LBF 2017: FICTION, SELECTED NEW TITLES
(Literary / Upmarket – Commercial – Suspense)
Literary / Upmarket
Arif Anwar
THE STORM
Client: Ayesha Pande Literary
Publisher: Harper Collins Canada
Fall 2018
MS available
THE STORM is a sweeping epic in the tradition of The Kite Runner and A Fine Balance. It is the
suspenseful, heartbreaking story of a Bangladeshi family stretching across decades and continents by
an immensely talented new voice in international fiction.
Inspired by the 1970 Bhola Cyclone, which killed a half-million people overnight, THE STORM seamlessly
interweaves five love stories that come together to form a chronicle of fifty years of Bangladeshi history and
are a testament to the bonds of family and the power of love. Shahryar, a recent Ph.D. graduate and father of
nine-year-old Anna, must leave the US when his visa expires. As they spend their last remaining weeks
together, Shahryar tells Anna the history of his family, beginning in a fishing village on the Bay of Bengal,
where a poor fisherman and his Hindu wife, who converted to Islam out of love for him, are preparing to face a
storm of historic proportions. Their story is impacted by others, including a Japanese fighter pilot, a British
female doctor stationed in Burma during WW II, a Buddhist monk originally from Austria, and a privileged
couple in Calcutta who leave it all behind to move to East Pakistan following the Partition of India.
ARIF ANWAR was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, just miles from the Bay of Bengal. He has previously
worked for BRAC, one of the world's largest Non-Governmental Organizations, on issues of poverty alleviation,
and for UNICEF Myanmar for public health issues. Arif has a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto.
He currently lives in Toronto Canada, with his beautiful vivacious wife Si (Sandra) Lian.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Kim Fu
THE LOST GIRLS OF CAMP FOREVERMORE
Client: Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Publisher: HarperCollins
February 2018
MS expected May 17
From the award-winning author of For Today I Am a Boy, a gripping and deeply felt novel about one
night that changes everything for five young women whose fates became forever intertwined at a
remote sleepaway camp.
A group of young girls descend on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where
their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with
excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before night
falls, they find themselves stranded, without a guide, without protection.
The novel traces the lives of these five girls after this fateful trip. We see them through successes and failures,
loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to find, and define, oneself and the ways in which
the same experience is refracted through different people. In diamond-sharp prose, Kim Fu gives us a portrait
of friendship and of women, of the families we build for ourselves, and the pasts we can't escape.
KIM FU’s debut novel, For Today I Am a Boy (2014), was the winner of the Edmund White Award and the
Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award; a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Kobo
Emerging Writer Prize, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
1
Bill Gaston
A MARINER’S GUIDE TO SELF-SABOTAGE
Client: Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Fall 2017
A Mariner’s Guide to Self-Sabotage displays a fertile imagination channeled through a range of styles.
It’s his versatility that sets Gaston apart from Canada’s other top short fiction practitioners. ‘Critic’ is elegant,
somber, its outcome subtly calculated, while ‘The Church of Manna, Revelator’ is lunatic and weirdly voiced,
as hilarious as it is painful. What links these stories is their element of complete unpredictability, their
freshness and surprise, and their potently idiosyncratic yet authentic voice and versatility.
BILL GASTON is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His previous collection Juliet Was a
Surprise was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award as was his short story collection Gargoyles,
which was also shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and won the ReLit Award and the City of Victoria
Butler Book Prize. Gaston was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize with Mount Appetite, and theinaugural
recipient of the Timothy Findley Prize, awarded by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. His most recent novel, The
World, won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. He teaches at the University of Victoria.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Wang King-Tuo
MY ENEMY'S CHERRY TREE
Client: THE GRAYHAWK AGENCY
Publisher: Ink
September 2015
Winner of Taipei Book Fair Award
Winner of China Times Open Book Award
Winner of Eslite Bookseller Award for Book of the Year
Published in 2015, it was the biggest literary event of the year in Taiwan, along with Wu Ming-Yi's THE
STOLEN BICYCLE. It won the Open Book Award, the Taipei Book Fair Award, and was chosen as one
of the Ten Chinese Novels of the Year.
Mr. Luo, a middle-aged philanthropist, walks into a newly opened café in a small town and orders a coffee. But
after seeing the owner, he flees the scene as if in shock and falls ill soon after. What could possibly surprise
such a benevolent man – well-known all over the country for his kindness and charity work – that he even
attempts to commit suicide? There’s apparently some kind of feud between the two men, but no one knows
what really happened. Except that the owner’s wife has gone missing.
A modern-day Gatsby story, written in stunningly precise prose that brings to mind the best of Alice Munro, MY
ENEMY’S CHERRY TREE explores the deep currents that run through man’s experience in today’s world.
Wang Ting-Kuo’s first novel won every major literary award in Taiwan, including his third Open Book Award in
three years, setting an unprecedented record. He lives in Taichung and runs his own property and construction
business.
Born in 1955, WANG KING-TUO started writing when he was young and quickly became the literary superstar
in the 80s. Then he fell in love with the daughter of a rich man, who told him to get a "real" job if he wants to
marry her. So Wang stopped writing and got into the real estate business. For 25 years he didn't write a single
word but he became a construction tycoon.
Rights sold: WORLD ENGLISH Portobello
Contact: Marc Koralnik
2
Pasha Malla
FUGUE STATES
Client: The Cooke Agency International
Publisher: Knopf Canada
May 2017
MS available (352pp.)
