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Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes

“Wives Like Us made me laugh so hard… so wickedly smart, so effortless, so chic and hilarious …Plum Sykes is in a class of her own when it comes to peeling back the layers of status paranoia amongst the poshest of the posh as she delivers a delectable tale that you never want to end”
— Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians
“A fabulous and funny bucolic romp – Plum Sykes does it again.”
— Hannah Rothschild
“I absolutely adored Wives Like Us, I thought it was so fun and funny, a romp and a riot - and a glorious dollop of much needed escapism.”
— Daisy Buchanan
“Wives Like Us may be set in the most gorgeous English manor house, but I’d happily sleep in the shed if it meant I could tag along with these marvellous characters—Tata, Minty, and their chic and crafty butler.”
— Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

Wives Like Us

by Plum Sykes

Bloomsbury / HB / 14 May 2024 / £18.99

'Take a grand English country house, one (heartbroken) American divorcée, three rich wives, two tycoons, a pair of miniature sausage dogs and one (bereaved) butler; put them all into the blender and out comes the impossibly funny Wives Like Us, the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes and Party Girls Die In Pearls, Plum Sykes.

 If you think the English countryside is all green wellies, muddy Land Rovers and grey-haired ladies in tweed, then you've never visited 'The Bottoms.'

 Welcome to the rose-strewn county of Oxfordshire, and the tiny Cotswold villages of Little Bottom, Middle Bottom, Great Bottom, and Monkton Bottom, recently annexed by a glittering new breed of female: the Country Princess.

Following a ghastly row about a missing suite of diamonds, Tata Hawkins has flounced out of Monkton Bottom Manor with her daughter, Minty, and Executive Butler Ian Palmer in tow, decamping to The Old Coach House to teach her husband Bryan a lesson.

But things don't go to plan: Bryan disappears to Venice with a bikini designer; Selby Fairfax, the glamorous American divorcée who has inherited the beautiful estate next door, is refusing Tata's overtures at friendship; Tata's best friends, Sophie Thompson and Fernanda Ovington-Williams, are distracted by their own heartache, and the posh Pennybacker-Hoare sisters are plotting to prevent Tata regaining her crown as Queen of the Bottoms. Worst of all, Ian has nowhere to store his collection of vintage Gucci loafers.

Will Tata ever return to the comforts of the Manor? Will Selby find her Prince Charming? Will the Pennybacker-Hoares prevail? With the help of a pig farmer-ess moonlighting as a Personal Assistant, a male model moonlighting as a stable hand and a London barrister moonlighting as a gentleman farmer, can Ian restore harmony to The Bottoms?

‘Plum Sykes’s delectable new novel, Wives like Us, bears a strong resemblance to the Austen-era novels of the 19th century…delightful…a loving portrait of a social milieu that recognises the value of tradition but is also perpetually chasing what’s new.’ US Vogue

Praise for Plum Sykes' previous novels:

'Deliciously moreish' Daily Mail ++ 'Thoroughly fabulous' Vogue ++ 'A total hoot' The Sunday Times ++

 'Sykes has a distinctive, wily and well-deployed comic voice' New York Times ++ 'Savagely funny' Observer ++

'Glam and lively' Heat ++ 'You'll have a blast' Re

Plum Sykes was born in London and educated at Oxford. The author of the novels Bergdorf Blondes, The Debutante Divorcée, Party Girls Die in Pearls and the Kindle Single memoir Oxford Girl, she is a contributing editor at World of Interiors, and at American Vogue where she writes about fashion, society, and Hollywood. She has also written for Vanity Fair.

Plum lives in the English countryside with her family.
Follow her on Instagram @therealplumsykes

For further information please contact:

EMMA FINNIGAN PR

07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | @emmafinnigan | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk

The Shadow Network by Tony Kent

A new action-packed Dempsey / Devlin thriller from Zoe Ball Book Club and Richard & Judy Book Club pick, Tony Kent

‘Like Baldacci at his best’ - Steve Cavanagh

‘Tony’s books are always absolute belters’ - Ian Rankin

‘Joe Dempsey is this decade's Jack Bauer’ - Neil Lancaster

'A rollicking good thriller' - Vaseem Khan

 ‘What a ride! The very definition of a fast-paced thriller. Great characters. Bang up to date plotting. Tony Kent’s best yet’ - Imran Mahmood

 ‘Perfectly plotted, this adrenaline-fueled, action-packed thriller has high stakes and emotional punch in equal measure. I couldn't put it down!’ - Steph Broadribb

 ‘A blistering, bruising and utterly addictive thriller’ - Neil Broadfoot 

‘Another knockout from the British Baldacci’ - Paul Waters

The Shadow Network

by Tony Kent
Hardback / 15 February 2024 / Elliott & Thompson / £16.99

How do you take down an enemy when no one believes they exist?

When the lawyers of alleged war criminal Hannibal Strauss are caught up in a terror attack in The Hague, barrister Michael Devlin immediately suspects all is not what it seems. Teaming up once more with Agent Joe Dempsey, they must find who’s behind it all before any more innocent lives are lost.

With their key witness on the run and assassins on their tail, their only lead is a codename: the Monk, a legendary and mysterious foreign agent with a fearsome reputation. But what is his stake in this dangerous game? And just who is part of his shadowy network of spies? Caught in a complicated web of lies, secrets and double agents, there’s no one Dempsey and Devlin can trust but themselves.

The Shadow Network is a tightly plotted and fast paced political thriller set against the backdrop of Russian espionage, American spy-hunting and the modern day consequences of the games played by both superpowers during the Cold War.

ABOUT Tony Kent

Tony Kent is a practising criminal barrister and former boxer who draws on his experiences to bring a striking authenticity to his thrillers: Killer Intent, Marked for Death, Power Play, No Way To Die and now The Shadow Network.

Ranked as a ‘leader in his field’ Tony has prosecuted and defended in the most serious trials during his twenty years at the Criminal Bar - specialising in murder, terrorism, corruption, kidnap and organised crime. His case history is filled with nationally reported trials and his practice has brought him into close professional contact with GCHQ, the Security Service and the Ministry of Defence. He has also defended in matters with an international element, involving agencies such as the FBI.

Tony also appears as a criminal justice expert on a number of TV shows, including Meet, Marry, Murder, My Lover, My Killer and Kill Thy Neighbour.

Prior to his legal career Tony represented England as a heavyweight boxer and won a host of national amateur titles.

Tony Kent is also the founder director of Chiltern Kills, which launched in October 2023 - featuring over 70 bestselling writers, including Frederick Forsyth, Mark Billingham, Ruth Ware, Sarah Pinborough, Claire Macintosh, Elly Griffiths, Mark Edwards and many more, all appearing free of charge to help the Prince of Wales’ flagship charity Centrepoint fight youth homelessness.

