BOOKS: FICTION

Agents' initials follow each client's entry

JUDITH ALLNATT
Judith Allnatt is a teacher who lives in rural Northamptonshire with her young family. She is a published poet and is already at work on her second novel. Her writing is being compared to that of Rose Tremain, Helen Dunmore and Tim Pears

http://www.judithallnatt.co.uk/

A MILE OF RIVER

It is 1976 and England is suffocating. The long, dry spring has given way to a summer of severe drought, with standpipes in the streets and a rallying cry to ‘save water, share a bath!’ For the farmers, life has become a daily struggle to make ends meet. The fields are tinder dry, the earth is dusty and scorched and the rivers are drying up to a trickle.

Jess and Tom live on a remote farm in the English countryside with their increasingly difficult and brutal father, Henry. Their mother, Sylvie, walked out years before and Jess is struggling with the role of mother figure to Tom, as well as skivvie and hired hand for her father. Jess just wants to be a normal teenager, to go to dances and kiss boys, to take her exams and dream of a future far away from milking cows and ploughing fields. Daydreaming about her mother’s return, Jess discovers Sylvie’s old diary and begins to uncover the shocking truth about her disappearance.

As the drought grips ever tighter, as the water level of the river begins to drop, the menace in the air builds until it reaches boiling point, with a confrontation between Jess and her father that has devastating consequences

‘A novel of rare insight, exquisitely written. A standing ovation for this debut.’
Michael Morpurgo

UK Publisher: Doubleday/Black Swan, March 2008

Rights sold: Holland
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CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG
Campbell Armstrong was born in Glasgow in 1944. After receiving his BA from the University of Sussex Campbell migrated to the United States where he lived with his wife and children for twenty years initially teaching creative writing and then becoming a full-time novelist. He produced 20 bestselling novels before deciding to return to Europe in 1991. He now lives and writes in the Republic of Ireland.

BUTCHERS
Lou Perlman, officially on sick leave from the Strathclyde Police, has hit the lowest point in his life. Barred from participating in the investigation of the bloody gangland slayings that have shocked Glasgow, and seemingly abandoned by Miriam, the nomadic object of his affection, he’s a man without much of a future…Until the day when he decides to clean his long-neglected house and discovers, stuffed between yellowing old newspapers, a decayed human hand in a Ziploc bag…Whose hand is this? And who cut if off? And who put it in Perlman’s bedroom? These are questions he alone must answer, and they take him on a baffling quest through the strata of Glasgow society, from slum tenements to casinos to New Age Temples and high-flying criminals and freaks… the answers, when they come, prove to be more troubling than the questions.

UK publisher: Allison & Busby, 2006

Praise for WHITE RAGE...
“Armstrong’s skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.”
The Scotsman

Already published: JIG, MAZURKA, MAMBO, AGENTS OF DARKNESS, CONCERT OF GHOSTS, JIGSAW, HEAT, THE SURGEON’S DAUGHTER, BLACKOUT, SILENCER, THE TRADERS WIFE, THE BAD FIRE, THE LAST DARKNESS, WHITE RAGE.

Previous foreign sales in: USA, France, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden, Spain.

"The thinking man's thriller writer ... Armstrong's novels are unusually supple in their writing, elegiac and lyrical...The hard-boiled writing of Chandler and Hammett runs through his work." Sunday Times

DT

VICOUS CIRCLE

Felix Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off...
Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after the case of the Bonnington Archive ghost convinced him that he really can do some good with his abilities ('good', of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead). But his friend, Rafi, is still possessed: the succubus, Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends), still technically has a contract on him; and he's still - let's not beat around the bush - dirt poor.

.... and when Satanists, sacrifice farms, stolen spirits and possessed churches all appear on the same police report, the name of Felix Castor can't be too far behind.

MD

GLENN CHANDLER
Glenn Chandler is best known as the creator and writer of the award-winning TAGGART television series which continues to be made and screened world-wide.

JANET SKESLIEN CHARLES
Originally from the US, Janet now lives in Paris. She recently lived in the Ukraine, and this formative experience forms the background for her her wonderfully funny, wise first novel, about the lucrative business of internet dating.

MOONLIGHT IN ODESSA
Life in post communist Ukraine is not a bed of roses. Prices are rising, job prospects falling, accommodation remains Soviet style communal flats in dreary suburbs. Life is hard, except for the Mafia who are making a killing. Daria has classical Ukrainian beauty (except for her Communist-era bad teeth), and a degree in engineering. She loves her native city of Odessa and her grandmother, with whom she lives. Because of her excellent English, she lands a good job with a foreign shipping company.