The wild and poignant story of two young men—Ash Dhar, who is grieving the death of his father, and
his best friend Matt, a pot-head drifter—who embark on a Don Quixote-like quest from Canada to
Kashmir, India. A brilliantly entertaining novel by an award-winning, Giller Prize-nominated author.
Fugue States opens with the eulogy at a funeral: a eulogy delivered by Ash, a radio host, upon the death of his
father, Brij, a Kashmir-born doctor and would-be writer. Later, while sorting through his father's belongings,
Ash comes across a mysterious document: a half-completed and utterly baffling work of fiction set (possibly) in
Kashmir. Ash begins to wonder about his Indian heritage and the ancestral home he knows only through his
father's stories—as a place of brutality and stunning natural beauty. And yet he resists going to visit, skeptical
of being another Westerner visiting a war-torn homeland; instead, Ash's best friend Matt—a drifter, pot-head,
career bartender, massage therapy student, and self-described "maker of memories" takes it upon himself to
go in Ash's place...with strange, unexpected, hilarious and excruciating results.
Fugue States is a spectacular novel, at once a parody of clueless tourism and western meddling in world
affairs and a subtle, immensely affecting book about homesickness and the deep melancholy that abides in
people who, like Ash and his father, and even like the foolish Matt, have never felt completely at home in the
world.
PASHA MALLA is the author of five works of poetry and fiction. His work has won the Danuta Gleed Literary
Award, the Trillium Book Prize, an Arthur Ellis Award and several National Magazine awards.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Elisabeth de Mariaffi
I REMEMBER YOU
Client: Transatlantic Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
2018
MS expected in April
For fiction readers and also captivate fans of mystery/psychological tension such as Sarah Waters,
Tana French and A.S.A Harrison. With its high society 1950s setting in the Finger Lakes region of New
York, seemingly a story about the ghost of a little girl and a mystery revolving around a missing son
named Daniel, it soon questions everyone surrounding them and the tainted idyllic society and
countryside in which the story is situated.
Heike Lerner walked away from the Dresden firestorm at the age of fourteen, crossing war-torn Germany and
fleeing to Switzerland. Now married to an American psychiatrist working at the infamous Willard Asylum, she’s
raising her young son in New York’s idyllic Finger Lakes region and learning to navigate 1950s high society
when a hazy canoe ride to a local pond ends in the unthinkable: a strange little girl seems to appear from
nowhere, befriending four-year old Daniel, then disappearing just as quickly below the surface of the water.
Convinced she’s just witnessed a drowning, Heike dives below the water to rescue the child but she has
vanished without a trace, and no one in Heike’s circle knows of the girl.
Just as she begins to question the encounter and even the girl’s existence, Heike meets Leo Dolan, a
playwright moving quickly into the new medium of television with a series that explores the paranormal.
Caught between her controlling husband and the intense Dolan, Heike returns from a party to find Daniel, too,
has disappeared– and her own husband was the last to see him.
ELISABETH DE MARIAFFI is the critically acclaimed author of two previous books. Born and raised in
Toronto, she now makes her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
3
Gregory Norminton
THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Feb. 2018
MS available
One road. Three thousand years. A novel of elegy, prophecy and great power
A Roman road, an Iron Age hill fort, a hand-carved flint, and a cycle of violence that must be broken…. An
ancient British boy, discovering a terrorist plot, must betray his brother to save his tribe. In the twenty-first
century, two people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the meaning of a landscape. A
gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a broken landscape. THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is a vivid and
deftly constructed three-part novel, spanning three thousand years and charting the many worlds of one place
over generations. The title refers to the Roman road of that name, with ‘Blueface’ set in ancient Britain as the
Roman occupier is consolidating his rule. ‘No Man’s Land’, takes place on the same threatened heathland in
2011, while the virtuoso third section, ‘The Heave’, is set centuries in the future, with England now a burning
desert, and civilisation regressed to barbarism.
THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is uniquely affecting, an unforgettable and urgent new work from a brilliant writer.
GREGORY NORMINTON trained as an actor, and is the author of four acclaimed novels published by
Sceptre. His short stories have been published widely and Comma Press will publish his first collection THE
GHOST WHO BLED in late 2016. He teaches creative writing and English at Manchester Metropolitan
University.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Rob Reid
FOREVER ON
Client: The Martell Agency
Publisher: Ballantine/Del Rey
2016
New York Times best-selling author of YEAR ZERO and tech insider Rob Reid’s new novel FOREVER ON,
will be the Bonfire of the Vanities for Silicon Valley, a funny, provocative and dead accurate depiction of the
technology world, capturing its glorious platinum age in the madcap tale of two imaginary start-ups (Phflutter
and Giftish.ly) hell bent for success in the brawling scrum of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and engineers
who are “re-architecting” our world.
ROB REID is an extremely successful entrepreneur. While at Harvard Business School, he wrote a book about
the experience, YEAR ONE: An Intimate Look Inside Harvard Business School (William Morrow, 1994).
Passionate about the technology industry, after graduating, he became an Internet full-timer and one of only
three investors who started the first Internet-only venture capital firm.
Shortly thereafter, he wrote ARCHITECTS OF THE WEB: 1,000 Days That Built the Future of Business (Wiley,
1997). Partnering with Chris Anderson (who later created and still runs the TED conference), he started
Business 2.0, a magazine that chronicled the business world's relationship with the Internet. The magazine
was eventually sold to Time Warner in an eight figure deal. He then went solo and founded Listen.com and
created Rhapsody music service, which immediately became the top seller of online music in the world, until
Apple launched iTunes in 2003. Reid sold the company to RealNetworks, which then sold it to MTV.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
4
Anbara Salam
CENTRAL
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Under auction in UK
MS available
Set on a small island in the South Pacific, this stunning novel evokes the enchantment of Ann
Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and the wit and wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver’s THE POISONWOOD
BIBLE.