Tony was co-founder of The Floats Like A Butterfly Ball, a high-profile white- collar boxing event which was held in aid of the charity Caudwell Children. From 2017 to 2019 they raised approximately £1,000,000 for charity.

He lives just outside of London with his wife, young son and dog.

NB Tony Kent is a pseudonym for Tony Wyatt.

‘A pulsating action thriller’ SUNDAY TIMES on No Way to Die

‘A thrilling journey across America that channels Baldacci and Crais... Terrific.’ MASON CROSS on No Way to Die

 ‘An intricate twisty minefield . . . Kent has outdone himself’ DAVID BALDACCI on Power Play

 ‘A high-octane conspiracy yarn’ THE TIMES on No Way to Die

 ‘A gripping conspiracy thriller’ IAN RANKIN on No Way to Die

Tony is available for interviews, events and to write features.

For further information please contact:

EMMA FINNIGAN PR

07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | @emmafinnigan | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk

Stone Blind: Medusa’s Story by Natalie Haynes

'Witty, gripping, ruthless' – Margaret Atwood via Twitter

'Beautiful and moving' – Neil Gaiman

‘A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy’ – Glamour

‘Haynes’ clever, empathetic writing transforms Medusa from Gorgon into a girl, who’s a victim of the cruel machinations of the gods and of circumstance.’ – Red

‘brilliant and compellingly readable.’ – Observer

‘feminist, funny and thought provoking.’ – Mail on Sunday

‘Stone Blind is inventive and playful. There is a debt to Aristophanes; the depiction of the absurdities of the bickering gods is very funny’ – Times

‘With wit, humanity and extraordinary imagination, Haynes breathes life and meaning into myths as she has done so brilliantly before.’ – iPaper

Stone Blind

Medusa’s Story

by Natalie Haynes
Paperback / 8 June 2023 / Picador / £9.99

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023

In Stone Blind, the instant Sunday Times bestseller, Natalie Haynes brings the infamous Medusa to life as you have never seen her before.

‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters’

Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt.

When Poseidon commits an unforgiveable act against Medusa in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can: on his victim. Medusa is changed forever – writhing snakes for hair and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. She can look at nothing without destroying it.

Desperate to protect her beloved sisters, Medusa condemns herself to a life of shadows. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .

ABOUT NATALIE HAYNES

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of novels THE AMBER FURY, shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize; THE CHILDREN OF JOCASTA, a feminist retelling of the Oedipus and Antigone stories; A THOUSAND SHIPS (shortlisted for the Women’s Prize), a retelling of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective and STONE BLIND a re-telling of the Medusa story (long listed for the Women’s Prize); and non-fiction books THE ANCIENT GUIDE TO MODERN LIFE and PANDORA’S JAR about the women in Greek myths. DIVINE MIGHT: GODDESSES IN GREEK MYTH will be published in September. She has written and presented seven series of the BBC Radio 4 show, NATALIES HAYNES STANDS UP FOR THE CLASSICS. In 2015, she was awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience.

For further information please contact:

EMMA FINNIGAN PR

07870 210468 | emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk | @emmafinnigan | www.emmafinniganpr.co.uk

FRAY by Chris Carse Wilson

FRAY By Chris Carse Wilson
HarperNorth / 27th April 2023 / Hardback Fiction / £14.99

‘Fray is right up there for me with other first-person books like The Catcher in the Rye and Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.’ - Alan Cumming

‘Grief is the everyday devil, and in this hallucinatory debut it grabs us by the hand. Is there a mystery to solve? Or is it the real mystery that any of us manages to go on living in the face of grief?’ - Damian Barr

 ‘Mind-alteringly beautiful writing.’- Kirstin Innes

The debut literary suspense novel by Chris Carse Wilson, exploring hope and grief in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands. Chris secretly wrote Fray in fifteen-minute bursts on the bus to and from work, even hiding the book from his wife until it was finished.

I am not gone. Mum is not gone. We are here. We are hidden.

 A father who is trying to rescue his lost wife. 

Their child, desperately searching the wild forests and dangerous mountains of the Scottish Highlands, not knowing what’s out there.

An abandoned cottage in the remote wilderness, filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying handwritten notes.

And a dark, looming voice who threatens to destroy everything…

ABOUT CHRIS CARSE WILSON

Chris Carse Wilson is a debut author and lifelong runner who uses exercise and nature to manage his mental health. Chris is a passionate advocate for mental health awareness and was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 40. He lives outside Dundee, where he was part of the team who created V&A Dundee, Scotland’s design museum.

INTRODUCTION TO FRAY

Chris Carse Wilson began writing Fray in 2016 during a family trip to Glen Coe in the Scottish Highlands.

 He had long wanted to write about his own mental health experiences but had always struggled to find a way to do this. The key moment came during a mountain run in a storm.

Chris said: “I had foolishly decided to try and run up one of the Munro mountains in Glen Coe on a dark October day. Not long into the climb, the rain came on heavily and the wind really picked up – the conditions were painful, with raindrops spiking into my face and terrible visibility.

“I had to give up halfway, but on the way back down I passed an old, boarded-up hunting lodge. That combination of the wild, threatening weather and this abandoned building gave me the way into telling a story that is open and honest about mental health.”

Chris would later receive an autism diagnosis, after completing Fray.

He said: “My mental health challenges are inextricably linked to being autistic and how I experience the world, which for 40 years of my life I never understood. The diagnosis has been an incredible moment, although I’m still learning and coming to terms with it.

“But, and this is crucial, this book isn’t really about me – it’s about the mental health experiences we all face, and the ways we may struggle to understand or communicate these. At its heart, Fray is a book about love and self-acceptance, while also taking the reader on a wild adventure through the Scottish Highlands.”

FURTHER ADVANCE PRAISE

‘Fray is a haunting, insightful literary story... a tale of family, tragedy, and loneliness set against the evocative backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, written with a unique flair and style. A dark and atmospheric masterpiece.’ - Vikki Patis, author of Return to Blackwater House

‘Eerie and ethereal, Fray is an unsettling quest in the unforgiving Scottish Highlands – utterly spellbinding.’ - Marion Todd, author of the DI Clare Mackay series

‘Fray is a totally original novel and I loved it for that… A dangerous journey that throws up lots of surprises. The writing is awe-inspiring.’ - Alex Pine, bestselling author of the DI James Walker series 

'Dark and atmospheric, Fray is chilling and very original. I couldn't put it down.' - Simon McCleave

'Chris Carse Wilson has that deftness of touch that will scare you witless but keep you coming back for more and more.' - Jonathan Whitelaw

Fray will also be available as an audio book read by Angus King, who voiced Booker Prize winner Shuggie Bain.

