We’re thrilled to announce that media agent Louisa Minghella will be sitting on the jury for the 2020 Filmarket Hub Feature Film competition. She joins BBC Studios’ Dione Farrell and development consultant Karol Griffiths to determine who wins the €2000 prize! There are cash prizes and industry goodies for the winner and 3 runner-ups.
The competition closes in December with announcements in March, and you can submit your scripts here.
Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan yesterday launched their Christmas Book Club selections, exclusive to WH Smith. We are thrilled to announce that Joseph O’Connor’s magnificent novel SHADOWPLAY is one of Richard and Judy’s picks for Winter. Judy describes SHADOWPLAY as ‘a terrific book… dramatic, sad, but also richly funny… A truly great book you simply cannot put down’, whilst Richard says, ‘SHADOWPLAY is complex, rich, sad, funny, and a beautiful read. You’ll LOVE it.’
SHADOWPLAY was published in paperback this week by Vintage Books. WH Smith customers can enjoy exclusive special editions of the Book Club titles filled with added bonus content, including book club discussion points, author Q&As and more recommended reads.
London, 1878. Three extraordinary people begin their life together – and the idea for Dracula is born.
Fresh from life in Dublin, Bram Stoker – now manager of the Lyceum Theatre – is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. Soon, the eerie tale of Dracula begins to emerge.
But Henry Irving, volcanic leading man and impresario, is determined that nothing will get in the way of Bram’s dedication to the Lyceum. And both men are growing ever more enchanted by the beauty and boldness of Ellen Terry, the most celebrated actress of her generation.
Published in 2019, SHADOWPLAY, has garnered extraordinary praise, was a Sunday Times novel of the year and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, the Dalkey and Costa Novel Prizes. SHADOWPLAY won Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards. The superb audio edition, read by Barry McGovern and Anna Chancellor, is released by W.F. Howes in the UK and Dreamscape in the US. Europa published in the US, film rights are optioned and translation rights have been sold in eight translation markets so far: China (Shanghai Elegant People), Croatia (Fraktura), France (Editions Rivages), Hungary (Helikon), Italy (Guanda), Serbia (Carobna Knjiga), Sweden (Natur Och Kultur) and Turkey (Sia Kitap).The French edition was shortlisted for the Jean Monnet Prize.
About Joseph O’Connor
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction. He has also written film scripts and radio and stage-plays. His novel STAR OF THE SEA was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
See Joseph O’Connor’s website here.
Praise for Joseph O’Connor and SHADOWPLAY
‘Ireland’s greatest storyteller.’ — The Sunday Independent
‘SHADOWPLAY totally swept me away . . . It’s a bit like Moulin Rouge meets Dracula. I absolutely loved it.”—Oliver Callan, Irish Examiner
‘Joseph O’Connor is a very great artist and storyteller. The quotient of enjoyment in his extraordinary new novel is stupendous.’ — Sebastian Barry
‘A vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition.’ — Miranda Seymour, New York Times
‘Dazzling … The panache and subtlety of his prose perfectly match the gusto and creative finesse of the world his novel wonderfully evokes.’ – Peter Kemp, Sunday Times, Paperback of the Week
‘A colourful tale of secret love and public performance…in a romantic, lost London’ —The Times
‘A virtuoso act of literary ventriloquism. SHADOWPLAY is funny, smart, tender, wise and written with inch-perfect precision.’ – Colum McCann
‘A novel I’d recommend to anyone: a rollicking and moving story’ — James Naughtie, Radio Times
‘Ingenious…hugely impressive and utterly haunting’ — Sunday Mirror
‘An ambitious celebration of friendship, theatre and the power of darkness, SHADOWPLAY is chilling and dramatic in equal measure.’ — Jane Shilling, Daily Mail, Must Reads
‘A great writer performing Olympian literary storytelling.’ — Sir Bob Geldof
‘Subtly drawn and intensely affecting, this portrayal of accidental friendship, enduring love, frustrated ambition and the alchemy of acting … O’Connor’s main characters—Stoker, Irving and the beloved actress Ellen Terry—are so forcefully brought to life that when, close to tears, you reach this drama’s final page, you will return to the beginning just to remain in their company.’ — Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
Little Island Productions has acquired the television rights to T.C. Farren’s THE BOOK OF MALACHI from Louisa Minghella at Blake Friedmann.
The story follows Malachi, a mute thirty-year-old man who receives an extraordinary job offer. In exchange for six months as a warden on a top-secret organ-farming project, Raizier Pharmaceuticals will graft him a new tongue. Malachi finds himself on an oil rig among warlords and mass murderers. But do the prisoner-donors deserve their fate?
Little Island Productions was founded by producer Helen Flint (Patrick Melrose, Summer of Rockets) in 2013, and specialises in high-end scripted drama for domestic and international markets. It is currently in production on big-canvas fantasy adventure series The Wheel Of Time, which is co-produced with Sony for Amazon.
Producer Suzan Harrison (The Dresser) is Little Island’s Head of Development, and the Development Executive is Bryony Cunningham (Patrick Melrose).
Suzan Harrison said: ‘THE BOOK OF MALACHI’ is an intense and beautifully written story that explores themes of race, disability, and sexuality. T.C Farren has created an extraordinary world, and we’re thrilled to bring it to the screen.’
T.C. Farren said: ‘People who read the book often say they’ve just watched a movie. I felt the same way writing it. It is wonderful that Little Island Productions are going to make this materialise’.
THE BOOK OF MALACHI was published in the UK in October 2020 by Titan Books, and in South Africa in 2019 by Kwela, while the audio edition is available from Bolinda. Titan will also release THE BOOK OF MALACHI in the US on 10th November. The novel was nominated for the Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction 2020.
About T.C. Farren
T.C. Farren is a prize-winning novelist and scriptwriter, based in Cape Town. Her first novel, WHIPLASH won both humanitarian and literary awards. Her screenplay adaptation gave rise to the feature film, TESS, which won numerous awards, including a prestigious screenwriting nomination. She also adapted her highly acclaimed second novel, SNAKE to a screenplay which has won production funding and is due to be produced soon. HOTEL NOWHERE, T.C. Farren’s drug trafficking thriller script has recently been selected for development.
Praise for THE BOOK OF MALACHI
‘Farren has created an extraordinary narrator in Malachi... An intense and memorable read.’ – SFX
‘Grace and hope elevate THE BOOK OF MALACHI from the foundations of its sci-fi action thriller narrative. The questions Farren asks about who controls our ideas about forgiveness, who deserves it and why, could stay with you for a long time.’ – New Scientist
‘Farren is an exceptional writer, one of the best I’ve encountered, and not just in this country. By the time the novel ended, I was bereft, missing the characters and the setting as if I’d spent real time in an actual place. I can’t recommend this powerful novel highly enough.’ — Janet van Eeden Harrison, LitNet
‘Her descriptive powers are faultless, but more than that her understanding and exposition of what it is to be human, even in a broken form is magical… Sheer genius … Utterly brilliant.’ — Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times
‘Will have you ripping through the pages. Part thriller, part horror, part speculative fiction: this gripping read goes to the heart of ethical quandaries, forcing the reader to ask: “What if it were me?”’ — Sunday Times (SA)
‘An extraordinary, moving story that I read sometimes through the gaps in my fingers, like peeking at a horror movie — but one with hope and some exquisite visuals.’ — Country Life
We are delighted that Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch has been shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize, an award established to celebrate fiction ‘that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form’. Prize judge Sarah Ladipo Manyika described the book as ‘a powerful feminist tale which speaks artfully to the nature of love and possession, race and class, creolization and colonialism’. Also shortlisted are Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, DBC Pierre, Paul Griffiths and Anakana Schofield.
