Fall 2020 North America Rights Guide - US
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Fall 2020 North America Rights Guide
Contents
General Fiction (Page 3)
Crime & Thriller (Page 11)
Historical Fiction (Page 23)
Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror (Page 29)
Non-Fiction (Page 38)
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
M is for Mommy
Katy Cox
Agent: Katie Fulford / Ball Lomax Moreton
A humorous tale of the trials and tribulations of life as a
working mum, follows professional musician Lucy as she
attempts to juggle her return to work with looking after
her two young children – while also coming to terms with
the realisation that her adorable four-year-old son,
Stanley, is autistic.
The romance in her marriage is officially dead and so is her
career that took years to build. Instead of playing the cello
behind superstars at packed-out arenas, Katy now spends
every day mopping up broccoli vomit whilst listening to her
eldest son Stanley (4) recite facts about the gall bladder, and
UK: Corvus/Atlantic dealing with the explosion when things don’t go his way.
Editor: Sarah Hodgson
Date: Spring 2022 Husband Ed (42, guitarist) is easily distracted and despite
having the best of intentions, spends the bulk of his time
Material: COMING SOON meticulously organising his DVDs in chronological order and
bidding for Action Man toys on eBay.
Rights Available:
US & Canada
As their relationship seems irredeemable, Katy has an
epiphany and realises that Ed, like Stanley, is also on the
spectrum. This realisation explains everything and inspires Katy
to carry on fighting Stan’s corner. Despite his challenges, Ed
has managed to navigate his way through life successfully,
making him the ultimate role model for their son.
With their support, Stanley too, has the potential to find his
place in an ordinary world that simply isn’t designed for the
extraordinary.
M is for Mommy is a comic and often tear-jerking story of
unconditional love in its purest form.
Katy Cox is a professional cellist who has performed with a
string of famous artists, including Michael Bublé, based the
novel on her own experiences of raising two autistic children
whilst continuing to develop her career as a musician. 3
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Story of My Lives
Maria de Luca
Agent: Kiran Kataria / Keane Kataria
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if
you had made different decisions? In this funny yet
poignant story, one woman gets to find out as she lives
through her thirtieth birthday four times.
Maggie Fowler’s thirtieth birthday, is not going well. Her friends
have forgotten, and she’s just been fired. If only she hadn’t
decided a year ago to go part-time at the Ormond Hotel to
set up as a freelance events manager. Electra, Maggie’s bossy
virtual personal assistant, offers her a ‘universe reset’ from
her twenty-ninth birthday, and …..
DING! Margaret Fowler, successful Celebration Curator,
UK: On submission wakes up on her thirtieth birthday feeling smug. A year ago she
Extent: 105,000 words took redundancy from the Ormond and set up her own
Material: available events business, and it’s going well. Her only regret is breaking
up with her boyfriend Thomas two years ago. Electra works
Rights Available: her magic again and …
US & Canada
DING! Mags Fowler’s life is heading towards a dead end with
no hope of having children — a fate she can trace back to her
twenty-second birthday when she ditched her fiancé Steven
Love for his best friend Thomas. DING! And here is Margot
Fowler-Love, happily married to Steven and mother of two
beautiful children. At least … she thinks she ought to be happy.
But is she really?
There’s always one bad decision in her past to blame. At the
end of this strange birthday, all the different versions of Maggie
besiege her in her own home, each demanding her right to
exist. Then … DING! DING! DING! More versions come
into being, all claiming to be the original M. Fowler. Things have
got out of hand and Maggie can’t control this unruly crowd of
alter egos. How can she get her life back, and get her happy
ending?
Maria de Luca works in the world of theatre and film. She is a
Deputy Stage Manager and tours with productions from
theatres such as The Old Vic.
4
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Quiet Whispers Never Stop
Olivia Fitzsimons
Agent: Brian Langan / Storyline Literary Agency
A story of love, obsession and escape, an uncompromising,
lyrical tour-de-force that marks the arrival of an
extraordinary new voice in Irish fiction
Nuala Malin wants nothing more than to escape – from her
brooding husband Patsy, from the farm, from the inevitability of
hate and stagnation that is Northern Ireland in 1982, from her
life. Only her children, daughter Sam and baby son JP, hold her
firm, for now, and so she finds refuge with a 17-year-old paper
delivery boy with sallow skin and brown eyes. But this can only
ever be temporary, a sticking plaster on a festering wound, and
UK/Ireland: when her chance comes to leave, Nuala takes it.
Extent: 97,000 words
The name of the paper boy is Naoise.
Material: COMING SOON
Twelve years later, Sam Malin’s escape plans are hampered by
Rights Available: the fact that she is only 17, still at school. The place is still
US & Canada
rotten, but there are signs of hope and change that Sam
scarcely wants to believe. The past is always at her heels, her
mother’s vanishing act the defining moment that nobody, not
least her father, will ever talk about. When Sam meets a jagged,
magnetic older man, she is drawn to him, he to her.
His name is Naoise.
Olivia Fitzsimons was an Irish Writer Centre Novel Fair
Winner for 2020. Her feature film screenplay The Frequency of
Life and short Lesley agus Fionn are being developed by Jim
Sheridan’s Hell's Kitchen Ltd. The Quiet Whispers Never Stop is
her first novel
5
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Veneers
Holly Friend
Agent: Hannah Sheppard / D.H.H. Literary Agency
A compelling, irreverent and humorous tale about young
women, identity – on and offline – and revenge in the age
of #metoo, for readers of Emma Jane Unsworth’s Grown
Ups, Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times and Ottessa Moshfegh’s
My Year of Rest and Relaxation and for fans of Fleabag.
Orla is a directionless intern with a dubious attachment to the
truth. While finding her feet in South London, she discovers
that an old flame has been accused online of sexual assault.
From behind her screen, she watches as an uprising of young
women – led by enigmatic artist Cleo King – transforms the
internet into a game of victims and villains, while wrestling
with what the growing swell of accusation means for her own
experience with the perpetrator.
UK: on submission
Extent: 105,000 words Exploring the complexity in the grey areas of consent and
Material: Available
whether any of us is completely without digression, Veneers
examines the emotions involved in accepting the identity of
Rights Available:
US & Canada victim. Holly brilliantly pulls these various threads together in
her story of self-efficacy and young women who have come of
age online.
