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A Reluctant Spy

*Currently under option*

Jamie Tulloch is a successful exec at a top tech company, a long way from the tough upbringing that drove him to rise so far and so quickly.

But he has a secret…since the age of 23, he’s had a helping hand from the Legend Programme, a secret intelligence effort to prepare impenetrable backstories for undercover agents. Real people, living real lives, willing to hand over their identities for a few weeks in return for a helping hand with plum jobs, influence and access.

When his tap on the shoulder finally comes, it’s swiftly followed by the thud of a body. Arriving at a French airport ready to hand over his identity, Jamie finds his primary contact dead, the agent who’s supposed to step into his life AWOL and his options for escape non-existent.

Pitched into a deadly mission on hostile territory, Jamie must contend with a rogue Russian general, arms dealers, elite hackers, CIA tac-ops and the discovery of a brewing plan for war. Dangerously out of his depth, he must convince his sceptical mission handler he can do the job of a trained field agent while using his own life story as convincing cover.

David is originally from Edinburgh and now lives in East Lothian, by the sea, with his wife and two cats. Sometimes he wanders along the shoreline early in the morning, muttering about spies and spaceships into his dictaphone. He harbours dreams of being a full time shoreline mutterer. For the moment though, he writes short stories and novels very early in the morning and works as a UX designer by day. He’s an enthusiastic member of Edinburgh SFF and the Codex Writers group. When he’s not writing, he can most often be found walking in the Highlands or trying to make a dent in his reading pile. David is represented for publishing by Harry Illingworth at DHH Literary Agency.

 

WRITING ON THE WALL: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth Century Britain

‘Fascinating … not only a history of graffiti, but also a history of the 18th century through lost voices of the people who lived through it.’ The Times

‘You’ve read the Austen and seen the Gainsboroughs, well this is the real Eighteenth Century in the words of those who walked the streets, worked the coal seams and clung to the topsail yards” Dan Snow

What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look.

A brilliant new cultural history of the long eighteenth century, Writing on the Wall is told through the marks its citizens left behind, bringing into focus lost voices from the highest to the lowest in society. From the centre of London to the islands of the Caribbean, Pelling goes in search of graffiti, evidence of how ordinary people experienced the world-changing events that defined their lives – from political prisoners to sex workers, homesick sailors, Romantic poets and the artisans of the industrial revolution.

Here are lives, loves, triumphs and failures, scratched into the walls of prisons and latrines, chalked up on doors and etched into windows. The names of their creators may be lost to history, but together they tell the real story of Britain’s most rebellious and transformative century.

 

Madeleine Pelling is a cultural historian, writer and broadcaster. Her first book, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Britain (Profile Books, 2024), tells a history of the period through the marks its inhabitants left behind. It was described as ‘fascinating’ by The Times, and ‘ingenious’ by The Spectator.

Madeleine is the ARIAs-nominated writer and co-host of History Hit’s After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal, and a regular contributor for television and radio, having worked with broadcasters including Channel 4, Sky Arts, Warner Bros and Times Radio.

She holds a PhD from the University of York, and her words appear in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, BBC History Magazine and History Today, as well as in numerous scholarly journals and edited collections.

Artezans: The Forgotten Magic

For the last 400 years, magic has been fading…

Edward Crane has always feared he won’t have any magic at all. Sure, he’s part of a powerful magic Artezan family, but he’s adopted. His twin sister, Elodie, isn’t so worried, but then everything always seems to work out perfectly for her.

So when Ed discovers he does have an Artezan power after all, he’s relieved. And it’s more than he ever could have imagined – in fact, it’s a dream come true.

But the problem with dreams is that sometimes they twist themselves into nightmares. And with Ed’s new abilities growing by the day, there’s a chance that this nightmare will become all too real…

L. D. Lapinski is the best-selling author of JAMIE, Stepfather Christmas, and The Strangeworlds Travel Agency series, including Adventure in the Floating Mountains, which was a 2023 World Book Day title. L. D.’s books are published around the world in fifteen languages, and each book in the Strangeworlds trilogy has been awarded a Kirkus star – one of the most coveted designations in the book industry, marking books of exceptional merit. L. D.’s is represented by Claire Wilson at RCW Literary Agency.