At the centre of the novel are two missionaries, Max and his wife Bea, who have come to the village of
Bambayot in the ‘central’ region of a Melanesian island. Max is worried about what demure and gentle Bea will
make of island life – but is surprised to find she adjusts to it with ease, exploring the landscape, foraging for
food in the hedges and impressing the islanders with her sewing machine. Meanwhile, Max craves liquorice
drops and electric lights – and he can’t get through to the natives, who insist on performing strange
‘purification’ rituals on the women, claiming possession by demons.
Max is pushed further to the edge by the arrival of Marietta, the previous missionary, who hums incessantly
and has no manners, and takes up all the air in the already claustrophobic Mission House. When a terrible
accident befalls her, Max is overcome with guilt, which he begins to assuage with more and more involvement
in the nightly exorcisms. As Max’s sanity deteriorates, Bea realises she must start to take control of her
destiny, or risk becoming trapped in the jungle forever.
CENTRAL reflects the everyday struggles and complicated racial politics often excluded from Western
portrayals of the South Pacific, puncturing the myth of collectivist bliss and cocktails on white-sand beaches.
This is an incredibly accomplished debut, rich in evocative detail and wry humour. Though the novel is tinged
with tragedy, with darkness creeping in at every turn of the page, Anbara depicts her diverse cast of characters
with warmth and intimacy.
ANBARA SALAM is a research associate at University of Oxford with a PhD in Theology. She’s halfPalestinian and half-Scottish, has lived in Lebanon for a year and travelled extensively around the Middle East,
Asia and Europe.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Genevieve Scott
CATCH MY DRIFT
Client: Transatlantic Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: Goose Lane
Spring 2018
MS expected in June
For lovers of Sarah Selecky’s This Cake is for the Party, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, CATCH MY DRIFT is a novel that reminds us of our
lifelong labor to connect with others, even as we tackle most of life’s complications alone.
CATCH MY DRIFT is the enduring story of a mother and daughter. The book starts with Lorna, a varsity
swimmer in denial about a career-killing injury and a broken engagement. The narrative then hands off to nine
year-old Cara, distracted from her nativity play by the terror of becoming the world's next Virgin Mary. Lorna
always wanted to stand out. Cara tries hard to blend in. Lorna is vain about her ability to shut out distractions.
Cara can’t control her scary thoughts. And while Lorna tries her best to move past life’s early disappointments,
Cara picks at the cracks in her family’s story. From 1975 to 1995, the book follows mother and daughter
through life changes big and small, and reveals that despite our shared experiences or family connections, we
each live a private story.
GENEVIEVE SCOTT is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing MFA. Her short
fiction has been published in literary journals in Canada and the United Kingdom, including The New Quarterly,
The White Wall Review and the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, among others. Genevieve grew up in
Toronto and currently lives in Southern California. She is a creative writing mentor to at-risk teen girls in Los
Angeles with the nonprofit WriteGirl. CATCH MY DRIFT is her debut novel.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
5
Maan Abu Taleb
ALL THE BATTLES
Client: Hoopoe / AUC
Publisher:
A journey from bourgeois respectability into the world of working-class boxing
One afternoon, Said leaves work early and crosses into the rough side of town, in search of a run-down boxing
club. Bored with his comfortable, middle-class life, his obsession with this underground sport grows: he starts
skipping work and showing up with visible injuries. Finally he is entered for the big fight he has been waiting
for. Will this be the making of him, or could it be the end of the road?
Maan Abu Taleb’s stylish debut novel is a tale of transformation, from corporate worker to fighter. With
directness and precision, All the Battles is fueled by a slowly burning, yet gripping, momentum.
MAAN ABU TALEB is the founding editor of Ma3azef, the Arab world’s leading online music magazine, and he
holds a master’s degree in philosophy and contemporary critical theory. Born and raised in Amman, Jordan, he
now lives in London, UK.
Robin Moger is the translator of Otared by Mohammad Rabie and Women of Karantina by Nael Eltoukhy,
among other books. His translation for Writing Revolution won the 2013 English PEN Award for outstanding
writing in translation. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
6
Commercial
Sarah Franklin
SHELTER
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre
Summer 2017
MS available
A sparkling debut featuring an engaging cast of characters.
It’s 1944, and Connie runs to the forest to work as a lumberjill after her family home is blitzed and she must
survive alone, hiding her pregnancy. Once there, she meets Italian P.O.W., Seppe, and Amos, who has never
left the forest but is mourning his son who has. These three compelling characters weave a special bond in
extraordinary and testing circumstances and create a new family for Connie, but when the baby arrives she
must decide whether to stay or run - and who to leave behind.
A unique and engrossing love story, SHELTER is an entirely fresh tale of transformed lives in difficult times.
SARAH FRANKLIN grew up in rural Gloucestershire. She has written for The Guardian, Psychologies
magazine, The Pool, the Sunday Express and the Seattle Times. Her creative non-fiction has been published
in anthologies in the USA and appeared on radio affiliates there. Sarah is founder and host of popular Oxford
literary night Short Stories Aloud, and a Senior Lecturer at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing
Studies. Sarah won an Arvon/Jerwood mentorship to work on her debut novel.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Laurie Gelman
CLASS MOM
Client: Henry Holt and Company
Publisher: Holt
August 2017
A hilarious debut about navigating the world of kindergarten parents – wonderful commercial fiction
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom – or mom in general. Jen already has two
college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians and it’s her second time around the class mom
block with five-year-old Max – this time with a husband and father on her side. Having lead the kindergarten
class parents for her daughter’s, Jen’s best friend and Parent Teacher Association President sees her as the
wisest candidate for the job. But after one email, there’s already tension. Jen’s irreverent tone is off putting to
some of the impossible-to-please moms.