Holly Friend is a 26-year-old trend forecaster at The Future
Laboratory where her work focuses on Generation Z, brand
storytelling, and online and offline consumer behaviour. As well
as consulting and presenting for some of the world’s leading
brands, she has been quoted as an expert on meme culture for
The Guardian, dating apps for Dazed and positive singledom
for The Times. Hailing from Derbyshire, she now lives in East
London, where she harvests inspiration for her writing.
6
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
No Honour
Awais Khan
Agent: Annette Crossland / A For Authors Literary Agency
‘In No Honour, Awais Khan has crafted a deeply engaging story
that keeps you hooked from the first sentence to the end. It is a
masterful story of courage in the face of seemingly impossible
odds.’ - Sopan Deb, New York Times writer and author of Missed
Translations: Meeting The Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me
Love or Honour, Abida’s father had a choice. To drown his only
daughter in the river or destroy the reputation and honour of his
family and his entire village.
Abida’s pregnancy is barely showing when she is forced to flee
with her new husband Kalim, having been spared the medieval
UK: Orenda Books punishment the village Imam decreed by her father’s love. She’s in
Date: tbc love, her brother has taught her to read, the future looks bright.
Extent: 75,000 words But moving to the city for a new life doesn’t bring Abida the
Material: available freedom she dreamed of…
Rights Available: Awais Khan’s set in modern Pakistan shines a light on what
US & Canada
happens to girls who don’t live by the conservative codes
imposed by society…
Awais Khan is a writer and consultant based in Lahore. A
graduate of the University of Western Ontario and the University
of Durham, he has studied Creative Writing at the prestigious
Faber Academy in London. He now runs the largest Institution for
Creative Writing in Pakistan under the name ‘The Writing
Institute’ for aspiring and established
writers. His first novel IN THE COMPANY
OF STRANGERS was published by Simon &
Schuster India, Liberty Books in Pakistan,
and in the UK by The Book Guild. This is
also available in the US.
7
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Fallen
Mel O’Doherty
Agent: Brian Langan / Storyline Literary Agency
A stark and beautifully written debut novel about decades
of secrecy and scandal and the devastating impact on a
family.
Michael Connolly had never believed his mother. When he was
a child in the 1970s, she’d told him and his father about all the
things that happened to her in that place. All that the nuns had
done. The doctors encouraged Elaine to talk, and talk she did.
She even tried to tell the public. She wrote letters to the
newspapers. She picketed Mass with a sign that read: “They
killed my baby in Bessborough.”
The good, pious parishioners silenced her. She was delusional,
UK/Ireland: Bluemoose Books the doctors said. Her husband did not post her letters. Her
Date: June 2021 son did not believe her. Then, when Michael was twelve, she
Extent: 73,000 words took her own life.
Material: available
Three decades later, with his own life adrift, caught in the guilt
Rights Available: he and his father had lived with since that time, Michael sat
US & Canada watching the news on TV, and realised Elaine had been telling
the truth.
Mel O’Doherty lives in Douglas, Cork, and teaches English
and History. He was shortlisted for a Francis MacManus Short
Story Award in 2019. Fallen is his first novel. He is currently
writing a second novel.
8
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Now You See Me
Laura Starkey
Agent: Kate Hordern / K.H.L.A
Smart and contemporary, witty and stylish, Now
You See Me is a compelling and unputdownable
debut rom-com that explores both the pursuit and
the perception of love.
Rachel Ryan’s graduation day should be triumphant: a
celebration of three years’ hard work and her first class
honours degree. Instead, it begins with Rachel hiding in a hedge.
Not the most comfortable place to be, but the perfect vantage
point for spying on Jack Harper, her gorgeous, green-eyed
boyfriend.
Unfortunately, Jack isn’t alone. Still in yesterday’s clothes, he’s
passionately kissing another woman: the super-slim, sultry and
seductive Jessica Williams.
UK:
Date: Ten years later, Rachel has established a career in digital
Extent: marketing. She’s content at work, and Happy flatmates with her
best friend Anna. Life is steady. Rachel is going somewhere. So
what if she’s not quite sure of her destination?
Material: COMING SOON
Then there’s a shock announcement at work: her company is
Rights Available: being taken over, and whilst Rachel tries not to panic about
US & Canada redundancies, she’s horrified to discover that her new team
member is someone self-assured, uncommonly handsome and
with very familiar green eyes…
Laura was born in Warwickshire in 1982. After several years
teaching she is now a digital copywriter and designer. Despite
her disbelief in real life ‘meet cutes’, Laura first encountered her
husband on a Tube platform in London - a plot twist worthy of
any rom-com. She now lives in a small village in the West
Midlands with her family, her book collection and a mini
menagerie of pets. Laura is a graduate of the Faber Academy.
Now You See Me is her first novel.
9
General Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Spilt Milk
Amy Turner
Agent: Hannah Sheppard / D.H.H. Literary Agency
On the outside, I am @MsTWBF. Instagram popular and
Twitter droll. I am 74k-follower successful. Great marriage.
A hassled-but-finding-all-this-crap-amusing kind of mum.
Alongside the teaching, I make a pittance wage of the jokey
misery of motherhood. Of the drudgery of wiping a bum for
no money but for the love of a child who has made me
complete. Of my mistakes and your misfortune at having a
slummy mummy like me. But it is tongue in cheek. It is look
at how I can take the piss out of myself and still be a woman
who is pretty fucking close to having it all.
***
It is easy to curate a future, to believe in the story as it should be.
To put so much faith in that Happy Ever After that the lid quietly
closes on the now.
UK: on submission When Bea accidentally posts her gin-fuelled, for-her-eyes-only
thoughts about regrets and her secret plans to terminate her
Date:
second pregnancy, to her popular #motherhood blog, her
Extent: 100,000 words
reputation, her marriage and her life all fall apart. Yet perhaps
Material: COMING SOON everything was already broken, held together by the precariously
fraying threads of doing-the-right-thing…
Rights Available:
US & Canada Spilt Milk is full of heart and heartache. It’s about motherhood,
womanhood, grief, love and fractured expectations.
