category: Fiction

FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVER follows Ben Church, a man running out of time and trying to grab every bit of life he can, and Vita Ambrose, a widow trying to run down the clock – and asks the question: is it ever too late to fall in love? It is funny, charming, and has a wonderful compelling twist.

Vita Ambrose’s life looks glamorous from the outside, but she’s stopped trying to really live it. What use is a life when you have spent it losing those who are closest to you?

Ben Church has never done anything risky. He’s never been on an adventure. He’s never fallen in love. Now he wants to do it all – because Ben is running out of time.

Time seems to stop altogether when Ben and Vita meet. Brought together by their shared passion for the art and work of Leonardo da Vinci, their attraction is powerful and instantaneous. As they grow closer, life’s great joys suddenly feel within reach.

But Ben and Vita know they don’t have long together. Unless they can find a way to make their love last forever?

Rowan Coleman is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author and screenwriter of sixteen novels including THE MEMORY BOOK, THE SUMMER OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS and THE GIRL AT THE WINDOW. A life-long Bronte fan, under the Bronte inspired pen name Bella Ellis, Rowan also writes the Bronte Mysteries – a carefully researched series of novels that imagine that before they were famous the Bronte Sisters were amateur detectives. Rowan is represented by Hellie Ogden at WME Agency.

Set in cut-throat, corporate London, JADED is a blistering account of consent, power, race, sexism and identity in a broken society. The novel follows the story of a mixed-race lawyer in London who, after a night of heavy drinking at a work event, has to piece together what happened. It is darkly humorous and bitingly honest, with a fantastic cast of characters and electrifying setting. It is reminiscent of INDSUTRY and I MAY DESTROY YOU, but with a refreshing and unique tone – exploring issues of consent, but at its core, the fallout of a relationship. It was pre-empted by Vintage in the major deal in the UK and Simon & Schuster in the US, and will be published in February 2024. You can read more in The Bookseller here.

When mixed race lawyer Jade is preyed upon by her boss at a work event, she ends up drinking way too much, leaving her colleague Josh, her knight in shining armour, to come to the rescue. He insists on helping her home, the perfect gentleman – bundling them both into a cab and walking her to the door. But suddenly Josh is inviting himself in, slipping Jade’s shoes off, helping himself to wine, moving her to the bedroom. Everything after that is a blank.  

Jade wakes the next morning, naked and alone, with no memory of how she got home. Too afraid to talk to Josh or open up to long term boyfriend Alex, she throws herself into work, ignoring the office rumours, drinking to oblivion, and working 90-hour weeks. It’s only after a series of debilitating flashbacks that Jade starts to unravel the truth. But a woman’s indignity is so mass market and accused of “crying rape” by Josh, it’s a slippery slope. But Jade isn’t going down alone.

Ela Lee is a London-based author. She studied Law at the University of Oxford and previously practised as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Ela decided to focus on her love of writing and began work on her debut novel. Ela is represented by Hellie Ogden at WME Agency.

NEARLY ALL THE MEN IN LAGOS ARE MAD is a distinctive debut collection of stories by Nigerian based actress and writer, Damilare Kuku, which there is strong interest in. NEARLY ALL THE MEN IN LAGOS ARE MAD is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos. It became a huge bestseller in Africa after its release in 2021, and the UK edition was published in July 2022 by Swift Press, with rights sold in the US to HarperVia and also in Germany. We think it would lend itself well to television adaptation in particular.

One night, you will calmly put a knife to your husband’s penis and promise to cut it off. It will scare him so much that the next day, he will call his family members for a meeting in the house. He will not call your family members, but you will not care.

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos.

There’s a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor’s wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; a wife takes a knife to her husband’s penis; a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie takes an unexpected turn.

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad underscores with wit, humour, wisdom and sensitivity, the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa’s most notorious city.

Damilare Kuku has worked as a radio presenter, scriptwriter, film producer, actor and director. She holds bachelors and masters degrees in the arts, has lectured at universities on feminism and the art of storytelling through pictures, and has spoken at mentorship events organized by the United Nations for young girls in Lagos. Her debut novel, ONLY BIG BUMBUM MATTER TOMORROW, is forthcoming in Nigeria from Ouida Books, who also publish Ayobami Adebayo.

Damilare is represented by Charlotte Seymour at Johnson and Alcock.

THE HOTEL is a twisty, psychological thriller with a gothic feel (and a sprinkling of The Blair Witch Project) set in a rambling, deserted hotel on the Welsh coast. Louise’s writing feels really visual and creepy and the book brings together a great ensemble of characters.

Four of them went to the hotel

Only three of them came back

Ten years later, they return one last time

Four teenagers travel to Ravencliffe, an abandoned hotel perched on steep cliffs on the Welsh coast to create their own spooky Blair Witch-esque documentary. After a series of unexplained accidents, only three of them leave. The fourth, Leo, disappears, and is never seen again.

A decade on, the remaining three friends have lost contact but their film has reached cult status.

