BOOKS


Rights UK (Ebury), US (Public Affairs)


The Boy Who Built Lahore Aisha Hassan “Courageous, haunting” début of love and deception “for fans of Christy Lefteri, Khaled Hosseini and Abi Daré”.


Agent Hellie Ogden Rights UK (Orion), US (Simon & Schuster), the Netherlands (Mozaïek), Spain (Almuzara)


Blessings Chukwuebuka Ibeh “Exquisite, searing” début of loneliness and longing which tells the story of a young gay man’s coming- of-age in 2010s Nigeria.


Agent Emma Leong Rights UK (Viking), Canada (Viking), Germany (S Fischer), Spain (Urano)


Strange Creatures Beyond Count Paige Madison Palaeoanthropologist Madison constructs a radical new history of humankind through the discovery of the “Hobbit” fossils—(the small Homo floresiensis species, thus far only found on an Indonesian island)— without the distorting lens of colonialism.


Agent Will Francis Rights UK (Hodder), US (Scribner)


The Sound of Ice J R Thorp


Privilege and science clash on a cruise ship in the Arctic in this sharp and smart murder mystery: “‘White Lotus’ or ‘Knives Out’ meets Donna Leon”.


Agent Claire Paterson Conrad


Jenny Brown Associates


The Phoenix Ballroom Ruth Hogan The Keeper of the Lost Things author returns with a “warm, uplifting novel of hope and second chances across the generations”.


Agent Lisa Highton Rights UK and Commonwealth (Corvus), North America (Morrow)


Chimera Alice Thompson Deep space novel in which scientist and “dream investigator” Artemis


20 31st March 2023


London Book Fair Special Agents' Hotlists


travels to a distant moon to search for organisms to help Earth’s climate crisis; but it becomes clear there are other disturbing reasons for the mission.


Agent Jenny Brown Rights UK and Commonwealth (Salt)


Lady’s Rock Sue Lawrence “Eye-opening” novel set in Scotland in 1520, based on the brutal true story of two ruthless attempted murders between a husband and a wife.


Agent Jenny Brown Rights World English (Saraband)


The Forgotten Shore Sarah Maine A sweeping novel about transgression, the long shadow of the past, belonging and second chances set in Scotland and Canada in the 1940s and 1980s.


Agent Jenny Brown Rights UK and Commonwealth (Hodder)


Rural: The Lives of the Working-class Countryside Rebecca Smith Part memoir and part social history, Rural is a look at the people whose labour has shaped the British countryside beginning with Smith’s own family.


Agent Jenny Brown Rights UK and Commonwealth (HarperCollins)


Jo Unwin Literary Agency


Penance Eliza Clark The Boy Parts author returns with an “utterly chilling, compulsive” story of a murder among teenagers on the eve of the historic Brexit vote.


Agent Rachel Mann Rights World English (Faber), US, Romanian, screen


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Other Women Emma Flint Based on a murder in London in the 1920s, Other Women is the haunting second novel by bestselling author and multiple prize- shortlistee Flint.


r g - Agent Jo Unwin


CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH'S DÉBUT IS A COMING-OF-AGE TALE ABOUT A YOUNG GAY MAN IN NIGERIA


The Girls of Heatherley Hall Julie Houston The author of A Village


Spirit Level Richy Craven Up-lit comedy in which, after losing his best friend


Rights UK and Commonwealth exc Canada (Picador), Italian


Killjoy: Taking on a Macho Empire and Winning Jo Cheetham


“Hilarious, brilliantly warm and moving” insider account of Cheetham and her friends’ No More Page 3 campaign.


Agent Jo Unwin Rights UK and Commonwealth exc Canada (Picador)


The Summer Skies Jenny Colgan Colgan’s newest centres on Morag, born into a family of pilots. But when a tragic accident above the clouds grounds her, could the future she'd always imagined be suddenly out of reach?


Agent Jo Unwin Rights UK and Commonwealth exc Canada (Little, Brown), US, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian


And So This Is Christmas: 50 Festive Poems Brian Bilston The witty social media superstar/“Banksy of poetry” Bilston turns his attention to the Yuletide in this seasonal collection.


