Literary fiction


ABOUT THE BOOK: READING THE WORLD tells the story of Ann Morgan's quest to read a book from every country in the world in a year



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ABOUT THE BOOK: READING THE WORLD tells the story of Ann Morgan's quest to read a book from every country in the world in a year.

Fanatical bibliophile and self-confessed bookworm, Ann was surprised to realise, to her shame, that she rarely read international or translated fiction. Setting about to rectify the gaping hole in her reading, and just maybe mount a small challenge to this literary hegemony, Ann decided to read a book from each country in the world. No mean feat in itself, she soon discovered that the first challenge would present itself sooner than she expected, in the very defining of those seemingly straightforward terms: What is a country? And what do we mean by the term ‘book’?

Ann’s journey is the perfect bibliophile’s read – it’s about reading, about narrative, and why we need to tell stories, and about how those stories are written the world over. Importantly, it's also about how place – the world and the (soi disant) countries dividing or uniting it – shapes the books we read and write.


Ann Morgan is a freelance writer, editor and sub-editor, working mostly on The Guardian's contract magazines. Other credits include The Australian, the New Internationalist, BBC Music Magazine, The South London Press and The Literary Review. When she’s not writing, Ann can often be found performing with some of London’s top professional choirs. Singing has taken her to such far-flung destinations as the Red Sea, the Arctic Circle, India, and Texas, as well many places in between.

THE ROAD TO LITTLE DRIBBLING: More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

AGENT: The Marsh Agency (translation rights only)

PUBLISHER: UK – Transworld, US – Random House

RIGHTS SOLD: German – Goldmann

PUBL. DATE: September 2015

DEL. DATE: June 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: The first travel book from Bill Bryson for 15 years, THE ROAD TO LITTLE DRIBBLING will be a new journey around Britain by the writer.

OPTIONS: Dutch – Atlas-Contact, Chinese – Cheers, Czech – Pragma, German – Goldmann, Italian – Guanda, Japanese – Hakusuisha, Korean – Kachi, Norwegian – Gyldendal Norsk, Portuguese/ Portugal – Bertrand, Russian – AST, Serbian – Laguna, Spanish - RBA


SPEED KINGS: Four Extraordinary Adventurers, a Thirst for Danger, a Lust for Life by Andy Bull http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/i/a1lhovjdopl.jpg

AGENT: Rupert Heath Literary Agency

PUBLISHER(S): UK – Transworld, US – Gotham

PUBL. DATE: May 2015

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK: For the Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit markets. The epic, untold story of four extraordinary gentlemen adventurers who came together to win bobsled gold in the 1932 Winter Olympics, and of a doomed generation, infatuated with fast living, heading into the vortex of the Second World War.

In the 1930s, as the world hurtled towards terrible global conflict, speed was all the rage. It was described by Aldous Huxley as 'the one genuinely modern pleasure', and one of the fastest and most thrilling ways to attain it was through the new sport of bobsledding. Exotic, exciting and above all dangerous, it was by far the most popular event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. It required an abundance of skill and bravery. And the four men who triumphed at those Games lived the most extraordinary lives.

Billy Fiske was an infamous daredevil, blessed with a natural talent for driving. He would later become the first American airman to die in the war - flying for the RAF. Clifford Gray was a notorious playboy and a player on both Broadway and Hollywood. Or was he? His identity was a mystery for decades. Jay O'Brien was a gambler and a rogue who, according to one ex-wife, forced women to marry him at gunpoint. And Eddie Eagan, a heavyweight boxer and brilliant lawyer, remains the only man to win gold at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

This is their story, of loose living, risk-taking and hell-raising in an age of decadence, and of their race against the odds to become the fastest men on ice. We will never see their like again. Especially after the world did descend into that second, terrible global conflict.

Andy Bull is a senior sportswriter for the Guardian. This is his first book.



HISTORY – MEMOIR AND GENERAL
1666: PLAGUE, WAR AND HELLFIRE by Rebecca Rideal

AGENT: Donald Rutherford, Watson Little

PUBLISHER: UK – John Murray

MATERIAL: proposal available

DELIVERY: December 2015

BLURB: the first history which will encompass the Great Fire, return of the Plague and the second Anglo-Dutch War.

1666 was the year of the Great Plague, the return of the dreaded bubonic disease, in which twenty-five per cent of London’s population perished. It also saw the eruption of the second Dutch War, the clash between two great naval powers, which fomented great patriotism (Pepys said the country was ‘mad for war’) and thrilling native successes both near (Lowestoft) and far (present day New York), but ultimately ended in one of the English military’s most humiliating defeats. The year’s almighty climax, of course, was The Great Fire, which saved London from disease but was seen by the Dutch as divine retribution for English raids. It is a year in which no single event existed alone and which, in many ways, gave shape to the country we know today.

1666: Plague, War and Hellfire will shine a light on these dramatic events to reveal an unprecedented period of terror and triumph.

Rebecca Rideal is a factual television producer and writer, responsible for producing Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed, Escape from a Nazi Death Camp and the triple Emmy award winning series David Attenborough’s First Life. She runs the online history magazine, The History Vault, and is currently studying for my PhD on Restoration London during the Great Plague and the Great Fire at University College London.