To her horror, Daria soon discovers that sex is part of the job description. Appalled at the prospect of being mauled by her lecherous middle-aged boss, but loathe to give up the perks of the job - tasting real coffee and other Western delicacies for the first time, a salary that she and her grandmother can actually live on - Daria decides on the only course of action available: she persuades her best friend to seduce him. This succeeds too well: Daria still loses her job but by this time she is working for Soviet Unions, a dating agency run by a formidable former communist specialising in finding rich American husbands for Ukrainian women. She is also being pursued by the local Mafia Boss, the gorgeous but dangerous Vlad. So she takes the next only sensible course of action available: she marries one of the rich Americans. Her second mistake: her rich American turns out to be a toilet attendant living in a godforsaken corner of California (not a park ranger outside San Francisco, as in his cv). She has exchanged one form of drudgery for another. Can Daria escape, and will she ever find Mr Right?

Ukrainian Tractors meets Desperate Housewives: this is a novel for our times

UK & US Publisher: Bloomsbury, Autumn 2009

Foreigh rights sold: Germany, Holland, Brasil, Italy

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ELIZABETH DARRELL
The fourth in A MAX RYDAL military mystery series by the author of many popular novels including UNSUNG HEROES and THAT SWEET AND SAVAGE LAND. Elizabeth Darrell, who also writes as Emma Drummond, lives in Bournemouth. She was an army officer before she became a full-time writer, and draws on this experience in this crime series, which has the unusual setting of a British military base in Germany

DUTCH COURAGE

The truth must be told; blinkers removed from eyes. That’s the message in anonymous letters sent to Sam Collier, a helicopter pilot decorated for bravery during a daring rescue of wounded men in Afghanistan. When a campaign of determined harassment is mounted against his wife, she turns to Special Investigation Branch, aka the military police, for help.

Tom Black is uncomfortably disturbed by this stunning, wealthy woman, but Max Rydal believes that a colleague’s resentment of a man’s good fortune, in professional and personal life, is behind the vendetta. However when Sam is savagely beaten up, the case becomes top priority. Who is behind this persecution of the couple? Sam claims to remember nothing of the brutal attack, but Max knows he’s lying. Max begins to investigate what really went on in Afghanistan, while suspicion also falls on Sam’s wife, the daughter of a high-ranking military officer.

Max and Tom have the unenviable job of having to unravel a seemingly successful, happy marriage to get at the truth.

UK: Severn House August 2008

Already published: UNSUNG HEROES, SCARLET SHADOWS, THE BURNING LAND, THE RICE DRAGON, BEYOND ALL FRONTIERS, FORGET THE GLORY, THE BRIDGE OF A HUNDRED DRAGONS, A CAPTIVE FREEDOM, SOME FAR ELUSIVE DAWN, THAT SWEET AND SAVAGE LAND, A QUESTION OF HONOUR, A DISTANT HERO, AND IN THE MORNING, AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN, WE WILL REMEMBER,SHADOWS OVER THE SUN, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, CHINESE PUZZLE

Praise for previous Elizabeth Darrell titles:
‘Well crafted ...a memorable, full-blooded historical’ Publishers Weekly on WE WILL REMEMBER
&A fascinating account of a little-appreciated branch of the armed forces’ Booklist on UNSUNG HEROES

Previous foreign sales in: USA, Italy, Norway, Poland, France, Russia

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KATE DUNN

Kate comes from a long line of writers and actors: her grandfather, Hugh Williams, was a celebrated actor and playwright and her uncles are the actor Simon Williams and the poet Hugo Williams. Kate followed her family into the theatre and has performed in repertory and in the West End. She has appeared in television productions including My Brother Jonathon and The Bill. Her career changed with the birth of her son Jack and the publication of her first novel REBECCA'S CHILDREN by Barrie and Jenkins. This was followed by the publication of ALWAYS AND ALWAYS, the Wartime Letters of Hugh and Margaret Williams, edited by Kate, published by John Murray and broadcast on Radio 4. In October 1998 John Murray issued EXIT THROUGH THE FIREPLACE - The Great Days of Rep and the sequel to this, DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET – The Early Days of Live Television, was published in 2003. Kate now broadcasts on Radios Two, Three and Four and is a regular contributor to Front Row. She teaches creative writing at Bristol University and has just finished a novel, THE THINGS YOU DO FOR LOVE, for which she has received a grant from Arts Council England.

Praise for Exit Through the Fireplace

‘Many of the stories made me laugh out loud.’ Charles Spencer, The Sunday Telegraph.

Praise for Always and Always
"Kate Dunn has edited this collection faultlessly. Generally unobtrusive, she is always on hand when needed to guide us." Charles Duff, The Spectator

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

A family estate near Monmouth is the setting for Kate Dunn’s second novel. Theo and Patrick have inherited the place from their aunt, Esther. It needs a huge amount of restoration and Theo, still emotionally raw from his recent divorce, sets to with great gusto, helped by a local gardener, Nico, whose uncle worked for Esther before the war. Two women are hired: Asmita, taking time off before she goes to study medicine at university, and Pink Ones (‘before you ask it’s not my real name’), who has run away from home. Work is hampered by the discovery of a body in the well – which turns out to be that of Nico’s uncle - and by a tree falling on Theo and Patrick’s wife, Hedda. For anyone who ever thought countrylife was all flowers and balmy evenings: this novel will bring you firmly back to earth.