The Mermaid of Black Conch was published in the UK by Peepal Tree Press, and by W F Howes in audio, and was described by The Sunday Times as ‘sensuous, beguiling, but without whimsy’. Manyika also praised the book for its ‘unforgettable characters and scenes’, adding that it ‘sings with warm echoes of Jean Rhys, Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neale Hurston’ and is ‘one of those rare gems of a novel that can be read and enjoyed on many levels’. Read more about the novel and the judges’ commentary on the Goldsmiths Prize site here.
The Mermaid of Black Conch is a vivid, moving story of love and trust, family and friendship in a Caribbean island community – a world brought to unforgettable life by a master storyteller.
A fisherman sings to himself in his boat, but attracts an unexpected sea-dweller — Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed to live as a mermaid, swimming the ocean for centuries. Theirs becomes a calm, unspoken bond. But when she hears David’s engine again one day and follows the vessel, she finds herself in a fierce battle for her life. Caught by American sports fishermen, she is strung up on the dock as a trophy, but David rescues her, and gently wins her trust as she starts to transform, painfully, back into a woman. But jealous eyes are watching them…
Interwoven with David and Aycayia’s love story is that of Miss Arcadia Rain, a white landowner bringing up her deaf son on a dwindling estate. As her young son connects with fellow outsider Aycayia, an old lover of Arcadia’s returns to the island and she too begins to feel her way into love and trust again.
See more about The Mermaid of Black Conch on the Peepal Tree Press site here.
The winner of the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize will be announced on 11th November. The £10,000 prize is awarded to the work it deems ‘genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best’. Winners over past years are Lucy Ellman, Robin Robertson, Nicola Barker, Mike McCormack, Kevin Barry, Ali Smith and Eimear McBride.
Praise for The Mermaid of Black Conch
‘The Mermaid of Black Conch arrives bearing tragedy and beauty. Monique Roffey has created a new myth for an age of ruined oceans. She continues to be one of our most exciting new Caribbean voices.’ — A.L. Kennedy
‘Monique Roffey is a unique talent and most daring and versatile of writers.’ — Bernardine Evaristo
‘Monique Roffey is a writer of verve, vibrancy and compassion, and her work is always a joy to read.’ — Sarah Hall
‘The Mermaid of Black Conch is wonderfully written, with both soul and intense drama – it glistens almost, like the mermaid! I love its all-round charisma and also its great compassion for both humanity and the natural world.’ — Diana Evans
‘The Mermaid of Black Conch is like a lost myth, found, and made fresh again for our times.’ — Tessa McWatt, author of Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
About Monique Roffey
Monique Roffey is an award-winning novelist. House of Ashes (Scribner UK) was shortlisted for the Costa and the BOCAS Prize. Archipelago, winner of the OCM BOCAS prize for Caribbean Literature, was published by Scribner in the UK, Viking in the US, and translated into 5 languages. Her second novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Encore Prize, among other accolades.
Read an interview with Monique Roffey here.
Visit Monique’s website
Follow Monique on Twitter
FIND THEM DEAD by Peter James, the sixteenth novel in the much-loved Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, has been shortlisted for Crime Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Readers Awards.
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 …
Crime and thriller fans can place their votes on the Capital Crime website and winners will be announced on Tuesday 13th October 2020.
FIND THEM DEAD shot straight to Number One on the Sunday Times hardback bestseller list in July, and stayed in the Top Ten for 7 weeks. It will be released in paperback on 29 October. Another striking standalone title, I FOLLOW YOU, was published in hardback, ebook and audio on 1 October his year.
The Roy Grace series starring John Simm as Grace, is currently being filmed in Brighton, with ITV broadcast set for 2021.
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
‘A master plotter who cunningly tunes into contemporary concerns. Peter James cannot fail to thrill.’ ¬– Daily Mail
‘Memorable characters and nail-biting tension.’ — Kathy Reichs
‘Peter James creates a world we can smell, touch and feel for his Brighton detective Inspector Roy Grace.’ – The Times
'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business.' — Karin Slaughter
About the Author:
Peter James is an international bestselling crime and thriller writer. 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 16 consecutive Sunday Times Number Ones. 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 PlatinumBestseller 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.
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