Graeme Macrae Burnet’s A CASE OF MATRICIDE wins Best International Crime Fiction prize at the Ned Kelly Awards

We are delighted to announce that Graeme Macrae Burnet’s A CASE OF MATRICIDE has been announced as the winner of the Best International Crime Fiction prize at Australia’s Ned Kelly Awards!

Run by the Australian Crime Writers Association, the Ned Kelly Awards are Australia’s oldest and most prestigious honours for the best crime fiction and true crime writing published in Australia. A CASE OF MATRICIDE, published by Text Publishing in Australia in October 2024, won against fellow nominees Michael Bennett, David McCloskey, Charity Norman, Jacqueline Bublitz and Michael Connelly.

A CASE OF MATRICIDE – in which small-town French police inspector Georges Gorski must investigate the overlapping paths of a deceased business magnate, a shadowy stranger with no apparent reason to be there, and the titular threat of familial murder – sees Graeme receive his second nomination at the Ned Kelly Awards, having also been recognised for his Booker-longlisted standalone CASE STUDY in 2022.

Alongside Text Publishing, A CASE OF MATRICIDE was published in North America by Biblioasis and, most recently, as a paperback in the UK by Saraband in May 2025. The audiobook edition is published by Bolinda, and rights have sold to Impedimenta in Spain. Graeme will return this autumn with his new novella BENBECULA, the latest entry in Polygon’s Darkland Tales series, in which Scotland’s best writers reimagine moments from the country’s past – Polygon, Biblioasis and Text will all publish in October 2025.

Congratulations Graeme!

About A CASE OF MATRICIDE

In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s bars, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski mulls over the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.

Graeme Macrae Burnet pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this deeply human story. He draws a wry humour from the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds to present a fascinating puzzle that blurs the boundaries between suspect, investigator and reader in an entertaining, profound and moving novel.

Credit: Euan Anderson

About Graeme Macrae Burnet

Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London.

His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017, and the trilogy was completed in 2024 with the ‘tragic, cinematic, propulsive' (Martin MacInnes) A CASE OF MATRICIDE.

HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize. It has been published in over twenty languages. CASE STUDY was published in 2021 by Saraband (UK), Text (ANZ) and Bolinda (UK audio) to wide critical acclaim. The North American edition was published in 2022 by Biblioasis. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and the Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Ned Kelly International Crime Prize. It has been published in fifteen languages.

Graeme was named Author of the Year in the 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Awards and has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Ireland, Germany, Poland and France, as well as in the UK.

Praise for A CASE OF MATRICIDE

‘A dizzyingly immersive experience. Macrae Burnet’s Gorski novels were already a significant achievement, but the concluding part is breathtaking – tragic, cinematic, propulsive – and marks a new standard in contemporary crime fiction.’ – Martin MacInnes, Booker-longlisted author of IN ASCENSION

‘Burnet plays metafictional games, but the book pulls off the rare double of being emotionally involving as well as teasingly tricksy.’ – Jake Kerridge, 5* review, The Telegraph

‘Brilliantly weird.’ – Paula Hawkins, author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

‘I’ve long appreciated the way Burnet’s novels are in conversation with earlier times… min[ing] the postmodern era without pretense and with deep respect… You can gulp down A CASE OF MATRICIDE in one sitting, as the prose style seems to demand. But linger over Burnet’s novel, and its real pleasures emerge.’ – Sarah Weinman, New York Times

‘A CASE OF MATRICIDE demonstrates literary talent of the highest order… Details of place are especially rich, and the subtle mores of the small town are reflected in Gorski’s misguided incorruptibility… few writers can rival Burnet.’ – Andrew Rosenheim, The Spectator

‘Macrae Burnet brings a slyly playful quality to his reimagining of the classic police procedural… and here delivers a wickedly funny novel that owes as much of a debt to Albert Camus as it does to Georges Simenon.’ – Declan Burke, Irish Times

‘Burnet has proved to be a durable talent, and A CASE OF MATRICIDE continues his upwards trajectory… this final book in a trilogy is a triumph.’ – Barry Forshaw, Financial Times

‘Graeme Macrae Burnet’s A CASE OF MATRICIDE finished up his Gorski trilogy with all the Kafkaesque shenanigans, paranoia and observational bathos you could wish for. It’s an incredibly fun, cleverly crafted novel that works on so many levels I can even forgive him for being a postmodernist.’ – Eimear McBride, The New Statesman, ‘Books of the Year 2024’

Visit Graeme’s website.

