category: Recently Optioned

The Raptures

THE RAPTURES explores how tragedy can unite a small community – and tear it apart – with the extraordinary resilience of a young girl at its heart.

It is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks’ reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other. As others fall ill, questions about what – or who – is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help. Elsewhere in the village, tempers simmer, panic escalates and long-buried secrets threaten to emerge.

As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Price for Literary for Ireland in 2019, and her short stories have been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, the BBC National Short Story Prize, An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award, and in 2016 won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. The Fire Starters is in development with Element Pictures. The Raptures is her third novel and was published by Doubleday in January 2022. Jan is represented by Kate Johnson at Wolf Literary Services.

*Currently under option*

Lies We Sing To The Sea

*This title is currently under option*.

Lies We Sing to the Sea is a sapphic, feminist reimagining of The Odyssey, in which a failed oracle and a vengeful immortal must break the curse on their kingdom by killing its prince.

In the cursed kingdom of Ithaca, each summer brings the hanging of twelve maidens, a tithe to the vengeful Poseidon.

When Leto is sacrificed, she awakens on the shore of a long-forgotten island, home to the immortal Melantho. Eternally bound to guide the girls that the sea gives back, Melantho tells Leto that there is only one way to break Ithaca’s curse: kill the prince before the winter solstice.

Together, Leto and Melantho escape the island and infiltrate the palace, assuming the guise of an Athenian princess and her handmaid. To their dismay, the last son of Ithaca – Prince Mathias – is no monster; he is guilt-ridden by his role in overseeing the yearly executions, grieving the loss of his beloved sister, and searching for his own way to end Ithaca’s curse.
As Leto becomes closer to Melantho and Mathias, she must unravel Ithaca’s terrible history – a history that binds the three of them together – before the sea claims them all.

A reclamation of a story from thousands of years ago, LIES WE SING TO THE SEA is about fate, about grief and sacrifice, and the power we can find within.

Sarah Underwood grew up in Devon, England. She obtained her MEng in Computational Bioengineering at Imperial College, London, and is now studying for her MPhil in Population Health Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Sarah is currently working on a second novel called THE LOVELY GRAVE OF KITTY JAY, based on the folklore of Dartmoor. Sarah is represented by Catherine Cho at Paper Literary. Lies We Sing To The Sea will be published March 2023.

*Currently under option*

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers

This title is currently under option.

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr is a witty and gloriously uplifting debut, reminiscent of The Thursday Murder Club, with an ensemble cast of eccentric puzzlemakers and a young protagonist who inhabits their spirit. We think there are some truly fantastic casting opportunities here. It wassnapped up by Orion in the UK in a major two-book deal after an 8-way auction, and in a major two book deal in US with Anchor Books/Random House – with pre-emptive deals in several countries.

Clayton Stumper is an enigma. He’s twenty-four years old, but he dresses like your grandad and drinks sherry like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the front steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of enigmatologists and finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When Clayton’s best friend – the esteemed crossword compiler Pippa Allsbrook – passes away, she bestows her final puzzle to him. It promises to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune.

But as Clay begins to unpick the clues, he uncovers something even the Fellowship have never been able to solve. It’s a secret that will reshape his future for good…

Samuel studied at Westminster Film School and now works as a freelance TV producer, developing and creating popular-factual shows including the BAFTA-nominated Secret Life of 4-Year-Olds. A documentary he shot inside a retirement village when he was eighteen-years-old launched his career in television and inspired this novel. Samuel’s writing was shortlisted for Penguin’s WriteNow scheme and in 2021 he graduated from the Faber Academy. In his spare time he volunteers for elderly charities Age UK and Re-Engage. He lives in London with his partner Tom and their cat Muriel. THE FELLOWSHIP OF PUZZLEMAKERS is his debut novel. He has always been old at heart.

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.

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*

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.

Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change

by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi

Currently under Option

As a minority in a predominantly white institution, taking up space is an act of resistance. Recent Cambridge grads Chelsea and Ore experienced this first-hand, and wrote Taking Up Space as a guide and a manifesto for change.

FOR BLACK GIRLS:

Understand that your journey is unique. Use this book as a guide. Our wish for you is that you read this and feel empowered, comforted and validated in every emotion you experience, or decision that you make.

FOR EVERYONE ELSE:

We can only hope that reading this helps you to be a better friend, parent, sibling or teacher to black girls living through what we did. It’s time we stepped away from seeing this as a problem that black people are charged with solving on their own.

It’s a collective effort.
And everyone has a role to play.

Featuring honest conversations with students past and present, Taking Up Space goes beyond the buzzwords of diversity and inclusion and explores what those words truly mean for young black girls today.