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

'A nail-biter of a thriller' Shari Lapena

‘Hypnotically good' Lee Child

'Feels like a blockbuster movie' Lisa Jewell 

‘Utterly riveting’ Lucy Foley

‘A propulsive read – Hostage will have you questioning “what would you do” at every turn’ Karin Slaughter

The jaw-dropping, edge-of-your-seat Sunday Times bestselling thriller

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh
Sphere / 23 June / PB / £8.99

Save hundreds of lives. Or save your child?

You're on board the first non-stop flight from London to Sydney. It's a landmark journey, and the world is watching.

Shortly after take-off, you receive a chilling anonymous note.

There are people on this plane intent on bringing it down - and you're the key to their plan.

You'd never help them, even if your life depended on it.

But they have your daughter . . . So now you have to choose.

DO YOU SAVE HUNDREDS OF LIVES? OR THE ONE THAT MATTERS MOST?

'Taking the locked room mystery to a new, white-knuckle extreme, this is electrifying' HEAT

'A thrilling, chilling gut-punch of a book' RED

'The year's most intriguing high-concept plot' DAILY EXPRESS

'Mackintosh is a pro' NEW YORK TIMES

'An incredibly tense read that has a satisfyingly clever ending' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘The book of the summer’ SUN

About Clare Mackintosh

Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of five Sunday Times bestselling novels, including I Let You Go, which was the fastest-selling debut thriller in the year it was released. Translated into forty languages, her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide, have been New York Times and international bestsellers and have spent a combined total of 64 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller chart.

Clare spent twelve years in the police force, including time on CID, and as a public order commander. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant and is the founder of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. She now writes full time and lives in Wales with her husband and their three children.

Brouhaha by Ardal O’Hanlon

The razor-sharp, violent and darkly comic satire on the politics and close-kept secrets of small-town Ireland from actor, comedian and writer Ardal O’Hanlon

‘Ardal O’Hanlon is blessed with a genuine literary talent’ - Mail on Sunday

‘Perceptive, local and wild, a brilliantly imagined deadly serious thriller with a wonderful undertow of soul…’ Tommy Tiernan – comedian, actor and write

Brouhaha by Ardal O’Hanlon
Harper Collins / 26 May 2022 / £16.99
Hardback fiction

Dove Connolly is dead. That’s not good for anyone in Tullyanna, never mind Dove.

Now his best friend Sharkey is home asking awkward questions about Dove’s death, about the strange graphic novel he left behind, and, most of all, about Sandra. Sandra Mohan. Missing now for over a decade, whereabouts unknown.

This, however, is a town dead-set on keeping its secrets. And Sharkey is already drawing attention from all the wrong quarters…

A mystery, a black comedy, and a satire on Ireland’s tangled politics of memory, Brouhaha is an edgy, funny and fierce novel set in a small town on the Irish border during the transition to peace. And peace doesn’t come easy in these parts.

ABOUT Ardal O’Hanlon

Ardal O’Hanlon is an actor, comedian, writer, and documentary filmmaker. A star of several high-profile television series, including Death in Paradise, My Hero, and the BAFTA-winning Father Ted, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Talk of the Town (1998). He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

‘Growing up in the border region, I’ve always been captivated by the language and deadpan character and dark humour of the people and the place. In trying to capture that I’ve tried to write the sort of book I love to read - pacy, thrilling, edgy, insightful, funny, and humane and I really hope people enjoy it.’

Ardal is available for interview and events.

The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson

‘What an astonishing work OCTOPUS MAN is. Schizophrenia is not an easy condition to write about. It scares us. It scares those who live with it even more. But there is a kind of beauty, comedy and transcendence in the way that Jasper Gibson takes us inside the mind of Tom, which lifts the spirits and shows that disorders like his can give as well as take away.’ Stephen Fry

 

‘Funny. Disturbing. Brilliant.’ Lily Allen

 

‘What a brilliant and necessary book. A funny, heart-expanding story of a man trapped between the God-like voice in his head and society's desire for him to be “normal”. It's a deeply compassionate portrait and I felt the frustration of battling a broken mental healthcare system, and the guilt and hope of everyone who loves poor, cheeky, troubled Tom and wants so badly for him to get better.’
Douglas Stuart, author of SHUGGIE BAIN and winner of the Booker Prize

 

'The Octopus Man reminds us that behind the words "mental health" lies a universe of wild creativity, humanity, and spanking big life. A beautiful thing, this is The Dharma Bums meet Clozapine. Now is the time for this book.'
DBC Pierre, author of VERNON GOD LITTLE, winner of the MAN Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award

*The Octopus Man has been optioned by Working Title*

The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson
Paperback / Weidenfeld & Nicolson / 19 May £8.99

I put my hand against the hot patch and return to prayer, closing my eyes to concentrate on my breathing and think only of His love. I love you with all my heart. Please keep me from triggering. Please keep me from madness.

Once an outstanding law student Tom is now lost in the machinery of the British mental health system, talking to a voice no one else can hear: the voice of Malamock, the Octopus God – sometimes cruel, sometimes loving, but always there to guide him.

After a florid psychotic break, the pressure builds for Tom to take part in an experimental drugs trial that promises to silence the voice forever. But no one, least of all Tom, is prepared for what happens when the Octopus God is seriously threatened.

Deeply moving and tragi-comic, The Octopus Man takes us into the complex world of voice-hearing in a bravura literary performance that asks the fundamental questions about belief, meaning, and love.

About Jasper Gibson

Jasper Gibson was born in the Peak District, Derbyshire in 1975. He is the author of one previous novel, A BRIGHT MOON FOR FOOLS (2013). He lives in East Sussex, where the book is set.

Talking Points

  • The inspiration for the novel – a cousin who died at the age of 40 for apparently no reason after two decades of a schizophrenia diagnosis, and the author’s own experiences of psychosis

  • The importance of humanising mental health conditions and the frustration at the usual depiction of people with severe mental health challenges as being violent etc

  • The weight of responsibility when writing fiction based on issues of mental health – and the challenges of writing about voice hearing as a non-voice-hearer

  • The research process - inside the Hearing Voices Network, meeting voice-hearers, visiting frightening psychiatric units, drug trials

  • The mental health system as a microcosm of society at large: materialism, individualism, surveillance, infantilization

  • NB Mental Health Awareness Week is 9-15 May 2022

‘The Octopus Man was a joy to read. I cried with laughter and I just plain cried. It is one of the wittiest and most humane pictures of a person and their mind - a timely conversation about mental health from within the perspective of the subject. It's a beautiful book and so incredibly funny.’ JOHNNY FLYNN

 

'A brave, bold and brilliant exploration of the forces that drive us mad and the wild, crazy journey's back to ourselves and each other. Scary, hilarious and touching. I loved it.'  DR JACQUI DILLON

A letter from the author - Jasper Gibson, 2020

This book started with a knock at the window. I was sitting in a train about to leave London for Glasgow when my girlfriend tapped on the glass, her face fallen, her eyes brimming with tears. She had gone back onto the platform to answer the phone as the reception was so poor, and perhaps that was why they hadn’t been able to get through to my phone at all. The whistle blew. She motioned to me to take our luggage and get off the train. We weren’t going to Glasgow anymore. My cousin Ed had been found dead in his bed. There was no disease, no suicide, no murder. At the age of 40, he had simply stopped living.

