ANASTASIA LESTER LITERARY AGENT PRESENTS : SPRING2015 FICTION TABLE OF CONTENTS FICTION .............................................................................................. 3 BEST-SELLERS 2015 ..................................................................................... 3 HIGHLIGHT SPRING 2015 .......................................................................... 9 DISCOVERED WRITER ............................................................................. 19 LITERARY FICTION .................................................................................. 20 SHORT STORIES ......................................................................................... 27 NON-FRANCOPHONE AUTHORS ........................................................... 27 DEBUT NOVEL ............................................................................................ 28 WOMEN WRITING ..................................................................................... 32 CONTEMPORARY UP-MARKET COMMERCIAL TRENDS ............. 38 BIOGRAPHICAL & HISTORICAL NOVEL ........................................... 44 COMMERCIAL FICTION .......................................................................... 50 LITERARY CRIME & SUSPENSE NOVELS ........................................... 56 THRILLERS .................................................................................................. 61 SCIENCE-FICTION & FANTASY ............................................................. 65 YOUNG ADULT & CROSSE OVER .......................................................... 66 ALL TITLES ...................................................................................... 71 Contact: Mrs Anastasia Lester ; Email: [email protected] 1 FICTION FICTION BEST-SELLERS 2015 Gounelle, Laurent: LE JOUR OU J’AI APPRIS A VIVRE (THE DAY I LEARNED TO LIVE) (Kero, October 2014, 288 pages) Impressive 1st print run of 200 000 copies ! Pocket rights sold in France (Pocket) ! ! A lively style and lots of dialogue make the book an easy read. ! Once again, Laurent Gounelle manages to get readers to take a good look at modern lifestyles and society: are we really happy? ! A strong message that reverberates long after you close the book. When a fortune-teller predicts that Jonathan, a young insurance agent in San Francisco, is going to die before the year is up, Jonathan takes a good hard look at the life he’s been living, and decides to take full advantage of the time he has left. First he gets back to nature, staying with his Aunt Margie out in the country. Together, they try to get back in touch with deeper values: being aware of the present, finding a better existence within oneself. Back in San Francisco, he decides to live in harmony with the people around him and to improve their lives with small kindnesses. When he finds out that the gypsy woman’s prediction was a hoax – and had in fact been organized by his Aunt Margie, he’s grateful: she has helped him to find himself, and to finally be happy. A radiant and joyful new novel by bestselling author Laurent Gounelle that invites us all to take a good look at our own lives and shows how we can be the architects of our own happiness. Laurent Gounelle was a human-resources consultant for 15 years. His novels reflect his interest in philosophy, psychology and personal development. LE JOUR OU J’AI APPRIS A VIVRE is his fourth book, after the success of L’HOMME QUI VOULAIT ETRE HEUREUX exceeded the million of copies sold in France and was translated into 28 languages!). Grand, Emmanuel: TERMINUS BELZ (Liana Levi, January 2014, 368 pages) 20 000 copie sold in France English sample available ! TERMINUS BELZ has entered the French bestsellers’ list. Longlisted for the Prix du Polar Européen, the Prix Landernau Policier Shortlisted for the Prix des Maisons de la Presse and the 2014 Prix Polar Michel Lebrun ! In the Top 10 for Best Thriller of the Year (LIRE Magazine) ! Listed for Prices: Prix of european detectif Le Point, Deuxième liste du Prix des Maisons de la presse, Prix Landernau policier ! An unsettling tale in a magnificent and menacing natural setting that is the only true master of sailors and other men’s fates. ! Human folly and superstition, as well as small-town gossip, make for a threatening atmosphere. ! The plot weaves social commentary in with themes like illegal immigration and sailors’ difficult working conditions. Marko, an illegal alien with the Rumanian mafia on his trail, is hiding out on the island of Belz, in Brittany, where he works on a fishing boat. He is confronted with a world steeped in superstition. A thriller with a threatening atmosphere and relentless suspense. Contact: Mrs Anastasia Lester ; Email:[email protected] 3 BEST-SELLERS 2015 Marko has decided to leave Ukraine