BEYOND THE CALL: The True Story of One World War II Pilot’s Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front by Lee Trimble with Jeremy Dronfieldhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/i/51jakl70lil.jpg

AGENT: Andrew Lownie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER: US – Penguin, UK – Icon

PUBL. DATE: February 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: This is the story of Captain Robert M. Trimble, an American hero of World War II, who laid his life on the line to help his fellow Americans to freedom, along with other expatriates stranded in Eastern Europe.

By the fall of 1944, Soviet forces had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As the front line rolled across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated, including slave labor and POW camps. In their tens of thousands, the suffering inmates were set loose.

The Soviets refused to help the freed prisoners, rejecting offers from the US to help get their men out. Foreign slave laborers and POWs were left to wander helplessly, starving, sick and dying. Something had to be done to save the lost American servicemen from starvation and death. With US/Soviet relations in a bad way, they would have to go under cover.

The OSS (forerunner of the CIA) swung into action. They picked out their only foothold in Soviet-occupied territory: the tiny US detachment at the air base at Poltava, Ukraine. A tiny dot of freedom in a sea of communist red, it would be the base for the covert rescue mission. The man they picked for the mission was veteran bomber pilot Captain Robert M. Trimble.

With only a crash course in secret agent fieldcraft, Captain Trimble took on a dangerous mission, outwitting and courageously facing off against the devious might of the deadly Soviet security force, the NKVD. He succeeded in smuggling a thousand lost souls to freedom, including American POWs, foreign slave laborers and concentration camp inmates.

Trimble’s story takes us into the little-known world of Poland in the wake of Soviet re-conquest: a war-ravaged land where life was cheap and atrocities occurred almost as a matter of routine.

A series of hair-raising adventures, with seat-of-pants flying, encounters with rampaging Cossacks, NKVD spies, flights piloted by vodka-soaked Russian airmen, glamorous NKVD seductresses, and lonely snow-swept forest vigils.

A dramatic, emotional roller-coaster, with Robert suppressing his yearning to go home to his wife and the baby daughter he had never seen, haunted by memories of his own father, and scarred by the traumas of war.


CONQUERORS: How Portugal Seized The Indian Ocean and Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley

AGENT: Andrew Lownie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER: UK – Faber, US – Random House

RIGHTS SOLD: German – Theiss, Portuguese/ Portugal – Presenca

PUBL. DATE: September 2015

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK: As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions but far more wide-ranging, the dynamic burst of Portuguese voyaging at the start of the sixteenth century is one of the tipping points of world history : the moment that the world went global. Within a short time span a tiny country, whose population did not exceed a million, created a maritime empire that stretched from Brazil to Nagasaki.

CONQUERORS tells the almost forgotten story of how Portugal’s navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East – then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade.

This is history at its most vivid – a epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors – men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire – who set in motion the forces of globalisation.

Portugal was the imperial pathfinder, the template for a wave of successors. Its empire connected the world and created a framework for profound interactions. It left a huge and long-lasting influence on the culture, food, flora, art, history and languages of the globe. It marked the start of 500 years of domination by the West which is only reversing now.

SALES OF PREVIOUS TITLES/ OPTIONS: Arab – Dar El-Ilm Lilmalayin, Danish – Rosenkilde & Bahnhof, German – Theiss, Greek – Oceanida/ Psichogios, Hebrew – Opus, Hungarian – Park, Italian – Pearson, Portuguese/ Brazil – Rosari/ Tres Estrelas Publifolha, Russian – AST/ Centrepolygraph, Serbian – Algoriatm izdavastvo, Spanish –Atico, Turkish – April,
HITLER’S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN by Ingrid von Oelhafen & Tim Tate

AGENT: Andrew Lownie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER(S): UK – Elliot & Thompson, US – Penguin

RIGHTS SOLD: Finland – Atena, Italian – Newton & Compton

PUBL. DATE: October 2015

DEL. DATE: May 2015

MATERIAL: proposal available

ABOUT THE BOOK: A powerful, first-person account of being at the heart of one of the Nazi’s cruellest and most obscene experiments - the Lebensborn program to create a new Aryan master race. In 1942, when she was 9 months old, Erika Matko was stolen from her family in St. Sauerbrunn in what was then Yugoslavia and transported to Germany to be ‘Germanized’ in the Lebensborn program.  She was chosen because, unlike her older brother and sister, she was blond with blue eyes, and passed a medical racial examination which classed her as Aryan. Lebensborn farmed her out to politically-vetted German foster-parents.  They re-named her Ingrid von Oelhafen and she grew up believing she was German.    Then, one day, friends of her foster-family told her about her origins.  It was the beginning of a life-long quest to discover the truth about her birth and the Lebensborn program. It was a journey which would take her across Germany, uncovering the terrible secrets of Lebensborn  - including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her and its deliberate murder of those deemed ‘sub-standard - and back to the village where she was born. But here she would be faced with something even more painful: another woman who for more than 70 years had been living under her name – and living her life.

