Highlights London Book Fair 2019 Highlights Welcome to our 2019 International Book Rights Highlights For more information please go to our website to browse our shelves and find out more about what we do and who we represent. Contents Fiction Literary and Upmarket Fiction 1 - 9 Commercial Fiction 10 - 15 Crime, Suspense, Thriller 16 - 28 Non-Fiction Politics and Current Affairs 29 - 33 History and Science 34 - 36 Reissues 37 Focus Page: Ben Myers 38 Upcoming Publications 39 - 41 Film & TV news 42 - 44 Sub-agents 45 Primary Agents US Rights: Veronique Baxter; Jemima Forrester; Georgia Glover; Anthony Goff (AG); Andrew Gordon (AMG); Jane Gregory; Lizzy Kremer; Harriet Moore; Caroline Walsh; Jessica Woollard Film & TV Rights: Clare Israel; Penelope Killick; Nicky Lund; Georgina Ruffhead Translation Rights Alice Howe: [email protected] Direct: France; Germany Claire Morris: [email protected] Direct: Denmark; Finland; Iceland; Italy; the Netherlands; Norway; Sweden Emma Jamison: [email protected] Direct: Brazil; Portugal; Spain and Latin America Sub-agented: Poland Emily Randle: [email protected] Direct: Croatia; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Slovenia Sub-agented: China; Hungary, Japan; Korea; Russia; Taiwan; Turkey; Ukraine Margaux Vialleron: [email protected] Direct: Arabic; Albania; France; Greece; Israel; Macedonia, Vietnam plus miscellaneous requests. Audio in France and Germany Sub-agented: Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Indonesia; Romania; Serbia; Slovakia; Thailand Contact t: +44 (0)20 7434 5900 f: +44 (0)20 7437 1072 www.davidhigham.co.uk Skin Kerry Andrew When Joe disappears, his only child Matty goes looking for him in the cool, cold water of the wild swimming ponds in Hampstead Heath Andrew’s second novel shimmers in the liminal space between borders and their permeability; between genders; between skin and water, water and land, reality and fantasy; between two millennia; between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The novel opens in 80s London. One day, Matty’s dad Joe walks out and never comes back. Matty’s mum says he’s died, but Matty thinks otherwise and begins to explore the ponds on Hampstead Heath that dad loved so much; finding a liberation in the cold dark water. Later, a grown-up Matty, still wild swiming and looking for Joe, this time in Ireland, finds more than bargained for. Various water myths and folklore swim in and out of this novel: nix, shape shifting water spirits who try and draw people into the water, selkies or merfolk who change UK: Jonathan Cape - January 2020 from seal to human form on land and Melusin, women from UK Editor: Robin Robertson European folklore who are fish or serpents from the waist down. US Rights: DHA (JW) Primary Agent: JW Translation Rights: DHA Film/TV Rights: DHA (PK) Kerry Andrew is a London-based author, composer, performer and television presenter. Her first novelSwansong was published by Jonathan Cape in 2017 (rights: Jonathan Cape). She made Additional Info: her short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014 and was a finalist in Extent - 90,000 words the BBC National Short Story Award October 2018 for “To Belong Illustrations - NO To”. As a composer, she has won four British Composer Awards Material Available - Edited and is best known for her experimental vocal, choral and manuscript due March 2019 music-theatre work, often based around themes of community, landscape and myth. She sings with Juice Vocal Ensemble and Subagents: has released two albums with her band You Are Wolf: Hawk Chinese - Andrew Nurnberg to the Hunting Gone (2014), a collection of avian folk-songs Associates re-interpreted, and Keld (2018), inspired by freshwater folklore. Japanese - Japan Uni Swangsong was released in paperback on 31st of January 2019. Praise for Swansong: ‘Swansong is the real thing, right from the start: spiky, strange and contemporary, but always with a dark undertow of myth and folklore tugging at its telling. The voice jags at you, and the plot grips: this is a brilliant novel by a writer - and musician - of frankly alarming talent.’ - Robert Macfarlane ‘Like the great storytelling tradition it extends so elegantly, Swansong is all about transformation, whether through love, rage, fear or desperation: a chilling tour de force that draws the old gods and demons from the land, and lets them loose in the most unexpected ways... Essential reading.’ - John Burnside ‘A subtle, supernatural tale told in a present-day voice, unsettling right from the start. The writing is so vivid and charged with energy, it’s truly a remarkable novel.’ - Shirley Collins Literary and Upmarket Fiction 1 Untitled Hannah Begbie You can work hard all your life – and still lose it all. You can do the right thing – and still be wrong. Becky works in film production, the protege of successful producer Matthew Kingsman. With his backing she is finally close to getting her own passion-project off the ground, the first step in re-building a life that was shattered in her teens. But when she visits Matthew’s house to deliver a thank-you gift, she witnesses him cheating on his wife – with a young, intoxicated- looking actress. Days later, the actress publicly alleges that she was raped. Becky chooses to remain silent. After all, how much does she really owe a stranger? With her livelihood inextricably tied to Matthew, telling the truth would mean losing everything, and there are good reasons to believe that the actress is out for UK: HarperCollins - Early 2020 revenge against the man she is accusing. UK Editor: Martha Ashby US Rights: DHA (VB) But as the toxic consequences of Becky’s silence begin to Primary Agent: VB Translation Rights: DHA spread, she is pushed towards a reckoning – with her own, Film/TV Rights: United Agents (St John deeply-disturbing past and a secret that could shatter her Donald) forever. Hannah Begbie studied Art History at Cambridge University. She Additional Info: went on to become a talent agent, representing BAFTA and Extent - TBC Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning writers and comedians Illustrations - NO for ten years until her youngest son was diagnosed with cystic Material Available - Unedited fibrosis. manuscript In 2015 she joined the board of The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, to raise Rights sold for Mother: awareness and advocate for the CF community. She also Italian - Fabbri enrolled in The Novel Studio course at City University, winning that year’s new writing prize. The book she developed there became her debut novel, Mother, which was published Subagents: by HarperCollins on 26 July 2018. Mother went on to win the Chinese - Andrew Nurnberg Romantic Novelists’ Association Joan Hessayon Award for new Associates writing. It was picked for Fern Britton’s inaugural book club for Japanese - Tuttle-Mori Tesco and for Mumsnet Book of the Month. Mother has been optioned by Clerkenwell Films for adaptation as a television drama. Hannah lives in north London with her husband, a screenwriter, and their two sons. Praise for Mother: ‘Human and true’ - Financial Times ‘An emotionally-charged, heartstoppingly addictive page turner, which shocks and entertains’ - Irish Examiner Literary and Upmarket Fiction 2 Edith and Julian Naoise Dolan A love story under late capitalism by a major new voice in literary fiction Edith and Julian is the story of a simple love triangle: Edith and Julian and the narrator, Ava, and the question of who will end up together. But it is also the much more complex story of late capitalism, the 21st Century’s obsessive affair with class and money, which asks: how do we love under these conditions? As if Sally Rooney had a sly sister or Jane Austen was writing about modern relationships, Naoise Dolan is a bracingly sharp new voice who exposes the intricacies and vulnerabilities of human interaction and all our financial and intimate transactions with wit and flair. For fans of Conversations with Friends and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, this is the arrival of a scorchingly smart literary writer UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson - Spring of crisp, wry, politically alert fiction. 2020 UK Editor: Lettice Franklin US Rights: Ecco (HarperCollins) US Editor: Megan Lynch Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer born in Dublin. She studied English Primary Agent: HM Literature at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University, and Translation Rights: DHA now lives in London. Edith and Julian is her first novel, an excerpt Film/TV Rights: DHA (NL) from which was published in The Stinging Fly. Rights sold: Dutch - Atlas Contact French - TBC Russian - TBC Swedish - Wahlstrom & Widstrand Additional Info: Extent - TBC Illustrations - NO Material Available - Unedited manuscript Subagents: Chinese - Andrew Nurnberg Associates Japanese - Tuttle-Mori Literary and Upmarket Fiction 3 Ness Stanley Donwood & Robert Macfarlane A prose poem for dark times, written under nuclear shadow that asks ‘what might happen if land came to life?’ Ness is a work of nature writing like no other. Ness is a black mass for dark times. Ness is a modern myth. Ness is a prose- poem-play-novella of the Anthropocene. Ness is a book that is ultra-contemporary in its atmospheres and themes (nuclear war, environmental collapse, nature’s return), but that also reaches far back into literature’s history for its precursors (Beowulf; Gawain and the Green Knight; The Epic of Gilgamesh). Ness leaves its readers troubled and bewitched. Ness is a collaboration between prize winning writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Stanley Donwood, both with major international reputations, who have together made a deeply strange, strong short book. In 2012, Robert Macfarlane and UK: Hamish Hamilton - Autumn 2019 Stanley Donwood (together with the writer Dan Richards) UK Editor: Simon Prosser published a book called Holloway in a limited letterpress US Rights: DHA (JW) edition of 277 copies, which sold out within days. Rights were Primary Agent: JW Translation Rights: DHA soon acquired by Faber and Faber, who published the book Film/TV RIghts: DHA (PK) in 2014: it became a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller, has since been filmed, and has been translated into languages including German and Galician.