for France, illegally. But the trip doesn’t go as planned: the two guides rape the young woman who is traveling with them. Three men step in, take their money, and slip away. With the Rumanian mafia on their trail, they part ways. Marko heads west, eventually finding a job on a fishing boat on a small island called Belz. What seemed like a perfect situation quickly turns into a nightmare: everybody on the island knows everybody else, fishermen live in miserable conditions, and there’s not enough work to go around. When a man is viciously murdered, the police lock the island down in order to interrogate everyone. But if they interrogate Marko, they’ll find out that he’s an illegal alien, and he’ll be deported. Once he has hidden from the police, he has to continue to lay low. Other strange events ensue, and fishermen’s superstitions crop up. Marko feels trapped between the demons of his own past, a threatening community, the police manhunt and the Rumanian mafia. Masks finally fall, and having faced down both his fear of the sea and of death, Marko is welcomed into the community. In this masterful tale, Emmanuel Grand’s Marko is captive to a hopeless situation and a police investigation on an island whose closets are filled with skeletons, where the madness and supernatural events evoke David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Born in 1966, Emmanuel Grand spent his childhood on the Atlantic coast. TERMINUS BELZ is his first novel. Rights sold to: Germany (AufBau), Spain (Salamandra), French Pocket rights sold (Seuil) "At times a sobering thriller, at others an inspired social novel, Terminus Belz deploys its beautiful architecture and musical style right to the last page." Télérama "The thriller revelation of the new season." RTL "Grand strings us along right to the last sentence." Métro "A first thriller that speaks of resilience, of masculine fraternity, and of insularity." Psychologies "Cursed be the reader who misses this diabolical book." Paris Match "Right from the start of play, he proves he's got the soul of a storyteller. A detour to Belz is a must." Livres Hebdo "A 'devilishly' disturbing road movie punctuated with murders and peopled with feisty yet profoundly humane characters." Actualité "A windswept island is the harrowing no-exit setting for this first novel that combines Stephen King and Simenon." Télé Z Levy, Justine: LA GAIETE (BEING CHEERFUL) (Stock, Novel January 2015 216 pages) 78 000 copies sold in France! ! That is the powerful, universal subject of this real-life-novel, a subject of downfall and hope that we all know: about how children are central to your lives. “It was when I became pregnant that I decided to stop being sad once and for all, and by whatever means I could.” Louise, the narrator of Justine Lévy’s eagerly awaited new book, has all the doubts, anxieties, fretfulness, melancholy, cold sweats and violent fears that she had in the author’s previous novels. She stumbles through life, feeling blue in her soul and black in her heart, relying on “mumanddad” for support, tripping over and picking herself up. Sadness clings to her and drags her down. Until the day when... Louise, the daughter of a tragically damaged mother and an over-loved father, finds she is carrying her husband Pablo’s baby. How to love our children? Too much, not enough, too hard, too intensely? And what should we pass on to them? It is also only now that this young adult herself still immersed in childhood becomes a mother. Through smiles, regrets, tears, irritations, the tiny setbacks of everyday life, as well as family secrets and a Cinderella- style stepmother who looms up from the past, Louise tames this life of hers as if it were a gentle caress. Justine Lévy is the author of RENDEZ-VOUS (Plon, 1995) and MAUVAISE FILLE (Stock, 2009) and RIEN DE GRAVE (Stock, 2004), translated into 17 languages. 4 Contact: Mrs Anastasia Lester ; Email:[email protected] FICTION Rights under option in China, Germany, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Taiwan and Turkey “Evil is not contagious, Justine Lévy demonstrates it splendidly” L’Express Leroy, Gilles: LE MONDE SELON BILLY BOY (THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BILLY BOY) (Mercure de France, January 2015, 252 pages) 10 000 copies sold in France ! A moving novel in the intimistic vein of the author's previous novels. ! An immersion into post WWII Paris and the Montparnasse neighbourhood, with its teeming and exciting artistic milieu. The result of a teenage passion, Billy Boy is the love child of a seductive and strong-willed mother and an amorous and gambling father; in this family novel, Gilles Leroy draws the moving portraits of his own parents. At the very end of the 1950’s, Eliane is twenty years old when she gets pregnant. Andre,