We’ve got plenty to report from this week, including the chance to win a trip to Cornwall to celebrate the release of The Lamplighters! Here are the highlights.

First up, a flurry of shiny new covers to reveal! We love this bright, witty cover for Hannah Tovey’s second novel Is This It? This “no-holds-barred honest and painfully relatable comedy” will be published by Piatkus/ Hachette in July.

Here’s the creepy cover for Rona Halsall’s latest thriller, The Missing Sister, “a tale of deception, secrets and family ties”. Bookouture is publishing in April so not long to wait!

The cover for Ella Carey’s heartbreaking historical novel A New York Secret has been revealed as well: the perfect sneak-peak for this World War II romance which Bookouture is publishing in March.

And finally, ahead of Lake Union/ Amazon’s publication in August, here’s the beautiful cover for Katherine Slee’s The Love We Left Behind, a sweeping dual-perspective novel about friendship and heartbreak.

This week has had the Agency buzzing with some fantastic announcements, and we’re incredibly proud of Stephanie Wrobel who’s debut suspense novel The Recovery of Rose Gold is a Spring pick for the Richard & Judy Book Club!

Stephanie’s dark psychological thriller about an implosive mother-daughter relationship comes out in paperback in March (Michael Joseph/ PRH), and she gave a wonderful reading during an online event this week hosted by Bay Tales, an organisation for crime and mystery readers and writers.

 

Huge congratulations as well to Danielle Jawando, whose stunning YA debut And The Stars Were Burning Brightly has been longlisted for the CILIP Carnegia Medal Awards! This is wonderful recognition by the UK’s oldest running award for children & YA writing, and we’re so proud to see Danielle’s novel featured.

Happy Publication week to Caroline Bishop’s The Other Daughter (Simon & Schuster UK), a beautifully told story of female choice and set against the gorgeous Swiss backdrop of the author’s home. It was a featured title in both Bella and Prima magazine this week.

Also published in paperback this week was The Animals of Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey, which won the HWA Debut Crown Award 2020. What a great start to see it featured under Waterstones’ ‘Best New Paperbacks’ on their website, next to none other than Benjamin Dean’s Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow!

Following the publication of The Joy of Being Selfish two weeks ago, Michelle Elman gave a fun yet empowering interview on C4 lunch-time chat show Steph’s Packed Lunch, calling on the need to say “no” more often and start setting boundaries to regain control of our work and relationships. We couldn’t agree more!

Michelle was also a guest on singer-songwriter Frankie Bridge’s podcast Open Mind for her new series Self-Care Sessions. You can tune into the episode here.

Alexandra Wilson, the author of In Black & White, has been filmed by CBeebies as part of an exciting new series called What’s on Your Head? in which she introduces her job as a barrister to tiny viewers! Children (and adults) can stream the series on BBC iPlayer here.

And if you’re looking for more lockdown entertainment, what could be better than C.J. Tudor’s spine-tingling fourth thriller The Burning Girls, which Apple has chosen as one of their February Must Listens.

On the bestseller lists, Katherine May‘s Wintering is still gracing the US Indie bestseller list at No. 10. There’s no getting her off!

An enormous well done to Imogen Clark this week who’s novel The Last Piece has passed the 100,000 copies milestone, in less than six months since publication. Well done Imogen!

Best Magazine ran a brilliant side-by-side review of two Agency author: Inga Vesper’s The Long, Long Afternoon, which was published by Bonnier at the start of the month, and Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters, which is published by Picador on 4th March.

The Lamplighters is one of our most hotly anticipated books this year, so what better way to celebrate its release than re-live the story with a holiday to Penzance! Waterstones are offering one lucky reader the chance to win a three-night stay for themselves and a guest at the beautiful Artist’s Residence on the Cornish coast. To enter the competition you’ll need to pre-order your copy of The Lamplighters from Waterstones by March 3rd. Get all the details here, and good luck!

In another exciting giveaway, GoodReads are offering US readers the chance to win a copy of Abbie Greave’s The Silent Treatment! Abbie’s second novel The Ends of the Earth (Anywhere For Me across the pond), will be published in April and in anticipation GoodReads have 50 copies of Abbie’s critically acclaimed first novel to give away.

There’s no sign of a slow-down in the International Rights Department this week, with a record month for pre-empts and auctions as foreign publishers scramble for rights to two of the Agency’s hottest non-fiction books Womb and Wintering.  Here’s what IRD closed this week:

French rights to The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper sold to La Martinière

Finnish rights to The Yearbook by Holly Bourne sold to Gummerus

Swedish rights to Womb by Leah Hazard sold to HarperCollins at auction

Spanish rights to Womb by Leah Hazard sold to Salamandra at auction

Hebrew rights to The Joy of Being Selfish by Michelle Elman sold to Tchelet Books

Dutch rights to Womb by Leah Hazard sold to Balans at auction.

And to round the week off, we now have an incredible 16 publishers on board for Wintering by Katherine May!  Ukrainian rights have now sold to Yakaboo Publishing, Russian rights sold to Eksmo, and Italian rights sold to TEA.