NEWS


Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 The headlines


Head of Zeus finds missing Link with The Book of Love


Melina Spanoudi @mspanoudi


H


ead of Zeus has scooped The Book of Love, the “long-awaited” first


novel from award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, publisher and bookseller Kelly Link.


Managing director Nicolas Cheetham acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, at auction from Rachel Clements at Abner Stein, on behalf of Renée Zuckerbrot at Massie McQuilkin. The novel will be published in February 2024 on Head of Zeus’ SFF list, Ad Astra. Zuckerbrot sold rights in North America to Link’s long-term US publisher, Random House. Miami-born Link is an editor of multiple anthologies and the author of the collections White Cat, Black Dog; Prett Monsters; and Get in Trouble. She has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant, and won one Hugo and three Nebula awards, while Get in


Z


‘Powerful’ family memoir of Holocaust signed by HQ


10 20th October 2023


ipora Klein Jakob has signed a deal with HQ for The Forbidden Daughter: The True Story of a


Holocaust Survivor after pitching it to HarperCollins c.e.o. Brian Murray at last year’s London Book Fair. While researching her family


history, Klein Jakob became inter- ested in her cousin Elida, and was determined to share her story of survival with a wider audience. The book was originally self-published via Amazon before Klein Jakob interested Murray at LBF 2022. HC US acquired the book, with HQ commissioning editor Marleigh Price buying UK and Commonwealth rights from her American colleague Kelsey Young. The Forbidden Daughter will be


published in April 2024. It is about Elida, born in the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania during the Nazi Occupation.


Trouble was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Based in Massachusets, Link is also the co-founder of SFF specialist publisher Small Beer Press and indie bookshop Black Moon. The Book of Love begins with “supernatural beings and chaos descending” on the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusets, in the wake of the unexpected return of three missing teenagers. Head of Zeus said the novel “investigates everything from the eldritch and uncanny to the nature of friend- ship and family ties with [Link’s] trademark compassion, wit and intelligence”. Link said: “The Book of Love is a project I’ve been thinking about and working on for about a decade. It’s a love leter to the writers of the romance and Gothic novels I devoured in my twenties.”


Head of Zeus previously released White Cat, Black Dog in the UK, while Canongate published some of Link’s earler work. Cheetham said: “Like so many entranced by Kelly’s short stories, I’ve been waiting for her début novel for years—decades, even! And it has been worth the wait. The Book of Love is the big book we were hoping for; 200,000 words of unalloyed Kelly Link make light the weight of all our expectations.”


Her parents, Tzila and Dr Jonah Friedmann, made the decision to smuggle Elida out of the ghetto, relying on the kindness of strangers to protect her. The “horrors of the Holocaust leave Elida orphaned and alone, yet in spite of her circum- stances, she survives, changing families, countries, continents, and even names, countless times”. Price said: “I was blown away by


the extraordinary story of Elida and her survival in the face of insur- mountable odds. Among the horrors and atrocities of the Holocaust, the risks undertaken by ordinary people to help save those facing persecution is a powerful reminder to us all of the importance of human kindness.” Klein Jakob was a teacher, a


manager at the Open University and now coaches memoirists.


New Zealand Top five


1


Riley’s Atlas is on the map


Prince Harry settled for second place in New Zealand, as Lucinda Riley and Harry


Whittaker’s Atlas, the final title in Riley’s


Seven Sisters series, navigated directly into the top spot. Christchurch-born Eleanor Catton, the


youngest ever Booker winner, returned to the Kiwi charts with Birnam Wood, which edged out Jojo Moyes’ Someone Else’s Shoes and Colleen Hoover’s It Starts with Us to claim third place.


2


3


4


5


Data Source Nielsen BookScan, year to date


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