Hutchinson Heinemann has won A Real Piece of Work by Nero Book Awards shortlistee Freya Bromley in a three-way auction. Linda Mohamed, Commissioning Editor, acquired UK & Comm Rights from Liv Maidment at Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency, for publication in June 2026.
Freya Bromley is a writer living in London. Her memoir The Tidal Year was published by Coronet in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards. She’s written for titles including Condé Nast Traveller, Financial Times and National Geographic Traveller. Freya also writes in her Substack “Field Notes”.
A Real Piece of Work follows Nola, a woman in her early thirties whose life changes when the memoir she writes about her sister Darina’s sudden passing catapults her to critical acclaim. On the eve of the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death, when Nola’s parents and her three remaining siblings are on their way to the remote island of Lundy for a long weekend of commemoration, an anonymous complaint made to Nola’s publisher about the memoir – clearly submitted by a family member – suddenly puts her career at risk. Nola is forced to travel to Lundy to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage; but first, she must discover who made it.
Mohamed said: ‘A Real Piece of Work is a raw, tender and bracing story about who owns grief and who gets to tell the story of the people who go and those who stay. The novel is equally poignant as it is genuinely funny in the wake of its tragic backdrop, managing to explore relationships of all kind with a focused and forgiving eye. I have long admired Freya’s writing, and welcoming her to Hutchinson Heinemann with her fiction debut is an absolute dream come true.’
Bromley said: I can’t wait for readers to meet Nola and the McConkey family. At its heart, this novel is about grief as a shared experience, and I think we can all relate to the way everyone in a family tells a different version of the same story. I’m not done writing about loss, and to be able to continue that journey with exciting new characters on the wild setting of Lundy island has been my biggest writing adventure yet. I’m thrilled that it found its home at Hutchinson & Heinemann! They consistently champion books that embrace bold storytelling about the messiness of human connection, and Linda Mohamed understood me and my writing straight away. The enthusiasm, expertise and support from Linda and my agent Liv Maidment has made collaborating on my debut novel a dream come true.
Maidment said: From the moment I pitched Freya’s debut to Linda at the Foyles Café before it was even ready for submission, I knew that she and Hutchinson Heinemann would be an incredible home for the novel. For fans of introspective yet propulsive and witty portrayals of female experience with the texture and gravitas of the best of British nature writing, A Real Piece of Work is a novel that strives to find love, forgiveness, happiness, and hope in the wake of immutable tragedy. I am so proud of Freya and know this is the start of a very exciting fiction career.