Ed, once a handsome and brilliant law student (both my sisters were utterly in love with him), had suffered under a schizophrenia diagnosis and the effects of long-term medication for twenty years. His experiences became the inspiration for Tom Tuplow, the protagonist of The Octopus Man.

What does it feel like to hear voices? To see things no one else can see? To have beliefs which condemn you as mad? What is it like to be caught up in the British mental health system, at the mercy of a scientific consensus that fundamentally rejects your reality? What is it like to be on such heavy drugs that every day you wake up on the bottom of the sea?

I always knew this book had to be first person, present tense. Yet though we see the world through Tom’s eyes, I hope too that the thoughts and feelings of the other characters, particularly his long-suffering sister Tess, are just as real, just as valid.

This is not an anti-psychiatric or indeed political novel, in the sense that its primary concern is not ‘another world is possible’, but rather another possible world. However, if we book-lovers can argue that the novel is the most human of all the arts, and that the lodestone of this artform is the individual, then questions of human dignity are bound to rise when discussing mental health provision. Though for some, receiving the label 'schizophrenic' is a relief, a label the world can understand, for many it means a catastrophic loss of power over oneself and one's decisions. 

Unlike so many portrayals of people with mental health difficulties as either psychopathic killers or 'Rainman'-type idiot savants, this novel hopes to bring a little more reality, and humanity, to those in touch with dimensions the rest of us cannot access. If just one reader doesn't move seats next time they see a person apparently talking to themselves on the bus, but instead wonders what happened to them, what have they suffered, what have they seen, then this book will have been worth it.

The other thing is that it's meant to be funny. I do hope you like it.

No Way to Die by Tony Kent

‘Like Baldacci at his best.’ Steve Cavanagh

The fourth adrenaline-fueled thriller from author of Zoe Ball Book Club and Richard & Judy Book Club picks

A deadly threat. A ghost from the past. And time is running out…

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NO WAY TO DIE
By Tony Kent
Boxer. Barrister. Thriller Writer.
HB / 18 November 2021 / Elliott & Thompson / £16.99

When traces of a radioactive material are found with a body in Key West, multiple federal agencies suddenly descend on the scene. This is not just an isolated murder - a domestic terrorist group is ready to bring the US government to its knees.

The threat hits close to home for Agent Joe Dempsey when he discovers a personal connection to the group. With his new team member, former Secret Service agent Eden Grace, Dempsey joins the race to track down the bomb before it’s too late. But when their mission falls apart, he is forced to turn to the most unlikely of allies: an old enemy he thought he had buried in his past.

Now, with time running out, they must find a way to work together to stop a madman from unleashing horrifying destruction across the country.

ABOUT TONY KENT

Tony Kent

Tony Kent is a practising criminal barrister who draws on his legal experience to bring a striking authenticity to his thrillers: Killer Intent, Marked for Death, Power Play and now No Way To Die.

Ranked as a ‘leader in his field’ Tony has prosecuted and defended in the most serious trials during his twenty years at the Criminal Bar - specialising in murder, terrorism, corruption, kidnap and organised crime. His case history is filled with nationally reported trials and his practice has brought him into close professional contact with GCHQ, the Security Service and the Ministry of Defence. He has also defended in matters with an international element, involving agencies such as the FBI.

Tony also appears as a criminal justice expert on a number of TV shows, including Meet, Marry, Murder (coming soon to Netflix), My Lover, My Killer and Kill Thy Neighbour (both Channel 5).

Prior to his legal career Tony represented England as a heavyweight boxer and won a host of national amateur titles.

He lives just outside of London with his wife, young son and dog. 

NB Tony Kent is a pseudonym for Tony Wyatt.

NO WAY TO DIE will be published in paperback in April 2022, when Tony will be available for interview and to write features.

Selected Praise for No Way To Die

’An intricate twisty minefield . . . Kent has outdone himself’ - DAVID BALDACCI 

‘Twist after twist ... it builds to a brilliant finale’ - DAILY MIRROR

‘A high-octane conspiracy yarn’ - THE TIMES

‘A gripping conspiracy thriller’ - IAN RANKIN

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

With film rights bought by the producers of ‘La La Land’ and ‘The Night Manager’ and foreign rights sold in 28 countries this novel about the secrets behind Boris Pasternak's banned literary masterpiece, Dr Zhivago, is Hutchinson’s lead debut for 2019.

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The Secrets We Kept
By Lara Prescott
Hutchinson / 3 September / Hardback, Ebook, Audio/ £12.99

A book really can change the world.

At the height of the cold war, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR and help Boris Pasternak’s new novel make its way into print around the world.

Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who uses her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a novice, and under Sally’s direction quickly learns how to blend into a crowd, make connections and ferry classified documents all over Washington DC.

The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story - the decades-long love affair between Boris Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga, who went to prison for him and was the inspiration for Zhivago’s heroine, Lara – with a narrative about two American women whose lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk are entangled with the history of the CIA.

From Pasternak’s country estate in Peredelkina to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, D.C . to Paris, Manhattan, and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a time and a place and a watershed moment in the history of literature with astonishing veracity and command.

Lara Prescott has woven an irresistible literary thriller from one of the greatest love stories of all time. This unforgettable debut novel – which captivates in its rich historical detail and soars in emotional intensity – is destined to be one of the books of the year.

TALKING POINTS

  • How Lara’s old job working on political campaigns made her interested in cold war propaganda tactics—how tactics have evolved from books to Twitter bots and Facebook groups, but the motives are still the same.

  • How history repeats itself re: the censorship of literature, persecution of writers, and how those in power still fear the power of words.

  • Historically the spy novel genre is male-dominated, but there is now a rise of women writing spy fiction.

  • 2020 is the 60th anniversary of Pasternak’s death - his legacy and the importance of Doctor Zhivago today.