On the first parent night of the school year, Jen’s eyes catches a familiar face in the room. Her old high school
fling is a single father to a girl in the class. The two renew their friendship, but Jen can’t help but wonder if
there’s something else there.
Relatable and irreverent, Gelman’s CLASS MOM is a welcome new voice in women’s fiction, a brilliant sendup of the petty and cutthroat terrain of parent politics.
LAURIE GELMAN has been a correspondent for Good Morning America and CBS’s The Early Show and a cohost for the national Canadian parenting show, The Mom Show, among others. She was a contributing editor
for the now defunct Cookie Magazine and a writer for The Observer Playground. She is currently a blogger for
Babycenter.com, representing the site on shows like The Today Show and Live with Kelly.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
7
Amanda Leduc
THE CENTAUR'S WIFE
Client: Transatlantic Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: randomhouse canada
Spring 2018
MS available in May
In the tradition of Station Eleven , The Leftovers and Neverwhere , comes a dark and lovely fairy tale
about despair and redemption, desire and loss, and magic both seen and unseen.
The world has ended, and there is no magic in the ground anymore. Three years ago, a rain of asteroids hit
the planet—obliterating satellites, flattening whole countries.
The centaurs, who were born from magic and grief but were myth for so long, have come down from the
mountain in the wake of the asteroids and are trying to help rebuild the nearby cities. The centaurs hear voices
in the wind and feel rumblings in the ground that the humans cannot; they know that something else is coming.
As grief and sickness ravage the city below them, the centaurs feel dread mount and try their best to help.
Then a madness unleashes itself into the air one April day—The centaurs intervene and rescue a pregnant
Heather, a young woman frustrated by her shattered life.
But when a ragtag family with a mysterious connection to the centaurs comes traveling up the mountain,
offering proof that others are alive and bringing their own stories of nature run amok, even Heather begins to
see that the world is turning against them in ways that no one could expect. And when war erupts on the
mountain and threatens them all, it is Heather and her newborn son who must find a way forward, through
forbidden love and thwarted desire and the echoes of a magic almost gone, and teach the others to navigate a
world that is dying and being reborn all at once.
AMANDA LEDUC's stories and essays have appeared in publications across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and
Australia, including The Rumpus, The Butter, ELLE Canada, and many others. She has been shortlisted for
numerous awards, including the 2015 StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize, the CBC Writes Fiction and Creative
Nonfiction Prizes, and the UK Daily Mail First Novel Award. Her first novel, The Miracles of Ordinary Men, was
published in 2013 by Toronto's ECW Press.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Hillary Manton Lodge
JANE OF AUSTIN
Client: The Crown Publishing Group
Publisher: Water Brook
June 2017
This hip contemporary romance combines Jane Austen-inspiration and foodie fiction in a witty and
engaging tale of two sisters who are forced to uproot to unfamiliar Austin, Texas, after high rent and
broken relationships force them away from their San Francisco life.
In this Sense and Sensibility adaptation, Jane Woodward and her sister Celia run a small tea salon in San
Francisco but are forced to relocate to Austin, Texas. While trying to start fresh and settle in, Jane meets a
dashing musician, Sean, who steals her heart, but not before catching the eye of another suitor, military
veteran Ben Fredrickson. The sisters drift apart, lives collide, dashing men steer Jane off course, and she
discovers that adjusting to a new life is trickier than she anticipated.
HILARY MANTON LODGE is the author of Plain Jayne, a Carol Award Finalist, and Simply Sara, an ECPA
Bestselling book. A graduate of the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, Hillary discovered the world
of cuisine during her internship at Northwest Palate Magazine. At an early age, Hillary decided on royalty as a
career path. She and her husband live in Portland, Oregon.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
8
Beryl Matthews
WHEN THE MUSIC STOPPED
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Allison & Busby
March 2017
A new classic World War One saga set in London.
London, 1912. Identical twins Lester and Lillia Holdsworth are destined for the stage. Lester is a brilliant
pianist; Lillia a magnificent opera singer. But their cruel father has other ideas for their future. Lester is sent to
a military academy, while Lillia must marry Lord Dalton - a self righteous, pompous friend of her father's
looking for a young wife to give him an heir. Yet their plans to defy their father's wishes are put on hold when
war breaks out in 1914.
Suddenly Lester is flying planes for the RFC and Lillia trains as a nurse to help those wounded at home, and
then abroad. For both twins, the fighting brings hardships and difficult choices. They wait in hope, like the rest
of Europe, for the war to end and the music to start again.
BERYL MATTHEWS is an accomplished novelist, writing in the genre that Catherine Cookson made her own,
but with novels set in London. As a young girl Beryl’s ambition was to become a professional singer but lack of
funds drove her into an office, where she worked her way up from tea-girl to credit controller. After she retired,
she began to pursue her dream of becoming a published author.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Catherine Miller
THE GIN SHACK ON THE BEACH
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: HarperCollins
June 2017
A new contemporary comedy for fans of THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL – a story of friendship,
defiance, and the quest for the perfect gin and tonic.
You’re never too old to try something new!
