category: Fiction

With This Kiss

WITH THIS KISS is the enchanting new love story from the Number One bestselling author, Carrie Hope Fletcher.

If you knew how your love story ends, would you dare to begin?

From the outside, Lorelai is an ordinary young woman with a normal life. She loves reading, she works at the local cinema and she adores living with her best friend. But she carries a painful burden, something she’s kept hidden for years; whenever she kisses someone on the lips, she sees how they are going to die. But she’s never known if she’s seeing what was always meant to be, or if her kiss is the thing that decides their destiny. And so, she hasn’t kissed anyone since she was eighteen.

Then she meets Grayson. Sweet, clever, funny Grayson. And for the first time in years she yearns for a man’s kiss. But she can’t…or can she? And if she does, should she try to intervene and change what she sees?

Carrie Hope Fletcher is an actress, singer, songwriter, vlogger and, thanks to her popular YouTube channel, ‘honorary big sister’ to hundreds of thousands of young people around the world. Carrie’s first book, All I Know Now was a number 1 Sunday Times bestseller and her debut novel, One The Other Side, was published by Spectre in 2016. With This Kiss is her fifth novel. Carrie is currently starring as Cinderella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, and lives just outside of London with numerous fictional friends that she keeps on bookshelves, just in case.

Edith and Kim

Edith and Kim is a poignant and captivating reconstruction of one of the most important relationships of interwar espionage – that between Kim Philby and Edith Tudor-Hart, the woman who introduced him to his Soviet handler. It is written by Kim’s granddaughter, Charlotte Philby, drawing on letters from the family’s private archives and intertwining the forgotten but fascinating story of Edith.

In June 1934, Kim Philby met his Soviet handler, the spy Arnold Deutsch. The woman who introduced them was called Edith Tudor-Hart. She changed the course of 20th century history.

Then she was written out of it.

Drawing on the Secret Intelligence Files on Edith Tudor-Hart, along with the private archive letters of Kim Philby, this finely worked, evocative and beautifully tense novel – by the granddaughter of Kim Philby – tells the story of the woman behind the Third Man.

Charlotte Philby worked for the Independent for eight years as a columnist, editor and reporter, and was shortlisted for the Cudlipp Prize for her investigative journalism at the 2013 Press Awards. A former contributing editor and feature writer at Marie Claire, she is founder of the online platform Motherland.net, and has contributed to all the major newspapers, as well as the BBC, Channel 4 and numerous magazines and books. Edith and Kim is her fourth novel, which will be published 31st March 2022 by Harper Collins. She is represented by Julia Silk at The Greyhound Agency.

The Windsor Knot

This book is currently under option.

On a perfect Spring morning at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II will enjoy a cup of tea, carry out all her royal duties . . . and solve a murder.

The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck.

When the police begin to suspect her loyal servants, Her Majesty knows they are looking in the wrong place.

For the Queen has been living an extraordinary double life ever since her coronation. Away from the public eye, she has a brilliant knack for solving crimes.

With her household’s happiness on the line, her secret must not get out. Can the Queen and her trusted secretary Rozie catch the killer, without getting caught themselves?

Miss Marple meets The Crown in The Windsor Knot, the first book in the ‘Her Majesty The Queen Investigates’ mystery series by SJ Bennett – for fans of The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Agatha Christie and M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin.

‘Hilarious, affectionate, and so well observed . . . I loved it’ – JOANNE HARRIS

‘A total joy’ – NINA STIBBE

‘A highly original and delightfully charming crime series’ – ADELE PARKS

‘Possibly the most adorable crime novel out this year’ – RUTH WARE

‘Charming, cosy and respectful’ – GUARDIAN

‘Gently hilarious and utterly charming‘ – AMANDA CRAIG

Out of Her Depth

Patricia Highsmith meets E. Lockhart in Out of her Depth – a simmering summer thriller about the choices you make as a teenager, and what happens when they go horribly wrong.

