category: Fiction

Winner of the ‘Comedy Women in Print Prize’, this hilarious crime novel brings a grounded fantasy element to the cosy crime genre, with shades of GHOSTS and THE GOOD PLACE.

How do you solve your own murder when you’re already dead?

Purgatory (noun):
1. Where the dead are sent to atone.
2. A place of suffering or torment.
3. A youth hostel where the occupants play Scrabble and the mattresses are paper thin.

When Dave wakes up in his own personal purgatory (St Ives Youth Hostel circa 1992), he’s shocked to discover he’s dead. And worse – he was murdered.

Heaven doesn’t know who did it, so, with the help of two rogue angels, Dave must uncover the truth.

As divine forces from both sides start to play the game, can Dave get out of this alive? Or at the very least, with his soul intact?

Rebecca Rogers grew up in Birmingham, UK on a diet of Blackadder and Monty Python. For a long time, she thought Michael Palin was her uncle (he’s not). Now a civil servant by day and writer by night, she’s a proud mum to two grown up boys and lives in the glorious south west of England.

The Purgatory Poisoning is her first novel and won the Comedy Women in Print Unpublished Prize 2021.

A darkly beautiful and modern gothic thriller that tells a gripping story of identity and obsession.

Teddy Colne arrives in the small town of Rye, hoping to settle down and leave his past behind him. But fear blisters through the streets, and the locals warn him to avoid a shop known only as Berry & Vincent, where people have been known to come to a bad end. Teddy, however, is strangely determined to discover more about the establishment and why everyone fears its proprietor, and so he takes a job behind its dusty, creepy windows.

Ada moved to Rye with her young son, Albie, to escape a damaged childhood and years of never fitting in, but here she’s lonely, and ostracised by the community. Ada is ripe for affection and friendship but the people of Rye smell the desperation on her.
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As old secrets bleed out into this town, so too will a mystery about a family who vanished 50 years earlier, and a community living on a knife-edge. Teddy looks for answers, thinking he is safe, but some truths are better left undisturbed. And inevitably his past will find him here, just as it has always found him before. 

And before long, it will find Ada too.

Ronnie Turner grew up in Cornwall, the youngest in a large family. At an early age, she discovered a love of literature. She now lives in the South-West with her family and three dogs and works as a Senior Waterstones Bookseller and barista. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and taking long walks on the coast.

Ronnie is represented by Emily Glenister at the DHHL Literary Agency.

THE WITCHES OF VARDØ is the spellbinding new novel by Anya Bergman. Combining meticulously researched historical fiction with magical realism, this is a rousing, cinematic fictionalization of the real women put on trial in one of the largest witch trials in Scandinavia, 1662 – full of hope and empowerment.

“Powerful, deeply moving” Sunday Times and featured as a Sunday Times International Bestseller

 “A passionate indictment of the patriarchy…a vibrant exaltation of the resilience of women … Anya Bergman summons a historic witch trial with breath-taking detail and immediacy” Hannah Kent

Norway, 1662. A dangerous time to be a woman, when even dancing can lead to accusations of witchcraft. After recently widowed Zigri’s affair with the local merchant is discovered, she is sent to the fortress at Vardø to be tried as a witch.

These Witches of Vardø are stronger than even the King. In an age weighted against them, they refuse to be victims. They will have their justice. All they need do is show their power.

Anya Bergman became interested in the witch trials of Vardø and the vivid folk tales of the north while living in Norway. Travelling to the Steilneset memorial, in which Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor commemorated those persecuted as witches, she became fascinated by their stories.

Now resident in Ireland, she is currently undertaking a PhD by Published Works at Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland where she also lectures as well as tutoring for Jericho Writers. She recently wrote an article for the Guardian earlier this year called How We Fell Under the Spell of Witcherature.

Anya is represented by Marianne Gunn O’Connor

It’s time to get festive! Published by Usborne in October, this madcap comedy finds Oscar and Molly in a race to save Christmas…

When Oscar and Molly rush outside to investigate a crash in the night, they’re not expecting to find a dazed Angel Gabriel wandering around their grandparents’ back garden. And they’re certainly not expecting to find themselves in a race to save Christmas.

But if they don’t track down a missing shepherd, wise man, donkey and the actual Mary and Joseph, who’ve all crash-landed in Chipping Bottom, not only will Christmas cease to exist, but they will too.

Operation Nativity is on.

