category: Fiction

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.

The Hulda Series

This book is currently under option.

“Ragnar Jonasson’s masterly trilogy is a landmark in modern crime fiction” – THE TIMES

The HULDA SERIES series revolves around female detective Hulda (literally meaning “hidden woman”) and is set in Reykjavik, the Icelandic highlands, in an isolated fjord and on one of Iceland’s most picturesque and inaccessible islands. The series also features, in book no. 4, inspector Helgi Reykdal.

DIMMA (“DARKNESS”) – BOOK 1 (2015, ICELAND) (2018, UK/US)

THE ISLAND – BOOK 2 (2016, ICELAND) (2019, UK/US)

THE MIST   – BOOK 3 (2017, ICELAND) (2020, UK/US)

The Dark Iceland Series

By Ragnar Jónasson

Currently Under Option

The series is set in and around Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind.

SNOWBLIND: When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness – blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose. Taut and terrifying, Snowblind is a startling debut from an extraordinary new talent, taking Nordic Noir to soaring new heights.

NIGHTBLIND: The peace of a close-knit Icelandic community is shattered by the murder of a policeman – shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic waters closing in, it falls to Ari Thor to piece together a puzzle that involves tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor and a psychiatric ward in Reykjavik where someone is being held against their will…

BLACKOUT: On the shores of a tranquil fjord in Northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer’s night. As the 24-hour light of the arctic summer is transformed into darkness by an ash cloud from a recent volcanic eruption, a young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person’s life hangs in the balance. Ari Thor Arason and his colleagues on the tiny police force in Siglufjordur struggle with an increasingly perplexing case, while their own serious personal problems push them to the limit. What secrets does the dead man harbour, and what is the young reporter hiding? As silent, unspoken horrors from the past threaten them all, and the darkness deepens, it s a race against time to find the killer before someone else dies…

RUPTURE: 1955. Two young couples move to the uninhabited, isolated fjord of Hedinsfjörður. Their stay ends abruptly when one of the women meets her death in mysterious circumstances. The case is never solved. Fifty years later an old photograph comes to light, and it becomes clear that the couples may not have been alone on the fjord after all… In nearby Siglufjörður, young policeman Ari Thór tries to piece together what really happened that fateful night, in a town where no one wants to know, where secrets are a way of life. He’s assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinsister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town of Siglufjörður in quarantine, the past might just come back to haunt them.

Bollywood Wives

Zara Das is Bollywood’s hottest property, her every move watched by the eyes of the press. Riding high from the success of a string of blockbusters, she has the world at her feet, but the scandal from her latest film threatens to dethrone her as Bollywood’s reigning queen.

So when superstar director Raj Dillon stages a lavish retelling of Pride and Prejudice, moving the shoot from Mumbai’s soundstages to London, Zara knows this is the role that could put her back on top. Coming with them are the Bollywood Wives – Jackie, Sasha, and Rani – bringing their own off-screen drama.

But behind the diamonds, designer clothes and seven-star hotels lies the truth of how Zara reached the top. And when a dead body is found in her hotel room, it seems that someone is determined to take Zara down – and will stop at nothing to expose her darkest secrets.

Zara has spent years running from her past. But now it’s caught up with her…

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

Currently Under Option

British-born Punjabi sisters Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina have never been close but when their mother died, she had only one request: that they take a pilgrimage across India to carry out her final rites. While an extended family holiday is the last thing they want, each sister has her own reasons to run away from her life.

Rajni is the archetypal know-it-all eldest but her son dropped a devastating bombshell before she left and for the first time she doesn’t know what the future holds.

Middle sister Jezmeen was always a loudmouth, translating her need for attention into life as a struggling actress. But her career is on the skids after an incident went viral and now she’s desperate to find her voice again.

Shirina has always been the golden child, who confounded expectations by having an arranged marriage and moving to the other side of the world. But her perfect life isn’t what it seems and time is running out to make the right choice.

As the miles rack up on their jaunt across India, the secrets of the past and present are sure to spill out…

The Only Child

Currently Under Option

An eerie and absorbing novel following a criminal psychologist who has discovered shocking and possibly dangerous connections between a serial killer and her stepdaughter

Criminal psychologist Seonkyeong receives an unexpected call one day. Yi Byeongdo, a serial killer whose gruesome murders shook the world, wants to be interviewed. Yi Byeongdo, who has refused to speak to anyone until now, asks specifically for her. Seonkyeong agrees out of curiosity.

That same day Hayeong, her husband’s eleven-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, shows up at their door after her grandparents, with whom she lived after her mother passed away, die in a sudden fire. Seonkyeong wants her to feel at home, but is gradually unnerved as the young girl says very little and acts strangely.

At work and at home, Seonkyeong starts to unravel the pasts of the two new arrivals in her life and begins to see startling similarities. Hayeong looks at her the same way Yi Byeongdo does when he recounts the abuse he experienced as a child; Hayeong’s serene expression masks a temper that she can’t control. Plus, the story she tells about her grandparents’ death, and her mother’s before that, deeply troubles Seonkyeong. So much so that Yi Byeongdo picks up on it and starts giving her advice.