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DIVING INTO LIGHT
Tesco's book of the month and Waterstones summer promotion

Every summer throughout her childhood, Florence would return to her family home on the west coast of France, where she would be joined by her exotic, hopelessly glamorous cousins and life as she knew it would begin under the benevolent eye of her grandmother Mimi. It was a heady existence of illicit drinking, stolen kisses and the bittersweet pains of first love.

But now Florence is living completely alone with her new baby. Haunted by nightmares, she cannot open the letters from her grandmother accumulating on her mantelpiece. What devastating truth do these letters hold? Why has Florence turned her back on her past? And will she and Mimi ever be able to escape the guilt that is tearing them apart and has shaken their family to its very core?

DIVING INTO LIGHT is steeped in emotion and drama; it’s got the sweep of story and place which one associates with writers like Elizabeth Jane Howard, and the sexiness and humour of Mary Wesley.

Quote for DIVING INTO LIGHT
'Compulsively readable... I loved it' Meg Rosoff

UK Publisher: Transworld, July 2008

Foreign sales: Germany, Holland

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NEIL FORSYTH

Neil Forsyth is a freelance journalist who has written for (amongst others) the Scotsman, The Mail on Sunday, Scotland on Sunday, Maxim, Details and Esquire. He has also written two non fiction books OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY, The rise and fall of Britain’s Boldest Credit Card Fraudster Elliot Castro which has been optioned for feature film and DELETE THIS AT YOUR PERIL a critically acclaimed hilarious collection of responses to spam emails.

LET THEM COME THROUGH

Twentysomething stage medium Nick Santini finds himself implicated in the death of a young girl, employed as one of the backstage assistants on his latest tour. The death threatens to derail all of Nick and his scuttling manager, Tony’s, plans as this tour was intended as a ‘comeback’ from an earlier almost forgotten scandal which torpedoed Nick’s fledgling television career.

Nick finds himself struggling to hold it together mentally and physically as pressure builds from both the sinister and corrupt policeman who is leading the investigation, and a journalist from a local paper, who seems to be delving into events Nick thought were carefully hidden.

In counterpoint to this story, the reader is given glimpses into Nick’s childhood and we are exposed to the twisted figure of his father, a man whose warped attitudes have shaped Nick’s own outlook on life. The sudden reappearance of his father – uninvited and rightly unloved – only adds to Nick’s present day crisis.

Told in a vivid, acerbic first person narrative this is a fascinating exposé of the poisonous, cynical world of professional mediums – the ticks and tricks of the trade, the grubby atmosphere of the hotel rooms in unnamed towns, the backstage bickering – all are captured with Forsyth’s mordant wit.

UK publisher: Serpents Tail/Profile, Summer 2009

DR

JEAN FULLERTON

Jean joined MBA Agents as a client after she won the 2006 Harry Bowling Prize for her novel NO CURE FOR LOVE. She is married to a Cof E vicar and they live in Stratford in East London. Like Harry, Jean is a true cockney and she has worked as a nurse and as a lecturer on health and nursing. She has published romantic novels with E-publisher Triskelion.

NO CURE FOR LOVE

is a romantic historical set in the late nineteenth century in London’s East End. The heart of the novel is a very touching love affair between a poor Irish singer and a respectable Scottish doctor. The background is the dreadful poverty and hardship in the East End at the time, as unscrupulous and corrupt landlords and employers in the nearby docks get away with, sometimes, literally murder.

Full of fascinating insights and detail into the closeknit Irish working-class community which crowded into the East End in the late Victorian era, and the upperclass medical profession beginning to discover the connection between bad hygiene, infected water and terrible diseases like cholera, Jean Fullerton’s first novel is also a first-class love story with believable and sympathetic characters, and lots of humour, drama and emotion. All in all, everything you could want from a historical saga!

UK Publisher: Orion, December 2008

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l
Previously published: SPRING WILL BE OURS, KEEPING SECRETS, THE LAST GUESTS OF THE SEASON, LETTERS FROM PRAGUE which was serialised on Woman’s Hour, THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT which was awarded the Romantic Novelists Association Novel of the Year in 1997, EARTH AND HEAVEN, THIN AIR, shortlisted for RNA Novel of the Year 2003; THE MYSTERIES OF GLASS (longlisted for the Orange Prize 2005).