Amy Turner writes a food and pregnancy blog and is the author
(as Amy Beashel) of a YA novel, The Sky Is Mine, written in the
too-short hours when her small children were sleeping and her
husband was obsessing with boxsets (Oneworld, February 2020).
Inspired by the books she read at school in which she and her
mum would always look for female characters finding their own
self worth, Amy now writes about young women discovering just
that.
10Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Pepys and The Primrose Hill Murder
Malyn Bromfield
Agent: Kiran Kataria / Keane Kataria
Samuel Pepys turns detective when he is falsely accused of
murder and faces a race against time to find the real
perpetrator. Based on Pepys’ diary, this atmospheric
Restoration mystery will appeal to readers of C.C.
Humphreys and Susanna Gregory. Series potential.
London is still reeling from the aftermath of the Great Plague
when a fresh disaster occurs—a small fire at the King’s Bakery in
Pudding Lane becomes, in the hot, dry summer of 1666, an
unstoppable conflagration that consumes large swathes of the
city.
Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Naval Office and close associate
UK: On submission of King Charles II, walks around the burning city taking notes, and
Extent: 107,000 words
reports back to the King on how the fire is spreading. In the
Material: available
course of his wanderings he meets a Justice of the Peace, Edmund
Rights Available: Godfrey, anxious to help the victims of the disaster.
US & Canada
Two years later the nation is in the grip of anti-Catholic fever, and
the King offers a £500 reward for information relating to
treasonous plots. Titus Oates, a disgraced Anglican cleric, brings
fabricated evidence of a ‘Hellish Popish Plot’ to Godfrey, who fails
to report this to the authorities. Shortly afterwards, he is found
dead in a ditch on Primrose Hill. Pepys has enemies keen to
remove him from office, and they are quick to accuse him of
orchestrating Godfrey’s murder. In order to exonerate himself,
Pepys must act swiftly and solve the mystery of what really
happened to Edmund Godfrey on the day he died.
Malyn Bromfield is the author of Mayflowers for November,
which depicted the downfall of Anne Boleyn. A former teacher,
her lifelong fascination with the Tudors and Stuarts has inspired
her historical fiction. She lives in West Yorkshire.
11Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Ice Beneath Me
Patti Buff
Agent: Hannah Sheppard / DHH Literary Agency
A cracking crime debut set in frozen Minnesota.
Cold case obsessive Bo Parrington’s life fell apart a year ago when
she and her mother fell through the ice on a nearby frozen lake.
While her mother’s body was found immediately, Bo’s wasn’t but
she too was presumed dead. Seventeen days later, Bo resurfaced
in a hospital in Canada after a dissociative fugue episode with no
memory of the accident or where she’d been. Unable to return
to work as a cop, a job she loved, due to her trauma, she turns to
solving crimes online.
When she witnesses a car drive onto the ice and someone force
a young man to his death in the frozen water beneath she alerts
her policeman uncle who instigates a search.
But with no body found, and Bo’s judgment called into question
UK: On submission because of her PTSD, the case is closed. Bo is sure her mind isn’t
Extent: 100,000 words playing tricks this time but she’s going to have to use all her cold
Material: available case cracking skills to prove it…
Rights Available: This book will appeal to My Favorite Murder listening true-crime
US & Canada enthusiasts, with its focus on a woman who was destined for a
fast-track career in law enforcement before her breakdown and
who is active on cold case solving websites. It’s an intricately
woven plot touching on mental health and gaslighting set in the
frozen landscape made familiar to crime fans by FARGO. THE ICE
BENEATH ME earned an honourable mention in the reader
voted New Voices Award at the 2019 Capital Crime Festival in
London.
Patti is an exciting new voice in crime fiction. She’s a native
Minnesotan who now lives in a disgustingly beautiful area of south
Germany with her husband and two grown children. She has
already started writing a second book featuring Bo who has
managed to finish her Criminal Science degree but is forced to
become a PI because her mental health history is a barrier to a
career in law enforcement. She’s still active on Websleuths though
and might have just discovered a serial killer…
12Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Conspiracy
A A Chaudhuri
Agent: Annette Crossland / A For Authors Literary Agency
An explosive cat and mouse thriller by former City lawyer
A.A. Chaudhuri.
Young city of London lawyer Sienna is on a hen weekend in Las
Vegas with friends when several bombs explode in the hotel
they’re staying at, killing the bride-to-be and most of their party.
It appears to be a coordinated attack, but when no group claims
responsibility something doesn’t add up, and Sienna, distraught at
losing her friend and having narrowly escaped death herself, is
approached by MI5 to help catch the ruthless organisation
responsible.
UK: on submission
Extent: 100,000 words Puzzling suicides, secret offshore trusts, the abduction of ethnic
Material: available minority students at Oxford thirty-five years ago, and a fanatical
secret white suprematist sect – all these are somehow related
Rights Available:
and Sienna must play a dangerous game of cat and mouse to help
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find the missing link.
Should she be looking closer to home?
A.A. Chaudhuri is a former city lawyer and highly ranked British
Junior Tennis player. She is the author of two pacy legal thrillers,
The Scribe, and The Abduction, both featuring lawyer Maddy
Kramer and DCI Jake Carver.
13Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Nobody’s Hero
M.W. Craven
Agent: David Headley / DHH Literary Agency
A fast-paced standalone thriller set in the US to appeal
to Jack Reacher fans from the CWA Gold Dagger award
winning M. W. Craven.
Ben Koenig has Urbach-Wiethe disease, a rare condition that
affects the body’s response to danger. This should have ruled
him out of police work, but his boss in the US Marshall’s
Special Operations Group (the unit that goes after
the really bad guys) recognised an upside and took him on
under supervision.
This worked well until Ben killed the son of a Russian mob
boss during a raid. A million dollar bounty was put on his
UK: Little, Brown / Constable head and to protect his family and friends, he had to
Editor: Krystyna Green
disappear.
Date: tbc
Extent:
Material: available Six years into his exile, Ben’s been keeping his head down,
but one day is arrested for no reason. It turns out that he had
Rights Available: been put on the US Marshall’s Most Wanted list by his old
US & Canada boss who was desperate to track him down. He needs his
help. His daughter has vanished and he needs Ben to find her.
Ben’s search takes him to Washington and ultimately to a
town in Texas with a deadly secret.