ABOUT LARA PRESCOTT

Author photo - Lara Prescott 1 - (c)Trevor Paulhus.jpg

Lara Prescott received her MFA as the prestigious Fania Kruger Fellow from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. Before she started the MFA, she was an animal protection advocate and a political campaign operative.  She worked on campaigns around the world – including for the first woman prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. She also worked at Bully Pulpit Interactive and AKPD.

Her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, BuzzFeed, Day One, Tin House Flash Friday, and other places. She won the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize (and Pushcart honourable mention) for the first chapter of this novel.  She has spent years researching the history around The Secrets We Kept.

Lara lives in Texas with her family.

www.laraprescott.com/  @laraprescott

Lara will be in the UK from 28 September – 5 October 2019

She will be appearing at literary festivals and bookshops including:

  • Mr B’s, Bath – Tuesday 1 October

  • Henley Literary Festival – Wednesday 2 October (lunchtime)

  • Chorleywood Bookshop (event at Chorleywood Library) – Wednesday 2 October (evening)

  • Ilkley Festival – Saturday 5 October

  • Cheltenham Literary Festival – Sunday 6 October

Bearmouth by Liz Hyder

A bold and original novel about justice, independence and resisting oppression that introduces a remarkable new voice.

“Liz Hyder is a writer of true courage”
— David Almond
“Ambitious and darkly brilliant...It’s provocative, tender, claustrophobic and epic. It blew my mind”
— Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Bearmouth
By Liz Hyder
Pushkin / 19 September / hardback / £12.99

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Newt has been living and working in Bearmouth mine from a tender age. The days are full of strict routine and a quiet acceptance of how things are – until, that is, Devlin arrives. Newt fears any unrest will bring heightened oppression from the Master and his overseers. Life is hard enough and there is no choice about that. Or is there? Newt is soon looking at Bearmouth with a fresh perspective - one that does more than whisper about change: one that is looking for a way out.

Liz Hyder has written an astounding debut novel that shows a young person daring to challenge the status quo. Bearmouth draws on Liz's research into the working conditions of children in Victorian mines in Britain. Inspired by her findings, she has created an imagined world riven with social injustice and populated by characters who don't simply accept things because they are told they must.

‘a mighty impressive piece of work… compelling, powerful and utterly unique. The voice of Newt is so original, demonstrating a lyrical dexterity in such a brilliant style’ - Brian Conaghan, winner of the Costa Children’s Book Award

‘A hugely atmospheric read... a page-turner for sure’ - John McLay, Artistic Director, Bath Children's Literature Festival

‘memorable, different and stunning… BEARMOUTH is *that* fresh and new, and that exciting, just as Mortal Engines was when it came out’ - Katy Moran, author

‘clearly destined for greatness... It will stop you in your tracks. It will grip you, bewitch you, haunt you. It's a brilliant, brilliant book’ - Nicholas Pegg, writer, director, actor

TALKING POINTS

  • How the Victorian era has been glamorised, we think of top hats, steam trains and infrastructure not the exploitation it was built on

  • The parallels between the Victorian era and now - how exploitation today has been re-branded as opportunity with the likes of zero hours contracts

  • Mining and children– with children as young as four working down the mines six days a week, it is a forgotten part of British history for many

  • The lack of creativity in the education system – importance of creative writing for and with young people

  • What I’ve Learnt from Storytelling - from working on soaps and ongoing series to novels, films, plays and a writing retreat in rural Scotland. The importance of understanding all sorts of stories in terms of content, form and style.

  • From the birth of the industrial revolution to the famed ‘blue remembered hills’ – why Shropshire is the best kept secret in the country

  • In defence of suburbia – growing up on the edge of the capital with Epping Forest as a playground

  • Language – why dialect, accents and making up words is important

ABOUT LIZ HYDER

Liz Hyder is a writer, creative workshop leader and freelance PR Consultant in the arts. She has been part of Writing West Midlands’s Room 204 writer development programme since 2016. In early 2018, she won The Bridge Award/Moniack Mhor's Emerging Writer Award. Bearmouth is her debut novel.

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A past member of the National Youth Theatre, Liz has a BA in Drama from the University of Bristol and is on the board of Wales Arts Review. Previously, she’s developed a pilot series with Channel 4 Scotland, collaborated with the E17 Shadow Puppet Theatre for the Cultural Olympiad and been runner-up of the Roy W Dean Writers’ Grant (International Writing Award). Her debut short film The Caller won the Highly Commended Award at London Film Festival and was the only UK film in competition at Slamdance that year.

She worked in BBC publicity for six years on everything from EastEnders, Holby and Casualty to Radio 4. Since going freelance, she has been shortlisted for and won various PPC Awards with both Riot Communications and Maura Brickell. Since 2016, she has been the Film Programme Coordinator at the main Hay Festival.

Liz is available for interviews, features, events and creative workshops. She is based in Shropshire but travels widely.

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Beyond Reasonable Doubt by Gary Bell

The start of a fantastic new legal series, perfect for fans of Robert Galbraith, written by an acclaimed QC and set in the extraordinary, stranger-than-fiction world of the halls of British justice

Beyond Reasonable Doubt 
Elliot Rook, QC: Book 1
By Gary Bell (and Scott Kershaw)
13 June 2019 / Hardback / Raven Books / £12.99

Elliot Rook QC is one of the greatest barristers of his generation. He is also a complete fraud.

Gary Bell

Unbeknown to the high society of the Inns of Court surrounding him, Rook is not the Old-Etonian, Oxford graduate he pretends to be. In fact, he is an ex-petty criminal with a past that he has spent decades keeping secret. 

Until now...

A young woman has been found murdered on the outskirts of Rook’s home town. Billy Barber a violent football hooligan and white supremacist – is accused of her murder. Barber is insisting that Rook defend him. If Rook refuses, Barber will expose him, bringing crashing to the ground the life and career that Rook has spent his life building. Rook must now team up with Zara Barnes, the state-school-educated apprentice dismissed out of hand by his snobbish legal counterparts, but in whom Rook sees a special talent.

The truth is there for the finding.

But at what cost?

Talking points

  • Gary used his own life as inspiration for his fiction (including pretending to be an Old Etonian)

  • Social diversity at the Bar

  • Cuts in legal aid and the knock-on effects

  • Crime and its causes

About Gary Bell

Born into a coal mining family, Gary Bell QC left school without any qualifications and was an apprentice mechanic, fork lift truck driver, production line worker, builder, fireman and door-to-door salesman, as well as a notorious football hooligan, before being arrested for fraud aged 18.

After a brief stint in prison he set off to seek fame and fortune abroad and, after two years drifting around Europe ended up penniless and homeless. He next enrolled in a FE College to study his O and A levels, and then went on to study law as a mature student at Bristol University where he 'became' an Old Etonian.