When octogenarian Olive Turner is persuaded by her son to move into a retirement home, she congratulates
herself on finding the secret to an easy life: no washing up, cooking or cleaning. But Olive isn’t one for
mindless bingo with her fellow residents, and before the first day is over she's already hatching a plan to
escape back to her beloved beach hut and indulge in her secret passion for a very good gin & tonic.
Before long Olive’s secret is out and turning into something wonderful and new. Only a select few are invited,
but word spreads quickly about the weekly meetings of The Gin Shack Club. Soon everybody on the beach
wants to become a gin connoisseur and join Olive on her journey to never being forced to grow older than you
feel.
When CATHERINE MILLER became a mum to twins, she decided her hands weren't full enough so wrote a
novel with every spare moment she managed to find. Her debut novel, WAITING FOR YOU, came out in
March 2016, with ALL THAT IS LEFT OF US following in Autumn. In 2015 she won the Katie Fforde bursary,
was a finalist in the London Book Fair Write Stuff Competition and highly commended in Woman magazine's
writing competition.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
9
Daniel Mills
MORIAH
Client: The Cooke Agency International
Publisher: ChiZine
April 2017
A work of historical Gothic horror which recalls the Victorian fiction of Sarah Waters, Michael Cox, and
Charles Palliser
Silas Flood is haunted, a broken man in a broken country. Nine years have passed since the end of the
American Civil War and Flood is helpless to escape its shadow. During the war, he served as an army
chaplain at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania only to lose his faith, his family, and his vocation. Now he finds
work as a journalist for a New York newspaper.
In the summer of 1874 he is dispatched to the mountain village of Moriah, Vermont to investigate sensational
claims of supernatural happenings at a wayside inn. There the brothers Thaddeus and Ambrose Lynch are
said to converse with spirits and summon the dead.
In Moriah, Flood encounters others like himself: a grieving couple, a childless widow. By day he questions the
Lynch brothers who prove less than forthcoming. They too are haunted by buried secrets, old ghosts. In the
evenings he attends séances where the resurrected dead dance and sing and give comfort to the living. As
Flood investigates the true nature of these phenomena he is forced to come to terms with his own past and
with the hold it has upon him.
DANIEL MILLS is the author of Revenants: A Dream of New England (Chomu Press, 2011) and The Lord
Came at Twilight (Dark Renaissance books, 2014). His short fiction has appeared in various magazines and
anthologies including Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The
Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. He lives in Vermont.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Mallory Ortberg
THE MERRY SPINSTER
Client: Henry Holt and Company
Publisher: Henry Holt
March 2018
While running The Toast, Mallory Ortberg wrote the beloved “Children’s Stories Made Horrific” series updating
traditional folklore tales with elements of horror and social commentary. The feature became among the most
popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved to be a perfect
vehicle for Ortberg’s eye for deconstructing social norms. While readers mourn the loss of The Toast,
millennial women who swore by the site will get their fix of feminist thought mixed with literary nerdiness (a
Toast hallmark) with Ortberg’s latest: THE MERRY SPINSTER.
For readers of Kate Beaton, as well as George Saunders, and an exciting follow up to Ortberg’s beloved
debut, Texts from Jane Eyre, the stories in THE MERRY SPINSTER will satisfy longtime fans and introduce a
new readership to Ortberg’s unique spin on fiction—where something a bit sinister is always at work just
beneath the surface.
MALLORY ORTBERG is the co-creator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women. She
has written for Gawker, New York Magazine, The Hairpin, and The Atlantic. She is Slate's "Dear Prudence"
and she lives in the Bay Area with her laptop and her cat.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
10
Eileen Ramsay
RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL
#1 Flowers of Scotland Series, re-issue
Client: Teresa Chris Literary Agency Ltd
Publisher: Bonnier UK
Feburary 2017
Eileen Ramsay has signed a ten book contract with Bonnier Publishing. At the moment she is writing
the first book of a four book series based on the G.I. Brides of WW11. Meanwhile they are re-issuing
her backlist under the banner FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND
RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL. Lucy Graham, daughter of a British diplomat in Washington D.C, lives a pampered
life both in the American capital and in the family's Scottish home. To her mother's dismay, she refuses to
conform to the life planned for her. Her parents look forward to a splendid marriage, perhaps to the rich and
handsome
Maximilian du Pay,. Lucy demands an education, no matter what her Mama's friends say about unfeminine
behaviour. Against all odds, Lucy graduates with a degree in medicine and sets up a general practice in
Dundee. That in itself is shocking - a man could well ask for aid from a general practitioner. The practice grows
and Lucy needs a partner. She hires Rosie Nesbitt, a recently qualified doctor, whose struggle for education is
as far from Lucy's as it is possible to be.Lucy's best friend is Kier Anderson-Howard who owns an estate in
Fife. He has loved her all his life and although she loves him too, she refuses his offers. At an evening party,
Kier sees Rosie and is drawn to her immediately. war comes and men go to fight and women go to mend
them.. Is a happily ever after possible?
EILEEN RAMSAY was born in Scotland and educated there and in the U.S and Mexico. She went through
college babysitting for G.I. families stationed near Edinburgh and visited several while touring the U.S after
graduation. Eileen, who is Chairman of the Romantic Novelists Association, lives in Angus with her husband
whom she met while she was working on the archives of a Presidential campaign.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
11
Suspense
Tim Baker
CITY WITHOUT STARS
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Epic, honest, unforgettable: a mesmerising thriller on the War on Drugs
May 2000: billions are about to be lost on the stock exchange – and billions more made smuggling drugs into
the USA. For residents of Ciudad Real, the situation is desperate. A deadly cartel war is erupting, despairing
labour activists are about to take social justice into their own hands, hundreds of women are disappearing
without trace, and a priest hovers on the frontier between damnation and sainthood.