READING IN BED

Shortlisted for Good Housekeeping 2008 book award; Daily mail book of the month choice; WH Smith read of the week; included in Waterstoones, Smiths and Borders promotions

Friends since university, with busy working lives now behind them, Dido and Georgia have long been looking forward to books and outings, conversation and carefree days. Alas: life is rarely as one wishes it to be, and both find themselves caught up in wholly unexpected domestic drama. Dido, for the first time, has cause to question her marriage; widowed Georgia is certain her husband will return to her. Meanwhile an eccentric country cousin goes wildly off the rails, children are unhappy in love, and perfect health is all at once in question. Turning to one another should be as natural as breathing but with so much at stake even this old friendship comes under strain. As hatches are battened down, and silence falls, it takes all their loyalty and humour to recover the easy confiding intimacy of the past.

Wry, surprising, moving and uplifting, READING IN BED will delighted anyone who has known the pleasure of turning to a well-loved book, or a true friend.

‘Humorous, wryly-observed, she is never less than assured – especially on the small stuff, those moments to pause and ‘drink in being alive.’’
Daily Mail

Giving great vividness to their inner lives, Gee unerringly and confidently evokes her characters.’
Elizabeth Buchan, The Times

UK publisher: Headline Review July 2007, published in May 2008 in paperback

Previous foreign rights sold: USA, Germany

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CLIO GRAY
Clio won the 2004 Harry Bowling Prize for her first novel, which was subsequently bought in a two-book deal by Headline. Clio has also written award-winning short stories which have been published in magazines and anthologies. She lives in Scotland where she works as a librarian. In July 2006 Clio Gray won the prestigious Scotsman-Orange short story prize. Her latest novel, ENVOY OF THE BLACK PINE, is the third in the acclaimed crime series set in nineteenth-century England.

ENVOY OF THE BLACK PINE

IIn April 1808, a storm sweeps across the islands of the Baltic Sea and on towards England, destroying the entire village of Lower Slaughter in its wake.

Into this ruined land comes missing-persons finder Whilbert Stroop, on the trail of a lost miniature library and the man who was supposed to have been its protector. Almost crossing paths with Stroop is Griselda Liit, a refugee from Lower Slaughter, carrying her last few possessions and her father’s secret back to Hiiumaa, the Baltic island of her birth. Behind Griselda, in the shadows, a strange figure follows for a very different reason.

From flooded valleys and sinister printworks in England to ancient brotherhoods and hidden tree chapels of the tiny Baltic island Hiiumaa, Stroop and his entourage of lost souls encounter piracy, insurrection and find themselves embroiled in an ancient feud which threatens to spill over into bloody civil war.

UK: Headline, August 2008

Praise for Clio Gray:

" just as bloody as The Da Vinci Code... however, much better written" Scotsman

‘Clio Gray is a master of atmosphere and sensuousness. She combines historical realism with the bizarre, whimsy with the macabre. Reading her is like being at a sumptuous feast in a palace, just before it is stormed.’
Alan Bissett

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SHARON GRIFFITHS

Sharon Griffiths comes from Pembrokeshire, west Wales. She worked for many years at the BBC, before becoming a freelance journalist based in Yorkshire. She writes two columns a week for The Northern Echo in Darlington and two for the Eastern Daily Press in Norwich. She also writes features for national newspapers plus some radio and TV work.

THE ACCIDENTAL TIME TRAVELLER is her first novel

If 50 is the new 30, then where does that leave today’s 30-year-olds? How would they have coped in a less indulgent age? In 2008, journalists Will and Rose love each other, live together but are still not quite a couple. He thinks she is too independent for commitment. She thinks he is too immature. It would have been very different in the 1950s…

Then Rosie is researching a feature on the 1950s and suddenly finds herself living the story. It’s 1953, and she is working on a newspaper: offices full of men and cigarette smoke and women making coffee and writing recipes. What’s worse is that Will is there too. But in the 1950s he is known as Billy and has been married since he was 16 and has three children. In the different circumstances of the 1950s, Will/Billy is a family man and devoted father; he grows vegetables and even has a shed. He is, in fact, a grown up.

Rose is desperate for Billy to love her in the 1950s the way Will does in 2008. 1950s Billy is intrigued to have a female colleague as hungry for the big stories as he is, and is clearly very taken with Rosie - but he would never betray his wife and family. Ironically now that she really knows Will and is sure he’s the one for her, she can no longer have him. Unless she can get back to 2008…

A wonderfully warm romantic comedy, whose heroine is transported back to the 50s and finds she rather likes the traditional values of the time. One of the debuts most likely to be an instant hit that I’ve seen.’ Bookseller

UK Publisher: Avon Books, July 2008

Foreign sales: Spain, Holland, Germany, Romania

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AMBREEN HAMEED

Ambreen Hameed has been a producer/director in British television for fifteen years. Trained as a journalist, Ambreen’s career in television began at the BBC on the Asian programme, “Network East”. She has produced many documentaries mostly on social issues and many concerned with matters of race. She was series producer of the award-winning Channel 4 series “Devil’s Advocate” and two of her “London Programmes” have been nominated for RTS awards. Her recent projects include “Second Chance” a peak-time series on school exclusion for Channel 4, and “Dispatches”.