After graduating he spent a year as a litigation lawyer in Beverly Hills before coming back to England to become a barrister. He has spent over thirty years at the Bar, specialising in defending in major fraud and murder trials, becoming a QC in 2012.

Always on the look out for challenges and opportunities he has also been an award winning stand-up comedian; an after-dinner speaker (when at University he won several national debating competitions and was runner up in the World's Humorous Debating Competition at Princeton); he has learned to fly a plane, hosted his own TV show (the Legalizer) on BBC1; writes regularly for national newspapers; has a column in The Spectator and wrote his best-selling autobiography, Animal QC.

* Gary Bell is available for interview, features and events *

About Scott Kershaw 

Scott Kershaw is the author of two novels. Prior to becoming an author, Scott worked as a professional chef for several years, and travelled the continent as a music journalist.

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What Lies Around Us by Andrew Crofts

What Lies Around Us by Andrew Crofts

What Lies Around Us by Andrew Crofts

Red Door | 13 June 2019 | Hardback | £12.99

Why would one of Silicon Valley's most powerful billionaires offer a British ghostwriter a million dollars to write the autobiography of one of Hollywood's biggest stars?

Only once he is living and working amongst the world's richest and most beautiful people does the ghost realise that there is way more than a publishing deal at stake. Everyone he meets seems to have a hidden agenda and someone is willing to kill to ensure that their plans work out. But what are those plans, who are the ultimate puppet-masters and how far are they willing to go?

What Lies Around Us takes us to a world where ghostwriters work with presidents, (James Patterson and Bill Clinton writing The President is Missing), and create presidents, (Tony Schwartz who ghosted The Art of the Deal ,  setting President Trump on the road to becoming the most famous name in the world). 

This is the world of myth-makers, story-tellers and media manipulators – the people who really run the world and the ones who shape the global conversations.

Talking points

  • How exactly does it work when a rich and powerful man like Trump decides they want to write a book? Who shapes the message? How is the message sold?

  • Who is more likely to be telling the true stories today – ghostwriters, who are paid to create bestselling books, or journalists, who are paid to sell newspapers and create click-bait?

  • Why are books still such powerful media weapons, as illustrated by the multi-million selling political books of 2017 from authors like Michelle Obama, Bob Woodward and Michael Wolff?

  • How much power do ghostwriters and speech writers exert when telling the stories of political and business leaders and other celebrities?

  • Do traditional publishers add any value to a book? In this story every publisher in the world wants the book that the ghost is writing, but if the subject can afford to publish it themselves, why would they need a traditional publishing deal?

  • There is so much written about how hard it is to make a living as a writer, less about how much in demand ghostwriters are.                                                              

About Andrew Crofts

Andrew Crofts has published more than 100 books, including Confessions of a Ghostwriter, Freelance Writer’s Handbook and Ghostwriting, a dozen of which were Sunday Times bestsellers. Best-selling author, Robert Harris quoted Ghostwriting extensively in his novel The Ghost, later filmed by Roman Polanski with Ewan McGregor in the lead. 

Travelling all over the world Andrew has worked with victims of enforced marriages in North Africa and the Middle East, sex workers in the Far East, orphans in war-torn areas like Croatia and dictatorships like Romania, victims of crimes and abused children everywhere. He has also worked with celebrities from the worlds of film, music, television and sport.

Andrew’s fiction includes the critically acclaimed Secrets of the Italian Gardener, in which the same ghostwriter finds himself dangerously enmeshed in the Arab Spring while ghosting for a Middle Eastern ruler.

More information is available from: http://andrewcrofts.com/ and you’ll find Andrew on Twitter at @AndrewCrofts 

Andrew is available for features, interviews and events.

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The Black Earth By Philip Kazan

A heart-breaking love story set during the turbulent years leading to WWII and the Nazi occupation of Greece.

The Black Earth By Philip Kazan
Hardback | Allison & Busby | 19 April 2018 | £14.99

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1922. When the Turkish Army occupies Smyrna, Zoë Haggitiris escapes with her family, only to lose everything. Alone in a sea of desperate strangers, her life is touched, for a moment, by a young English boy, Tom Collyer, also lost, before the compassion of a stranger leads her into a new life.

Years later when war breaks out, Tom finds himself in Greece and in the chaos of the British retreat, fate will lead him back to Zoë. But he will discover that the war will not end so easily for either of them.

Talking points:

  • Kazan draws upon fascinating family history, including his grandfather, a British army officer who served in Greece in 1941, as well as his Greek grandmother and cousins who were migrants and refugees in the period. Zoë is based on Philip’s grandfather’s cousin.
  • Greek Civil War – not widely written about, even in Greece. Kazan writers about Dekemvriana, the December Events, where the British triggered the Civil War by taking sides with ex-Nazi collaborators and royalists against the Soviet-leaning resistance.
  • Inherited trauma – Philip’s grandfather served in WW1 and in Greece in WW2 and the impact of his experiences were felt by his son and grandson

About Philip Kazan

Philip Kazan was born in London and grew up on Dartmoor in south west England. He has written two novels set in Fifteenth Century Florence: Appetite, about the adventures of an early celebrity chef and The Painter Of Souls, an imagining of the early career of the artist Fra Filippo Lippi, which the Daily Mail called 'an irresistible feast of painting and quattrocento Italy, beautifully written and magnificently researched... a sheer pleasure from start to finish'.

As Pip Vaughan-Hughes, he also wrote the Petroc series - Relics, Vault Of Bones, Painted In Blood and The Fools' Crusade - about a relic smuggler in Thirteenth Century Europe. After living in New York and Vermont, Philip is back on the edge of Dartmoor with his wife and three children.

philipkazan.wordpress.com / @pipkazan / #TheBlackEarth

The Long Forgotten by David Whitehouse

“Outlandishly clever, ingenious . . . There’s no question that David Whitehouse is a writer to watch.”
— Janet Maslin, New York Times

Picador / hardback - £14.99 / fiction / 22 March ‘18 / Ebook - £12.99

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‘Dove is walking to work along the canal when he remembers the bog violet. It just appears, however memories do, a glimmer of the past shining through the now…Dove knows nothing of flowers. And there are few of his age (if his age is thirty, which he thinks it is) who know what he now knows of the bog violet; that’s how vivid his memory is…The memory is as lucid as his reflection, stilling on the black glass of the canal. But where has he seen it before, and why is he recalling it now?’

When the black box flight recorder of a plane that went missing 30 years ago is found at the bottom of the sea, a young man named Dove begins to remember a past that isn't his. The memories belong to a rare flower hunter in 1980s New York, whose search led him around the world and ended in tragedy.

