Dear newsletter subscriber,
Recent Deals
UK & Commonwealth
Richard Aldrich has stayed with Harper Collins for his new book Behind the Black Door: : Secret Intelligence and 10 Downing Street to be delivered next year to tie in with a tv series.
Bloomsbury, who published Indian chef Gurpareet Bains’s Indian Superfood have bought a new book on healthy Indian food The Super Diet
Mark Felton’s Zero Night: The Most Daring Great Escape of World War II has been sold to Icon and the documentary rights optioned for development.
Constable, who are about to publish Paul Jones’s word origins guide Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroonshave just commissioned Jedburgh Justice & Kentish Fire a fascinating exploration of the origins of 500 English phrases and expressions.
Amazon's Kindle Single imprint has commissioned Katharine Quarmby's poignant memoir Father's Day.
Anthony Stancomb’s memoir Playing in the Sun, about his move to the Croatian island of Vis , has been bought by John Blake for publication next summer.
Last Gentleman of the SAS:: John Randall’s War 1939-45 by Mei Trow the story of the first Allied soldier through the gates of Bergen-Belsen, has been bought by Mainstream for publication next spring
South African rights in Gavin Evans’s study of racial science Black brain, white brain have been bought by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
US
Pegasus have bought US rights in Lawrence James’s Churchill and Empire
US rights in Chris Marinello’s memoir of his time at the Art Loss Register Art Hunter : Searching for the World’s Missing Masterpieces have been bought by St Martin’s Press.
Little Brown have bought US rights in Susan Otaway’s best-selling Sisters, Secrets and Sacrifice: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne
Pegasus have bought US rights in three Desmond Seward titles: The Last White Rose: Fear and Paranoia in the Tudor court, Henry V and Richard III
Louisa Treger’s debut novel The Lodger has been sold to St Martin’s Press.
Translation
Romanian rights in Simon Berthon's Warlords
Czech rights in David Craig's Would You Buy That?
Hungarian rights in Roger Crowley's Empires of the Sea
Chinese rights in David Day's Antarctica: A Biography
French rights in Noreen Riols' The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish
Italian rights to Daniel Tammet's Thinking in Numbers
Polish rights in Casey Watson's Too Hurt to Stay
Recent News
The Bookseller ran a feature on agency publishing imprints, focusing on Thistle Publishing:
IPR License, the global and digital marketplace for books rights, has entered into a partnership with the agency which will see an unpublished manuscript, with world rights available, selected as the monthly ‘Agents Pick’ to be featured on a special promotion to over 50,000 publishers in over 90 countries. In addition, the chosen work will also receive a professional written critique.
Full story
Andrew Lownie will be the guest speaker for The Guardian’s course on ghost writing on 12-13 October 2013.How to be a ghostwriter
There have been three agency titles in the top twenty paperback non-fiction list for most of the last month with :
Cathy Glass’s Please Don’t Take My Baby spending ten weeks in the top ten.
She also had four titles in the top ten on Amazon’s Tragic Life Stories best-seller list with Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Broken Child at no 4, Another Forgotten Child at no 7, Cut at no 9 andHidden: The Heartbreaking True Story of an ‘Invisible’ Boy at no 10.
Emily Mackenzie’s Runaway going to no 16
Jail Bird : The Life and Crimes Of An Essex Bad Girl by Tracy Mackness and Deborah Crewe entering the list in its first week of publication at no 20.
Casey Watson’s Breaking the Silence: Two little boys, lost and unloved. One foster carer determined to make a difference. going to no 8 .
Casey Watson’s Little Prisoners: A tragic story of two siblings trapped in a world of suffering and abusewas no 1 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs and no 3 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs whilst Just a Boy reached no 1 kindle in biographies and memoirs .
Casey Kelleher’s gripping thriller Rise and Fall won the ebook category at The People’s Book Awards, and continues to generate terrific sales and reviews. “It won’t be long before Casey can join the ranks amongst some of the other legends of British crime such as Lady Heller, Kim Chambers and Martina Cole.” ~Bestcrimebooks.co.uk
The documentary Spies Beneath Berlin, based on Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford, has just won the prestigious Gold Camera Award at the 47th U.S. International Film & Video Festival. The book was recently reissued by Thistle Publishing. Film Fest Awards
Daniel Tammet’s Thinking in Numbers has been selected as one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for July. Best Books of the Month and named one of July’s ‘Books to Watch Out For’ by the New Yorker: New Yorker
MJ Trow’s detective mystery The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade went to number 25 in the Amazon bestseller list, with Nicholas Best’s comic novel Tennis and the Masai also within the top 100 paid Kindle list.
Andrew Lownie
Selected current Submissions
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
Annys Darka’s inspirational memoir Raging
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.
Debbie McDonald’s biography of the spy and lover of Gorky and HG Wells The Mysterious Lives of Moura Budberg
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.
Weep No More, a romantic saga set against the sweep of history, in the tradition of James Clavell, Noel Barber and Colleen McCullough, by bestselling novelist Marius Gabriel.
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. US rights sold to St Martin’s Press.
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
Piu Eatwell’s They eat horses, don’t they?: The Truth about the French
The Class Book of Baby Names by the provocative Katie Hopkins.
Linda Porter’s Crown of Thistles: The fatal inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots
Katharine Quarmby’s book on gypsies No Place to Call Home
Noreen Riol’s wartime memoir The Secret Ministry of Ag. & Fish
Best wishes Andrew Lownie and David Haviland
