Happy New Year! The agency is back from the Christmas holidays raring to go. 2021 may find us sadly back in lockdown, but all the more reason to round off the first week of the year with some January-blues-busting news.
To kick us off, a cover reveal. Our first of the year, featured above, is none other than this cheerful cover from HarperCollins/ William Morrow for the US edition of The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. This heart-warming book-club debut, about an unlikely friendship inspired by a chance library discovery, will be published in the US in August.
Katherine May‘s sensational memoir Wintering is still sitting strong on the US Indie bestseller list and has climbed up to No.5 over the holidays! And no wonder – in the world we’re all living in now, Katherine’s book is the tonic we all need.
At long last, this week also sees Ashley Audrain’s utterly mesmerizing debut novel The Push unleashed upon the English-speaking world! Published by PRH/Pamela Dorman Books in the US, and PRH in Canada on 5th January, and PRH/Michael Joseph in the UK on 7th January, this is a tight-rope thriller about motherhood, nature vs nurture and intergenerational trauma that the whole agency has been talking about ever since the submission landed over a year ago. We’re predicting a big year for Ashley, especially with publication in 32 languages to follow…
Ashley and her agent Madeleine Milburn also featured in a brilliant article in Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, where they both detailed the thrilling path from manuscript to book deal, via parenthood, a torrent of international deals and a film option. If you subscribe, you can see the article here.
Apple have featured both The Push and The Authenticity Project as ‘Ones to Watch in 2021’.
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January also sees lots of other agency authors finding their way onto New Year reading lists; murder mystery debut Marion Lane & the Midnight Murder by T.A. Willberg has been chosen by Amazon as a top 10 January pick in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category, and Clare Pooley’s bestselling novel The Authenticity Project, about a notebook that draws together six strangers, is Barnes & Noble’s Fiction Book of the Month.
We’re very pleased to see two of our hotly anticipated debut authors reviewed in the i paper’s round-up of ‘75 of the best books for 2021‘. Emma Stonex’s elegiac novel The Lamplighters was described as:
“… gorgeously written novel [about] the atmospheric story of three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously vanish from their tower.”
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner was also featured, and the piece called it:
“One of the year’s most entertaining crime novels. A sharp, witty take on class and motherhood which begins with well-off but lonely Helen meeting the very different Rachel at her pre-birth NCT-style class…”
Look out for both novels hitting bookshelves this spring, in March and April respectively.
Some impressive milestones to note now, firstly for Fiona Valpy’s beautiful new novel The Skylark’s Secret, which has sold a staggering 50,000 copies in less than three months since it was published by Lake Union/ Amazon last September. And further congratulations to Rona Halsall, who has hit 250,000 copies sold across all her thrillers published with Bookouture. An outstanding New Year achievement for both authors!