Across a short-fuse, multi-stranded narrative of five bloody days, Baker masterfully manoeuvres different
voices and perspectives as the action cascades towards its conclusion. The gruelling scenes are inspired by
actual historical events, simply because in el mondo narco anything and everything can happen.
The most despairing acts are counterpoised with a rich humanity, dark swathes of humour and an unstinting
faith in the redemptive power of human courage and decency. Its blistering pace, morally ambiguous
characters and vast story architecture will appeal to audiences that made Breaking Bad, Narcos and
Gomorrah international sensations, as well as to fans of richly-imagined epic fiction such as THE POWER OF
THE DOG and BLOOD MERIDIAN.
Born in Sydney, Australia, TIM BAKER moved around Europe before settling in Paris, where he wrote about
jazz. He was the director of consular operations at the Australian embassy in France, liasing with international
police, judicial and intelligence authorities on numerous cases involving murder, kidnap, child abduction,
hostage-taking, terrorism, suicide, assault, and disappearances.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Paul Finch
WAR WOLF
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher:
Major motion picture in 2017 (dir. Simon West LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER)
September 1356: England and France have been at war for 20 unrelenting years. The land is ravaged and
both armies exhausted. The Earl of Northumberland has taken possession of the Chateau Machoul, where his
Knight-commander, courageous and principled Hawkyard, meets the beautiful Yvette, the daughter of the
vanquished Count.
Their kindling romance is halted when, in the dark woods that surround the castle, someone rouses the Loup
de Guerre, or War Wolf, a notorious monster of French legend. Using black magic and a mysterious wolf-pelt,
a ferocious man/wolf is born – a thing of nightmares, which now embarks on a wild killing spree, with
abloodlust for English flesh.
But this ancient beast is no patriot. It cannot be controlled and when it begins murdering indiscriminately no
one in the castle or surrounding villages is safe. Who would unleash such a horror, such a weapon of mass
destruction, on an already war-weary land?
With the Earl dead from his wounds, Hawkyard must lead the resistance. But he is badly distracted. Enemies
have arisen among his own disillusioned ranks, and increasingly he fears that Yvette may be responsible for
summoning this devil.
The War Wolf continues to prowl, continues to kill. Is there any hero left among the ranks of the exhausted
garrison who is strong enough to overcome such demonic savagery?
A former cop and journalist, PAUL FINCH’s HECK series has sold over 600,000 copies worldwide. STALKERS
was an instant bestseller, and book 2, SACRIFICE, was the most pre-ordered book in Harper Collins history.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
12
David Humbert
KARST
Client: Editions Liana Levi
Publisher: Liana Levi
April 2017
384 pp.
A brisk, well-documented thriller about geology and water pollution.
Newly arrived from the Paris judicial police, Lieutenant Paul Kubler is transferred to public security in Rouen,
his hometown. Good Flemish beer and his old Honda Super Sport help keep the days from dragging, for his
first case could hardly be called thrilling: supervising the orderly conduct of a workers’ protest against cutbacks
at EuroGaz. But twice in the same week, the town’s taps start spitting out discolored water. The first time pale
pink, then fluorescent green. An accident? Vandalism? Vengeance? Kubler is put in charge of a discrete
investigation into the sources upstream of the Moulin where pollutants must have been dumped. When a third
discoloration of the water occurs, a dismembered body is found. Kubler’s investigations lead him to Melody
Dornier, the «princess of karst.» She lures him into the limestone subsoil--the geological foundation of the
region--to discover who is polluting the water sources. And who is protecting them.
Suspense, a feisty tone, an eye for detail, and paciness characterize this thriller about water, a precious public
asset whose conservation often clashes with private interests.
DAVID HUMBERT was born in 1973 in France’s Franche-Comté. A geologist in Rouen, he has worked for
fifteen years on the protection of the groundwater table of Upper Normandy from pollution. A scientific
journalist as well, he has contributed articles on environmental questions to various magazines (notably
Science et Vie). Karst is his first crime novel.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Harriet Alida Lye
THE HONEY FARM
Client: Transatlantic Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: Vagrant Press
Spring 2018
For fans of Darren Aronfsky's Black Swan and readers of Kazuo Ishiguro's unnerving novel Never Let
Me Go , THE HONEY FARM, by the talented Harriet Alida Lye is a psychological thriller about art, bees
and love.
When beekeeper Cynthia offers young artists free room and board in exchange for help on the farm, strange
things start happening, resembling the plagues from the Book of Exodus, triggering a Catholic would-be-poet
into an increasingly terrorized state where she can no longer tell if Cynthia is her protector or her destroyer.
The novel explores the relationship between bees and creativity and the plight of bees in today’s world, artistic
identity and collective community. It’s also about possession, perception, power, and the beauty and mystery
of the natural world.
HARRIET ALIDA LYE is a writer from Richmond Hill, Ontario. She studied Philosophy and English at the
University of King's College and lived in Paris for the better part of eight years, where she worked as a
bookseller at Shakespeare & Company, an English teacher for the children of Jacques Lacan and Julia
Kristeva, a storytelling researcher for Google, a painter's model, and various other jobs that kept her from
completely starving as an artist. She founded and edited Her Royal Majesty, a literary arts magazine that ran
for six years and 13 issues and published James Franco, Robert Hass, and the first-ever short story by Alice
Munro. Her fiction, essays and reporting have been published by VICE, Hazlitt, Happy Reader, The Guardian,
The National Post, and more. Harriet now lives in Toronto, and works at the McMichael Canadian Art
Collection.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
13
Phillip M. Margolin
THIRD VICTIM
Client: The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: St. Martins
March 2018
Everyone calls Regina Barrister, 58, the Queen of the Bar because of her regal bearing, stately beauty and
stunning record of courtroom victories. But Regina has a secret. Lately she has been forgetting simple things
like the four number code she needs to work the office copier and the charges her clients are facing,
symptoms of the onset of dementia. This may be a serious problem for Alex Mason, a prominent attorney who
has hired Regina to defend him in an Aggravated Murder trial, which can lead to a sentence of death.