Restless and lonely in present-day London, Dove is quickly consumed by the memories, which might just hold the key to the mystery of his own identity and what happened to the passengers on that doomed flight, The Long Forgotten…

‘A great read and a touching and funny exploration of the true meaning of family’ - S J Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep, on Mobile Library

‘A great, tender-hearted story about stories. It’s a book about what books can give us, and how they can add to our adventure – or even take us on one. A lovely read’ - Matt Haig, author of The Humans, on Mobile Library

About David Whitehouse

David Whitehouse is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His first novel, Bed, won the 2012 Betty Trask Award and his second novel, Mobile Library, won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Originally from Warwickshire, he now lives in Margate with his family.

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The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Rhidian Brook

Hurtling across 1980s America, this wildly original story is full of characters you’ll never forget...The Killing of Butterfly Joe is the dazzling new novel from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Aftermath (soon to be a major movie). 

The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Rhidian Brook
Picador / hardback & Ebook / fiction / 8 March 2018 / £14.99

The Killing of Butterfly Joe

‘I killed Joe once, in a manner of speaking. But not twice. Not in the way you mean.’

Young Welshman, Llew Jones, wants to see America, have an experience and write about it. After an encounter with the charismatic, illusive, infuriating ‘Butterfly Joe’ and his freakish family, he gets his wish. He’s soon hurtling across 1980’s America, having an adventure whilst hoping to pull-off a life-changing deal. But it’s a road that leads to trouble and sees Llew thrown in jail. Now he has to give his side of the story if he’s ever going to get free.

Part neo-gothic thriller, part existential road trip, part morality tale, The Killing of Butterfly Joe is a wildly original story full of characters you’ll never forget. An epic tale of friendship, desire and the search for freedom and self-definition. It’s about participating in the Great American Dream – ‘the one that takes you from rags to riches via pitches’ – whatever the consequences. 

About the author

Rhidian Brook is an award-winning writer of fiction, television drama and film. His first novel, The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, won several prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including the Paris Review and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is also a regular contributor to 'Thought For The Day'. His 2013 novel, The Aftermath, was translated into more than twenty languages and has been made into a movie, staring Keira Knightley, that is set for release in 2018. He once had a job selling butterflies in glass cases.

@RhidianBrook #TheKillingofButterflyJoe

‘Superb…. masterly.’ - Mail on Sunday, on The Aftermarth

‘Profoundly moving, beautifully written.’ – Independent, on The Aftermath

‘Superb.’ – Guardian, on The Aftermath

‘Terrific. … Richly atmospheric.’ - Sunday Telegraph, on The Aftermath

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Beneath the Water by Sarah Painter

Beneath the Water by Sarah Painter
Published in paperback by Lake Union (an imprint of Amazon Publishing) | 8 February 2018 | £4.99 / audio book - £13.38

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Munro House is the new start Stella needs. But it will also draw her back to a dark past…

Devastated by a broken engagement, Stella Jackson leaves her old life behind for a new start in rural Scotland. But when she arrives in the remote coastal village of Arisaig, nothing is what she expected.

At the edge of Arisaig sits Munro House; grand, imposing and said to be cursed by a string of tragic deaths. No less intriguing is its eccentric and handsome young owner, Jamie Munro, who hires Stella as his assistant while he pursues a seemingly impossible aim. Working through the great house’s archives, Stella soon finds herself drawn in by a cache of increasingly erratic letters from a young Victorian woman about her husband, Dr James Lockhart, a man whose single-minded ambition has strange parallels with Jamie’s.

Just as Stella begins developing feelings for Jamie, she discovers that the connection between the Lockharts and the Munros could have sinister repercussions for them both. She’s finally found the life she wants to live - but is it all an illusion?

About Sarah Painter

Sarah Painter writes novels which sometimes have historical elements or touches of magic, but always have an emotional core. Her debut novel, The Language of Spells, became a Kindle bestseller and was followed by a sequel, The Secrets of Ghosts. Her last book, In the Light of What We See, was also a bestseller and a Kindle First pick. 

Sarah hosts a podcast about writing (and interviews other authors and creative-types) at www.worriedwriter.com. She lives in rural Scotland with her children, husband, and a grey tabby called Zelda Kitzgerald. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from St Andrews, drinks too much tea, loves the work of Joss Whedon, and is the proud owner of a writing shed.

www.sarah-painter.com / @SarahRPainter / #BeneaththeWater

Talking points:

  • Anxiety and self-doubt – how Sarah overcame anxiety and self-doubt to pursue her ambitions
  • Psychological impact of childhood heart surgery - and the decision to marry and have children early as a result
  • Helping other writers through the 'Worried Writer' podcast, book, and website to overcome fear, self-doubt and procrastination
  • James Young Simpson - the amazing 19th century Scottish obstetrician, who has captivated Sarah's imagination

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The Homecoming by Rosie Howard

A major new series for fans of Katie Fforde, Veronica Henry, Carole Matthews and Jill Mansell

A heart-warming and witty new series that combines a cosy Sussex setting, relationship drama and a cast of endearing characters.

The Homecoming (Havenbury 1) by Rosie Howard | Published in hardback by Allison & Busby on 15 February 2018 | £19.99

The Homecoming by Rosie Howard

The Homecoming by Rosie Howard

Maddy fled the idyllic market town of Havenbury Magna three years ago, the scene of a traumatic incident she revisits most clearly in her dreams. Even so, when she is called back to help at the Havenbury Arms when her godfather Patrick suffers a heart attack, she is unprepared for the welter of emotions her return provokes.

Psychologist and ex-army officer Ben is sure he can help Maddy to resolve her fears, until he finds himself falling for her, and struggling with a recently uncovered family secret of which Maddy is blissfully unaware.

Then Maddy's mother, Helen, arrives and Patrick himself must confront a few uncomfortable truths about his history and the pub’s future.

The Homecoming is page-turning escapism at its best, and the start of an exciting new series.

Author biography

With a father in the forces and the diplomatic corps, Rosie Howard spent much of her childhood in UK boarding schools, joining her parents in exotic destinations during holidays. After obtaining a degree in music she pursued a career in public relations, campaigning, political lobbying and freelance journalism but realized her preference for making things up and switched to writing novels instead. She lives in a West Sussex village with her husband and two children in a cottage with roses around the door.

rosiehoward.com / @RosieHowardBook

Talking points

  • Home / interiors – Rosie lives in a beautiful little cottage which she and her husband renovated themselves (photos available)
  • Family - raising a teenage daughter, a son with special needs, caring for elderly parents
  • Commenting on disability rights, equality for women, working women and access to childcare
  • Rural pub closures and community solutions – beer ties, pubs being sold off for housing, which features in the novel
  • Childhood spent in boarding schools – learning to be tough and resourceful

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Love And Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a moving novel with astonishing scope.

