The judging committee of the Historical Novel Society International Award (Matthew Bates, Fiction Buyer for W.H. Smith Travel, Heather Lazare, editor at Simon & Schuster, New York and Carole Blake, joint managing director of Blake Friedmann) were unanimous in being impressed by Martin Sutton's LOST PARADISE. The powerful First World War novel concerns William Pascoe, a young gardener on the Heligan estate in Cornwall, who is wrenched away from a blossoming but difficult romance, to fight at the front on the Somme. The book contrasts the horror of trench warfare with the terror of those left behind in Britain.

Carole Blake and the author immediately agreed to work together, and she will introduce the book to editors at next week's London Book Fair. This is the first client Carole has added to her list since she took on Liz Fenwick three years ago, whose debut novel has been so successful with Orion that they have now contracted her for a second two-book deal.

Submissions of LOST PARADISE will be made after the Fair. Martin Sutton has already completed another novel set against the occupation of Paris during the Second World War.

Praise for LOST PARADISE:

'The best novel I have read about the Great War since Birdsong.' -- Richard Lee, Historical Novel Society

'A haunting, generational novel of war, love, secrets and lies…will appeal to a wide and varied pool of readers… Has the scope of a Kate Morton.' -- Matthew Bates, Fiction Buyer for W.H. Smith Travel