Isobel Dixon is delighted to announce that North American rights in Margie Orford’s highly acclaimed Clare Hart series have been acquired by Margaux Weisman for the Witness Impulse list. Witness, an imprint of William Morrow/HarperCollins, is an innovative new digital mystery, suspense, and thriller line. It launches in October 2013 and is already home to a host of internationally bestselling authors. They have bought all five of the Clare Hart titles: DADDY’S GIRL, LIKE CLOCKWORK, BLOOD ROSE, GALLOWS HILL and WATER MUSIC.
Margaux Weisman of Witness says: “Margie Orford is unlike any other writer in our stable. Her books will help us take the Witness brand to the next level. Dr. Clare Hart is one of the strongest thriller heroines I’ve encountered, and I’m so happy to introduce her to a US audience.”
Margie Orford, has been described as 'the Queen of South African Crime Fiction'. The Clare Hart series has been published in the UK, South Africa, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Russia and the Czech Republic. She was born in London and grew up in Namibia, the setting for BLOOD ROSE, the second novel in the series, which is also optioned for film. A Fulbright Scholar, she was educated in South Africa and the United States. She is Executive Vice-President of South African PEN, the patron of Rape Crisis and of the children's book charity, the Little Hands Trust. She lives in Cape Town.
2013 is proving to be an exciting year for Margie; with the highly praised publication of WATER MUSIC in South Africa by Jonathan Ball, the sale of UK rights to the entire series to Head of Zeus and a host of Scandinavian deals this summer, we’re thrilled that Clare Hart will be heading across the Atlantic too.
Praise for Margie Orford:
'Margie Orford writes with great human insight, at times with poetic beauty,
and always the ever-present deep, dark undertow of menace.' - Peter James
'The queen of South African crime thriller writers.' - Sue Grant-Marshall, The Weekender
Praise for WATER MUSIC:‘What Orford excels at is bringing together many of the disparate worlds we have in one country... I loved every word.’ Pretoria News
‘Margie Orford gives genre writing swagger, she makes it look good…every detail in WATER MUSIC convinces. Every sentence is clipped, pared down, muscular, every emotion captured with poise and precision. WATER MUSIC is Orford’s best work yet.’ – Jonathan Amid, Slipnet
For further rights queries contact Isobel Dixon: Isobel@blakefriedmann.co.uk