Huge congratulations to Grace Link, whose script CRACK OF DAWN has landed her in the top 5 of the Amazon/Triforce WriterSlam competition.
The winner of the competition receives a fully-paid 6 month development deal with Amazon Studios, with the hopes of commissioning a new original drama.
The next stage of the competition is a rehearsed reading of each project on Friday 6th September, after which a winner will be announced. Read more about the competition here!
We are delighted that Sheila O’Flanagan’s latest novel, HER HUSBAND’S MISTAKE (Headline, UK and Audio), has spent three months in the Top 3 of the Irish Times Bestseller list and remains in the Top 5 this coming week. In its first week of sale, HER HUSBAND’S MISTAKE jumped straight to the Number One spot. The paperback edition of HER HUSBAND’S MISTAKE will be published in March 2020.
HER HUSBAND’S MISTAKE tells the story of Roxy who, after twenty years of marriage and with two carefree kids, thinks she and Dave are still the perfect couple. Until the day she comes home unexpectedly, and finds Dave in bed with their attractive, single neighbour. Suddenly Roxy isn't sure about anything – her past, the business she's taken over from her dad, or what her family's future might be. She's spent so long caring about everyone else that she's forgotten what she actually wants. But something has changed. And Roxy has a decision to make. Whether it's with Dave, or without him, it's time for Roxy to start living for herself.
Sheila O’Flanagan is an international bestselling novelist, with more than 8 million copies sold. Numerous novels have been immediate and long-lasting No 1s in Ireland, UK Top 10 Sunday Times Bestsellers and Kindle Bestsellers. She is widely published around the world and is also a Number One bestseller in Sweden. She is the recipient of the prestigious Irish Tatler Literary Woman of the Year Award.
Praise for Sheila O’Flanagan
‘One of my favourite authors’ – Marian Keyes
‘'O'Flanagan doesn't skirt the pain of heartache but embraces it along with the humour (and imperfect judgment) that give her characters their aching credibility... Despite some dark themes, the book's overall tone is light and hopeful.' - Irish Independent on HER HUSBAND’S MISTAKE
‘O'Flanagan is one of our best-known, best-loved and most prolific women's fiction authors’ – Irish Independent
‘O'Flanagan's writing is crisp and concise and her plotting deft’ – Belfast Telegraph
'One of our best storytellers' – Irish Mail on Sunday
Peter James’ explosive international thriller ABSOLUTE PROOF has shot to Number 3 in the Sunday Times paperback bestseller chart, as featured this coming weekend. A Number 1 bestseller in hardback earlier this year, ABSOLUTE PROOF was published in paperback by Pan Macmillan on 25 July.
ABSOLUTE PROOF was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Audiobook of the Year in 2018 and was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club 2019. Judy Finnigan described ABSOLUTE PROOF as ‘Thought-provoking, thrilling, funny and challenging…Peter James’s most ambitious novel yet.’
In ABSOLUTE PROOF, investigative reporter Ross Hunter receives a phone call that will change his life – and possibly the world – for ever.
‘I’d just like to assure you I’m not a nutcase, Mr Hunter. My name is Dr Harry F. Cook. I know this is going to sound strange, but I’ve recently been given absolute proof of God’s existence – and I’ve been advised there is a writer, a respected journalist called Ross Hunter, who could help me to get taken seriously.’
What would it take to prove the existence of God? And what would be the consequences?
The false faith of a billionaire evangelist, the life’s work of a famous atheist, and the credibility of each of the world’s major religions are all under threat. If Ross Hunter can survive long enough to present the evidence . . .
Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels. His Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, set in Brighton – translated into thirty-seven languages with worldwide sales of over twenty million copies – has given him fourteen consecutive Sunday Times Number Ones. In 2015 WH Smith customers voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he was awarded the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger, a lifetime achievement award for sustained excellence. In 2018 he received a Specsavers Honorary Platinum Bestseller Award.
Peter’s standalone titles include THE PERFECT MURDER, which has been turned into a smash hit stage play and his chilling ghost story THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, which had its stage tour in 2019, with the sequel, THE SECRET OF COLD HILL, to be published in October 2019.
Praise for Peter James:
‘Sinister and riveting… Peter James is one of the best British crime writers, and therefore one of the best in the world.’ — Lee Child
‘Peter James, Britain’s closest equivalent to Stephen King’ — Sunday Times
'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business.' — Karin Slaughter
‘In my thirty-four years of policing, never have I come across a writer who so accurately depicts “The Job“’ —Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, Office of the District Attorney, NYPD
Follow Peter James on Twitter.
Edward Carey’s novel LITTLE, published by Gallic Books in October 2018, has been shortlisted for the American Library in Paris 2019 Book Award. The award, now in its seventh year, recognises the most distinguished books of the year, in English, about France. In this cycle, eighty-two titles were submitted by authors, publishers, and others for consideration. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on 7 November 2019 at the George C. Marshall Centre on Place de la Concorde in Paris. See more on the award here.
From the gutters of pre-revolutionary France to the luxury of the Palace of Versailles, from casting the still-warm heads of The Terror to finding something very like love, LITTLE is the unforgettable story of how a ‘bloodstained crumb of a girl’ went on to shape the world.
Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed ‘Little’. Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employment in Bern, Switzerland, under the charge of reclusive anatomist, Dr Curtius. In time the unlikely pair form an unlikely bond, and together they pursue an unusual passion: the fine art of wax-modelling.
Forced to flee their city, the doctor and his protégée head for the seamy streets of Paris where they open an exhibition hall for their uncanny creations. Though revolution approaches, the curious-minded flock to see the wax heads, eager to scrutinise the faces of royalty and reprobates alike. At 'The Cabinet of Doctor Curtius', heads are made, heads are displayed, and a future is built from wax.