There are summers that could change your life.
There are summers that could end it.

Meet Rachel.
An unassuming young woman from a quiet London suburb.

Picture the scene:
A summer job at the beautiful Villa Medici in the Tuscan hills.
A group of glamorous teenagers, used to a life of privilege.
Lavish parties, heady sun-soaked days, backstabbing and bedhopping.

Until someone goes too far.
And nothing will ever be the same.

Voyeur

This book is currently under option.

Summer in Paris. Leah, bored of tedious dead-end jobs, is intrigued to spot a job advert posted by the famous author Michael Young: ‘Writer Seeks Assistant’.

After an unconventional interview, Michael invites Leah to spend summer in the south of France with his family. But as she begins her work transcribing his diaries of his debauched youth in 1960s Soho, the lines of past and present, truth and deceit, begin to blur, and Leah has to question what it is that Michael really sees in her.

A novel that challenges us to both question what we see, and what others see in us.

‘Addictive’ Stylist

‘Sultry’ Elle

‘Shimmers with suspense’ Daily Mail

‘Sizzling’ Esquire

‘A devastatingly compelling new voice in literary fiction‘ Louise O’Neill

‘Devastatingly witty, compulsively readable . . . like Sally Rooney meeting Martin Amis in Paris’ Francine Toon, author of Pine

Afterlove

This book is currently under option.

Ash Persaud is about to become a reaper in the afterlife, but she is determined to see her first love Poppy Morgan again, the only thing that separates them is death.

Car headlights.The last thing Ash hears is the snap of breaking glass as the windscreen hits her and breaks into a million pieces like stars. But she made it, she’s still here. Or is she?

This New Year’s Eve, Ash gets an invitation from the afterlife she can’t decline: to join a clan of fierce girl reapers who take the souls of the city’s dead to await their fate.

But Ash can’t forget her first love, Poppy, and she will do anything to see her again … even if it means they only get a few more days together. Dead or alive …

Other People’s Clothes

*This title is currently under option*

Intoxicating, compulsive and blackly funny, Other People’s Clothes is the thrilling novel from Berlin-based American artist Calla Henkel.

2009. Berlin.

Two art students arrive from New York, both desperate for the city to solve their problems.

Zoe is grieving for her high school best friend, murdered months before in her hometown in Florida.

Hailey is rich, obsessed with the exploits of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and wants to be a Warholian legend.

Together they rent a once-magnificent apartment from eccentric crime writer Beatrice Becks. With little to fill their time, they spend their nights twisting through Berlin’s club scene and their days hungover.

Soon inexplicable things start happening in the apartment and the two friends suspect they are being watched by Beatrice. Convinced that their landlord is using their lives as inspiration for her next thriller novel, they decide to beat her at her own game. The girls start hosting wild parties in the flat and quickly gain notoriety, with everyone clamouring for an invite to ‘Beatrice’s.’ But ultimately they find themselves unable to control the narrative and it spirals into much darker territory . . .

‘Thrilling’ Cosmopolitan

‘Full of delicious layers . . . I felt drunk reading it.’ Emma Jane Unsworth

‘Other People’s Clothes feels like reading a thriller by your most acerbic friend’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

*Currently under option*

The Stranding

by Kate Sawyer

Winner of the Fiction Prize at the East Anglian Book Awards 2021.

FROM THE BONES SHE BUILT A NEW LIFE.

Ruth lives in the heart of the city. Working, drinking, falling in love: the rhythm of her vivid and complicated life is set against a background hum of darkening news reports from which she deliberately turns away.

When a new romance becomes claustrophobic, Ruth chooses to leave behind the failing relationship, but also her beloved friends and family, and travels to the other side of the world in pursuit of her dream life working with whales in New Zealand.

But when Ruth arrives, the news cycle she has been ignoring for so long is now the new reality. Far from home and with no real hope of survival, she finds herself climbing into the mouth of a beached whale alongside a stranger. When she emerges, it is to a landscape that bears no relation to the world they knew before.