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Prize-winning poet Romalyn Ante’s lyrical debut novel THE LEFT-BEHIND CHILD to be published by Chatto & Windus

Photo: Jeremiah Doles

Romalyn Ante – the Poetry London Prize and Manchester Poetry Prize-winning author of AGIMAT and ANTIEMETIC FOR HOMESICKNESS – has written her debut novel THE LEFT-BEHIND CHILD, which reveals the experiences of Filipino overseas workers, untold in fiction until now, through the story of one family, and one daughter in particular. Rosanna Hildyard, assistant editor at Chatto & Windus, has acquired World All-Language rights from Isobel Dixon, with publication in the UK set for 2 July 2026.

The book is an evocative coming-of-age story following Neneng, a spirited girl growing up in Lipa, whose life is forced onto a new path when her mother, Rosa, leaves to work as a nurse in Oman and then the UK.

As Neneng navigates the pressures of caring for a ‘left behind’ family, her resentment at her mother’s desertion, and the experience of first love, things come to a head when she herself falls into danger. Yet THE LEFT-BEHIND CHILD shows that perhaps Neneng and Rosa’s experiences are not so different, despite being geographically far apart.

‘I feel incredibly honoured that Chatto and the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency believed in this novel, even in its earliest stages,’ said Romalyn. ‘This is our story, but it’s also yours: a story of every child and parent separated by distance and time. I hope it gives voice to the narratives that have been left behind, yet continue to shape who we are – and the love that we carry.’

‘When I first read Ante’s prose, I was blown away by the emotional pull of the relationship she portrays between an equally stubborn mother and daughter,’ added Rosanna Hildyard. ‘This novel takes you to the heart of one particular family, but it also puts the spotlight on a global community that many countries rely on – with over 40,000 Filipino health workers in the UK’s NHS alone. It’s an unforgettable and important story.’

Isobel Dixon said: ‘Romalyn Ante’s poetry has captivated and challenged me since I first heard her read her prizewinning poem of nursing experience, ‘Names’, years ago. I am thrilled that Rosanna Hildyard and Chatto have embraced her vivid storytelling in THE LEFT-BEHIND CHILD, a novel of both heartbreak and balm, that will speak to so many readers around the world.’

US and Translation rights are available. For US, please contact Lucy Beresford-Knox (LBeresford-Knox@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk), and for translation requests, please be in touch with Celia Long (CLong1@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk).

About Romalyn Ante

Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-British writer born and bred in Lipa, Philippines. She was 16 years old when her mother – a nurse in the National Health Service – brought the family to the United Kingdom. She now lives in the West Midlands where, as well as writing and editing, she works as a registered NHS nurse and psychotherapist, specialising in the mental healthcare of young people.

Her debut poetry collection, ANTIEMETIC FOR HOMESICKNESS, is published by Chatto & Windus and was an Irish Times Best Poetry Book of 2020, an Observer Poetry Book of the Month and a Poetry School Poetry Book of the Year 2020. It was also a National Poetry Day UK Recommended Read and was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chatto published her second collection AGIMAT in 2023, which was longlisted for the 2025 Jhalak Prize for Poetry.

She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language, and the founder of Tsaá with Roma, an online interview series with poets and other creatives. She was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship and she currently sits as an editorial board member for Poetry London magazine.  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the first East-Asian writer to win the Poetry London Prize (2018) and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017). She also won the Creative Future Literary Award 2017.