Ambreen’s investigative career and passionately enquiring mind have compelled her to turn her hand to fiction. Her first book is a crossover title is about a schoolgirl who just doesn’t fit in. SHRINKING FRANCESCA TIDDLEY is a witty and intelligent plea against institutionalisation and an amazing worm hole ride into the worlds of Einstein and Zeno. It is undergoing a final edit and will be ready at the end of the year. Ambreen is also writing an adult book with her sister about love, betrayal and mass terrorism called UNDYING

SGB

ONE MISTAKE
Joanna Hines has written a novel for adults who have trouble reading and it was published by Barrington Stoke in July 2008.

Praise for Joanna Hines:
outdistances most current crime writing’ Crime Time

Ben always gets it wrong. He's lost his job, his girlfriend and his driving licence. Not like his perfect sister Emma. But one night changes it all.

Emma's world has turned into a web of lies, blackmail and murder... And only Ben can sort it out. Will he help? Or will she lose everything because of one mistake?

Already published: DORA’ S ROOM which was W.H. Smith Fresh Talent winner 1993. THE PURITAN’S WIFE, THE CORNISH GIRL, THE FIFTH SECRET, THE LOST DAUGHTER, THE AUTUMN OF STRANGERS, IMPROVISING CARLA (Channel 4 drama autumn 2003), SURFACE TENSION, ANGELS OF THE FLOOD, THE MURDER BIRD

Praise for IMPROVISING CARLA (Simon & Schuster):
‘Hines has succeeded in producing a gripping women’s thriller that cannot fail to hook male readers too...completely credible, reminiscent of the best of Robert Goddard. I thoroughly recommend it.’ The Times

Foreign rights sold: Poland, Germany, Greece, Serbia, France, Sweden, Japan, USA, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Holland

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GALLOWGLASS

The second part of the trilogy, THE PROMISES OF DOCTOR SIGMUNDUS.

In this thrilling sequel to THE HOLLOW PEOPLE, we meet Dante’s nemesis – his evil twin Luke – who is being manipulated by Dr Sigmundus, and only Dante can stop him. Meanwhile, his best friend Bea is being held captive…

In the depths of the Odyll a new evil is born: the Gallowglass. Only Dante can stop it. To do so he must face a terrible choice.
UK Publisher: Orchard Books, September 2008

Foreign sales: Portugal, France, Poland, Norway, Lithuania, Greece, US (Alfred Knopf & Crown)

THE HAUNTING OF NATHANIEL WOLFE

A story of the supernatural set among the winding streets of Victorian London.

It’s seven o’clock on a cold, London evening and in a grubby theatre down by the docks, Nathaniel Wolfe watches as his father ¬ the greatest medium in London ¬ takes to the stage. Which of the dead will speak through him tonight?

What Nathaniel doesn’t know is that his father is meddling with things he cannot control. Before the night is over Nathaniel will find himself in the middle of a chilling mystery, one that can only be solved from beyond the grave.

Brian was born in London of Irish parents. He has worked for the last 20 years as a children’s and educational writer. He has written fourteen previous novels for children of which the most recent is The Hollow People.

UK publisher: Orchard Books, August 2008

Previously published:
DON’T HANG ABOUT, SOME PEOPLE NEVER LEARN, NO NEED FOR HEROES, IF THIS IS THE REAL WORLD, BOYS DON’T WRITE LOVE STORIES, FAMILY SECRETS, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF GEORGIA BROWN, BITTER FRUIT, BALLOON HOUSE, FALLING FOR JOSHUA, JACOB'S LADDER, HOLLOW PEOPLE

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MARK LALBEHARRY

Mark Lalbeharry was joint winner of the Harry Bowling Prize in 2002. He lives and works in London and this is his first novel.

THE SIMIAN CURVE
www.thesimiancurve.com

On a freezing November afternoon, a headless corpse is found in the garage belonging to Thomas Tranmore, a maverick scientist who has worked for the Ministry of Defence. His house has been emptied of all furniture and possessions, his bank account is also empty. He seems to have no family, few friends and colleagues are reticent in talking about him.

DCI Diane Cresson and her team are assigned to the case. They soon discover that some very high-up people seem to know quite a lot about what Tranmore has been up to recently, and don’t necessarily want to share that information. Then another body is found in a nearby lake...

The Symian Curve marks the arrival of a powerful new thriller writer. Already showing the sure touch of a master craftsman, Mark Lalbeharry has created an utterly absorbing and chilling tale of murder and deception

UK Publisher: Robert Hale, December 2006

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SHARING CHARLIE
Unwanted pregnancy may not ruin women's lives in the way it once did, but for some it is too much. James Cassidy did not even know he was a father when a young women appeared on his doorstep, gave him a baby and ran away. Barely grownup himself, he turns to his own mother, Sarah, for help with Charlie. Being a grandmother is not part of Sarah's life plan; she is running a successful but time consuming business, and rediscovering the joy of being in love many years after the end of her stormy marriage to James' father. But she adores Charlie and often takes care of him. Then Charlie's real mother reappears and wants him back...

