News

Head of Zeus have acquired World English language rights excluding India in Vikas Swarup’s picaresque thriller The Girl with the Seven Lives. It has already appeared in India, where it won the Kalinga Book Award for Best English Fiction.

In its first full week of publication, Worse Than Murder by Michael Wood, a new novel in the highly successful Matilda Darke series (One More Chapter), rocketed to no 9 in last week’s national e-bk sales rankings.

Interest and excitement around the Trials of Gabriel Ward series (Bloomsbury Raven) by Sally Smith continues to build. The first two books in the series, A Case of Mice and Murder and A Case of Life and Limb, have both garnered stellar reviews in the national press, and A Case of Mice and Murder was longlisted for the Historical Novelists’ Association’s 2025 Debut Crown award.

Film and television rights to John Matthews’ mighty new and expanded version of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, with contemporarystories that were never included in the original – The Great Book of King Arthur and Realms of the Round Table (HarperCollins) – have been optioned by celebrated French artist and graphic novelist Joann Sfar and his company Magical Productions.

A paperback edition of The Neighbour’s Secret, the latest standalone thriller by Sharon Bolton, was published in July. And her new thriller The Token will be published in hardback, e-book and audiobook editions early in November 2025 and has already been chosen as Apple’s Book of the Month. Her publisher, Orion, calls it ‘a mesmerising, atmospheric page-turner, with shocks, surprises and a killer-twist finale.’

Under Vixens Mere, a bitter-sweet novel by Kit Fielding that chronicles the lives, loves, delights and disasters of a small canal-boat community, has just been published by Inkspot Publishing.

The option on film rights in Tuesday Falling (HarperCollins), an outstanding debut thriller by Stephen Williams, has recently been extended by a Hollywood production company.

Walker Books have renewed their licence for Bronze & Sunflower, the prize-winning novel by Cao Wenxuan about the effect of Mao’s Cultural Revolution on two children.

Audiobook rights to Alex Walters’ crime series featuring DCI Annie Delamere have been acquired by W F Howes.