albanian: BOTART

Arabic: Dar Kalemat

Bulgarian: Bard Publishers

Chinese (complex): Spring International

Chinese (simplified): Beijing Time

Croat: Planetopija

Czech: Nakladatelstvi Jota

German: Goldmann Verlag

Greek: Klidarithmos Publications

Hungarian: Athenaeum

Italian: Lastaria Edizioni

Japanese: Yodosha

Korean: Munhakssasang

Latvian: Zvaigzne

Lithuanian: Jotema Publishers

Norwegian: Gloria Forlag

Portuguese: Particular

Portuguese (Brazil): Intrinseca

Russian: Eksmo

Slovak: Aktuell,

Slovene: Mladinska Knjiga Zalozba

Spanish: Grupo Planeta

Swedish: Volante

Thai: MAXX Publishing/MOVE Publishing

Turkish: Epsilon

US: Morrow

Vietnamese: Kim Dong Publishing House

The brand-new book from the number one bestselling author of This Is Going To Hurt

Undoctored Adam Kay

Hilarious, heartbreaking (and sometimes horrifying) stories from a life on and off the wards by Adam Kay, multi-million copy bestselling author of This is Going to Hurt

This is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon of the century, read by many millions, loved by at least fifty of them, and adapted into a major TV series. But it was only part of the story.

By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and humbling, Undoctored is about what happens when a doctor hangs up his scrubs, but medicine refuses to let go of him.

It’s about an extraordinary medical school education.

It’s about opening old wounds and examining the present-day scars. It’s about hospital admissions and personal ones.

It’s about blowing up your life and stitching it back together. It’s about being a doctor and being a patient.

It’s about 300 pages long.

Undoctored is Adam Kay’s funniest and most moving book yet - an astonishing portrait of a life in and out of medicine, from one of Britain’s finest storytellers.

About the author:

Adam Kay is an author, screenwriter and comedian. His books have sold over 3 million copies, have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity, have been translated into thirty-seven languages, and have won numerous awards. But he doesn’t like to boast.

He lives in Oxfordshire with his dog and husband (two separate individuals).

W&N

July 2023

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 288

Rights: World

Clarity, Culture and Identity in the Web of Chaos

The Awokening Ayishat Akanbi

The digital age has birthed The Great Awokening. Grievances previously overlooked - mental illness, racism, gender identity, homophobia, the need for safe spaces - now occupy centre stage. The current cultural climate demands us to declare our standing quickly and emphaticallyoften without pause for understanding. Looking at how the concept of a spiritual awakening has evolved into present day ‘wokeness’ - and how it has in turn lead to further polarisation rather than unification - in The Awokening, Ayishat Akanbi encourages an appeal to humanism. It is a timely and inspiring reminder of the power of curiosity and the benefits of intellectual humility, and an urge to partake in the gruelling task of developing self-awareness, such that we can become more socially aware - and aware of each other.

About the author: Ayishat Akanbi is a fashion stylist, writer, cultural commentator and artist based in London.

W&N

October 2022

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 1392

Rights: World

Rights sold:

US: A Knopf

Polish: Znak

Dutch: Uniboek

Korean: Sigongsa

Albanian: Shtepia Botuese

Bulgarian: Prozorets

Portuguese: Planeta

Italian: Mondadori

Serbian: Laguna

Estonian: Kirjastus

German: Cotta’sche

Romanian: Editura Trei

Spanish: Planeta

Portuguese (Brazil): Schwarcz

Chinese (simplified): South Booky

Chinese (traditional): Rye Field

Norwegian: Cappelen Damm

French: Calmann-Levy

Previous Publishers:

Azerbaijani: Teas Press

Dutch: Het Spectrum

Finnish: WSOY

Norwegian: Cappelen Damm

Russian: Eksmo

The World Simon Sebag Montefiore

From the master storyteller and internationally bestselling author - the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family.

We begin with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago. From here, Montefiore takes us on an exhilarating epic journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims and Assads.

A rich cast of complex characters form the beating heart of the story. Some are well-known leaders, from Alexander the Great, Attila, Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan to Hitler, Thatcher, Obama, Putin and Zelensky. Some are creative, from Socrates, Michelangelo and Shakespeare to Newton, Mozart, Balzac, Freud, Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee.

Others are lesser-known: Hongwu, who began life as a beggar and founded the Ming dynasty; Kamehameha, conqueror of Hawaii; Zenobia, Arab empress who defied Rome; King Henry of Haiti; Lady Murasaki, first female novelist; Sayyida al-Hurra, Moroccan pirate-queen. Here are not just conquerors and queens but prophets, charlatans, actors, gangsters, artists, scientists, doctors, tycoons, lovers, wives, husbands and children.

This is world history on the most grand and intimate scale - spanning centuries, continents and cultures, and linking grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion, medicine and technology to the people at the centre of the human drama.

About the author:

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography, the Kreisky Prize and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; Jerusalem: The Biography won the JBC Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; The Romanovs: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. He is also the author of Written in History: Letters that Changed the World and Voices of History: Speeches that Changed the World

W&N

March 2024

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 432

Rights: World Rights Sold:

German: Aufbau-Verlag GmbH

500,000 Years of African History, Cultures and Identity

Motherland Luke Pepera

Historian, archaeologist, and anthropologist Luke Pepera’s Motherland is an exploration of African history and identity. He takes us on a personal journey beyond the last 400 years of slavery and colonialisation and explores the preceding 500,000 years of African history and cultures in order to reclaim and reconnect with this extraordinary heritage. It tackles the question many people of African descent ask - Who are we? Where do we come from? What defines us? And it explores how knowledge of this deeper history might affect current understandings of race and African identity.

The book consists of ten thematically-linked chapters that explore aspects of African identity from nomadic culture and matriarchal society to beliefs about the afterlife and the tradition of oral storytelling. Each chapter begins with a current day example, for instance the ancestor scenes in The Black Panther, and then goes back in time to tell the best stories from African history which brought us the modern day phenomenon.

Interwoven with Luke’s own experiences of exploring his Ghanaian family history and his personal questions of identity, this will be a comprehensive, relevant and beautifully told new history of Africa, and how it has shaped the world we know today.