A serial killer has already claimed two victims but the police get a huge break when Meredith Fenner, the third
victim, stumbles out of the woods, near death, and claims to have been held captive in a million dollar resort
cabin on the shores of Whisper Lake. Fenner has been bound with duct tape and tortured. When Alex Mason
turns out to own the cabin and Alex’s young bride tells the police that Alex’s interest in S&M includes bondage
and torture similar to that experienced by Meredith, Alex is arrested.
Now Regina is responsible for saving Mason’s life and she thinks she knows some fact that was turned up by
her investigator that will win his case. Only she can’t remember what it is. Misplacing this fact is not like
misplacing her car keys and if she can’t figure out what she can’t remember Alex Mason will die.
PHILLIP MARGOLIN has written over twenty novels, many of them New York Times bestsellers, including his
latest novels Violent Crimes (HarperCollins, 2016), Woman with a Gun (2014), Worthy Brown's Daughter
(2014), Sleight of Hand (2013), and the Washington trilogy. Each displays a unique, compelling insider's view
of criminal behavior, which comes from his long background as a criminal defense attorney who has handled
thirty murder cases. Winner of the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award, he lives in Portland, Oregon.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Grace O'Connell
BE READY FOR LIGHTNING
Client: The Cooke Agency International
Publisher: Random House Canada
June 2017
MS available (272pp.)
From an acclaimed emerging talent, whose debut was a national bestseller, comes a suspenseful,
poignant and provocative tale about violence, sibling love, friendship and heroism, all told through the
lens of a young woman trapped on a hijacked bus—disturbing, tender and darkly funny, this family
story calls to mind When God Was a Rabbit, Jodi Picoult and The Language of Flowers
On the surface, Veda’s life in Vancouver seems to be going just fine—nearly 30, she has a caring family,
lifelong friends and a good job as an audiologist. But beneath it all a dead-end romantic relationship lingers
and a stifling commitment to watch out for her vulnerable, violence-prone brother, Conrad, has left her feeling
adrift and detached from her own life.
When Veda is injured as a bystander during one of Conrad’s many fights, she knows it’s time to leave
Vancouver for a fresh start. She heads to New York; staying in the cozy Manhattan apartment of old friends Al
and Sunny, exploring the city, she’s begun to feel like a normal person, a tourist—until one day the uptown bus
she’s on is hijacked by a sweet-faced, gun-toting blonde man named Peter. He instructs Veda and the other
passengers to spray-paint the bus windows black, and what ensues is a gripping and unpredictable hostage
situation, the outcome of which will make Veda question everything she knows about herself.
Told with powerful immediacy and warmth, at once unsettling and engrossing, Be Ready for the Lightning is a
story of violence, its attractions and repulsions; of love, loyalty and friendship; and of a young woman finding a
well of courage she didn’t know she had.
GRACE O’CONNELL is a Toronto-based writer and editor and the author of Magnified World (Random House,
2012). She has been nominated for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award and two National Magazine Awards for
fiction, and was the 2014 winner of the Canadian Author Association’s Emerging Writer Award.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
14
Alan Parks
BLOODY JANUARY
Client: Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency Ltd
Publisher: Canongate
January 2018
Taut, dark crime thriller set in Glasgow in 1973 – for fans of Luther and William McIlvanney’s LAIDLAW
When an 18-year-old boy shoots a young woman dead in the middle of a busy Glasgow street and then
commits suicide, Harry McCoy knows it can’t be a random act of violence. With new country-mouse partner –
Wattie – in tow, McCoy uses his underworld network of rats to build a picture of a secret society run by
Glasgow’s wealthiest family, the Dunlops. The son, Teddy, is a particular charmer – he drugged up wee
Tommy Malone, and convinced him it was his God-given task to kill young Lorna. Drugs, sex, incest: every
nefarious predilection is catered for at the expense of the lower echelons of society, an underclass that
includes McCoy’s best friend from convent school – drug-Tsar Stevie Cooper – and his on-off girlfriend, a
prostitute, Janey. But with McCoy’s boss calling off the hounds, and his boss unleashing their own, the
Dunlops are apparently untouchable. But McCoy has other ideas…
The story stands alone, but leaves us with characters we’ll want to engage with again and again, and I attach
the synopsis for the second book in the series. This is perfect reading for fans of William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw
books, Oliver Harris’ The Hollow Man, Quintin Jardine and Rankin’s Rebus. Parks’s writing is energetic and
visceral, and McCoy is a satisfyingly complex and morally ambiguous protagonist. The novel reeks of the city,
holds you in its grip and doesn’t let go.
ALAN PARKS was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in
Moral Philosophy. He was Creative Director at London Records in the mid 1990s then joined Warner Music.
Contact: Marc Koralnik
Anna Porter
THE APPRAISAL
Client: Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Publisher: ECW
Fall 2017
MS expected in April 2017
A suspenseful novel that invites comparison with thrillers of Alan Furst and Joseph Kanon.