Cloistered

After the shock of her father’s death, and with her family scattered, twenty-four-year old Catherine was left grieving and alone. A search for meaning led her to Roman Catholicism and the nuns of Akenside Priory.

Cloistered takes us beyond the grille of an enclosed monastic world with its tight-knit community of dedicated women. We see Catherine, praying in the spareness of her simple cell, tilling the land or singing at Lauds, a novice who has found peace in an ancient way of life. But as she surrenders to her final vows, all is not as it seems behind the Priory’s closed doors. Power struggles erupt, and the hothouse atmosphere turns to conflict – with far-reaching consequences for those within.

Catherine comes to realise that divine authority is mediated through flawed and all-too-human channels. She is faced with a dilemma: should she protect the serenity she has found, or speak out?
Catherine Coldstream was born in London, and grew up loving music, words, and books. After converting to Roman Catholicism in her twenties, she spent twelve years in a Carmelite monastery where she lived the life of a silent contemplative nun. Since leaving her community she has studied at the Universities of Oxford, East Anglia, and London, and taught theology, philosophy, and ethics in schools. The effects of her years as a nun have. Catherine is represented by Patrick Walsh at PEW Literary Agency.

Seven Days

Your father is on death row. You have seven days to save him. But do you want to?
Alice knows her father is guilty of many things.
He’s guilty of abandoning her.
He’s guilty of being unfaithful to her mother.
But is he guilty of murder?

Now on Death Row, he has seven days to live.
Some people want him released.
Others will kill to keep him just where he is.
Alice has only one chance to save him. But should she?

Robert Rutherford had a random mix of jobs before taking the dive into crime writing; he’s been a bookseller, pizza deliverer, karate instructor, football coach, and HR Manager. He lives on the North East Coast with his wife, children & overly-needy dog, and is a founding member of the Northern Crime Syndicate crime-writers group. WHAT FALLS BETWEEN THE CRACKS, the first in his Porter & Styles series, written under the name Robert Scragg, was a New Writing North pick as one of the 2019 Read Regional books of the year. Rob’s work has also seen him shortlisted for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction in 2021, and shortlisted twice for the CWA Short Story Daggers. He is represented by David Headley at DHH Literary Agency.

An Idle Woman: gaslighting in the nineteenth century

1838, England: When eighteen-year-old Frances Dickinson impulsively marries Lieutenant John Geils, all her hopes for her future are quickly shattered as she finds there is much about her husband she did not know. A cruel and violent man, John keeps Frances in isolation on his family’s estate, while spending her fortune and preying upon their maids.

Frances yearns to break free from her marriage but the law is not on her side. Only when John’s abuse escalates can she set in motion a daring plan to secure her freedom.

A story of gaslighting, control and one woman’s fight, An Idle Woman is the true story behind one of the most sensational divorce trials of the nineteenth century.

Wendy Parkins is from Sydney and has held academic posts at universities in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, most recently as Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Kent. She decided to leave academia at the end of 2018 to return to New Zealand to pursue writing full-time. My memoir, Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive, was published in 2019. In 2018, Parkins moved back to New Zealand to focus on her writing and is currently teaching English Literature and Creative Writing part-time at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and reviews books for leading New Zealand journals and magazines.

Fast Money: The Backroom Deals, Corporate Espionage and Legendary Power Struggles that Drive Formula One

The first book to look at the unstoppable rise of Formula One

Few sports are as synonymous with money as Formula One. Its drivers are among the world’s most highly paid athletes, and it costs more than a billion pounds to keep its ten teams ticking over. Celebrities and their entourages flock to glamorous locations around the world – Monaco, Miami, Las Vegas – to be seen on the grid or lounging on a superyacht.