About the author:

Luke is a writer, broadcaster, historian, and anthropologist dedicated to sharing his passion for African history & cultures. He was born in Ghana, and has a degree from St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he read Archaeology & Anthropology and studied ancient and medieval African history. Since graduating he has worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum, The Times, and Tatler, and has written and presented Africa: Written Out of History, a documentary for Dan Snow’s History Hit.

W&N

September 2022

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 432

Rights: Translation

US: Coleridge & White

Rights Sold:

Chinese (simplified): Guangdong

Flower City

Slovak: Premedia

Spanish: Centro Libros

Polish: Literackie

Borderland

A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

Anna Reid

FULLY UPDATED

’A fascinating and often violent odyssey, spanning more than 1,000 years of conflict and culture’ The Independent

Flat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders, for centuries Ukraine was fought over by more powerful neighbours. Though its modern national movement dates back to the early nineteenth century, it did not win real independence until 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since then, Ukrainians have proved themselves one of the world’s most remarkable nations. In 2014 mass demonstrations forced out a corrupt pro-Russian president. Russia responded by invading, first seizing Crimea and the eastern Donbass, and then in February 2022 marching on Kyiv. With Western help, Ukraine is fighting back. But in what form it will emerge from the war - the bloodiest in Europe since 1945 - remains to be seen.

For this fourth edition of her classic history, Anna Reid returns to the scene. Talking to refugees, politicians and victims of widespread Russian war crimes, she adds a new chapter to the complex biography of a country on the frontline of the conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

About the author:

Anna Reid was born in 1965. She read law at Magdalen College, Oxford, and took a master’s degree in Russian history and reform economics from London University’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She lived in Ukraine from 1993 to 1995 where she was the Kiev correspondent for The Economist and the Daily Telegraph. She has also written for the Financial Times and The Spectator.

History

White Rabbit

March 2024

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 304

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

French: Éditions Présentes

German: Mare Verlag

A Human History

Clay Jennifer Lucy Allan

A human history told through clay.

People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since humans began. It is the material that God uses to form Adam in Genesis. Tomb paintings in Egypt show the god Khum at a potter’s wheel, throwing a human. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4,000 years ago – and this book is a love letter to clay, to the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives. Combining the author’s own experience with clay with archaeology and history, Clay tells the story about our relationship with this most profound everyday material.

About the author:

Jennifer Lucy Allan is a writer, journalist and broadcaster with a PhD in foghorns. She has been a journalist for over a decade, writing on underground and experimental music for publications including The Guardian, The Quietus, and The Wire, and was previously The Wire’s Online Editor. She is a presenter on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and wrote and presented Life, Death and the Foghorn for BBC Radio 4. She also runs the archival record label Arc Light Editions. The Foghorn’s Lament was her first book.

W&N

March 2024

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 320

Rights: Translation

US: Toby Mundy Associates

Rights Sold:

German: Siedler

The Last Trial Tobias Buck

It is 17 October 2019, the opening day of a trial in Hamburg’s imposing criminal justice building that is historic in more ways than one. Bruno Dey is accused of being an accessory to a crime that took place more than seven decades ago: the murder of at least 5,230 inmates at Stutthof, a Nazi concentration camp in present-day Poland. He was seventeen at the time, and a member of the SS unit charged with administering and guarding the camps. Dey admits he served as a guard at Stutthof from August 1944 to April 1945, but he denies the accusation that he had any role in the murders, even as an accessory.

The trial of Bruno Dey comes at a poignant moment for modern Germany. After fifteen years of stable government, the Merkel era is coming to an end and support for the AFD is ever-growing. The last members of the war generation - victims and perpetrators alike - are disappearing, and with them all first-hand knowledge of how the Holocaust came to pass. Against that backdrop, what is the significance - and the legacy - of the trial? Yet Dey’s trial raises questions that touch not just on German history, politics and memory culture, but also on Buck’s own family history. During childhood visits to see his German grandparents, those dark years were never spoken of, but he remembers the old wedding photo on the mantelpiece in their bedroom, his grandfather in uniform with a swastika armband. He knows little else about his record during the war. Why did he never ask?

Through the prism of this gripping and complex courtroom drama Buck explores its wider significance, both political and personal. In The Last Trial he interrogates the questions: is it right to punish Bruno Dey more than seven decades after he stood guard at Stutthof concentration camp? And what would I have done in his place?

About the author: Tobias Buck is Managing Editor of the Financial Times. He was born in Jugenheim, Germany and graduated from Humboldt University in Berlin, where he read law. He was previously the FT’s Berlin Correspondent and before that, their Madrid Correspondent. Buck is the recipient of several prestigious journalism prizes, including a British Press Award, a Foreign Press Association Award, and a Harold Wincott Award. In 2015, Spain’s International Press Club named him foreign correspondent of the year. Buck lives in London with his partner Ana, a Spanish journalist, and their son.

W&N

September 2022

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 400

Rights: World Rights Sold: US: Morrow

Previous Publishers:

Italian: Adriano Salani

Portuguese: Bertrand Editora

German: Gräfe und Unzer Verlag

Spanish: PRH

Turkish: Turkuvazl Polish: Publicat

All the Knowledge in the World

The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia

Simon Garfield

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world.

Created by thousands of scholars and the most obsessive of editors, adults cleared their shelves in the belief that wisdom was now effortlessly accessible in their living rooms. Contributions from Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Orville Wright, Alfred Hitchcock, Marie Curie and Indira Gandhi helped millions of children with their homework.

But now these huge books gather dust and sell for almost nothing on eBay, and we derive our information from the internet, apparently for free. What have we lost in this transition? And how did we tell the progress of our lives in the past?

All the Knowledge in the World is a history and celebration of those who created the most ground-breaking and remarkable publishing phenomenon of any age. It tracks the story from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print. It looks at how Encyclopaedia Britannica came to dominate the industry and how an army of ingenious door-to-door salesmen sold their wares to guilt-ridden parents. It explains how encyclopaedias have reflected our changing attitudes towards sexuality, race and technology, and exposes how these ultimate bastions of trust were often riddled with errors and prejudice.

With his characteristic ability to tackle the broadest of subjects in an illuminating and highly entertaining way, Simon Garfield uncovers a fascinating and important part of our past, and wonders whether the promise of complete knowledge - that most human of ambitions - will forever be beyond our grasp.