Attila, a reluctantly retired Hungarian policeman, has been hired as a private detective to follow a woman
newly arrived in Budapest. Helena Marsh seems to have an interest in buying an old painting, but it turns out
she is a woman of many disguises (literally).
She has a history of tracking down paintings acquired without the owner’s consent and is in Budapest to
acquire a valuable Titian that is being privately auctioned. It once belonged to the family of her client, a
Hungarian-Canadian named Geza Marton, and Marton wants to know whether the current owner, Janos
Krestin, is a man he had known in Vorkuta, one of the most terrible mines in the Soviet Gulag. Marton also
wants the painting back. Helena is adept at dealing with the Ukrainian mafia, Russian and Romanian
mobsters, families of former Nazis and just regular art robbers. As Attila and Helena pursue their separate
investigations, many secrets from the past emerge.
The Appraisal is as much about the new Eastern Europe, with its complex political, social and historical issues,
as it is about finding a priceless painting. It’s also, eventually, an unlikely love story, as Attila and Helena are
drawn together by the whirlwind of events.
ANNA PORTER is a celebrated Canadian publisher and author, born in Budapest. Most recent books are: The
Ghosts of Europe, winner of the Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for Political Writing; Kasztner’s Train: The True
Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust, winner of the 2007 Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Award
and of the Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
15
K. R. Richardson
SCATTERED OBJECTS
Client: The Cooke Agency International
Publisher: Pyre
Fall 2017
MS expected in April
The planet is beautiful, but the crime is gruesome: sixteen people have been murdered in a small illegal
gambling club—shot in the head, the bodies left lined up on the floor. All the victims are of the same ethnicity
and social class, all residents of the ghetto in which the crime has taken place.
Rookie cop Eric Matheson, a young idealist from a powerful family with an agenda of its own, has had no sleep
for two days. He’s been sent to the hospital to retrieve Inspector J.P. Dillal, part of both the ethnic
underclasses, but beloved of no one. Dillal is the planet’s first cybernetically enhanced forensic investigator.
The surgery he has undergone is crude and disturbing, the system untested and potentially fatal, but taking the
risk has raised the inspector to a position within the force he could never achieve otherwise.
Together, Matheson and Dillal set about solving this brutal crime from inside a system that thrives on greed,
corruption, and oppression. Everyone around them seems determined to exploit the massacre to their own
financial and political ends, and these two ambitious investigators are no exception.
K. R. RICHARDSON is the pseudonym of a bestselling Washington-based writer and editor of science fiction,
crime, mystery and fantasy. A former journalist with publications on topics from technology, software and
security, to history, health and precious metals, Richardson is also a lifelong fan of crime fiction and noir film.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
Nathan Ripley
I'LL FIND YOU
Client: Transatlantic Literary Agency Inc.
Publisher: SIMON AND SCHUSTER Canada
Reminiscent of The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith and Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, I’LL
FIND YOU is the story of Martin Reese, whose obsessive hobby digging up the undiscovered remains
of serial killer victims is about to lead to a real encounter with a killer who is very much alive.
Martin’s been illegally buying police files on serial killers and studying them in depth, using them as guides to
find the bodies. He takes photos that he stores in an old laptop along with the scanned police files: his digital
scrapbook. Detective Sandra Whittal, has taken a special interest in Martin, the mysterious caller who she
knows only as “the finder.” She's convinced that he’s a killer who hasn’t yet worked up the courage to kill.
On his latest dig, Martin is looking for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the early 1990s murderer who may have
been responsible for the disappearance of Tinsley Schultz—the sister of Ellen, Martin’s wife. Martin thinks he
is about to find the bones of the sister-in-law he never met. But when he arrives at the site and shovels up the
dirt, he finds more than just bones. There’s a freshly killed body in there, a young and recently disappeared
Seattle woman.
Journey Prize winner for his short fiction, NABEN RUTHNUM also writes literary fiction and journalism. His
crime fiction is written under the pseudonym Nathan Ripley.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
16
Timothy Taylor
THE RULE OF STEPHENS
Client: The Cooke Agency International
Publisher:
February 2018
The significance of being a survivor, in the case of Air France Flight 801, for a long time lay in the
simple fact that there should have been no survivors.
And yet Catherine Bach survived, barely suffering a scratch. Catherine hated the word “miracle,” but it felt that
way at first. The biotech startup she’d built from an idea to a multi-million dollar valuation continued with its
meteoric rise. But then, as if perhaps she’d used up all her luck on the fateful day of her survival, things began
to go very wrong. Glitches in tests that were meant to run smoothly, design delays, security breaches,
impatient investors and a growing sense that something had been released into the world, a mysterious other
out there betting against her. And lately, betting big.
Catherine might have chased these suspicions from her mind if it hadn’t been for the phone call. One of the
other survivors calling late at night. And he had his own story to tell, a warning he said, about his own troubles,
his own life in ruins. And all at the hands, he insisted, of a mysterious other, spawned into this world at the
moment of the crash. She’d always believed that Stephen Hawking explained the workings of the world better
than Stephen King. But when a mystery hedge fund launches a takeover attempt, headed by a woman nobody
seemed to know but who was reported to bear an uncanny resemblance to Catherine, she cannot not shake
the feeling that her “Rule of Stephens” might no longer hold.
TIMOTHY TAYLOR is an award-winning novelist and journalist. His debut novel, Stanley Park, was a national
bestseller and a finalist for the Giller Prize, and his most recent novel, The Blue Light Project, was a national
bestseller and winner of the CBC Bookie Prize in literary fiction.
Contact: Hannah Fosh
17