Praise for Romalyn Ante

‘Ante is an alchemical wonder of a poet: unparalleled in her image-making, raw to both historical and contemporary damage and rich in cultures.’ – Fiona Benson

‘Captivating, playful, moving, witty and agile... an unforced poet with a lightness of touch and fortitude’ – The Guardian

‘Romalyn Ante is a poet to fall in love with’ – Liz Berry

‘Ante's poems are like embers, pared back to a slow-burning emotional core’ – Times Literary Supplement

‘I felt grateful for the tender attention the poet affords to a hope that many of us hold dear: that as patients – that as people – we may amount to more than just flesh and bone. Thankfully, in the hands of Romalyn Ante the human self far exceeds statistics and the subtotal of all its scars.’ – Jade Cuttle, The Observer

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Rachel Blackmore’s ‘powerful and deeply affecting’ COSTANZA longlisted for Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown award

COSTANZA – Rachel Blackmore’s acclaimed Renaissance Rome-set debut novel – has been longlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown award. The prestigious HWA Awards celebrate the best historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, and its ability to engage, illuminate, entertain and inform legions of readers. To be considered, the bulk of the work must take place at least thirty-five years prior to publication.

‘Hypnotic, sensual, heartbreaking, and shocking, COSTANZA is flawless in execution and is set to be a classic for years to come,’ wrote the HWA in their statement. ‘A rich and compelling evocation of art and obsession in 17th-century Rome.’

A passionate feminist retelling of a true seventeenth-century tale, COSTANZA brings the tragic muse of famed sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini to vivid life. The novel was published by Renegade Books in August 2024, with a paperback published worldwide in July earlier this year, and translation rights have so far sold in eight languages. Rachel’s next novel will be published by Renegade Books in Summer 2026.

Longlisted alongside Rachel are THE WICKED OF THE EARTH by A. D. Bergin, THE INSTRUMENTALIST by Harriet Constable (Bloomsbury), NEPTHYS by Rachel Louise Driscoll (Harvill Secker), MURDER IN CONSTANTINOPLE by A.E. Goldin (Pushkin Press), WINTER OF SHADOWS by Clare Grant (Black Spring Crime), A POISONER’S TALE by Cathryn Kemp (Bantam), SPITTING GOLD by Carmella Lowkis (Doubleday), THE EIGHTS by Joanna Miller (Fig Tree), A LITTLE TRICKERIE by Rosanna Pike (Fig Tree), THEY DREAM IN GOLD by Mai Sennaar (Picador), and A CASE OF MICE AND MURDER by Sally Smith (Bloomsbury).

The winner will follow in the footsteps of last year’s honouree, Blake Friedmann’s own Bridget Walsh, who was recognised for her Victorian London crime novel THE TUMBLING GIRL, and 2023 winner THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLES IGNATIUS SANCHO by Paterson Joseph. The shortlists will be announced on 15 October, ahead of the awards ceremony in Central London on 19 November 2025.

Congratulations Rachel!

About COSTANZA

Rome, 1636: In the scorched city of Rome, the cobbled streets hum with gossip and sin... Costanza Piccolomini is a respectable young wife - until she meets Gianlorenzo Bernini, the famed sculptor and star of Roman society, whose jet-black gaze matches his dark temper. From the second they set eyes upon each other, a fatal attraction is born.

Their secret love burns with a passion that consumes them. But with every stolen kiss and illicit tryst, Costanza's reputation is at stake. Meanwhile, Bernini has a dangerous desire: he wants to make Costanza immortal. He vows to possess her not just in body and soul, but also in marble.

When Bernini unveils his sculpture of Costanza, she is exposed as his lover, marking the undoing of their affair - and the beginning of a scandal which will rock Roman society. For Bernini would rather destroy Costanza than let her go.

Betrayed. Abandoned. Banished. This was meant to be the end of Costanza's story. But Costanza is no ordinary woman: from the ashes, she will rise...

History calls her a Muse. Temptress. Fallen woman. This is her story. Based on a true story, COSTANZA brings to life a feminist icon who has been written out of history.

Photo: Nicolas Laborie

About Rachel Blackmore

Born in Birmingham the daughter of a theatre director and a teacher, Rachel developed her love of language and storytelling at a young age. She went on to study Early Modern History, before embarking on a career in politics which morphed into a long bout as a speechwriter – a craft she now teaches.