About the author:

Simon Garfield is the author of the international bestsellers Just My Type, On the Map, and Mauve, whilst To the Letter was one of the inspirations for the theatre shows Letters Live with Benedict Cumberbatch. His study of AIDS in Britain, The End of Innocence, won the Somerset Maugham prize.

W&N

February 2024

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 384

Rights: World

A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks

David Gibbins

The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII’s the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin’s doomed HMS Terror. The German battleship The Bismarck destroyed by Allied forces.

This is the story of some of the greatest underwater discoveries of all time, from the Bronze Age world of Troy and Caesar’s Rome, through Viking warriors and the court of Henry VIII, to the exploration of the Arctic and World War Two. A rich and exciting narrative, this is not just the story of those ships and the people who sailed on them, the cargo and treasure they carried and their tragic fate. This is also the story of the spread of people, religion and ideas around the world, a story of colonialism and migration which continues today.

Drawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past to tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets.

About the author: David has a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge. He has decades of experience investigating shipwrecks ranging in date from early prehistory to modern times, all over the world, and has personally made many new discoveries. He continues to dive regularly and explores the shipwrecks off the coast of Cornwall where he lives.

W&N

February 2023

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 320

Rights: World

The Other Side

A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World

Jennifer Higgie

In The Other Side we explore the lives and work of a group of extraordinary women, from the twelfth-century mystic, composer and artist Hildegard of Bingen to the nineteenth-century English spiritualist Georgiana Houghton, whose paintings swirl like a cosmic Jackson Pollock; the early twentieth-century Swedish artist, Hilma af Klint, who painted with the help of her spirit guides and whose recent exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim broke all attendance records; the ‘Desert Transcendentalist’, Agnes Pelton, who painted her visions beneath the vast skies of California; the Swiss healer, Emma Kunz, who used geometric drawings to treat her patients; and the British surrealist and occultist, Ithell Colquhoun, whose estate of more than 5,000 works recently entered the Tate gallery collection. While the individual work of these artists is unique, the women loosely shared the same goal: to communicate with, and learn from, other dimensions.

Weaving in and out of these myriad lives, sharing her own memories of otherworldly experiences, Jennifer Higgie discusses the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. A radical reappraisal of a marginalised group of artists, The Other Side is an intoxicating blend of memoir, biography and art history.

About the author:

Jennifer Higgie is a writer who studied painting at art school in Australia before moving to London. Previously the editor of Frieze magazine, she is the presenter of Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history. She is also a screenwriter, the editor of a collection of writings on art and humour, The Artist’s Joke, a novel, Bedlam, a children’s book, There’s Not One, and The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience - 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Bettany Hughes

The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Colossus at Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The scale and majesty of the seven wonders of the ancient world still enthral us today. In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, beststelling historian Bettany Hughes tells the story of the ancient world through its legendary achievements in engineering technology, sophisticated planning and religious devotion.

W&N

January 2024

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 512

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

Azerbaijani: TEAS Press

Chinese (complex): Eurasian Chinese (simplified): Yilin

French: Calmann-Lévy

German: Klett-Cotta

Greek: Psichogios

Italian: Mondadori

Korean: Miraebook Portuguese: Planeta Russian: Eksmo

Serbian: Laguna d.o.o.

Spanish: Editorial Crítica

Turkish: Alfa Basim

About the author:

Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. Her previous books, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore, and The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life, were published to great critical acclaim and worldwide success. Hughes has made a number of factual films and documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, The History Channel and ABC. She is a Research Fellow of King’s College London and has been honoured with numerous awards including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History.

W&N

August 2023

Editor: Kate Moreton

Extent: 432

Rights: World

The Lion and the Dragon

Lawrence James

Napoleon warned ‘Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world’. Lawrence James’s magisterial history analyses the relationship between Britain and China between the beginning of the Opium Wars in 1839 and the transfer of power in Hong Kong in 1997.

The Lion and the Dragon reveals the part that Britain played in the awakening of China, then covers relations between the two countries during the period when an aroused China did indeed shake the world. Lawrence James also follows the parallel trajectories of four competitive empires - the British, the Chinese, the Russian and the Japanese - during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and then the fortunes of a fifth imperial power, the United States.

Successive British governments saw China as a source of wealth which needed to be protected. Local objections were seen off by force (the ‘Opium’ wars of 1839-42, 1856-7 and 1859-60) whose results proved that the Qing emperors could not protect their country. Indian troops were deployed in each campaign and manned Britain’s small garrisons in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Treaty ports. Yet Britain never sought to make China into another India. Rather it allowed the emperors and their officials to govern, so long as they were docile and amenable to British needs. Paramount were the internal stability and fiscal responsibility that were the lubricants of trade.

About the author:

Lawrence James was a founding member of the University of York and then took a research degree at Merton College, Oxford. After a distinguished teaching career he became a full-time writer in 1985 and has emerged as one of the outstanding narrative historians of his generation for works including The Rise and Fall of the British Empire and Churchill and Empire

W&N May 2023

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 288

Rights: World

Previous Publishers: Turkish: Destek Yapim Chinese (simplified): Cultural Development Press

Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean Twilight Cities Katherine Pangonis

Katherine Pangonis explores five forgotten cities of the Mediterranean: Syracuse, Antioch, Ravenna, Tyre and Carthage. Each of these of these ancient cities has a claim to have been the centre of the world in its own time. Their fascinating entwined history takes in Alexander the Great, the Byzantine general Maniakes, and the Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Norman conquests. All were once major power centres that have declined into relative obscurity - but their glory still lingers for those who seek it out.

Combining on the ground research with spellbinding storytelling skills, Katherine Pangonis brings these mysterious ancient cities back to life, and tells a new story of the Mediterranean.

About the author:

Katherine Pangonis is a historian specialising in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and Middle East. She holds MA degrees in literature and history from Oxford University and University College London. She has a particular interest in rewriting the voices of women into the historical narrative, re-examining understudied areas of history and bringing her findings into the public eye. Travel is central to her research process, and that is how she spends most of her time.

W&N September 2023

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 544

Rights: World Rights sold: Chinese (simplified): Ginkgo Bulgarian: Knigomania Dutch: Unieboek

From the Vikings to Social Democracy

The Story of Scandinavia Stein Ringen

In Scandinavia, academic and international scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.