All rights available

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Aiveen McCarthy

Aiveen is a Dublin-based computer expert who has studied medical physics and worked at the London Stock Exchange. THE INSIDER is her first novel, a tense, action-packed thriller set in Dublin and the Bahamas.

THE INSIDER

When €12m shows up in Harry’s bank account and someone body-slams her under a train, she figures the two events must be connected. When the connection turns out to be her own father, her life takes a chilling turn.

Based in Dublin, Harry Martinez is a computer hacker turned security professional who gets paid to break the law. Her father, Sal Martinez, charmer, investment banker and high stakes poker player, was once Harry’s childhood hero. But he’s driven her away with a lifetime of broken promises and now he’s in prison. He belongs to an insider trading ring, whose leader is a cold-blooded killer called THE PROPHET. The Prophet reckons the €12m is his, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. Then one of the insider traders ends up dead and it looks like Harry’s next.

The Prophet gives Harry 48 hours to hand over the €12m, but suddenly the money disappears. Can Harry swallow her pride and go to her father for help, or can she find the money herself in the most daring and dangerous computer scam she has yet attempted?

UK Publisher: HarperCollins, May 2009

Foreign sales: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic, Russia

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JAN MINSHULL
Jan lives in the Lake District. This is her first novel.

www.janminshull.co.uk

COAST TO COAST
With her husband nearing retirement and her children grown up and left home, Linda is facing a crossroads in her life. Does she follow her husband around his favourite golf courses, making awkward conversation with the other wives? Does she turn her part-time job into a small business? In a rash moment, she decides to do the famous Coast to Coast walk across the North of England: from the Yorkshire moors to the mountains and lakes of Cumbria: the perfect opportunity to think about everything, and to prove to her doubting family that she can. Tramping through the stunning scenery of the Yorkshire Moors and the Lake District, in rain and shine, Linda enjoys the company of other walkers, especially Nick and his dog. The walk is interspersed with flashbacks to Linda’s life, as a child, as a daughter, as a wife and mother. We learn the true reason that Linda’s marriage feels like a trap are not surprised that Nick is clearly attracted to her.

An entirely satisfying read: the reader feels they have walked with Linda, but without the aching feet and limbs, and as she prepares to return home we are on tenterhooks as to which way her affections will turn...

UK: Transita, May 2006

'A likeable heroine who deals with marital crisis in a novel way. I strongly recommend you make this journey of discovery with her.’
Benita Brown, novelist

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FAMILY MATTERS

When Diane Jenner’s husband Gareth is hurt in a helicopter crash, his secrets begin to seep out. The pilot, also very badly hurt, was Gareth’s half-sister Valerie. At her hospital bedside, Diane is amazed to meet Valerie and Gareth’s father, Harold. As far as Diane knows, Gareth never knew his father, let alone sister, and their life together has been constrained by shortage of money and his absences for work. But Harold and Valerie are rich, and Gareth has been spending a lot of time with them. Why has he kept this life, and his sudden new wealth, secret? What else is he hiding from Diane?

A contemporary story of betrayal and guilt and how money can make or break family ties.

UK publisher: Robert Hale, 2008

Praise for UPHILL ALL THE WAY:
‘A strongly written story that many women will relate to.’ Katie Fforde

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THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS

The world is a puzzling, sometimes frightening place for Jessica Fontaine. As a child she only finds contentment in playing the piano and wandering alone in the empty spaces of Audlands Hall, the dilapidated country house where she grows up.

Twenty-five years later, divorced, with her son still living at home, Jessica is still preoccupied by the desire to create space around her. Then her volatile ex-husband reappears, the first of several surprises that both transform Jessica’s present and give her a startling new perspective on the past.

The Language of Others tells the absorbing story of a woman who spends much of her life feeling that she is out of step with the real world, until she discovers why. Related with humour and compassion, it offers a fresh,illuminating insight into what it means to be 'normal'.

UK: Sceptre, March 2008

Foreign rights sold: France(Fayard), Holland (Ambo Anthos)

UK: Sceptre, January 2006

Rights sold in: USA, Canada, Germany, Holland, Greece, France, Spain, Taiwan

Praise for ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR
‘Absorbing and sure-footed... Extremely well written and compulsively readable.’ Sunday Times

‘An extremely good first novel about loss, particularly lost children’ Guardian

‘Deceptively simple, subtly observed, with a plot that drags you forward like a strong current.’ Daily Mail

‘ A wonderful piece of writing - it is astonishing that she has never been published before’ John Carey, Chair of the Man Booker Prize

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VICTORIA MOSLEY
www.victoriamosley.co.uk

Victoria is a published poet and spoken word artist ; “The Dry Season “ 1998 “Crazy love “ 2002 CD “As in a Dream” 2003. She runs events and club nights in London and beyond , from the Groucho Club to the ICA , Austin Texas to Indonesia., from Jazz nights to new bands. At present she is Artist in Residence in the Film and Media Studies Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies London University.