Rachel spent more than a decade working and raising a family, before taking a career break to write historical fiction about marginalised women, as a way of looking at contemporary issues.

In 2021 she was a runner up in Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition and won the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair in 2022. Her debut novel, COSTANZA, a historical novel set in Renaissance Rome telling the story of Costanza Piccolomini, the muse of Bernini, was published by Dialogue Books imprint Renegade in August 2024.

She lives in London with her three teenagers, two cats and one dog.

Praise for COSTANZA

‘Spent my week immersed in this stunning piece of historical fiction, COSTANZA… This gorgeous, intimate portrayal of Costanza herself, reminded me of THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT in its melding of art & artistry with the lives of the women of the time’ – Jennie Godfrey

‘Wonderful… This novel took over my life for the time I was buried in it. Powerful and deeply affecting storytelling bringing us a new perspective on a famous story’ – Paterson Joseph

‘Sumptuous, immersive and bold, Costanza breathes life into a woman frozen in marble for three hundred years, finally giving her a chance to speak… Costanza is both a cathartic cry and a clarion call for justice for generations of forgotten women’ – Hesse Phillips

‘COSTANZA by Rachel Blackmore is a mesmerising, powerful tale of a young woman’s seeming rise to power and riches as the muse of a famous artist, only to come crashing down as his true nature is revealed.’ – Laura Shepperson

‘The substance, the textures the feel of the city was so immediate and immersive. It’s one of those historical novels that transports the reader straight to the time and place… A fabulous, evocative novel with plenty of food for thought.’ – Elizabeth Chadwick

‘I was mesmerised by COSTANZA, a searing, fierce tale of obsession, revenge, and resilience. Blackmore’s lush, sensuous prose evokes seventeenth-century Rome superbly, from its seamy underbelly to the glamourous Bernini circle. An unforgettable debut novel.’ – Naomi Kelsey

‘A shocking story… It is most persuasively written, obviously deeply felt and the detail is excellent. Quite apart from anything else, I will look at Bernini in a new light.’ – Elizabeth Buchan

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Jeanette Ashmole interviewed by Drama Quarterly

Drama Quarterly recently profiled our screenwriter client Jeanette Ashmole, exploring her unconventional journey from criminal barrister, police officer, and criminal investigator—with more than two decades of frontline legal experience—to TV legal consultant and now screenwriter.

Jeanette has quickly established herself as a trusted voice in TV, bringing a rare level of authenticity to the dramas she advises. Her credits include major productions for broadcasters such as ITV, Sky, and the BBC—among them are shows such as Grace, Jimmy McGovern’s acclaimed series Time and Unforgivable, as well as a recent adaptation of a Harlan Coben bestseller. Her legal and police background allows her to help with character development, story, and procedural detail with a precision that can only come from lived experience.

In the article talking about Jimmy McGovern’s ‘Time’, she explains: “I was involved right from the start to build all those character backgrounds and make sure it worked, as well as reading scripts, giving notes, and working with the costume department,” Jeanette explains.

Now, Jeanette is turning her knowledge and expertise into the creation of her own original projects, blending gripping storytelling with the same realism that has defined her consultancy work. She is represented by Julian Friedmann.

Read more about Jeanette and her unique career journey in Drama Quarterly’s article here.

Ivan Vladislavić longlisted for top South African prize for ‘cinematic, masterful’ portrait of Johannesburg, THE NEAR NORTH

We are delighted to announce that Ivan Vladislavić – one of South Africa’s foremost writers of both literary fiction and non-fiction – has once again been longlisted for South Africa’s prestigious Sunday Times Literary Awards, with his latest work THE NEAR NORTH recognised among the nominees for this year’s non-fiction award.