For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European powers, at the expense of their own populations. The last two hundred years have been a battle to escape that legacy. The unexpected success of that battle is a great European revolution.

Yet there are a set of constant storylines. One thread, from the Viking Age onward, is the European influence and the Scandinavians’ problem with becoming European. A second thread is inter-Scandinavian competition - conflict, warfare and mutual hatred. The brand we now know as “Scandinavia” is a recent invention. During most of its history, Denmark and Sweden, and to some degree Norway, were bloody enemies. These sentiments of enmity have not been fully settled. Under the surface of collaboration remain undercurrents of hatred, envy, contempt and pity. A third thread is the standing of those the Viking age sagas called “smallfolk” and how they gradually emerged into an entirely new world in which states serve people, rather than people states.

What does it mean today to be Scandinavian? For the author, whose identity is Scandinavian but his life European, this masterly history is a personal exploration as well as a narrative of compelling scope.

About the author: Stein Ringen is an international scholar of Norwegian origins. Since 1990, his base has been at the University of Oxford, where he is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social Policy. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London, where he now lives.

W&N

April 2023

Editor: Jenny Lord

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945

Men at War Luke Turner

As a child, Luke Turner was obsessed with the Second World War. He spent hours painstakingly constructing models of his favourite aircraft, watching Sunday afternoon war films, pouring over stories of derringdo and relishing in birthday trips to air museums. Lying in bed beneath Airfix bombers and fighter planes suspended from his bedroom ceiling, he would often think about the men that might sit in their cockpits, and whether he could ever be one of them. Now, as an adult who has come to terms with a masculine identity and sexuality that is often erased from dominant military narratives, he undertakes a refreshingly honest analysis of his fascination with the war.

In Men at War, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to discover a much richer history. He goes inside the machines of war and strips away uniform cloth to discover the true depth and complexity of men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. From writers, filmmakers, artists and ordinary men - including those in his own family - Turner assembles a broad cast of characters to bring the war to life. There are conscientious objectors, a bisexual Commando, a pacifist poet who flew for Bomber Command, a transgender RAF pilot, a soldier who suffered in Japanese POW camps and later in life became an LGBT+ activist, and those who simply did what they could just to survive and return home to a complicated peace.

As the conflict moves beyond living memory and the last veterans leave us, we are in danger of missing the opportunity to gain a true understanding of the rich humanity that lies beyond the myths, machines and iconography. By exploring a wartime experience that embraces sex, lust and the body as much as tactics and weaponry, Turner argues that the only way we can really understand the Second World War is to get to grips with the complexity of the lives and identities of those who fought and endured it.

About the author: Luke Turner is a writer and editor. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio show. He has contributed to the Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, NME, Q, Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and Somesuch Stories, among other publications. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He lives in London.

White Rabbit

July 2022

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 848

Rights: Translation

Rights Sold:

Japanese: Disk Union

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton

‘Literally changed the course of my life’ James Murphy

‘The chapter on Larry Levan alone transformed me into wanting to be your favorite DJ’ Questlove

‘The original and still the best’ Gilles Peterson

‘We can’t tell the story of dance music without speaking the names of Sharon White and Judy Weinstein, so I welcome this vital update’ The Blessed Madonna

When someone says, ‘You have to know your history...’ this is it. This classic book is the whole unruly story of dance music in one volume. It recreates the dancefloors that made history, conjuring their atmosphere with loving detail and bringing you the voices of the DJs and clubbers at their heart - from grime, garage, house, hip hop and disco, to techno, soul, reggae, rock’n’roll, and EDM. Whether musical outlaw, obsessive crate-digger or overpaid superstar, the DJ has been at the spinning centre of nightlife for a century, making parties wilder, pushing clubbers harder, and driving music into completely new shapes and styles. In 1999 this was the first book to do justice to the DJ’s rollercoaster ride. Twenty years later, it’s fully refreshed, carefully updated and filled with even more stories, including two brand new chapters. This edition comes with a new foreword by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem).

About the author: Bill Brewster is a former editor of Mixmag USA. His writing has appeared in The Face, The Guardian, Red Bull Music Academy and still regularly writes for Mixmag. Frank Broughton has written for i-D, The Face, Mixmag, DJ, Hip-Hop Connection, Details, NME, Rolling Stone and many other publications and is Creative Director at music and culture agency Pitch And Sync.

White

Extent:

Access All Areas

A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music & Culture

Barbara Charone

First as a journalist and then a publicist at Warner Brothers Records for nearly twenty years, Barbara Charone has experienced, first-hand, the changes in the cultural landscape. Access All Areas is a personal, insightful and humorous memoir packed with stories of being on the cultural frontline, from first writing press releases on a typewriter driven by Tip Ex, then as a press officer for heavy metal bands taking the bus up to Donnington Festival with coffee, croissants and the much more popular sulfate. To taking on Madonna, an unknown girl from Detroit, and telling Smash Hits ‘you don’t have to run the piece if the single doesn’t chart’, and becoming a true pioneer in music, Charone continues to work with the biggest names in music, including Depeche Mode, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters and Mark Ronson at her agency MBCPR.

The story of how a music-loving, budding journalist from a Chicago suburb became the defining music publicist of her generation, Access All Areas is a time capsule of the last fifty years, told through the lens of music.

About the author:

Born in Chicago, Barbara Charone moved to London after graduating from Northwestern University. The first half of her career was spent as a music journalist working for NME, Sounds, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy and Cream before writing the authorised biography wKeith Richards: Life As A Rolling Stone in 1979.

In November 2000, after almost 20 years at Warner Brothers, Barbara co-founded leading independent music agency MBCPR with Moira Bellas where she still works now. Within six months it became one of the country’s top music PR firms.

Barbara Charone is one of the most respected women working in the music business. In November 2001, Charone and Bellas, were honoured as Women of the Year by Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and The Brit Trust and in 2006 and 2009 won the coveted Music Week PR Award. In May 2022 Barbara Charone was presented with The Strat at the Music Week Awards, for lifetime achievement. Charone was involved in a recent successful bid to buy her beloved Chelsea Football Club, and will be a non-executive director.