Jenny Pearson’s debut children’s novel The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates (Usborne) was published in 2020. It was subject to a major 8-way auction and has already been sold in 20 languages. It has been shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book of the Year 2020, Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Bradford Boase, the UKLA Book awards and the Lollies. It was also Waterstones Book of the Month, The Times Book of the Year and Sunday Times Book of the Week.  It’s a super funny, heart-warming adventure of three boys, one summer holiday, and a few miracles along the way. Her second book – The Incredible Record Smashers – was released in 2021. Jenny is represented by Sam Copeland at RCW Literary Agency.

*Longlisted for The Booker Prize 2023*

From the prize-winning author of AS YOU WERE, HOW TO BUILD A BOAT is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers and brings together a community. It was published by Vintage in April 2023.

Jamie O’Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.

Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Her 2020 debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, andwon the Kate O’Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Feeney has published three collections of poetry including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise,and her short story Sojourn was included in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. Feeney lectures at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and is represented for books by Peter Straus at RCW Literary Agency.

THE BEAUTY CASE is a dark, elegant, genre-defying adult debut by Karen Ball, set in the glamorously debauched 1950s Hollywood. The rights were acquired by Viking in a 6-figure pre-empt and will be published in Summer 2024. You can read the Bookseller announcement here.

THE BEAUTY CASE follows Loretta, a quick-witted and plucky young woman who harbours a dubious past and is trying to succeed as a make-up artist in the misogyny-steeped world of 1950s Hollywood. It merges the escapism in the luxe debauchery of the Hollywood setting with a darker undercurrent of righteous justice.

A former Bookseller Rising Star with her publishing consultancy Speckled Pen, THE BEAUTY CASE is Ball’s debut adult novel having written more than 25 children’s books. She is represented by Katie Greenstreet at Paper Literary Agency.

THE AGENCY FOR SCANDAL is the first in a series following a secret detective agency for young women that specialises in digging up scandal on powerful men. Reminiscent of BRIDGERTON and CHARLIE’S ANGELS, it is a brilliantly plotted and swooningly romantic story with a host of beguiling characters. It will be published in the UK by Scholastic in January 2023.

An all-female detective agency righting wrongs at the end of the nineteenth century; infiltrating a scandalous upper class world straight out of Bridgerton and using their wit and bravery to unmask a villain. Eighteen-year-old Isobel Stanhope is keeping a lot of secrets. There’s the fact that she’s head over heels in love with a Duke who doesn’t know she exists; there’s the fact that her family is penniless but nobody in society knows about it; and then there’s her job at the Aviary, an investigative agency run by women that specializes in digging up scandal on powerful men.

When Izzy finds herself pulled into a case that involves gaslighting, blackmail, and missing jewels, as well as the Duke who holds her heart, can she and her friends untangle the web of secrets and lies to uncover the truth and protect the innocent? And when the stakes are so high, what happens when the crush she’s been hiding begins to turn into so much more? A smart, charming, brilliantly plotted and swooningly romantic story about a collective of bold women changing their world.

Laura Wood is a bestselling author whose first novel won the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for Children’s Writing. She mostly writes for children and young adults, and she also holds a PhD in nineteenth-century literature from the University of Warwick. She loves Georgette Heyer novels, Fred Astaire films, travelling to far flung places, recipe books, poetry, cosy woollen jumpers, crisp autumn leaves, new stationery, sensation fiction, salted caramel, feminism, Rufus Sewell’s cheek-bones, dogs, and lashings of ginger beer. Laura Wood is represented by Louise Lamont at LBA books.

NOTES ON A DROWNING is a captivating legal thriller by bestselling author, Anna Sharpe. Using her fast-paced storytelling ability, coupled with her real-life knowledge of the law, Anna has created a narrative that is a gripping insight into a closed world. Orion acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights have a swift pre-empt to two books, the first to be published in August 2024 under the name Anna Sharpe. You can check out the bookseller announcement here.

After a Moldovan girl is found drowned in the Thames, two determined women – a lawyer and a political adviser – must work together to uncover a scandal that stretches to the heart of the British government. We think the key her is the two women, Alex, the lawyer and Kat, the political advisor. Both fascinating and complex women who could have the potential to becoming returning.

Anna is a writer of dark historical fiction, or historical crime. Her third novel, The Clockwork Girl, set in Paris in 1750, will be published by Orion in 2022. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in the US. Her second novel, The Story Keeper, was nominated for the Highland Book Prize and follows a folklorist’s assistant as she searches out dark fairytales and stolen girls on the Isle of Skye in 1857. Anna is also a criminal justice and human rights solicitor working on behalf of victims of crime. Anna is represented by Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment.