Dear newsletter subscriber,
The agency celebrates its 25th anniversary this week.
Recent News
There are two agency titles in the top 10 non-fiction paperback list this week with Cathy Glass’s Please Don’t Take My Baby – which has been in the bestseller lists for almost two months including several weeks at no 1 - at no 6, and Casey Watson’s Breaking the Silence: Two little boys, lost and unloved. One foster carer determined to make a difference. at no 10.
Orion have bought a third memoir What the Blazes? in Malcolm Castle’s fire-fighting series .
There have been four more foreign rights sales for Marina Chapman’s The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeys bringing the number of publishers for the book to seventeen.
Rights in Jonathan Conlin’s Tales of Two Cities: Paris and London, 1750-1914 were sold in Taiwan and Brazil.
David Day’s Antarctica: A Biography is one of ten books selected as Amazon’s history books of the month.
Harper Collins have bought a new book from Cathy Glass. In About Writing And How to Publish, the best-selling author, drawing on thirty years experience, shares practical advice on writing and how to publish .
Today I'm Alice by Alice Jamieson has been chosen for a Pan Macmillan summer reading promotion.
Angus Konstam was commissioned by Haynes to write a book on the German battle cruiser Bismarck The Haynes Bismarck Manual
Frank Ledwidge’s Investment in Blood: The true cost of Britain’s disastrous Afghan Adventure attracted widespread media attention including a front page headline in the Guardian.
Mum's Way by Ian Millthorpe and Lynne Barrett-Lee was Number 3 in last week’s ‘accelerator’ chart.
Kirk Norcross’s Essex Boy was several weeks in the Sunday Times hardback non-fiction bestseller list rising to no 6.
Susan Ottaway’s Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne remained in the top twenty non-fiction paperback bestseller list reaching no 15.
US rights in Desmond Seward’s Richard III were sold to Pegasus.
Harper Collins have signed a three-book deal with new writer Julie Shaw to tell the story of her working-class Northern family The Canterbury Warriors Trilogy
Black Inc Books have bought ANZ rights in Many Smith’s Cabin Fever - an exhilarating, and often hilarious, account of what it’s like to be a stewardess in the modern world of air travel.
Pegasus bought Turkish rights in Daniel Tammet's Thinking in Numbers.
Reg Twigg’s Survivor on the River Kwai was no 1 in all its categories on Amazon
Casey Watson’s Little Prisoners: A tragic story of two siblings trapped in a world of suffering and abuse went straight in at no 14 on the New York Times non-fiction e book best seller list. Another agency title Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Broken Child by Cathy Glass - was no 1 a few months ago.
Andrew Lownie
Selected current Submissions
Carol Acton’s edition of the World War Two diary of nurse Mary Morris – a cross between Nella Last’s War and Call the Midwife - On Duty: The Diary of a Wartime Nurse
Nicholas Best continues his series of snapshot evocations of critical periods of history, through the lives of dozens of famous people, by looking at the seven days around Pearl Harbour in Seven Days of Infamy.
Louise Chapman’s ghosted memoir of the intersex Joella Holliday She's A Boy.
The memoirs of actor and singer Darren Day Day by Day
Jane Dismore’s Duchesses: Britain’s Duchesses in the twenty-first century in which ten living duchesses talk about their life and role and how a predecessor has inspired them.
Jacky Donovan’s memoir of her career as a dominatrix Just Desserts : Instant Whips and Dream Toppings full of revelations about her famous clients, including Cabinet Ministers and someone linked to Royal Family, which already has enormous serial interest.
Michael Du Preez’s life of the Victorian doctor revealed on death to have been male Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time
Eleanor Fitzsimon’s Wilde's Women which explores the many rewarding relationships that the writer Oscar Wilde enjoyed with a series of fascinating and accomplished women throughout his life.
Glyn Gowan’s revisionist biography , Prince George: Duke of Kent, which reassesses the reputation of George V’s most handsome, glamorous and cultured son.
Martin Hammond’s Ask a Silly Question: Messages from eBay's most troublesome customer, a collection of stupidly funny and completely genuine email exchanges between the quirky Fredrick Facedass and the online sellers of eBay.
Catherine Hewitt’s biography of the nineteenth century French courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne: A Courtesan’s Conquest of Paris
Tom Hughes’s account of a Victorian political and sexual scandal Blackguard
Diana Kader’s Hear My Cry - the true story of a Yemeni/British woman, Diana Kader, who successfully resisted a forced marriage whilst on a dream holiday to the Yemen and two attempts on her life by her spurned suitor.