White Rabbit

October 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 356

Rights: World

Paused in Cosmic Reflection

The Chemical Brothers with Robin Turner

The Chemical Brothers emerged in the early 1990s, an electronic music duo consisting of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons. Alongside The Prodigy and Fat Boy Slim they made the leap from the underground into the mainstream on the back of the ‘big beat’ genre, and the million-selling success of their debut, Exit Planet Dust. Their second album, Dig Your Own Hole went stratospheric in 1997 and they have collectively, had 6 number one albums.

Their original and incredibly influential but tiny residency was at the Heavenly Social in 1994. They have collaborated with a host of internationally famous artists from Noel Gallagher to Mazzy Star and Richard Ashcroft.

This is the story of the band, in their own words, and with contributions from intimate friends and collaborators. The book will be fully illustrated with photography and design work from the archives. The Chemical Brothers have headlined major festivals including Glastonbury and won six Grammys. They are unquestionably one of the biggest electronic music acts in the world today.

About the author:

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are The Chemical Brothers, DJs and electronic music artists. They met at the University of Manchester where most of their education happened at Fac51, the Hacienda.

Robin Turner has worked with the Chemical Brothers for 20 years.

White Rabbit

May 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 336

Rights: World

Come My Fanatics

The Story of Electric Wizard

Dan Franklin

Fully approved biography of ‘the Wizard’, the Dorset-doom metal band who for over two decades have set the bar for heaviness

For over 25 years, Electric Wizard have been gathering the masses around them as one of the largest cult bands in the world. They have over a quarter of a million followers on Facebook, have clocked up 25 million plays on Spotify and have sold tens of thousands of vinyl albums.

You haven’t heard of them? Let me introduce you...

Electric Wizard have set the bar for heaviness. With their potent VHShorror aesthetic, lyrics dripping with Lovecraftian horrors, and a monumental sound that provided a template for the myriad bands who followed - not to mention the fights, drugs and sex in the trail of destruction they’ve left behind them - this is the right time for the band’s story to be told.

Electric Wizard draw on myriad occult influences to create their own world: menacing, lurid, depraved. With such rich source material in the music, and how it bleeds out into the wider culture, a book written with the band will crystallize their position in the pantheon of British heavy rock. It will also introduce them to a wider audience - for many readers it will be like stumbling across an ancient, hidden terror.

Drawing on extensive interviews with the band and anyone else they deem worthy to speak to their legacy, the book takes a kaleidoscopic look at the world the band conjures in all its chaotic and drug-addled intensity.

About the author:

Dan Franklin has written about metal and heavy music for over ten years. He is a contributor to music and pop culture website The Quietus. His first book, Heavy was published in 2020.

White Rabbit

September 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 288

Rights: World

Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story

Rude Boys, Racism & the Soundtrack of a Generation

Daniel Rachel

In 1979, 2 Tone exploded into the national conscience as records by The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat, and The Bodysnatchers burst onto the charts and a youth movement was born.

2 Tone was black and white: a multi-racial force of British and Caribbean island musicians singing about social issues, racism, class and gender struggles. It spoke of injustices in society and took fight against right wing extremism.

The music of 2 Tone was exuberant: white youth learning to dance to the infectious rhythm of ska and reggae; and crossed with a punk attitude to create an original hybrid. The idea of 2 Tone was born in Coventry, masterminded by a middle-class art student raised in the church. Jerry Dammers had a vision of an English Motown. Borrowing £700, the label’s first record featured ‘Gangsters’ by The Specials’ backed by an instrumental track by the, as yet, unformed, Selecter. Within two months the single was at number six in the national charts. Dammers signed Madness, The Beat and The Bodysnatchers as a glut of successive hits propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops and into the hearts and minds of a generation. However, soon infighting amongst the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to an inevitable weight of expectation and recrimination.

Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment, shaped British culture.

About the author:

Solihull-born Daniel Rachel is a regular contributor on BBC Radio 5 Live and lives in north London with his partner and three children. He is the author of Isle of Noises (a Guardian and NME Book of the Year), Walls Come Tumbling Down (winner of the Penderyn Music Book prize), When Ziggy Played the Marquee by Terry O’Neill (editor), Don’t Look Back in Anger and co-writer of Ranking Roger’s autobiography I Just Can’t Stop It: My Life in The Beat.

White Rabbit

August 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Rights Sold:

Spanish: Contraediciones

The story of Jesus and Mary Chain

Never Understand Jim and William Reid

The Jesus and Mary Chain were arguably the most radical and visionary rock n roll band of the mid-80s. When the two Reid brothers arrived full of filth and fury and the sound of fuzzbox guitars, they caused the biggest outrage in pop culture since the Sex Pistols almost a decade before. With a young Bobby Gillespie on drums for the first album and the infamous British gigs of 1985 which almost inevitably descended into riotous violence after 20 minutes of brutal live assault, they were the most stylish and provocative of the emerging ‘indie’ bands of the decade. They sounded like The Ronettes meets the Velvet Underground. Their debut album Psychocandy is up there with the greatest rock debuts in history. Their follow-up Darklands is also regarded as a masterpiece. They continued over the course of 5 albums until 1997 when the feuding between the brothers (vocalist, Jim; creative genius and guitarist, Will) became too much. They split but reformed a decade later and continue to play gigs to audiences around the world.

The Jesus and Mary Chain are the definition of ‘cult’ but this is a story that will resonate with thousands of fans who still revere them as true rock and roll anti-heroes. Working with Ben Thompson – master ghostwriter responsible for books by Goldie, Steve Jones, Russell Brand, Ray Winstone and Chrissie Hynde– to create a portrait of the chaos and confusion that characterised the Mary Chain story, Never Understand will tell the story of the band in the first person by the brothers in alternate and sometimes conflicting accounts.

About the author:

Jim and Will Reid are the Jesus and Mary Chain, from East Kilbride. They are one of the most radical and influential groups to have emerged out of the Scottish postpunk scene and have produced several classic albums including Psychocandy and Darklands.

White Rabbit

August 2023

Editor: Lee Brackstone

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Rights sold:

German: Heyne

Spanish: Sexto Piso

US: Harper Collins

Curepedia

An A-Z of The Cure Simon Price

The Cure are arguably the biggest alternative rock band in the world. Their popularity is not limited to any one country, or even continent. Between 1985 and 2000 every album they released went to at least Gold in the UK, the US or both. In America they have earned four Platinum albums, and they are estimated to have sold 30 million albums worldwide. Their iconic status as elder statesmen of Alternative Rock remains undiminished - if anything, their tireless touring has ensured that it has grown with every passing year - and lead singer Robert Smith is an endlessly fascinating figure to successive generations of fans. The Cure’s influence reverberates through genres including Emo, Goth, Industrial and Indie Rock.