This is a sport where money – the spending of it, the flaunting of it, the ruthless pursuit of it – matters.

Fast Money will be the first book to treat F1 as the business it is. As one of the world’s most popular sports, and with races in far corners of the globe, F1 is big business.

With unparalleled insight and decades of reporting, they describe the pivotal moments which have driven the sport to new heights – the influx of tobacco advertising, the Concorde agreement, television deals, the reign of Bernie Ecclestone, and the huge popularity of Drive to Survive. Featuring exclusive interviews with the sports major players and featuring never-before-heard stories, Fast Money reveals the multitude of deal that turned the sport from a pastime for wealthy enthusiasts into the world’s most-watched annual sports series.

Secrets of Malta

An escapist historical novel of women, spies and a world at war

Malta, 1943.

The war in the air above Malta is over, but the battle for Europe is about to begin. Margarita, a young singer in a Valletta nightclub, has not seen her former lover Henry Dunn since breaking off their affair. His wife Vera, an enigmatic archaeologist, arrives at the club to tell her that Henry has disappeared, presumed dead.

While investigating, Margarita stumbles upon the hunt for a notorious and dangerous Nero. As an unlikely bond develops between the two women, and strange secrets emerge, an urgent quest to unmask Nero starts – before he can enact a deadly plan that may threaten the course of the war.

Cecily Blench is a freelance writer and editor with a particular interest in travel writing, wartime history, intrepid women and Southeast Asia. She grew up in Herefordshire, attended the University of York, and now lives in London. She has written for a number of publications including Reader’s Digest, Slightly Foxed, The London Magazine, and Hinterland. Her first novel won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and is under contract with Bonnier Zaffre.

Her first novel, The Long Journey Home, is a historical adventure set in Burma during the Second World War and will be published by Bonnier Books in June 2021. Her new novel, a WW2 espionage thriller, is being published by Bonnier Books in 2024.

Flowers from the Void

Grotesquely gothic short stories to keep you awake all night

Addictively strange and disturbing, Flowers From the Void is a collection of delectably uncanny tales. A reaper readies herself for her next gruesome assignment and a bereaved African witch prepares for a showdown with a rigidly traditional white Salem coven while an outcast teenage boy is lured into a pact with a schoolfriend that will cost him far more than he ever imagined.

Hauntingly macabre and piercingly insightful about loss and loneliness, these gothic short stories lead us into a labyrinth of other possible worlds, each one darker than the last and yet all fearfully close to our own. Living dolls serve as imperfect replacements for the deceased, a girl without a shadow finds her soulmate and spurned lovers’ bodies begin falling to pieces. In this scintillating debut collection Gianni Washington explores the limit of intimacy and empathy with the vivid intensity of your worst nightmare.

Gianni Washington’s writing has been published in The Fat City Review online, LitroNY.com, the horror anthology Brief Grislys and read aloud on the Great American Folk Show. She is a monthly contributor to the Chicago Review of Books and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Surrey. She worked for many years as a bookseller in London but is currently based in North Carolina

Poor Artists

A moving, eye-opening journey through the world of contemporary art from one of the most innovative voices in the field

At a moment in which working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, art criticism duo The White Pube investigate why so many artists try anyway. Labelled “the Diet Prada of the art world” by British Vogue, in Poor Artists writers Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad ridicule a contemporary art world that has turned art into artworks, art schools into art universities, and creative expression into cut-throat competition.

Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.

The White Pube is the collaborative identity of UK-based critics Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad. They have been turning heads since 2015 when the pair began publishing provocative art reviews and essays online from their art school studios and have earned themselves an international cult following due to their innovative writing style, their honesty and irreverence, and their willingness to challenge the pale, male, stale art establishment. The White Pube have worked with art schools, galleries and museums in the US, Canada, Australia, India, Cyprus, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Norway, and across Europe with organisations in Portugal, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland. Poor Artists is their first book.