She has been a part of the Mosley family and its circle for almost half her lifetime. Her novel draws on the experiences of being intimately involved with one of the most notorious and tempestuous 20th Century aristocratic families in modern history. She creates a profoundly moving portrait of the nature of modern marriage partnerships where temperaments are different and where love cannot always bridge the gap…

NEXT YEAR IN VIETNAM

Is the passionate debut novel of the poet Victoria Mosley. As the influential critic Julian Evans says of this novel “

“Enthralling, involving, fully and finely described, in passionate and lyrical language. ………. a hugely engrossing story,……… funny and passionate, the passion portrayed with an edge often of humorous despair and the characters with an unblinking knowingness. “

Julian Evans Broadcaster, translator and author

JP

A CHRISTMAS SECRET

Charlotte Pitt’s brother Dominic features in this new Christmas novella. After a stormy past, he has now become a vicar, and got re-married. He’s sent as a locum to a village whose vicar has gone on holiday. However, while Dominic struggles to make an impression on the villagers, his wife increasingly suspects that the vicar has mysteriously disappeared. It’s a lovely tale of hope and renewal at Christmastide.

UK: Headline, December 2006

AFRICA STAIRS (25th in the Pitt series)
UK: Headline US: Random House, April 2008
Translation rights: MBA

Pitt is woken by his boss, Narraway, very early in the morning. He’s got to investigate the murder of a maid. ‘Can’t one of the more junior policemen go to the scene of the crime? ’, grumbles Pitt. It’s at Buckingham Palace, says Narraway.
The suspects are narrowed down to a group of house guests who are meeting with the Prince of Wales to discuss the funding of a huge project: the Cape to Cairo railway. While the Prince might overlook the unfortunate loss of a maid while they’re there, the Queen is due back soon and if she finds out, she’s likely to veto any Royal support in the scheme.

While Pitt gets a fascinating glimpse of Palace life, he firmly believes in the concept of justice – yet now he witnesses people who are able to make their own laws and their own justice.

Praise for LONG SPOON LANE...

“In ‘Long Spoon Lane’ Perry… presents us with moral and political puzzles that are all too close to our own.”

Los Angeles Times

“Deeply impressive.” The Good Book Guide

The ‘Monk’ series
An English detective series set in the mid-1800's, and featuring the detective William Monk and ex-nurse Hester Latterly.

World War 1 Series
WE SHALL NOT SLEEP The Final book in the First World War series
TThe final book in the First World War series

October 1918. The war is in its closing stages. Joseph and Matthew are desperate to solve the conspiracy, because they know their arch-enemy will find a way to be involved in the war settlement – to Britain’s disadvantage.

Trying to save his skin, the Peacemaker’s cousin turns himself in, agreeing to reveal the identity of the mastermind. However, just as he arrives at Joseph’s field hospital, hidden among other German defectors, one of the nurses is brutally raped. Of course, everyone wants to believe it’s one of the German prisoners, and no one can leave the hospital until the truth is found. Joseph finally obtains the last pieces of information he needs about the master plot. The man is the German counterpart to the British leader of the conspiracy. Joseph, Judith, and Mason bundle him into an ambulance and drive for all their worth through France, trying to get him to London to alert the Prime Minister to the plot. After a hair-raising journey, they burst into Lloyd George’s office and expose the Peacemaker at last. Then silence falls: the guns have stopped. It’s the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Book 1: NO GRAVES AS YET (Sept 2003)
Book 2: SHOULDER THE SKY (Sept 04)
Book 3: ANGELS IN THE GLOOM (Sept 05)
Book 4: AT SOME DISPUTED BARRICADE (Sept 06)
Book 5: THEY SHALL NOT SLEEP (Sept 07)

UK: Headline US: Random House

Praise for NO GRAVES AS YET
‘This absorbing mystery/spy thriller, set in tranquil Cambridge just before the onset of the Great War, marks a powerful start to bestseller Perry’s much anticipated new series.’ Starred review, Publishers Weekly

Previous foreign sales for Anne Perry in: US, Italy, Germany, Japan, Korea, Greece, France, Spain, Netherlands and Portugal,

MD

A LONG WAY HOME
It’s 1939 when teenage Hannah and Louie Adams wave a tearful goodbye to their mother in North London, leaving for an uncertain future in the safety of the peaceful Hertfordshire countryside. All too soon, however, the two young girls discover that life with their new guardians, Maggie and Sid Bullock, will be far from idyllic. Beneath their smiles and seeming kindness lurks something quite devious and sinister, so much so that when they clash with sixteen year old Hannah, the homesick Louie is sent off to another family, a cruel act which absolutely devastates Hannah.