Oscar is fame-hungry, making public appearances and selling his story. Richard sank into alcoholism and is only just recovering. Bex just wants to forget.

But when a TV company approaches the trio to shoot a ‘making of’ documentary back at the hotel, Bex can’t resist the opportunity to find out what really happened to Leo that night. And so, the friends are reunited. But as soon as they and the TV crew get to the hotel things start going wrong again. Objects mysteriously disappear and reappear. Accidents happen. And Bex realises that her former friends know far more than they are letting on about the true events at Ravencliffe that night…

Louise grew up in Caerphilly, Wales. She studied English Literature at university and was an English teacher for fifteen years.

In the summer of 2019 Louise was discovered by her publisher at the Primadonna Festival.

Her debut book, SLEEPLESS, a “frighteningly inventive” speculative thriller inspired by her own experience of insomnia, was published by HQ in 2020, was the Karin Slaughter Asda Read for that year and leapt to the top of the Amazon pre-order charts. It was also optioned for TV by Insurrection Media.

Her second book, the psychological thriller, THE SAFE HOUSE, was published in 2022. THE HOTEL is her third and most recent book.

Louise is represented by Kate Shaw at The Shaw Agency

Reminiscent of MOTHERLAND with a touch of THE AFFAIR, WOULD YOU ASK MY HUSBAND THAT? follows Sarah as she takes over her husband Will’s executive job (a job she has longed for) after he is suddenly fired. Told from alternating perspectives, navigating their new roles in the marriage, the novel subverts our expectations and challenges our prejudices in a refreshing, light-hearted yet provocative way. It was snapped up by Embla Books in a two-book deal, and will publish in August 2023, with the second book to publish in summer 2024. You can read The Bookseller announcement here.

 

It’s her dream job … The only problem is, it belongs to her husband.

 

Will and Sarah are a (mostly) happily married couple, raising two young children, while both working full-time – for the same company.

 

After Will makes a thoughtless mistake, he’s fired and his executive job is offered to Sarah. It’s the role she’s always wanted, and would probably have got if she hadn’t gone part-time for a few years after the kids were born. And they could certainly use the money now that Will’s out of work. It’s a no brainer, surely…

 

… That is, if Will can swallow his resentment that his wife’s doing his old job (alongside Henry Cavill-lookalike-colleague Tom – who isn’t actually Superman, despite what Sarah thinks); and provided he fulfils the ‘stay at home dad’ brief to Sarah’s standards (rather than his own), so she can actually concentrate on her new role … Everything will work out just fine. Right?

 

Kathleen Whyman is an author, freelance journalist and columnist for Writer’s Forum magazine. Kathleen always aspired to be a novelist, but got slightly sidetracked over the years by her career in journalism, children and Mad Men box sets. It was her eight-year-old daughter’s words, “Stop talking about writing a book and just write one”, that gave her the push she needed. Kathleen lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and two daughters.

Kathleen is represented by Emily Glenister at DHH Literary Agency.

The Film/TV Rights are currently under option.

With the author’s intoxicating, compulsive, and blackly comic flair, SCRAP follows Esther Ray as she pieces together the life of a stranger – uncovering dark and sinister truths. As you may remember, OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES was one of the most anticipated novels of 2021, was part of a big auction for film and TV and is currently in development with Mark Gordon Pictures. Screenwriter Alexa Karolinksi (UNORTHODOX) is writing, and Calla is also closely involved in the process.

Esther Ray legally can’t talk about what made her drop out of the glitzy New York art world and start making books by hand, but she’s sworn off working for the rich and now she’s happy. She’s just bought a cabin in the mountains with her fiancée Jessica and they’re planning on having a baby.

But when Jessica abruptly breaks it off, leaving her with the cabin’s mortgage, Esther is forced to accept a job from Naomi Duncan, yet another member of the art adjacent criminally wealthy. Naomi ships over two hundred boxes of ephemera from her family’s life, and under the guise of extreme birthday secrecy, instructs Esther to produce a series of scrapbooks for her husband’s surprise party. Esther quickly becomes obsessed with the Duncans, fixating on their lavish lives, and their eighteen-year-old Tik-Tok influencer daughter, Tabitha.

While binging true crime podcasts and sorting through the contents of the boxes, Esther comes to realize it’s not just family photos that Naomi has been hoarding. When Naomi suddenly dies before the project is complete, Esther becomes convinced she was murdered. Inspired by the amateur detectives that narrate her bloody podcasts, Esther uses what she has learned from the scrapbooks to embed herself in the Duncan’s life, in an attempt to find out who killed Naomi and why.

Calla Henkel is an American writer, playwright, director, and artist who lives and works in Berlin. She has staged plays at Volksbühne Berlin, The Whitney Museum of Art, as well as at New Theater, the experimental theatre space she founded and programmed in Berlin from 2013-2015. Her art writing has been published in periodicals such as Texte zur Kunst, Spike, Mousse, and others and her artistic work with Max Pitegoff has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. She currently operates a bar, performance space, and film studio called TV in Berlin.