When all has been razed to the ground, what does it mean to build a life?

The Stranding is a story about the hope that can remain even when the world is changed beyond recognition.

PRAISE FOR THE STRANDING:

‘An immersive end of the world story full of hope and imagination’ THE GUARDIAN

‘A terrific debut. Brave, unexpected… transfixing and captivating… full of hope, resilience and love’ THE SUNDAY TIMES

‘Holds the big within the small, the intimate within the epic’ – Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

‘A captivating read’ THE SUN

‘GORGEOUS and original and captivating’ – Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Grown Ups

‘A captivating read… (a) beautiful, surprising novel’ FABULOUS

‘A novel that has stayed with me for weeks afterwards . . . Perceptive and unflinching’ – Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

‘A quiet, piercing contemplation on what really matters when it comes to the end of the world. Strange and beautiful’ – Abigail Dean, author of Girl A

‘Beautiful and harrowing but also optimistic and extremely moving . . . a truly arresting depiction of an unlikely relationship’ – Clover Stroud, author of The Wild Other

‘I didn’t want this book to end. It blew me away, and moved me beyond belief’ – Bryony Gordon, author of Mad Girl

Dog Rose Dirt

by Jen Williams

‘Creepy and compelling’ HARRIET TYCE

‘Brilliant – filled with tension and twists’ SARAH PINBOROUGH

‘An unsettling, terrifying thriller’ ABIGAIL DEAN

‘Masterclass in suspense’ THE TIMES

‘Will have you up all night with the lights on’ ELLE

What if your mother had been writing to a serial killer?

Serial killer Michael Reave – known as The Red Wolf – has been locked in Belmarsh Prison for over 20 years for the brutal and ritualistic murders of countless women.

Ex-journalist Heather Evans returns to her childhood home after her mother’s inexplicable suicide and discovers something chilling – hundreds of letters between her mother and Reave, dating back decades.

When the body of a woman is found decorated with flowers, just like his victims, Reave is the only person alive who could help. After years of silence, he will speak to Heather, and only Heather.

If she wants to unearth the truth and stop further bloodshed, she’ll have to confront a monster.

Ghost Girl, Banana

*This book is currently under option*

Warton’s debut novel, Ghost Girl, Banana – based on her mother’s posthumously discovered diaries – is a dual narrative examining the search for belonging and identity, set between the last years of the Chinese Windrush in 1966 and Hong Kong’s Handover to China in 1997. It was pre-empted by Hodder Studio.

Heartfelt, beautiful, funny and real, Ghost Girl, Banana is an irresistibly compelling exploration of family, identity and what it costs to belong. In 1966, Suk-Yin is exiled from Kowloon to London with orders to restore honour to her family. As she strives to fit into a world that does not understand her, she realises that survival will mean carving out a destiny of her own. Thirty years later, in London, her daughter Lily can barely remember the mother she lost as a small child. When she is unexpectedly named in the will of a powerful Chinese stranger, she embarks on a secret pilgrimage to Hong Kong to discover the lost side of her identity and claim the reward. But she soon learns that the secrecy around her heritage has deep roots, and good fortune comes at a price.

Wiz Wharton was born in London of Chinese-European heritage. She is a prize-winning graduate from the National Film and Television School where she studied screenwriting under the tutelage of Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh and Ken Trodd. Previously published in non-fiction, she has appeared on various broadcast platforms, including radio, television and print media.

An early draft of the novel reached the Longlist of The Jericho Writers Friday Night Live initiative 2020, the Grindstone Literary Novel Competition 2020, The TLC BESEA Initiative, and the Next Chapter Award from the Scottish Book Trust. She was the 2020 winner of The Jericho Writers Self Edit Bursary and a finalist in The DHA Open Writers Week. She currently divides her time between London and the Scottish Highlands.