The non-fiction award honours ‘the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power’ through their ‘compassion, elegance of writing, and intellectual and moral integrity’. Ivan’s book THE NEAR NORTH is a vivid account of life in Johannesburg in times of crisis. From the stony ridges of Langermann Kop in Kensington to the tree-lined avenues of Houghton, the book invites the reader to follow Ivan through the city’s streets, meeting its ghosts and journeying through time and (often circumscribed) space, finding meaning in the everyday and incidental. The book was first published by Picador Africa in March 2024; an extract from the book, ‘A Faceless Compass’ was published in the Yale Review and is available to read online.

Ivan is a previous winner of both the non-fiction and fiction awards – the only writer to have claimed both to date – having triumphed in non-fiction for his ‘ingenious love letter’ (Geoff Dyer) to Johannesburg PORTRAIT WITH KEYS (SA: Umuzi; UK: Portobello Books) in 2007, and in fiction with his ‘imaginatively wild’ (Neel Mukherjee) novel THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET (SA: Umuzi; UK: And Other Stories) in 2002.

Congratulations Ivan!

Photo: Minky Schlesinger

About Ivan Vladislavić

Ivan Vladislavić was born in Pretoria in 1957 and lives in Johannesburg. His books include the novels THE DISTANCE, THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET, THE EXPLODED VIEW and DOUBLE NEGATIVE, and the story collections 101 DETECTIVES and FLASHBACK HOTEL. In 2006, he published PORTRAIT WITH KEYS, a sequence of documentary texts on Johannesburg. He has edited books on architecture and art, and sometimes works with artists and photographers. TJ/DOUBLE NEGATIVE, a joint project with photographer David Goldblatt, received the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Award for best photography book.

His work has also won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Department at Wits University.

Praise for THE NEAR NORTH

‘Some of the most moving prose ever written about this former mining town…What a chronicle of a city in perpetual crisis.’ – Jacob Dlamini (author of ASKARI)

‘Ivan Vladislavić’s hand, not unlike that of Marlene Dumas, is unshaking as it paints silent, slow and highly vivid, almost cinematic, lines on the canvas of our shared Johannesburg… A masterful form of reportage of life spent seeing… feeling.’ – Bongani Madondo

‘A bewitching meditation. A raw, literary, and heart-felt ode to life in Johannesburg.’ – Andrew Harding

‘An elegant, gentle, bitter-sweet ramble through the streets of Johannesburg with the incomparable Vladislavić.’ – Jonny Steinberg

‘Ivan is one of South Africa’s best writers… the book is filled with exquisitely observed observations of Johannesburg in all its different moods and the different way people experience the different streets of Johannesburg: absolutely exquisite writing.’ – John Maytham, CapeTalk

‘THE NEAR NORTH has the febrile, hallucinatory feel of JG Ballard’s earlier apocalyptic novels, but tempered and made gentle by a Proustian attention to the ordinary that manages to make the book both paean and threnody.’ – Chris Roper, Daily Maverick

‘Vladislavić's helpless addiction to the inexhaustible variety of the ordinary reality is what makes his books so extraordinary. THE NEAR NORTH is a delightful addition to a substantial output.’ – Michiel Heyns (translated from Afrikaans)

‘There is sadness, rage, confusion and humour in the author’s responses to things but they come together in a reassuring gentle wisdom, an acceptance of things as they are, even as he wishes they could be different. There has been no waning of the author’s observational powers, and no waxing of the author’s ego. It’s a beautiful book. A true thing.’ – Karin Schimke

Praise for Ivan Vladislavić

‘Ivan Vladislavić occupies a place all of his own in the South African literary landscape: a versatile stylist and formal innovator whose work is nevertheless firmly rooted in contemporary urban life.’ – J.M. Coetzee

‘Mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny… Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.’ – Katie Kitamura

‘In a country obsessed with social realism, Vladislavic has always tried to find less obvious ways to approach the world.’ – Damon Galgut

‘Vladislavić's narrative intelligence is nowhere more visible than in his way with language itself… We enter incidents in medias res – as though they were piano études – and exit them before we have overstayed our welcome.’ – Teju Cole

‘Nothing short of a great contemporary writer, he pushes at form and content to make something strangely new and profound.’ – Neel Mukherjee

Visit Ivan's website.