M W Craven won the CWA Gold Dagger award for the first
Washington Poe thriller which was published in 2018 by
Constable & Robinson. He lives in Cumbria with his wife, where
he tries to go out as little as possible.
14Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Cabin Fever
Alex Dahl
Agent: Laura Longrigg / MBA Literary Agency
How well can we ever really know someone else? And
could it be that those closest to our hearts and minds are
the keepers of the biggest secrets?
Experienced psychotherapist Dr. Kristina Moss is deeply
unsettled when her long-standing client, celebrated novelist
Leah Iverson, goes missing.Their last session was unusually
tense and Leah seemed distracted and paranoid. As she’d left
she’d pressed an envelope with a message and a key into
Kristina’s hand, begging Kristina to meet with her at her
remote cabin…
Set in Oslo and the remote forests of Telemark, Cabin Fever
UK: Head of Zeus captures the bleak and eerie atmosphere of classic Nordic
Editor: Maddy O’Shea Noir thrillers, using two enigmatic female protagonists whose
Publication: Summer 2021 very different lives collide head-on.
Extent:
Material: COMING SOON
As her therapist, you think you know everything about her. But what
Rights Available:
US & Canada if she is the one who knows everything about you?
Cabin Fever is a twisty, fast-paced psychological thriller with
themes such as obsession, stalking, and the most vicious of
betrayals. It explores the intense and fascinating therapeutic
bond between therapist and client, as well as the sometimes
claustrophobic intimacies of marriage.
Alex Dahl is half American, half Norwegian and now lives in
London. Cabin Fever is her fourth novel.
15Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Last Man Home
A Thankful Village Mystery
Jenny Dent
Agent: Anne Williams / KHLA
With shades of Downton Abbey, Last Man Home is the first
of a proposed crime series set in a fictional village inspired
by one of England’s real ‘Thankful Villages’ at the end of the
First World War.
The Great War is over, and the village of Waterbeck in England’s
beautiful Lake District is welcoming their last man home with a
parade and a party at the Hall.
Miraculously, all those who went out to France have returned,
though most are scarred some in ways more obvious than
others. Whilst Mercy Appleby, who had taken on the role of
Estate Manager whilst the men were away, makes weekly visits to
her shell-shocked husband in Edinburgh's Craiglockhart Asylum,
UK: On submission
Extent: 80,000 words her childhood friend Frank Holland, seems to have emerged
Material: available unscathed, ready to take on the challenges the new world
presents.
Rights Available:
US & Canada But as the village celebrates Frank’s first night back, tragedy
strikes - the body of a young woman, effervescent Joan Freeman,
is found, strangled, in the Hall garden.
Fingers point at Joan’s husband, whom the war has left full of
anger and resentment. Mercy is not so sure but, as the police
arrive to start the investigation, she realises it is highly likely the
murderer is still in their midst…
Jenny Dent lives in Edinburgh. This is a debut historical novel.
Note: England’s ‘Thankful Villages’ are those that lost no men
during the First World War, where all the men who left to serve
in the armed forces came home.
16Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Art of Death
David Fennell
Agent: David Headley / DHH Literary Agency
‘Fennell can write up a storm’ James Patterson
An intensely creepy debut serial killer thriller that will leave
you wary of how much you share online, for fans of Ragdoll
and The Whisper Man.
London's latest art installation is a real killer . . .
An underground artist leaves three glass cabinets in Trafalgar
Square that contain a gruesome installation: the corpses of three
homeless men.
With the artist promising more to follow, newly-promoted
Detective Inspector Grace Archer and her caustic DS, Harry
Quinn, must race against time to follow what few clues have been
left by a savvy killer.
UK: Zaffre/Bonnier
Editor: Kathrine Armstrong As more bodies are exhibited at London landmarks and live
Date: February 2021 streamed on social media, Archer and Quinn's pursuit of the
Extent: 400 pp elusive killer becomes a desperate search.
Material: available
But when Archer discovers that the killer might be closer than
Rights Available: she originally thought - she realises that he has his sights set
US & Canada
firmly on her . . .
He is creating a masterpiece. And she will be the star of his show.
David Fennell was born in Belfast during the Troubles and with
youthful dreams of a new life he left Belfast for London in 1985
with £50 in one pocket and a dog-eared copy of Stephen King’s
The Stand in the other. He now lives in Brighton and works in
data security, so knows how vulnerable our personal data can be
online.
17Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Oligopoly
Grace Marosova
Agent: Katie Fulford / Bell Lomax Moreton
A debut crime thriller, perfect for anyone who could
dream up a combination of McMafia meets Riviera.
You’re in the house alone.
Unexpectedly, you notice three men enter via a CCTV monitor.
One of them is shot dead.
The shooter is the head of the Ukrainian Mafia.
Standing next to him is the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police.
Nobody knows you’re there.
You can keep your mouth shut - if you escape.
But the man shot dead is the love of your life.
UK:
What do you do?
Extent:
Material: COMING SOON This is the question Karina Templeton must ask herself.
After an attempt on her life Karina goes into hiding and
Rights Available:
US & Canada discovers a damning exposé her boyfriend, Roman Petrov, had
made about a depraved global human trafficking organisation.
To save her life and the countless lives of others she enrols the
help of Dominic Gray, her best friend and brilliant property
lawyer, and Vincent Villiers, a trusted journalist, to help her
bring this whole organisation down
Grace Marosova is a half English, half Russian law graduate,
who is now head of the Russian desk for a leading London
Estate Agent.
18Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
A Fatal Endeavour
Tom Hindle
Agent: Harry Illingworth / DHH Literary Agency
A classic, golden age style crime novel that will appeal
to fans of Anthony Horowitz’s The Magpie Murders,
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and the
hit film Knives Out.
November 1924 – The Endeavour has set sail from
Southampton to New York ahead of an international art
fair. When an elderly passenger is found dead at the foot of
a flight of stairs, it’s declared a tragic accident. However,
ships officer Timothy Birch, a character scarred by war and
tragedy, is tasked with escorting James Temple, an
obnoxious young Scotland Yard inspector who appears to
have some secrets on his own, in a precautionary
examination of the body.
The investigation soon takes a sinister turn when they are
led to the theft of a priceless painting, the very existence of
UK: On submission
which is a closely guarded secret from all but its owner –
Extent: 384 pp
and the dead man.