“Ford’s boundless compassion for the human spirit, in all its strengths andweaknesses, makes him one of our most unique and compelling storytellers”
— Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Allison & Busby / £14.99 / Hardback / Fiction / 12 September 2017

Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

1909, Seattle. At the World’s Fair a half-Chinese boy called Ernest Young is raffled off as a prize. He ends up working in a brothel in Seattle’s famed Red Light District and falls in love with Maisie, the daughter of a flamboyant madam, and Fahn, a karayukisan, a Japanese maid sold into servitude.

On the eve of the new World’s Fair in 1962, Ernest looks back on the past, the memories he made with his beloved wife while his daughter, a reporter, begins to unravel their tragic past.

Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from China to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name “Ford”. Jamie grew up in Seattle and worked as an art director and creative director, before becoming a full-time writer.  He now lives in Montana with his wife and children. 

For more information please visit www.jamieford.com. Twitter: @JamieFord

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet spent two years on the New York Times Bestseller list.  It has been translated into 29 languages. Jamie Ford is currently writing the screenplay.

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American War by Omar El Akkad

“‘American War’ creates as haunting a post-apocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in ‘The Road’, and as devastating a look at the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in ‘The Plot Against America’...El Akkad has written a novel that not only maps the harrowing effects of violence on one woman and her family, but also becomes a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians.”
— Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Hardback fiction / 7th September 2017 / £14.99 / 9781509852192

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle – a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. Telling her story is her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during war – part of the Miraculous Generation – now an old man confronting the dark secret of his past, his family’s role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others

Omar El Akkad is an award-winning journalist and author who has travelled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He is a recipient of a National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

More information: Omarelakkad.com / facebook.com/omar.akkad / twitter.com/omarelakkad

Selected international praise

‘Whether read as a cautionary tale of partisanship run amok, an allegory of past conflicts or a study of the psychology of war, American War is a deeply unsettling novel. The only comfort the story offers is that it’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.’  Justin Cronin, The New York Times

‘El Akkad’s formidable talent is to offer up a stinging rebuke of the distance with which the United States sometimes views current disasters, which are always happening somewhere else. Not this time.’ LA Times

‘Follow the tributaries of today’s political combat a few decades into the future and you might arrive at something as terrifying as Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War . . . El Akkad demonstrates a profound understanding of the corrosive culture of civil war.’ The Washington Post

‘A gripping plot and an elegiac narrative tone.’ Boston Globe

‘El Akkad’s debut novel transports us to a terrifyingly plausible future... Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself, where political loyalties hardly matter given the ferocity of both sides and the unrelenting violence that swallows whole bloodlines and erodes any capacity for mercy or reason. This is a very dark read; El Akkad creates a world all too familiar in its grisly realism’ Publishers Weekly

‘El Akkad has created a brilliantly well-crafted, profoundly shattering saga of one family’s suffering…American War is a gripping, unsparing, and essential novel for dangerously contentious times.’ Booklist

‘El Akkad’s astounding, gripping and eerily believable novel . . . masterful. Both the story and the writing are lucid, succinct, powerful and persuasive.’ Toronto The Globe and Mail

‘A dystopian vision . . . cannily imagined . . . But above all, El Akkad’s novel is an allegory about present-day military occupation’ Kirkus Reviews

 ‘A plausible, terrifying chronicle of the fracture and subsequent annihilation of the US… A thrillingly complex adventure that moves from the American south to Alaska and on to the Middle East and North Africa… At its heart and most movingly, the novel also becomes a coming-of-age narrative about how easily a curious child faced with horror and powerlessness can transform into a weapon intent on obliteration. As we learn at the end of the prologue, “This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin”’ The Australian

'The book that I found the most haunting this year. . . The premise is harrowing, the prose is stark and beautiful, the plotting is impeccable, and there’s something utterly heartbreaking in El Akkad’s subtle rendition of the ways in which war shapes the human soul.' Emily St John Mandel in The Millions

‘American War is a thought experiment in the form of a dystopian novel . . . The dramatic narrative takes us through the key events in Sarat’s life, while intercutting excerpts from various documentary sources that give us background and insight into the bigger political picture. A detailed world is constructed . . . American War asks us to imagine the uncomfortable.’ The Toronto Star

‘Omar El Akkad’s urgent debut transmutes our society’s current dysfunction into a terrifying yet eerily recognizable future, where contemporary global and local conflicts have wreaked havoc on American soil. The threads between today and that future are his masterfully shaped characters. Their resilience, savagery, and humanity serve both as a portrait of who we are but also what we might very well become.’ Elliot Ackerman, author of Dark at the Crossing

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Defectors by Joseph Kanon

From the bestselling author of Leaving Berlin and Istanbul Passage comes a thrilling and richly imagined novel about an American defector in Moscow during the Cold War.

'Kanon is fast approaching the complexity and relevance not just of le Carré and Greene but even of Orwell' New York Times

'Sensational! No one writes period fiction with the same style and suspense – not to mention substance – as Joseph Kanon' Scott Turow

'The perfect combination of intrigue and accurate history brought to life' Alan Furst

'Magnificent' Minette Walters

'Joseph Kanon owns this corner of the literary landscape and it's a joy to see him reassert his title with such emphatic authority' Lee Child

Published in hardback by Simon & Schuster on 1 June 2017 at £14.99

Moscow, 1961. Stalin has been dead for eight years. With the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union's international prestige is at an all-time high.

Former CIA agent Francis ‘Frank’ Weeks, the most notorious of the defectors to the Soviet Union, is about to publish his memoirs, and what he reveals is reportedly going to send shock waves through the West.

Weeks' defection in the early 50s shook Washington to its core – he had been a beloved member of the OSS and then the CIA, one of the bright young men who'd come out of the war ready to take an early lead in the new American century. His betrayal rippled through the State Department, prompting frantic searches for moles and forcing the resignation of Simon, Frank's brother and best friend.

When a Soviet agency approaches Simon, now a publisher in New York City, with a controversial proposition to publish his brother's memoirs, he knows that there's no way the US government will approve the publication of a book clearly intended as propaganda for the KGB. Yet he finds the offer irresistible since it will finally give him the chance to learn why his brother chose to betray his country. But what he discovers in Moscow is far more than he ever imagined...

Joseph Kanon is the Edgar Award–winning author of Leaving Berlin, Istanbul Passage, Stardust, Alibi, The Prodigal Spy, Los Alamos, and The Good German, which was made into a major motion picture starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. He lives in New York City. Visit him online at JosephKanon.com / @JosephKanon.

#thedefectors

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