FIND THEM DEAD BY PETER JAMES STRAIGHT TO NUMBER 1 ON THE HARDBACK BESTSELLER LISTS

Peter James’ new Detective Superintendent Roy Grace novel, FIND THEM DEAD, has flown straight to the Number 1 spot in the Sunday Times hardback bestseller chart after only three days on sale. FIND THEM DEAD’s chart-topping success gives James his sixteenth Number 1 on the British charts this coming Sunday.

In FIND THEM DEAD, Roy Grace gets a tip-off about a county lines drugs mastermind operating out of Brighton. On his first day back in his old job in Sussex, he is called to a seemingly senseless murder.

Separately, Meg Magellan finally has her life back together, five years after the car crash that killed her husband and their son. Her daughter, Laura, now 18, is on her gap year travelling in South America with a friend, and Meg misses her badly. Laura is all she has in the world. In between jobs, Meg receives a summons for jury service. She’s excited – it might be interesting and will help distract her from constantly worrying about Laura. But when she is selected for the trial of a major Brighton drugs overlord, everything changes.

Gradually, Grace’s investigation draws him increasingly into the sinister sphere of influence of the drug dealer on trial. A man utterly ruthless and evil, prepared to order the death of anyone it takes to enable him to walk free. Just a few days into jury service, Meg arrives home to find a photograph of Laura, in Ecuador, lying on her kitchen table. Then her phone rings.

A sinister, threatening stranger is on the line. He tells her that if she ever wants to see Laura alive again, it is very simple. At the end of the trial, all she has to do is make sure the jury says just two words… Not guilty.

Peter James’ Roy Grace series has been translated into thirty-seven languages with worldwide sales of over twenty million copies. Earlier this month THE SECRET OF COLD HILL, the ghostly follow-up to THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, was at Number 4 in the UK paperback charts. Later this year, readers can look forward to an exciting Autumn standalone, I FOLLOW YOU.

The first two Roy Grace novels, DEAD SIMPLE and LOOKING GOOD DEAD have been adapted for ITV by screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, with John Simm set to star as the tenacious detective. Filming begins in Brighton in late 2020.

Read Peter James’ 'Author's Tale' interview with the Independent.

Listen to Peter James’ interviews with the Mail Arts+ and Writer's Routine podcasts.

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

About the Author:
Peter James is an international bestselling crime and thriller writer. In 2015 WHSmith 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.

Successful nationwide tours of the stage plays of THE PERFECT MURDER (2014), DEAD SIMPLE (2015), NOT DEAD ENOUGH (2017) and THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL (2019) have played to packed theatres in dozens of British cities, and garnered magnificent reviews. The newest Roy Grace theatre production, LOOKING GOOD DEAD, will tour in 2021.

Visit Peter’s website

Like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter

THE SECRET OF COLD HILL BY PETER JAMES HITS NUMBER 4 AS THE NEW ROY GRACE IS PUBLISHED!

Master of suspense Peter James does it again, pleasing fans with his bestselling police procedural series and his chilling supernatural standalones.

THE SECRET OF COLD HILL, chilling sequel to THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, has shot straight to the Number 4 spot in the Sunday Times paperback bestseller chart, topping the success of the earlier hardback edition which went straight to number 6 in the hardback charts.

This paperback success coincides with the hotly anticipated publication in hardback of FIND THEM DEAD, the 16th title in the Roy Grace series – which has already made it to the Top 5 on the Australian bestseller charts!

In FIND THEM DEAD, ending his secondment to London’s Met Police, Roy Grace returns to his old job in Brighton, and is drawn into the sinister sphere of influence of a drug dealer on trial. Roy Grace begins to unearth a powerful criminal network, but a mother, called to jury service, fears for her daughter’s life …

The first two Roy Grace novels, DEAD SIMPLE and LOOKING GOOD DEAD have been adapted for ITV by screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, with John Simm set to star as the tenacious detective. Filming begins in Brighton in late 2020.

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 is one of the best crime writers in the business.' — Karin Slaughter

‘Peter James has penetrated the inner workings of police procedures, and the inner thoughts and attitudes of real detectives, as no English crime writer before him.’ – The Times

‘A riveting sequel to THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL… This follow-up has already received rave reviews since its release in early October, with many noting the shift in James’s style toward chilly, murder-mystery lore…’ — Best Crime Fiction Books Out in 2019, The Week

‘Peter James, Britain’s closest equivalent to Stephen King’ — Sunday Times

About the Author:
Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels. His books have been translated into thirty-seven languages, with worldwide sales of over twenty million copies and his Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, set in Brighton, has given him fifteen 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.

Successful nationwide tours of the stage plays of THE PERFECT MURDER (2014), DEAD SIMPLE (2015), NOT DEAD ENOUGH (2017) and THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL (2019) have played to packed theatres in dozens of British cities, and garnered magnificent reviews. The first two Roy Grace novels, DEAD SIMPLE and LOOKING GOOD DEAD have been adapted for ITV by screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, with John Simm set to star as the tenacious detective. Filming begins in Brighton in late 2020.

Visit Peter’s website

Like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter

FLEET ACQUIRE AMITY GAIGE’S NEW NOVEL SEA WIFE

Ursula Doyle of Little, Brown’s Fleet imprint acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights to Amity Gaige’s gripping new novel SEA WIFE in a deal with Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann on behalf of Kim Witherspoon of Inkwell Management. Jordan Pavlin of Knopf is publishing in the US and Fleet will publish in hardback in the UK in July 2020.

SEA WIFE is page-turning novel about a marriage on the rocks, and a family literally adrift – as a husband and wife escape suburbia with their young children for a year-long sailing trip that upends all of their lives.

Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids – Sybil, age seven, and George, age two – Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four-foot sailboat awaits them. 

The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given new energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea. Despite the stresses of being novice sailors, the family learns to crew the boat together on the ever-changing ocean.  The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve – until they are tested by the unforeseen.

SEA WIFE is told in gripping dual perspectives: Juliet’s first person narration, after the journey, as she struggles to come to terms with the life-changing events that unfolded at sea, and Michael’s captain’s log, which provides a riveting, slow-motion account of these same inexorable events, a dialogue that reveals the fault lines created by personal history and political divisions. 

SEA WIFE is a transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil. It is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.

Praise for SEA WIFE

‘Stunning… Gaige tows you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author. And yet, when you find yourself at the deep end of this book, gasping for breath, you will still be shocked by what you find at the bottom.’ — New York Times

‘Profound and universal… SEA WIFE achieves a lovely balance between the real and the metaphoric.’  —  Wall Street Journal

‘Splendid… profound. Every element of this impressive novel clicks into a dazzling, heartbreaking whole.’ — Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

‘Gripping… A powerful take on a marriage on the rocks.’ — Kirkus Reviews

‘SEA WIFE is brilliant, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful.’  — BookPage (starred review)

‘Gaige is a superb maritime writer.’ — Boston Globe

‘Gaige’s razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics.  But it’s also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.’ — People Magazine (Book of the Week)

‘SEA WIFE is a moody and compelling literary novel about the hidden depths of a marriage.  It’s the intricate design of this tale — which Gaige pilots expertly — and its eloquent revelations about the inner workings of the Partlow’s relationship that distinguish Sea Wife.  The final resolution of the Partlow’s differences is achieved in a fashion that even the most sharp-eyed reader won’t be able to spot, looming in the distance.’ — Washington Post

‘In her new novel, Sea Wife, Amity Gaige depicts the journey from a dual point of view, interspersing the wife’s recollection s of how it all went wrong with diary entries from the husband, both of which cut to the heart of mundane marital strife and the legacy of trauma.’ — Elle Magazine, ‘Best Books of 2020 So Far’ (#2)

About Amity Gaige

Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O MY DARLING, THE FOLDED WORLD, SCHRODER, and SEA WIFE.

She is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship, and fellowships at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction. Her previous novel SCHRODER has been translated into eighteen languages, and was shortlisted for The Folio Prize in the UK in 2014 and for L’Express Reader’s Prize in France. It was named one of Best Books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Kirkus, Cosmopolitan, and Publisher’s Weekly, among many others.

The longtime Visiting Writer at Amherst College, she now teaches creative writing at Yale. Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Die Welt, Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, Slate.com, One Story, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She has appeared at numerous conferences, festivals, and on radio shows such as NPR.

She currently lives with her family in West Hartford, Connecticut. She had to learn to sail in order to write SEA WIFE, but has decided that she will stick to writing about it.

Visit Amity Gaige’s website.

Chatto & Windus acquires HOW TO HOPE: A Survival Guide, by Kerry Hudson

Becky Hardie, Deputy Publishing Director of Chatto & Windus, bought World English rights in HOW TO HOPE from Juliet Pickering, for publication in 2022 in print, audio and eBook.

We are living in troubled and troubling times and the cumulative effect on our physical and mental well-being is beginning to show. In this new book, prize-winning author and journalist Kerry Hudson sets out to understand why resilience and hope, so often life-saving, can be easily accessed by some but not all of us, and how we can foster these qualities in ourselves and others. Drawing on her own experiences and speaking to a range of experts, including academics and front-line staff, she’ll seek out the best examples of responses to our most common challenges – poverty, housing, work, love and mental health issues – as well as the problems facing the wider world.