Material: available
With just days remaining until the Endeavour docks in New
Rights Available: York and the culprit walks free, Birch joins Temple in a
US & Canada desperate search for the stolen painting and the truth of
the old man’s death. There are lies and secrets at every
turn though, and it seems that even Temple has just as
much to hide as he does to uncover.
With a dead body, a stolen painting and wealthy, dishonest
individuals around every corner on, can anyone really be
trusted? And just what is Temple so reluctant to tell Birch
about his own business?
A Fatal Endeavour is a smart crime novel with twists and
turns aplenty, but most of all it is fun and a fantastic puzzle
to solve.
Tom Hindle is a Yorkshireman living in Oxfordshire. He
works for a PR agency but hopes one day to be a full time
writer. Inspired by Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz,
this is his first novel.
19Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Terms of Restitution
Denzil Meyrick
Agent: Jo Bell / Ball Lomax Moreton
Gangs of London meets the Sopranos in a rollercoaster ride
of brutality, tenderness, warmth, misplaced loyalties,
betrayal and the utterly unexpected.
Gangland boss Zander Finn is so sickened by the brutal
murder of his son in a Paisley pub, he decides to change his life
and moves clandestinely to London and becomes an
ambulance driver. But when his old second-in-command
Malky Maloney tracks him down, Finn knows he must return.
Both his real family and his crime family face an existential
threat from Albanian mobsters determined to take control of
the Scottish underworld.
Under the leery eye of his charismatic mother, Maggie Finn, the
family matriarch, he must try and look after his lovelorn younger
UK: On submission daughter, and her older sister who is pregnant to his old enemy
Extent: 92,000 words Joe Mannion’s son. His estranged wife, who has more than just a
Manuscript: Available business relationship with Mannion, and his remaining son,
crippled whilst serving in the military in Afghanistan also require
Rights Available: his attention. But most of all, he must take back what is his.
US & Canada
Facing the forces of law and order under Detective Chief
Superintendent Amelia Langley, a ruthless gang of Albanians, a
beautiful, mysterious, but deadly Italian woman, deceit, dishonour
and betrayal on all fronts, it looks like Finn may have made the
wrong choice to come home. But there are many paths to
redemption.
Denzil Meyrick is the bestselling author of the acclaimed DCI
Daley series, which has sold over 1 million copies across all
formats.
20Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Out Of Shot
Debby Waldron
Agent: Sara Keane / Keane Kataria
A remote Highland village. Two outsiders. One missing
child. And a guilty secret....
Film-maker Claire Armstrong has swapped city life for Kylecraig,
a remote coastal community in the Highlands, where she is
making a documentary about a year in the life of the local
school. She’s still settling in when another outsider appears at
the school – the enigmatic new teacher Jackson, who for some
reason does his best to avoid her camera.
Claire is increasingly attracted to Jackson but is confused by his
reluctance to share any personal information about himself. And
why does he choose to live in a campervan on the beach in the
dead of winter?
UK: On submission As her relationship with Jackson deepens and the harsh
Extent: 75,000 words Highland winter grips the village, Claire is unsettled by a series
Material: available of strange incidents at her isolated cottage. Are they just
random events or is someone trying to scare her?
Rights Available:
US & Canada When a boy from the school goes missing, the village is
swamped by journalists and Kylecraig becomes headline news.
Suspicion and anger turn to hatred, as some locals are convinced
that Jackson is the prime suspect. He is driven from the village –
or has he run away?
Heartbroken and unsure whom she can trust, Claire carries on
filming her documentary, but becomes aware that sinister events
are unfolding in Kylecraig way out of shot of her camera.
And just who is Jackson and what was he really doing in
Kylecraig?
A twisty plot and atmospheric setting reminiscent of Elly
Griffiths and Ann Cleeves.
Debby Waldron has had a long and varied career at the BBC,
and currently works at the BBC Alba, the Gaelic news service in
Inverness, Scotland.
21Crime & Thriller Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Silk Pavilion
Sarah Walton
Agent: Martin Goodman / Barbican Press
A steamy upmarket psychological thriller set in Deià on the
Spanish island of Mallorca.
Lucy’s on assignment. The wild reclusive writer awaits her arrival in
his Mallorcan home. She wants the story of his life. He wants her to
become part of it.
Villa Rosa hides a dark secret. Beneath Deià’s sunny olive groves
are the bodies of a generation. Spain’s unearthed shadow entwines
with Lucy’s as her own skeletons start to rattle out of her closet.
Will she uncover the truth before it’s too late, or replay the
pattern of her childhood abuse?'
The backstory of the book, those 'bodies of a generation', is the
UK: Barbican Press
Date: June 22 Spanish Civil War. The ruling that declared that no acts from the
Extent: war, even rape and murder, can be investigated or guilt attributed, is
Material: COMING SOON being challenged in Spain just now. It's also a deep psychological
thriller, a woman coming to see how her sexual behaviour is
Rights Available: dictated by childhood trauma.
US & Canada
Sarah Walton is an author, writing coach and founder of Soul
Writing Intuitive Coaching. Her debut novel, Rufius was long-listed
for the Polari First Book Prize.Her second novel, Sophia’s Tale was
written using her Soul Writing method and the process of writing it
helped write her brain back to health after she sustained a brain
injury, which caused language loss and writer’s block. The Silk
Pavilion is her third novel.
22Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Art of Secrets
Dodie Bishop
Agent: Sara Keane / Keane Kataria
In the tradition of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The
Miniaturist, a captivating novel vividly set in 17th century
Amsterdam, inspired by the life and career of the Dutch
Golden Age still life artist Clara Peeters.
Clara Peeters enjoys a privileged upbringing at her father’s estate
in Antwerp, but her world is rocked by the death of her mother
which leaves her with a profound fear of childbirth. So much so,
that she rejects an offer of marriage from childhood sweetheart,
Henri, and instead becomes a pupil to still life artist Osias Beerts
in Amsterdam.
UK: on submission A young woman in a male-dominated world, Clara is befriended
Extent: 102,000 words by fellow pupil Nico Cavello, and builds a reputation as an
Material: available innovative still life artist. She wins the patronage of powerful
Burgomeister Fabritius, but this turns to dangerous hostility when
Rights Available: Clara spurns his sexual advances. After he almost rapes her, she
US & Canada
exacts a quiet revenge by hiding a tiny self-portrait of herself
holding a skull in a painting he has commissioned.