To the girls’ surprise, however, Louie finds happiness with the warm and loving Beedles family, and Hannah befriends their son, Sam. But after several months of tension living with the Bullocks, even Hannah’s blossoming relationship with Sam can’t make life any more bearable, which leaves Hannah with only one option - to leave her foster parents and walk back home to her own mother in Blitz-torn Islington. But after thirty-six hours of her mammoth, dangerous journey, cold, weary and frightened, she arrives home to an unexpected, shocking sight.

Now young Hannah must fight not only to survive the war, but a secret that could destroy her family…..

UK Publisher: Headline, June 2007

DT

STEF PENNEY

THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES

2006 COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR

As winder tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steels herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. The violence has re-opened old wounds and inflamed deep-running tensions in the frontier township – some want to solve the crime; others seek only to exploit it.

To clear her son’s name, she has no choice but to follow the tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin and head north into the forest and the desolate landscape that lies beyond it…

‘A remarkable literary debut…brilliantly assured, subtly written.’ Scotsman

‘A fascinating, suspense-filled adventure.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘A suspenseful epic, offering a leitmotif of constant unease… impressive.’ Guardian

UK Publisher: Quercus, 2006

Rights sold: USA: Simon Schuster; Canada: Penguin; France: Belfond ; Italy: Einaudi; Germany: Goldmann; Holland: Prometheus; Spain: Salamandra, Spain (Catalan); Portugal: Difel ; Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Finland: Bazar; Czech: BB Art; Hebrew: Book In Attic; Japan: Hayawaka; Greece: Papyros; Estonia: Pegasus; Chinese Complex: Rye Field; Poland: Sonia Draga; Slovenia: Mladinska Knijiga; Romania: Polirom, Croatia: Algoritum; Russia: Inostranka; Serbia: Plato Publishing

DT

THE GOOD PLAIN COOK
It’s summer 1936, and the world is on the cusp of change, but there’s little sign of this in rural Sussex. So when local girl Kitty Allen answers an advert looking for ‘a good plain cook’, she has no idea what she’s in for. For starters, her employer is an American called Ellen Steinberg who believes in calling the staff by their first names and sunbathing in the nude. Then there’s Ellen’s eleven-year-old daughter, Geenie, a bright, unhappy little thing, and Mrs Steinberg’s gentleman friend, Mr Crane, who’s said to be a poet — even though he doesn’t have a beard and doesn’t seem to write much poetry either. Rich bohemians imagining themselves as communists, Steinberg and Crane see themselves as champions of ‘the people’ — not that they know the first thing about how the people actually live.

Kitty is in no place to criticise — after all she claimed to be a good plain cook, despite hardly knowing how to boil an egg. Utterly out of her depth, she is relieved to have the gardener, Arthur, to talk to. Otherwise she’d never last a summer in this madhouse. Ellen Steinberg wants life to run as smoothly as the love story she imagines her lover George Crane to be writing. But as Kitty arrives, the dream is on the edge of falling apart.

Gorgeously written, full of teasing observations about love, class and cookery.’ THE TIMES

Quote for THE POOLS - ‘A complex anatomy of a murder, The Pools brilliantly evokes the sickening recognition of a wasteful death. Bethan Roberts is a fearless writer whose first novel raises questions about fate and responsibility that remain with the reader long after the last page has been turned. A compelling debut’ Louise Welsh

Rights sold: France: Christian Bourgois, Germany: Kunstmann

THE POOLS
Set in an Oxfordshire village, THE POOLS tells the story of the events leading up to the murder of a teenage boy. The novel is told through two voices; that of the boy’s father, the unfailingly sensible but sensitive Howard Hall and that of the boy’s friend, the deceptively confident but confused young girl Joanna Denton.

The story is broad in scope - covering twenty years of family history, but extremely intimate in its focus. Bethan displays remarkable maturity in her presentation of these lives brimming with domestic and sexual anguish.

UK Publisher: Serpents Tail, 2007

DR

SMUGGLERS
A novel for children
1822. Pin, a street urchin and stowaway is shipwrecked on the English coast.

He is rescued by Rueben, who lives with his family on the dangerous rocky shore, making a meagre living from fishing and scavenging wrecks. Reuben’s neighbours are shocked: to save someone from drowning is to cheat the sea. Bad luck will surely follow.

It does, in the form of the Coastguards, a newly established paramilitary force tasked to stamp out smuggling. Reuben’s family have until now managed without joining the smugglers but an unnecessarily brutal Coastguard damages their nets, leaving them no alternative.

Reuben and Pin become involved in a smuggling run which goes disastrously wrong. Reuben’s brother Daniel is accused of murdering a Coastguard and Reuben of betraying the ‘traders,’ who take the law into their own hands. They leave Reuben for dead. Pin rescues him but now it is a race against time to save Daniel.

UK Publisher: Puffin February 2007
Previous rights sold in Italy, France, USA

DT