The book is an encyclopaedic A-Z of The Cure examining and riffing on miscellaneous trivia, biographies of the band members past and present, summaries of each album and selected songs, details of the band’s various tours and films, and essays on broader topics such as their image, their politics and their influences. Playful, eccentric and irreverent - true to the spirit of the band itself - Curepedia is a comprehensive biography of one of the biggest alternative rock bands in the world.

About the author:

Simon Price is a highly-experienced British music journalist whose career includes nine years as one of the main feature writers at Melody Maker and twelve as the senior Rock & Pop Critic for the Independent On Sunday newspaper. The alternative music of the 1980s is one of his specialist areas.

His first book, Everything (A Book About Manic Street Preachers) became the fastest-selling rock biography in British history on its publication by Virgin in 1999, selling the first 10,000 copies in record time and the next 10,000 almost as quickly. It was named Book Of The Year by NME and Rock Book Of The Decade by The Guardian.

He first became a fan of The Cure as a teenager in the 1980s, and has written about them several times since, for various publications.

Trapeze

May 2023

Editor: Jamie Coleman

Extent: 304

Rights: World Rights sold:

Finnish: Bazar Kustannus

Previous Publishers:

Bulgarian: KRYG

Croat: Naklada Ljevak

Czech: Jiri Sevcik

Danish: Forlaget Klim

Dutch: Xander Uitgevers

US: St Martin’s Press

Estonian: Kirjastus Kunst

Finnish: Bazar Kustannus

French: Hachette Pratique

German: Koch International

Italian: Tsunami Edizioni

Norwegian: Cappelen Damm

Polish: Kagra Krzysztof Grausz

Portuguese: Editora Globo

Portuguese (Brazil): Editora

Larousse

Russian: Eksmo

Serbian: Laguna

Spanish: Alianza Editorial

Swedish: Bokfabriken

Dark Desert Highway Mick Wall

This could be heaven or this could be hell...’

So sings Don Henley on their biggest hit, ‘Hotel California’, yet for The Eagles their story was one where the dividing line between ultimate Hollywood highs and subterranean LA lows was blurred beyond recognition, blinded by white-powdered double-visions and buried beneath greenback mountains.

The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with bloodletting betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied in the road behind them. The story of The Eagles is a truly gothic American fable: one of ultimate power and rivers of money; of sex and drugs at a time when both were the lingua-franca of sophisticated So-Cal living; of a band who sang of peaceful easy feelings in public while threatening to kill each other in private.

Now, for the first time, esteemed music biographer Mick Wall will provide the definitive insight into America’s best-selling band of all time, a band who have sold more records than Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones combined, exploring their meteoric rise to fame, and the hedonistic days of the 70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world.

About the author: Mick Wall is the UK’s best-known rock writer, author and TV and radio programme maker, and is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books, including definitive, bestselling titles on Led Zeppelin (When Giants Walked the Earth), Metallica (Enter Night), AC/DC (Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be), Black Sabbath (Symptom of the Universe), Lou Reed, The Doors (Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre), Foo Fighters, Lemmy and Guns N’ Roses (Last of the Giants). He lives in England. http://www.mickwall.com/home.htm http://www.mickwall.com/blog/blog.php https://twitter.com/WallMick

Seven Dials

September 2023

Editor: Tierney Witty

Extent: 352

Rights: World

Mikel Arteta Guillem Balague

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Mikel Arteta’s revolution at Arsenal, from award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling journalist, Guillem Balagué.

After Unai Emery’s underwhelming spell as Arsenal manager ended in November 2019, Mikel Arteta, understudy of Pep Guardiola, was appointed as manager. Since joining, Arteta has revolutionised Arsenal into a side known for its progressive, attacking style of play, filled with some of football’s most exciting youngsters and that nurtures homegrown talent such as Bukayo Saka and Emilie Smith-Rowe.

Guillem Balagué now presents a biographical portrait of Arsenal’s Spanish manager and offers an unprecedented glimpse into Arsenal. Drawing on extensive interview material with Arteta, his backroom staff and club players, Guillem will look at Arteta’s journey to becoming one of the Premier League’s most exciting managers and reveal the inner workings of Arsenal and its manager’s footballing philosophy.

About the author:

Guillem Balague is a Spanish football journalist, prizewinning author and pundit, first for Sky Sports and now for BBC Radio 5 Live. He is the author of A Season on the Brink - A Portrait of Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool (2006); the first biography of Pep Guardiola (2012); Messi (2013); Cristiano Ronaldo (2015) - the Football Book of the Year at the Cross Sports Book Awards; and the bestselling Brave New World - Inside Pochettino’s Spurs (2017). He is chairman of non-league Biggleswade FC, and lives in Hitchin in Hertfordshire.

Seven Dials

April 2023

Editor: Beth Eyon

Extent: 352

Rights: World

Previous Publishers:

German: Covadonga Verlag

Spanish: Editorial Planeta Italian: Mulatero Editore SRL

Alejandro Valverde

Matt Rendell

New from prize-winning writer Matt Rendell, a shocking deep dive into the tumultuous life of cyclist Alejandro Valverde, and the truth behind Spanish cycling’s corrupt heart.

Alejandro Valverde - the ‘Green Bullet’ - was a symbol of Spanish sport. Supremely talented, hard-working beyond belief, he was ranked no.1 in the world four times before retiring in 2022. He is a champion of undeniable charisma and immense achievement - and yet also a convicted doping cheat.

Appearing in a list of encoded names, Valverde was one of many at the heart of a doping ring for elite sportsmen. Discovered by Spanish police in the infamous Operacion Puerto, the revelations contained in the operation threatened to rip cycling apart. Shrouded in secrets still, and committed to his silence, Valverde’s story shows corruption at the heart of the cycling world, from politicians, doctors, businessmen - all after one thing: success. And the money that comes with it.

With exclusive access and new information unveiled, Rendell gets to the heart of the doping and corruption scandal that engulfed the world of cycling and continues to this day.