But the powerful Fabritius is out to ruin Clara. On his instigation,
her sister Adela becomes the victim of a vicious rape and false
imprisonment. Only the intervention of Clara’s old love, Henri –
now a wealthy merchant – secures her release. But Fabritius will
not stop there. He uses the tiny skull she hid long ago in the
painting to influence the Calvinist synod to accuse her of
witchcraft.
Dodie Bishop recently gained an MA in Creative Writing from
the Open University. Inspired by a visit to the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam, THE ART OF SECRETS is the result of her passion
for historical fiction and admiration for Dutch Golden Age artist
Clara Peeters’ achievement in an era hostile to women working
in male domains. Dodie lives in the Blackdown Hills in Devon.
23Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Alice & Iris
Leigh Chambers
Agent: Annette Crossland /A For Authors Agency
‘When one considers that these are the first photographs
which these children ever took in their lives, it is
impossible to conceive that they are capable of technical
manipulation which would deceive experts.’ Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, Yorkshire Weekly Post
Alice & Iris is a charming novel based on the real story of two
young cousins who in 1917 convinced a world in the grip of
war that fairies do exist, capturing them in photographs taken
by a stream in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley.
When Frances and her mother leave South Africa to spend the
UK: On submission remainder of the First World War with family in Yorkshire it
Extent: 80,000 words falls to a begrudging Elsie to entertain her little cousin. Franny
Material: available
loves playing in the woods down by the stream, seeking out
Rights Available: fairies living amongst the trees and Elsie indulges Franny’s
US & Canada imagination by capturing them on film.
The photographs were so convincing that when Elsie’s mother
showed them to her local Theosophical Society the local
newspaper takes up the story and the fairies found an earnest
believer in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
With such high profile attention, what started out as a bit of
innocent fun became a lie spinning out of control and for
Franny and Elsie (who were given the names Alice and Iris in
the press) the repercussions rippled down the years…
Leigh Chambers is a humanist celebrant conducting non-
religious wedding and naming ceremonies, works as a copy
editor, and presents Bookmark, a show about books and
writing on Cambridge radio station. This is her first novel
24Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Repossession
Reagan Lee Ray
Agent: David Headley / D.H.H. Literary Agency
repossession. /ˌriːpəˈzɛʃ(ə)n/.
the act of placing a demon into a person’s soul, in
particular as a legal form of punishment, sanctioned by a court
of law.
London, 1930s: Edwin Feathergill was born a Repossessor. He
collects and holds demonic spirits inside himself, a life that takes
him away from home, expunging evil from the furthest reaches of
the country. When his wife, Constance, falls ill and Edwin is forced
to rethink his work in order to stay close to her so accepts a job
at the infamous Bedlam Hospital. There he meets both friend and
foe in the forms of Philip, the orderly, and Doctor Hartley, the
morally corrupt lead psychiatrist.
UK: on submission
Extent: 80,000 words Edwin is horrified when Hartley allows one of the patients, Rose,
Material: available
to die after inflicting an injury on herself. As her life slowly drains
away, Rose’s spirit is accidentally drawn into Edwin, a happening
Rights Available:
US & Canada punishable by death. He must rid himself of her spirit and free her
from the demons he hosts.
Salvation comes in the form of Alice, a young orphan flower seller,
with whom Edwin has formed a bond. In rescuing her from
Hartley’s latest experimental treatment, a crude version of the
electric chair, she makes the ultimate sacrifice.
When the demons live inside your own head, can good ever
really triumph over evil?
Reagan Lee Ray is the writer of dark, alternate history, focusing
on adding her own twist to already compelling events. When she’s
not working, Reagan can often be found taking in the scenery on
the coastline where she lives. She works part-time at
Waterstones.
25Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Burnings
Naomi Kelsey
Agent: Anne Williams / K.H.L.A.
The Burnings is a powerful historical novel of persecution and
conspiracy, centred around Edinburgh’s 16th Century
Berwick Witch Trials, for readers of The Familiars and The
Witchfinder’s Daughter.
In 1589 they were burning a witch in Elsinore… Two years later they
are burning a witch on Edinburgh’s Castle Hill…
Is it fear or the wind the brings through the window and into the
bloody softness and glitter of the royal chambers a small that scratches
against skin, snags on silk: the roast-pork-wrongness of burning flesh?
Geillis Duncan and Margareta Vinstar. One a Scottish fisherman’s
wife, the other lady in writing to Princess Anne of Denmark, soon
UK: to be Scotland’s queen. Little except their sex connects them.
Date: Except for witchcraft. For Margareta’s wet-nurse was a woman
Extent: renewed for her healing powers, whose daughter Isla, Margareta’s
blood sister, has powers and connections that extend across the
Material: COMING SOON
North Sea as far as Geillis, assistant to MidLothin midwife Agnes
Rights Available: Sampson - and from her to the Scottish Court. And to Francis
US & Canada Stuart, Lord Bothwell, formerly Scotland’s Regent, who knows
that James VI, newly ascended to the throne, has an obsession
with witchcraft, and that the surest way to destroy the man he is
determined to supplant, is to drive him mad with fear…
Naomi Kelsey teaches English Literature in Newcastle. This is
her first novel.
26Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Weight of a Human Heart
Daniel Mallen
Agent: Brian Langan / Storyline Literary Agency
Why would a good man, disillusioned with war, volunteer to join
the SS?
Why would he ask to be posted to the horror of the
concentration camps?
What if that was the only way to get his son back?
Spring, 1944. Deep in the frozen hell of the Eastern Front, Captain
Max Jessen longs for his home in rural Germany, and for his wife
Lena and their son Manfred. His ticket back finally comes by way
of a Soviet rocket that takes his arm and the last remnants of his
patriotism. Max returns to shocking news. Lena has died from TB,
and eight-year-old Manfred has been taken away from his family
and incarcerated in a children’s home, to be part of a Nazi social
UK/Ireland: On submission experiment. Manfred is a mischling, a part-blood Gypsy. Max tries
Extent: 95,000 words everything to get Manfred out of St. Josef’s, until he discovers too
Material: available late that the children have been transported to Auschwitz.