LITTLE has also been shortlisted for the 2019 Chautauqua Prize and the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Award for Best Independent Voice 2019, with the winner to be announced at the Capital Crime Festival in September. Carey’s novel was also longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown 2019.
Born in England, Edward Carey is a novelist, visual artist and playwright who teaches Creative Writing at the University of Austin, Texas. He was awarded the prestigious Italian Fernanda Pivano Prize in 2016. His novel LITTLE has been internationally acclaimed, with film rights optioned and rights sold in 16 countries. Picador will be re-issuing his classic early novels OBSERVATORY MANSIONS and ALVA & IRVA in the UK.
Visit Edward Carey's Website here.
Follow Edward on Twitter here.
Praise for Edward Carey
‘If this were music, Carey would be Eric Satie. If it were film, he would be Tim Burton.’ - Newsday
‘Edward Carey is an enormously talented writer…’ — Publishers Weekly
‘Edward Carey is one of the strangest writers we are privileged to have in this country. There are echoes in his work of other great idiosyncratics from Angela Carter to Russell Hoban, but he supersedes even them in the downright oddity of his mind.’ — Observer
Praise for LITTLE
‘Don’t miss this eccentric charmer’ — @MargaretAtwood
'I marvel at the achievement of this book... I loved this book best when it showed me, with its stylised dialogue, its garrotting commas, its punctuating illustrations, history as an art form, history as an argument... LITTLE isn't about history... it's about humans, and bodies, and art, and loneliness, and it's deeply, painfully sad. I could talk about it forever.' – NPR Books
'Told with extraordinary panache, and illustrated by Edward Carey, this tale of the founder of Madame Tussauds is a macabre joy.' — The Times, Books of the Year
'You will weep, you will applaud, you will wonder if your nerves can take it... Guts'n'gore galore: I bloody loved it... in Carey's subtle, modelling hands, Paris is gay and gloomy, debauched and deathly, fabulous and fearful. Marie is the eyes, ears and hold-your-nose of this book, a delightful guide to a mad, macabre world.' - Spectator
'A gripping novel of shy wit and darkly humorous occurrences, mesmerising in its virtuosity. On top of which the author's own illustrations are wonderfully bizarre, as indeed is the story he tells.' — William Ryan, Irish Independent (Author Top Books of 2018)
Credit: Europa Editions
Blake Friedmann is delighted to announce that Karin Brynard’s WEEPING WATERS has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger Award 2019. The prize recognises crime novels not originally written in English but translated for UK publication. WEEPING WATERS was translated by Karin’s agent Isobel Dixon along with Maya Fowler, and is published in the UK and US by Europa Editions and in Italy by E/O.
The CWA Award winners will be announced at an award ceremony at the Grange City Hotel in London on 24 October 2019. See more information on the International Dagger shortlist here.
In WEEPING WATERS, Inspector Albertus Beeslaar is a traumatized cop who has abandoned tough city policing and a broken relationship in Johannesburg for a backwater post on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. But his dream of rural peace is soon shattered by the repeated attacks of a brutally efficient crime syndicate, as he struggles to train and connect with rookie local cops, Ghaap and Pyl, who resent his brusqueness and his old-school ways.
The original Afrikaans edition was published by Human & Rousseau as PLAASMOORD and won the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize for Fiction and the M-Net Literature Award, Film Category. Film and TV rights in the Albertus Beeslaar series are optioned to Three River Studios. Karin has completed two more novels in the series, OUR FATHERS and HOMELAND, published in Afrikaans and English in South Africa by Penguin Books. Formerly a political and investigative journalist, Karin Brynard is now one of South Africa’s most successful authors, a bestseller in her home country, with her work translated in Dutch, French, German and Italian.
Praise for Karin Brynard
‘Karin Brynard has established herself as one of a handful of great thriller writers in South Africa. The fact that she has won many literary awards attests to the depth and staying power of her work. … Brynard’s observations of people are subtle and deep; she reads the small things.’ – Jane Rosenthal, Mail & Guardian
'The queen of South African crime fiction is Karin Brynard... Her journalism background is tangible in the way she fills out her characters and storylines with relevant factual details in a subtle yet effective way.’ — Dey There, 12 South African Crime Writers to Add to Your Reading List
Praise for WEEPING WATERS
'Brooding. Riveting. Brilliant.' — Deon Meyer
‘WEEPING WATERS is brimming with authenticity. A lucent tale of farm murder and rural society in the vice of social pressures, with the translation beautifully done by Maya Fowler and Isobel Dixon.’ – William Saunderson-Meyer, Sunday Times, 2014 Best Reads
‘Karin Brynard's WEEPING WATERS is that rare crime fiction novel that transcends the genre. The heir apparent to J.M. Coetzee's DISGRACE, Brynard's book, set in South Africa, unfurls over the reader with glorious, sensuous prose in a tremendous translation. We see, feel, and smell the locations and are transported to another world. The many characters are three-dimensional and spring to life with crackling dialogue that has the ring of verisimilitude. Though a gripping whodunnit, WEEPING WATERS is geologically layered with complex interpersonal relationships, the backdrop of South Africa's fraught post-Apartheid politics, and a main character in Inspector Beeslaar – world-weary, fiercely independent – who anchors the book, and through whom Brynard paints a country's history, past and present, with the accretion of nuanced details. Built for a blockbuster miniseries. The best novel I've read all year.’ — Rex Pickett, author of SIDEWAYS
Directors: Julian Friedmann, Isobel Dixon
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