About the author: Matt Rendell survived Hodgkin’s Disease and lecturing at British and Latvian universities before entering TV and print journalism. He first visited Colombia in 1998, and his Channel 4 documentary Kings of the Mountains (2000) was described in the Observer as ‘a gem, telling us more about the essence of sport in under an hour than a season’s worth of Premiership matches’. His first book, Kings of the Mountains: How Colombia’s Cycling Heroes Changed their Nation’s History was described in The Times as ‘meticulous, elegant and sensitive’. He has worked on the British terrestrial coverage of the Tour de France since 1997, he has won three National Sporting Club awards, and his book The Death of Marco Pantani was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. Colombia Es Paslin is his fifth book about Colombia.

When We Touch

Orion Spring

March 2023

Editor: Pippa Wright

Extent: 320

Rights: World

Rights Sold: US: Chronicle

Professor Michael Banissy

Touch matters

We rely on touch every day of our lives. It makes us who we are. It helps us connect with those around us. And yet touch between individuals can be fraught with confusion and misunderstanding.

In When We Touch, social neuroscientist Professor Michael Banissy blends expert scientific insights with anecdotes from 90s rom coms to office politics to explore the new science of human touch.

His groundbreaking new book explains why touch is essential for healthy development, why a hugged person is a healthier person, how holding hands can make you less afraid, why teams who high five each other win more games, and how a shared handshake makes you more likely to tell the truth.

Banissy tackles the nuances of appropriate touch across culture and gender, investigates our ‘touch personas’ and why they differ, and offers solutions to the ‘touch hunger’ that has become a modern epidemic.

About the author:

Michael Banissy is an award-winning Professor in Social Neuroscience. He has expertise in several research areas, including touch, social perception, creativity, and empathy. The breadth of his work is not only seen in scientific contributions but also in his efforts to bring science to the public and to industries. A member of The Royal Society Industry Research Fellow College, Michael has close interactions with technology companies exploring the tools to support social interaction in the workplace. He is also an experienced science communicator, having been involved in several major public festivals and working with a variety of media outlets for the last decade. His most recent project was the Touch Test - a science and broadcast collaborator with the BBC and Wellcome Collection. This project explored attitudes and experiences of touch via the world’s largest contemporary survey on the topic, public exhibitions, and a series of broadcast programmes focused on the topic of touch that received worldwide attention. When We Touch is Michael’s first book.

Handshakes, hugs, high fives and the new science behind why touch matters

Seven Dials

September 2022

Editor: George Brooker

Extent: 144

Rights: World Series Publishers:

Arabic: That Al Salasil

Chinese (simplified): Beijing

Imaginist Time Culture

German: DTV

Korean: Miraebook

Polish: Marginesy

Portuguese: 2020 Editora

Russian: AST Turkish: Epsilon

10 Things You Should Know

The Brain Professor Sophie Scott

Uncover the mind-blowing complexities of the brain and how it affects our personalities, behaviours and more.

Written by Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, Sophie Scott, and composed of ten mind-blowing yet accessible essays, The Brain guides you through the astounding complexities of the organ that makes you, you. From diving into the networks of neurons that are vital to our functioning, to the way our brains differ from one another and how neuroscience is shaping up for the future; this book is a guide to our most powerful and awe-inspiring body part.

If you have ever wondered what’s going on inside your head (or someone else’s), this book will be a fascinating and enthralling read.

About the author: Sophie Scott CBE FBA FMedSci is a British Cognitive Neuroscientist and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UCL). She has been researching the human brain since the 1990s, and has published over 130 peer reviewed papers. Her research investigates the brain bases of human vocal communication, including voices, speech and laughter. She was the 2017 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and she was awarded the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday prize and lecture in 2021.

Seven Dials

September 2022

Editor: George Brooker

Extent: 128

Rights: World Series Publishers:

Arabic: That Al Salasil

Chinese (simplified): Beijing

Imaginist Time Culture

German: DTV

Korean: Miraebook

Polish: Marginesy

Portuguese: 2020 Editora

Russian: AST Turkish: Epsilon

Numbers

10 Things You Should Know

Colin Stuart

Uncover the language of our universe - numbers - in this wideranging whistle-stop tour of the history and majesty of mathematics.

Our world simply wouldn’t function if we didn’t have numbers. But where do they come from? Why do we cut cake the wrong way? How can there be different sizes of infinity?

All these questions and more are answered in this engaging romp through the history of numbers by acclaimed science writer, Colin Stuart. From the mathematicians who have (and haven’t) shouted ‘Eureka!’ to the theories that affect and inform our everyday lives; Numbers shows us that maths was never boring - we were just being taught it in the wrong way.

Consisting of ten bite-sized essays, there’s no better guide to this fundamental science.

About the author:

Colin Stuart is an astronomy author and speaker who has talked to half a million people about the universe. His books have sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide and been translated into 21 languages. He’s written 200+ popular science article for The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, New Scientist and the European Space Agency among others. He is also a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and he’s talked about the wonders of the universe on Sky News, BBC News and Radio 5Live.

Orion Spring

January 2023

Editor: Jessica Duffy

Extent: 288

Rights: World

Your cosmic coming of age

Saturn Returns Caggie Dunlop

Through my own story, and the parallels of astrology, I will show you that the chaos of your twenties isn’t all as random as you think.

Welcome to your Saturn Return, your cosmic coming of age.

Your Saturn Return, which occurs every 27 to 29 years as Saturn re-enters the position it was in when you were born, is considered to be a rite of passage and a time of reckoning and renewal. When Caggie Dunlop read about the transit of the Saturn Return, everything changed; she realised that the shifts and redirections of her twenties were not failures or losses, but part of a necessary initiation into adulthood.

Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, Saturn Returns unpacks this astrological phenomenon, and helps you see the power and the meaning in it. Through sharing personal stories, guidance, expert advice and helpful exercises, Caggie empowers readers to embrace their own spiritual journey. Part memoir, part roadmap, and including chapters on relationships, self-worth and finding hope in the darkness, this is a book about storytelling, truth seeking and the quest for authenticity.

Saturn Returns is a fascinating and reassuring adventure into the cosmic pull of Saturn and a coming-of-age story that we can all feel a part of.

