News

Some highlights from the last few months:

• Novels by two of our authors appear in the recently announced longlists for this year’s coveted Crime Writers’ Association Awards: The Neighbour’s Secret by Sharon Bolton is longlisted for the newly established Twisted Dagger Award, and A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith is longlisted for both the Historical Dagger Award and the Whodunnit Award.

• Profile Books have snapped up the latest book from acclaimed author and journalist Matthew Teller: a fascinating account of the unexplored history of the Aladdin story and how it was first told in the 18^th century to a French writer by an obscure young Syrian treasure hunter and carpet dealer named Hanna Diyab, who drew on his own experiences to create Aladdin’s story.

• Michael Wood has signed up to write three further Audible Original thrillers, following the huge success of Maybe Tomorrow, one of Audible’s best-selling audiobooks of 2024. And The Devil’s Code, book 2 in the Michael’s new Olivia Winter series, was published by One More Chapter (HarperCollins) in March.

• Much-feted author Moses McKenzie is currently in New York, having been awarded a place on the Hawthornden Foundation’s sought-after writers’ residency programme, taking place in Brooklyn during April/May.

• Indian subcontinental publishing rights in Reparation, the debut novel by award-winning Ramya Jirasinghe, have been acquired by Penguin Random House India.

• Sally Smith has recently signed a new contract with Bloomsbury UK for two more novels in her Gabriel Ward series, which has already acquired an army of fans among general readers and critics alike. The German-language hardback edition of the first book in this series, A Case of Mice and Murder (German title: Der Tote in der Crown Row) is published this week by Goldmann as their Lead Hardcover Title for April, supported by a wide print and social media campaign. And the UK paperback edition is also published by Bloomsbury this week (more news to come on this shortly!).

• Italian-language rights in Rafael Torrubia’s dazzling The Shipwright & The Shroudweaver fantasy duology have been pre-empted by Edizioni Ne/oN. Rafael’s English-language publisher Gollancz will publish the first of his two novels in the UK in the autumn. Expectations are already high…

• New Swedish and Finnish editions of various novels by the prolific and perennial favourite Georgette Heyer are being launched by Saga Egmont from April.