House historian Ellen Leslie’s My House Used To Be A …. a useful guide to those wanting to unlock the history of their converted home themselves from the everyday schools, barns and chapels to the more unusual military barracks, police stations and railway carriages.
Sean Longden’s Deliver us from Evil:: The Liberation of the Concentration Camps, 1945.
Silent Food: making sense of the modern diet the modern equivalent of Rachel Carson’s iconic book on environmental toxins Silent Springby Stephanie Matthews and Anthony Campbell.
The memoirs of female private investigator Gina Negus The Lady Detectives
Desmond Seward’s story of a famous literary house and its visitors Renishaw and the Sitwells
Gary Smith’s Duped by Data a collection of dozens of examples of tortuous reasoning,
Mandy Smith’s Cabin Fever a raunchy and hilarious, account of what it’s like to be a stewardess in the modern world of air travel. ANZ rights sold.
Natacha Tormey’s memoir The Family: a childhood born into a religious cult.
Lee Trimble’s biography of his father Fighting Bastard of the Ukraine: The Story of Captain Robert M. Trimble which tells the extraordinary World War Two story of an US pilot who covertly smuggled over a thousand people to freedom, including American POWs, foreign slave labourers and concentration camp inmates from his airbase in the Ukraine.
The memoirs of real life Ace Ventura Tom Watkins, who runs Europe’s largest, and most successful, pet detective agency ,Tails of a Pet Detective.
Chris Woodford’s Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Secret Science Hidden in Your Home an exploration of the science of everyday life which picks out the fascinating and surprising scientific explanations behind a variety of very common (and often entertainingly mundane) household phenomena, from gurgling drains and squeaky floorboards to rubbery custard and shiny shoes.
David Haviland
Non-Fiction Submissions
Matt Shoard’s Thin Wild Mercury: The Voice of Bob Dylan, a collection of essays by Dylan fans including Paul Morley, George Galloway MP, and AL Kennedy.
Fiction Submissions
Kidon, an epic wartime revenge drama by Robert Dickinson, which unfolds over the course of three major twentieth century conflicts.
Dominic Adler’s hard-boiled thriller The Ninth Circle, featuring reluctant assassin Cal Winter and his enigmatic employers The Firm.
The Art of Letting Go a thoughtful and surprising drama about art and artifice by award-winning debut novelist Chloe Banks.
Warwick Cairns’ action-packed historical romp The Fall, set during the English Civil War.
Paul Callan’s The Dulang Washer, a powerful historical novel set in the tin mines of 19th century Malaya. Longlisted for the prestigious IMPAC Literary Award.
Pia Heikkila’s sexy chick-lit novel Operation Lipstick, in which fearless war correspondent Anna travels across Helmand Province in pursuit of her story, and her man.
Casey Kelleher’s gritty sink estate crime novel, in the tradition of Martina Cole, Rise and Fall
Louisa Treger’s literary novel The Lodger, which tells the story of the passionate affair between writer Dorothy Richardson and H. G. Wells.
Mungo Lyon and the Adventure of the Double Headed Eagle, an old-fashioned spy thriller by Stephen O’Rourke, in the style of John Buchan.
Dominic Selwood’s The Sword Of Moses, an epic crypto-thriller in the style of Dan Brown, involving the Knights Templar, Nazis, and the Ark of the Covenant.
Forthcoming Books
Lawrence James’s Churchill and the British Empire
Emily Mackenzie’s memoir Runaway
Tracy Mackness’s Jail Bird : The Life and Crimes Of An Essex Bad Girl
Sean McMeekin’s July 1914: Countdown to War
The paperbacks of Tony Bleetman’s You Can't Park There!: The Highs and Lows of an Air Ambulance Doctor and Patrick Dillon’s children’s history The Story of Britain.
The American editions of David Day’s Antarctica: A Biography, Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville and Daniel Tammet’s Thinking in Numbers
Andrew Lownie has two appearances in the current issue of Words With Jam:
He will be speaking at the Editech conference (www.editech.info) in Milan on 20th June, contributing to a session on the subject of ‘Authors, publishers and agents in the self-publishing era’.
Best wishes, Andrew Lownie and David Haviland