From her debut novel TONY HOGAN BOUGHT ME AN ICE-CREAM FLOAT BEFORE HE STOLE MY MA to her memoir LOWBORN (‘should be required reading’ – Sunday Times) and her Pool columns, Kerry Hudson’s work has consistently called to our attention the reality and lasting effects of growing up poor in a broken society. At a time of uncertainty and change, HOW TO HOPE will be a must-read guide to the future.

Kerry Hudson said: ‘Hope and resilience have always been central themes in my books and I couldn't be more thrilled that this new book will allow me to focus fully on these tools which have repeatedly proved life-saving for me. It's also a particular gift to get to write this book at this time, when it feels hope is needed now more than ever.

‘This book also marks a decade of working with a team of brilliant women – my editor Becky Hardie, my literary agent Juliet Pickering and the team at Chatto and Windus and Vintage. They have helped me write the books I dreamed of writing and championed me every step of those ten years. I'm honoured and privileged to be working with this dream team once again.’  

Becky Hardie said: ‘This is the perfect next book for Kerry. The response to LOWBORN was overwhelming and she has become a powerful and humane voice in a world that now more than ever needs clear, compassionate and hopeful voices. One of Kerry’s greatest gifts as a writer is getting to the heart of people’s lives and stories, and HOW TO HOPE promises plenty of that, alongside her knack for political and social observation and her own remarkable resilience. We are so proud to be Kerry’s publisher and even discussing the idea of this book gave us all a boost at a very difficult time.’

LOWBORN will be published in paperback on 6th August.

About the author

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, TONY HOGAN BOUGHT ME AN ICE-CREAM FLOAT BEFORE HE STOLE MY MA, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Awards. THIRST, her second novel, won the prestigious prix Femina étranger. LOWBORN is her first work of non-fiction, and her journey has led to a highly successful column for the Pool. She currently lives in Prague.

Praise for Lowborn:

‘It should be required reading… [Hudson is] a fearless writer, an inspiring woman’ — Jackie Annesley, Sunday Times

‘A book that cuts like a knife’ — Jenny Colgan, Spectator

‘If there were any justice in the world, there would be a copy of Hudson's powerful examination of her impoverished upbringing and why it continues to resonate under every politician's Christmas tree’  — Sarah Hughes, i Books of the Year

‘Compelling, fascinating and well-written, undeniably grim but peppered with humour and tenderness... Hudson demonstrates that only by lifting whole communities out of poverty...can we hope to avoid consigning children and young people like her – vulnerable and blameless – to the worst of lives’ — Kit de Waal, Daily Telegraph

‘Lowborn is in part an indictment of a country that claims to still have a functioning welfare state…Most of all, it is a moving portrait of the survival and eventual flourishing of a remarkable spirit’ — John Harris, Guardian

ICON BOOKS ACQUIRES KAT LISTER’S MOVING MEMOIR EXPLORING LOSS

Icon Books have acquired THE ELEMENTS: A MEMOIR OF GRIEF, LOSS AND TRANSFORMATION by journalist Kat Lister. Kiera Jamison, senior commissioning editor at Icon Books, acquired UK, Commonwealth (excl. Canada) and European Rights from Juliet Pickering. The moving memoir which will be published in September 2021, chronicles Lister’s experience of widowhood in her mid-thirties. In addition to detailing Lister’s personal experience the book will also explore grief theories and cultural attitudes towards death and the language we use to process it.

Kat Lister says, ‘I began writing to understand my grief, but I continued writing to reach anyone who’s ever lost anything significant in their lives. THE ELEMENTS is a story of love and pain, but it’s also a book propelled by hope — a wild and radical feeling that can prevail even in the depths of trauma and despair. It was so important for me to find the right home for this memoir and I am so thrilled that I found it at Icon.’

Kiera Jamison says, ‘THE ELEMENTS was unexpectedly enticing given its subject: a visceral, emotional and cerebral examination of love and a broken heart, identity, and the shifting seasons of grief. Kat’s writing transfixed me, and her original approach connected with the Icon Books team instantly as an important contribution to the literature on understanding grief.’

Kat Lister is a writer and editor based in London and has worked in magazine media for over a decade. Beginning her career as a music journalist she spent her early twenties on the news desk at the legendary music newspaper, New Musical Express (NME) — where she met her husband, Pat Long. She went on to specialise in women’s issues, writing widely for publications including Vice, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Refinery29, where she was appointed Contributing Editor. In 2017, she joined the editorial team at women’s website The Pool quickly becoming a freelance features and news editor until its demise in 2019. Since her husband’s death in 2018, she has focused on investigating her experience of grief, writing widely-circulated essays and features for The Sunday Times Magazine, Sunday Times Style and The Pool.