Rights Available: A desperate Max decides he has no option but to volunteer for
US & Canada camp duty as an officer in the SS. Once there, however, he learns
the truth of the camps. Max faces a race against time: find
Manfred and get him out before he is sent to the gas chamber.
The Weight of a Human Heart is an emotionally charged historical
adventure that asks what lengths people will go to in order to
protect their loved ones. Inspired by the real life stories of the
Sinti children of St Josef’s The Weight of a Human Heart takes a
new angle on the darkest moment in recent human history.
Daniel Mallen is a firefighter from Cork, Ireland. He was a
member of the Irish pop band Treehouse Diner, who had a couple
of hits in the Irish charts in the 1990s. He is also a former
stained-glass artist and a published songwriter.
27Historical Fiction Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Planthunter
Thomas Mogford
Agent: Broo Doherty / D. H. H.Literary Agency
A sweeping, atmospheric, love story and white-knuckle adventure
ride, The Planthunter brings to life a period in history when real-
life Indiana Jones characters risked their lives to find the exotic
plants that fill our gardens today.
King’s Road, Chelsea, 1867 – a street lined not with fashionable
clothes shops, but with the vast plant nurseries that catered to
the Victorians’ obsession with exotic flora. Working at the most
successful nursery of them all – JM Piggott’s Plant Emporium – is
Harry Compton, a young salesman frustrated by the fact that his
employer places a higher value on his handsome looks – ‘the face
that sold a thousand pot-plants’ – than his horticultural skills.
When a mysterious Irishman named Lorcan Darke gifts Harry a
map detailing the secret location of a new and dazzling plant,
Harry sees a chance to leave behind this suffocating world of
UK: Welbeck stovehouses and crowded lodgings and become a planthunter –
Editor: Tara Loder one of that reckless band of adventurers whose job it is to
Date: Spring 2022 source the plants prized so highly by Victorian society.
Extent: 95,000 words
Material: Available
Having secured passage to China on a tea clipper, Harry meets
January 2021
Clarissa Lockhart, the prickly widow of a Shanghai opium
Rights Available: magnate, and together they embark on an epic journey down the
US & Canada Yangtze River and into the dangerous heartland of China.
But Harry’s old boss, Josiah Piggott, is only too aware of what his
former employee is up to, and has every intention of stealing
what Harry and Clarissa have worked so hard to find…
Thomas Mogford is the author of five Spike Sanguinetti
novels which are published by Bloomsbury. They are being
developed for TV and have been shortlisted for the CWA
New Blood Dagger. He lives in South London with his family
and spends more time than is strictly necessary tending to
their tiny courtyard garden.
28Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Line
Niall Bourke
Agent: Brian Langan / Storyline Literary Agency
An experimental work of speculative fiction, Line is the elegant
answer to maintaining a new world order. Following the financial
collapse of Europe and North America and the powerful
economic dominance of an Afro-Hispanic alliance built on data-
finance, a mass migration to the tropical regions which threatens
the balance of these new economies.
Line is the story of Willard who, along with his mother and
girlfriend Nyla, spend their days in a seemingly endless line (or
queue). Survival is dictated by the ultimate imperative: obey the
rules, or you will lose your place. Everything changes the day
Willard’s mother dies and he learns an uncomfortable truth
Ireland: Tramp Press about the world he thought he knew. He and Nyla set out on a
Date: Spring 2021 journey that will change their lives for ever.
Extent: 188pp
Material: available In its Beckettian sparseness, Line pushes the boundaries of
contemporary fiction. At once self-contained and deeply moving,
Rights Available: this stunning novel is concerned with contemporary issues such
US & Canada
as migration and the refugee crisis, big data and the erosion of
democracy, climate change, colonialism, conformity and fanaticism.
Niall Bourke’s short stories have been shortlisted for numerous
awards including the Costa Short Story Award, the Hennessey
New Irish Writing Award and the ASOL Tom-Gallon Trust Award.
Originally from County Kilkenny, Niall now lives in London where
he teaches English
29Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Those Fatal Flowers
Shannon Burnette
Agent: John Baker / Bell Lomax Moreton
A dark and gripping dark fantasy story by an American
author from the same rich Greco-Roman mythology that
inspired Madeline Miller’s Circe, with the compelling
darkness of Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching and
a love story that embodies the sapphic longing and
forbidden romance of the Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Roanoke Colony, 1589. When a half-dead woman washes
ashore in a boat filled with treasure, the colonists are too
greedy to ask questions. The woman, Thelia, reveals that she is a
princess in search of a suitable husband to return with her to
her mysterious, distant homeland. Unfortunately for the colony,
Thelia is not who, or what, she says she is.
UK:
Extent: Centuries ago, Thelia was cursed to be a siren after losing the
love of her life to the god of the underworld. Now, after
Material: COMING SOON sacrificing a sailor grants her a human form, she has an
opportunity: she can save her sisters from the same curse with
Rights Available:
US & Canada a final, spectacular offering. For that, she’ll need male victims,
and Roanoke has plenty.
But Roanoke is dangerous, especially for a woman. Thelia will
need the help of the women around her, especially from Cora, a
beautiful settler who resembles Thelia’s lost love. It is a tricky
proposition, considering the fate she has planned for their
husbands, fathers, and sons.
Shannon Burnette graduated with honours from the
University of Iowa with a B.A. in Anthropology and a minor in
Latin. She was especially interested in classical myth, religion, and
magic, and the roles women played in each. Her writing
explores how traditional power structures perpetrate violence,
and her characters seek to tear them down.
30Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
The Principles of Moments
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson
Agent: John Baker / Bell Lomax Moreton
Winner of the inaugural 2020 Gollancz and Rivers of
London BAME SFF award.
In self-deified Emperor Thracin’s brave new galaxy, Humans
are not classified as citizens. Instead, they are laborers
indentured to the empire, working to repay the billions in
debt they unwittingly incurred when they settled on Gahraan
—a planet already owned by someone else.
Asha Akindele has lived her whole life on Gahraan, eking out
an existence between factory assembly lines and constant
terror--studying stolen aeronautics manuals in the dead of
night and entertaining impossible dreams of pilotship. Then
UK: On submission she discovers she has a sister imprisoned by the Emperor,
Extent: 124,000 words and is forced to make a choice: stay enslaved, but relatively
safe, or escape and risk everything in the name of family.