Agent Jo Unwin Rights World English (Picador)


Johnson & Alcock


Spoiled Creatures Amy Twigg “Dark and riveting” début about the potency of female anger and desire, set in a women’s


commune that goes very wrong.


Agent Charlotte Seymour Rights UK (Tinder Press)


Mothtown Caroline Hardaker Dark, allegorical literary tale, alternating two narratives from a man abandoned in a hostile landscape trying to get home, and a boy whose grandfather has gone missing. With illustrations from Chris Riddell.


Agent Ed Wilson Rights UK (Angry Robot)


Gods of the Wyrdwood R J Barker First in the new Forsaken series from British Fantasy Award-winner Barker, set in a forest straight out of darkest folklore amid rebels fighting an evil empire, warring gods and a humble forester hired to find a missing child.


Agent Ed Wilson Rights UK (Orbit)


The Horror of Haglin House M R C Kasasian The first in the “fresh, witty” mystery series featuring Victorian heroine Lady Violet Thorn, a thriller writer who is tasked with solving some mysterious deaths, aided by her spirited protagonist Ruby.


Agent Ed Wilson Rights UK (Canelo)


Consciousness John Parrington An Oxford biologist’s “short, sharp and ground- breaking" look at how evolution transformed our brain, and what


neuroscience tells us about the way our thoughts are created.


Agent Michael Alcock Rights UK (Icon)


Jonathan Clowes


Mysticism Simon Critchley The bestselling author of What We Think About When We Think About Football is an exploration of mysticism via Julian of Norwich, Anne Carson, Annie Dillard, Julian Cope and Krautrock.


Agent Nemonie Craven Rights UK and Commonwealth (Profile), North America (NYRB), Spanish (Sexto Piso)


Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire MacGillivray Poet and musician MacGillivray (a.k.a. Kirsten Norrie) with a new collection drawing together her extensive research into the life and work of Norwegian- Shetlandic poet Kristján Norge, who vanished in the Outer Hebrides in 1961.


Agent Nemonie Craven Rights World (Bloodaxe)


Kate Hordern Literary Agency


After Eve Gina Allum A “potent and moving” literary début of submerged secrets, illness, death and the passage of time: “Invites comparison with Clare Fuller’s Unsettled Ground and Melissa Harrison’s All Among the Barley”.


Agent Anne Williams


A Summer on the Riviera Rachel Barnet There is romance, friendship and intrigue aboard the yacht “Blue Sky”, chartered by an actress hiding from the spotlight, with a complete newbie chief stewardess: summer escapist début “for fans of ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Below Deck’”.


Agent Anne Williams Rights World English (Bonnier Embla)


Affair returns in a novel of triplet sisters who find themselves unlikely owners of a rambling Yorkshire stately home inherited from their eccentric biological father: a “warm and funny story of sisters and their secrets”.


Agent Anne Williams Rights World English (Head of Zeus), options in Denmark, Hungary


Murder and the Moggies of Magpie Row Kate High Latest in High’s animal rescuer Clarice Beech cosy crime series: when a body is found among the appealing riverside cottages of Magpie Row, it’s not long before the inhabitants’ bitter rifts are revealed…


Agent Anne Williams Rights World English (Constable), option Germany


The Girls in the Glen Lynne McEwan The third instalment of the Scottish Borders- set DCI Shona Oliver series has a body being discovered on an archaeological dig where her daughter is working—could this be the long-missing victim of a notorious serial killer?


Agent Anne Williams Rights World English (Canelo)


Kate Nash Literary Agency


Nina Simone’s Travelling Circus Rebecca Rennie & Paul Robinson Drummer Robinson, who toured with Nina Simone for 20 years, on life on the road with the inspirational but sometimes chaotic icon in her autumn years.


Agent Justin Nash Hellisay


Shelly Mack YA début where an adventure weekend on an uninhabited Scottish island turns into a nightmare as the thrill- seekers start to die one by one.


Agent Saskia Leach


Photography: Stephen Mortland


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