About the author: Caggie Dunlop is a singer-songwriter, former TV personality and host of the highly successful spirituality and wellbeing podcast, Saturn Returns. The podcast, which began in Spring 2020, explores the challenges and opportunities that come on the journey to self-discovery, underpinned by the astrological transit known as Saturn Return.

Orion Spring

May 2023

Editor: Pippa Wright

Extent: 256

Rights: World

Hack Your Hormones

Davinia Taylor

When we talk about hormones, we so often think of them as a ‘women’s issue’. But our hormones regulate everything from our sleep, to the way we eat, our stress response and our moods. In Hack Your Hormones Davinia Taylor, number one Sunday Times bestselling author and biohacking pioneer, breaks down how best to hack all of our hormones - not just the female ones. Davinia gives symptom-led advice, backed up with the expertise of a doctor, on how lifestyle hacks and supplements can balance our cortisol, adrenaline, dopamine and more, even Vitamin D (yep, it’s a hormone).

Sections include:

Why Can’t I Sleep?

Why Can’t I Stop Eating?

Why Do I Feel Like I’m Losing My Mind?

Why Am I So Lacking in Energy?

WTF is up with my hormonal cycle?

About the author:

Actress, fitness fanatic and health biohacker extraordinaire, Davinia’s career started on C4’s hit Soap Hollyoaks playing part girl Jude Cunningham. This led to film and television roles, as well as television presenting.

Davinia’s heavily documented party lifestyle led to a dependency on alcohol, post-natal depression and a struggle to regain her pre-baby body after four children. But, after genetic testing, Davinia biohacked her way to optimum health, losing nearly three stone in six months, and keeping it off. She is currently studying to become a Personal Trainer and shares her story through public events and on her rapidly-growing Instagram (@daviniataylor).

Seven Dials

August 2023

Editor: Vicky Eribo

Extent: 288

Rights: World

Michel Roux Jr at Home

Michel Roux Jr

100 simple and delicious recipes from the home of Michelin-starred chef, Michel Roux Jr.

Journey into the heart of Michel Roux Jr’s home kitchen as he shares the everyday recipes he enjoys with his family, including hearty breakfasts, quick mid-week dinners and weekend banquets. At the core of each recipe is the use of simple, delicious, and abundant ingredients, instilled in Michel from his time working in Michelin-starred kitchens.

Michel serves up recipes that include family classics passed down through the generations of the legendary Roux family, newer dishes that he loves to cook with his wife and daughter, as well as childhood favourites and feasts perfect for sharing with everyone.

About the author:

Michel Roux Jr is one of the UK’s most respected chefs. Le Gavroche, which he has run since 1991, continues to receive recommendations for excellence in every food guide. Michel’s early training in France instilled in him a belief in simplicity and quality of raw ingredients which he has put to use in developing recipes. He is also a bestselling author of numerous books including, Le Gavroche Cookbook, The French Kitchen and Cooking with The Master Chef. www.michelroux.co.uk/

Seven Dials

September 2022

Editor: Vicky Eribo

Extent: 272

Rights: World Rights Sold:

US: Diversion

The Bodyguard Lee Sansum, Howard Linskey

This is the story of the real bodyguard, Lee Sansum, ex-Royal Military Policeman, martial arts champion, and expert in close protection. Part of Mohamed and Dodi Al-Fayed’s protection team, Lee had to guard the most famous woman in the world, Princess Diana. He formed a close bond with Diana and the young princes, particularly Harry, and it was only by a stroke of luck that he was not in the car the night Diana died. That night proved to be the turning point in his own life.

Over the course of his career, Lee has worked with the rich and famous, such as Hollywood stars Tom & Nicole, Pele and Sylvester Stallone, and he gives a candid account of what it’s like to work in a job where lives are literally at stake.

Growing up in a tough part of Greater Manchester, Lee learnt the hard way that to survive you need to stand up to bullies and be harder than your opponent. A career in the Royal Military Police took him to the “Bandit Country” of South Armagh, where he pulled an AWOL squaddie out of a honey trap moments before an IRA active service unit arrived to kill him. He worked undercover in Northern Ireland and joined the SIB, the Army’s own internal affairs unit, before entering the world of private security, operating in the world’s hotspots, such as Libya and the breakaway state of Somaliland.

Lee’s story is one of quiet strength, of how reading a situation is invaluable to getting out of trouble. It is one of achieving personal goals and overcoming trauma through the help of his wife, Kate, and through his love of martial arts. It is also a fitting tribute to one of the outstanding figures of our age.

About the author:

Lee Sansum is an ex-Royal Military Policeman, martial arts champion, private military contractor and expert in close protection. He has worked with Hollywood stars, looking after Tom & Nicole, Pele and Sylvester Stallone. Working for the controversial billionaire, Mohamed al-Fayed, Lee went on to protect the most famous woman in the world, Princess Diana, with whom he formed a close bond.

W&N

March 2023

Editor: Ed Lake

Extent: 592

Rights: World

The Lives of Noël Coward

Masquerade Oliver Soden

The voice, the dressing-down, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe Spirit is not in production somewhere in the world. Phrases from Noël Coward’s songs - “Mad About The Boy”, “Mad Dogs and Englishman” - are forever lodged in the public consciousness. He was at one point the most highly paid author in the world. Yet some of his most striking and daring writing remains unfamiliar. As T.S. Eliot said, in 1954, “there are things you can learn from Noël Coward that you won’t learn from Shakespeare”.

Coward wrote some fifty plays and nine musicals, as well as revues, screenplays, short stories, poetry, and a novel. He was both composer and lyricist for approximately 675 songs. Louis Mountbatten’s famous tribute argued that, while there were greater comedians, novelists, composers, painters and so on, only “the master” had combined fourteen talents in one. So central was he to his age’s theatre that any account of his career is also a history of the British stage. And so daring was Coward’s unorthdoxy in his closest relationships, obliquely reflected throughout his writing, that it must also be a history of sexual liberation in the twentieth century. In Oliver Soden’s sparkling, story-packed new Life, the Master finally gets his due.

About the author:

Oliver Soden is a writer and broadcaster. His first book, a biography of the composer Michael Tippett, was a Book of the Year in The Observer, Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator. It was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize and won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Storytelling. Soden’s essays and reviews have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Literary Review and Art Newspaper. He grew up in Bath and Sussex, and lives in London.