Material: COMING SOON
With the help of a hopeless time-traveler named Obi who
Rights Available:
US & Canada just wants to return home to London, 1812, and his almost-
boyfriend and future king of England, George IV, the reluctant
aid of a mouthy deckhand named Xavior whose past is a
mystery even to himself, Asha must travel through the stars
in an attempt to save a girl she’s never met, yet vowed to
rescue.
But the hatred of Humanity runs deep in Thracin’s empire,
and navigating a galaxy that sees her as nothing more than a
planet-snatching thief will not be easy. But if she fails, her
sister dies. If she fails, she’s wasted the one chance she’s ever
had to claw her way out of the shackles that bind her—the
one chance she’s ever had to be a hero.
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson is a English Literature and Classical
Studies student of Nigerian and Jamaican descent, and is also
co-founder of Impact of Omission, an organisation dedicated
to decolonising the UK’s compulsory curriculum, that has 31
been featured in publications such as The Guardian and The
Huffington Post.Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
MANNA
Alex Latimer
Agent: John Baker / Bell Lomax Moreton
M A N N A i s a n i n s p i ri n g s t o r y o f h u m a n
perseverance and an ode to the preservation of
our planet.
Perfect for fans of Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven and
Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars, it is a story of survivors holding
on to their humanity and is guaranteed to help you realise the
value in our own little blue dot in the universe.
MANNA follows three groups of survivors, before and after an
environmental apocalypse that sees life on Earth eradicated
from the microscopic level upward. An elderly father and his son
survive by their wits; Tully and her husband John survive in a
UK: On submission buried submarine; and Rebecca, Thea and Cal survive on Mars as
Extent: 76,000 words experimental colonists. Thirty years after the world has ended
Material: available they meet near Cape Canaveral in the hope that life, with a little
help from above, might find a way.
Rights Available:
US & Canada
This isn’t a story of square-jawed heroes defying the odds, or
battling a zombie horde, but a story about a small group of real
people, of different beliefs but a shared goal, facing obstacles like
avoiding starvation or crossing a river, but most of all, it’s a story
about hope.
Alex Latimer is a South African writer and illustrator living
in Cape Town. He has a degree in English and Philosophy and has
written and illustrated for many major brands across the globe.
Alex’s picture books have won the Hampshire Picture Book
Award, the CELI Read Aloud Book Award and have been
shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Alongside
this, Alex partnered with author Diane Awerbuck to write
the Divided States series, under the pseudonym Frank Owen,
published by Atlantic in 2018.
32Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Spirit Nights
Easterine Kire
Agent: Martin Goodman / Barbican Press
‘Tiger has eaten the sun!’ screams Tola the seeress when
darkness suddenly descends at midday, and the great spiritual
struggle begins to restore the light.
An ancient prophecy is fulfilled when darkness envelops a
number of villages for days on end. The only thing they know is
that a terrible taboo has been violated in the spirit world. Only
by crossing the borders between the natural world and the spirit
world, and acting with wisdom and courage can they get the light
back, but who will dare to do that?
Accounts of sudden darkness descending on the land exist in at
least two tribal histories of the Naga people, the Rengma and the
UK: Barbican Press Chang. The story of Spirit Nights is inspired by a story of darkness
Extent: tbc narrated by the Chang Naga tribe. Names and incidents are
Material: COMING SOON borrowed from the original tale, but it follows the path of fiction
to achieve its telling.
Rights Available:
US & Canada
Easterine Kire is a poet and author, and has won Hindu Writer
of the Year in India, and the Catalan PEN International Free Voice
Award, 2013. Originally from Nagaland in north-east India, she
now lives in Norway.
33Speculative/SF & Fantasy/Horror Helen Edwards Rights Agency
My Brother The Messiah
Martin Vopĕnka
Translation: Hana Sklenkova
Agent: Martin Goodman / Barbican Press
It’s 2096. Scientists work to protect a baking planet. What a
drought-stricken Europe needs is rain. What it gets is a
messiah.
Eli is born in a suburb of Prague. A rainstorm heralds the birth.
Perhaps this messiah is for real. Eli’s father abandons the family
to become the dictator’s right-hand man. Eli’s elder brother
Marek guides Eli through his short and powerful life.
Can tales of a messiah be enough to heal a ravaged planet in
which few babies are born? If so, Marek works with the zeal of
a prophet. Aged 72, he’s still going strong. A new follower joins
Marek’s community, young Natalia. She awakens the old man to
the joys of the body. But what’s the worth of a human love
UK: Barbican Press
when the environment is collapsing? Marek sets out to find his
March 2021
Extent: 257pp answer.
Material: available
My Brother the Messiah is a story about daring to seed the
Rights Available: future of our planet.
US & Canada
‘Vopenka has yet again produced a book that explores many
pressing issues of the near future. Highly readable, beautiful
and terrifying at the same time, it presents to us a future that
may not be as distant as it may seem at first sight.’—Eliška
Prokopová, iLiteratura
Martin Vopĕnka is a Czech traveller, writer and publisher and
is the author of 16 books for adults and children. He is the
Head of the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers
and owner of Prah publishers.
34Recently Published Helen Edwards Rights Agency
Virgin & Child
Maggie Hamand
Agent: Barbican Press
Recently published
As clever and intriguing as it is kooky. --The Irish Times
A genre-busting, gender-bending Vatican thriller. What happens
when everything you know is thrown into doubt?
And you’re the Pope?
The recently elected Irish Pope Patrick has plans for his future
Church. Then he is attacked in St Peter’s Square. Cardinals turn
against him. Shocking revelations threaten his traditional status
UK: Barbican Press
and his faith.
Editor: Martin Goodman
Date: April 2020
In this novel where nothing is as it seems, Catholicism and
Extent: 296 pp modern morality are held in tension. Pope Patrick has to face
challenges and make choices he could never have imagined.
Material: available
'Written with great elegance and authority. It tackles “head-on”
Rights Available: some of the most challenging issues for the Roman Catholic
US & Canada Church around gender and sexuality and at the same time has
some of the loveliest, most persuasive, writing about personal
prayer that I have ever encountered in fiction.' Sara Maitland.
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