Tim Tate is a multiple award-winning documentary film-maker and bestselling author. He was founder member of ITV’s popular and influential Cook Report team and subsequently spent nearly 10 years as producer-director in Yorkshire Television's acclaimed documentaries department making films for series as diverse as First Tuesday, Network First, Dispatches and Secret History.   He now runs his own independent production company, Interesting Films. Tim is also the author of ten published non-fiction books.  These include the best-selling Slave Girl which told the true story of a young British woman sex-trafficked to Amsterdam, and  Girls with Balls  which uncovered the secret history of women’s football.  
THE MAGIC OF A NAME: How Rolls met Royce and formed Britain’s most prestigious company by Peter Pugh

PUBLISISHER: UK – Icon Books

PUBL. DATE: October 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: The acclaimed history of the birth and growth of Britain's most famous luxury brand.

The magic of a name tells the story of the first 40 years of Britain's most prestigious manufactUrer - Rolls-Royce.

Beginning with the historic meeting in 1904 of Henry Royce and the Honorable C.S.Rolls, and the birth in 1906 of the legendary Silver Ghost, Peter Pugh tells a story of genius, skill, hard work and dedication which gave the world cars and aero engines unrivalled in their excellence.

With exclusive access to the company's archives, this is a unique portrait both of an iconic name and of British industry at its best.

Peter Pugh has written about 50 company histories.


A VERY DANGEROUS WOMAN: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia’s Most Seductive Spy by Deborah McDonaldhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/i/61g9eyox5jl.jpg

AGENT: Andrew Lownie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER: UK – Oneworld

PUBL. DATE: May 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: Spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century’s greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed.

When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain’s envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart’s plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin’s secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her.

Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.


MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
Literary Memoir:
MY FATHER THE PORNOGRAPHER (previously A DESK, A RIFLE AND EIGHTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS OF PORN) by Chris Offutt

AGENT: Aragi, Inc.

PUBLISHER(S): US – Atria/ Simon & Schuster

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK: The title lists Chris Offutt’s exact inheritance after his father, a well-known pornographer in the ‘70s, died of cirrhosis of the liver. Chris’s father, Andrew Offutt, was the author of 143 soft-porn novels, published under a variety of names, which he wrote from his house in the Kentucky hills, in a home office no-one dared intrude upon, with his wife serving as his typist. Upon his death it fell to Chris to pack up the house and help his mother move out – during that time Chris became the archeologist of his father’s life, a man he’d always feared, never understood. Going through his father’s desk allowed Chris to gain that understanding, even to empathise, but he also discovered that pornography was the least of his father’s obsessions. As Chris writes: “My father often said that if not for pornography he’d have become a serial killer.” It was a comment that puzzled his family, but in the latter stages of packing up his father’s “legacy” Chris comes to make sense of it. This is American Hustle meets The Liar’s Club; American Hustle for the era it evokes, its clothes, its chaos and its freedoms and The Liar’s Club in that it’s a carefully observed, utterly riveting memoir of a deeply complicated family, headed by a secretive, dictatorial father. Yet Chris doesn’t judge his father, and his determination to avoid doing so makes for the most touching sections of the memoir. It’s also a book about a small-town Kentucky childhood, where Chris found happiness roaming the hills and woods with his friends, where he was able to temporarily escape his complicated home life.

Chris Offutt is an American writer. His is most widely known for his short stories and novels, but he has also published two memoirs, nonfiction articles and, in 2005, had a story in a comic book collection by Michael Chabon and another in the anthology Noir. He has written episodes for the TV series True Blood and Weeds.

SALES OF PREVIOUS TITLES: French – Gallmeister, Norwegian – Gyldendal
SHAME AND WONDER by David Searcey

AGENT: Aragi, Inc

PUBLISHER: US – Random House

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK: David Searcy’s first book of non-fiction, a series of interconnected, memoiristic ruminations about life, longing, obsession, the inner workings of various beautiful machines, and childhood dreams of space travel.
Inspirational Memoir:
THE TIME IN BETWEEN: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope by Nancy Tucker

PUBLISHER(S): UK – Icon Books Ltd

PUBL. DATE: April 2015

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK: a remarkable memoir charting the teenage years of a girl with anorexia.

When Nancy Tucker was eight years old, her class had to write about what they wanted to be when they grew up. She thought, and thought, and then, though she didn’t know why, she wrote: ‘I want to be thin.’ Over the next twelve years, she developed anorexia, was hospitalised, and finally swung the other way towards binge eating disorder. She left school, rejoined school; went in and out of therapy; ebbed in and out of life. From the bleak reality of a body breaking down to the electric mental highs of starvation, hers has been a life held in thrall by food. Told with remarkable insight, dark humour and acute intelligence, THE TIME IN BETWEEN is a profound, important window into the workings of an unquiet mind – a ‘Wasted’ for the 21st Century.

Nancy Tucker is a 20-year old author and au pair. She suffered from both anorexia and binge eating disorder throughout her teens, but is now on the road to recovery and has gained a place at Oxford to study Experimental Psychology in 2015. She lives in London.

MUSIC
IN THE ALL-NIGHT CAFÉ: A Memoir of Belle and Sebastian’s Formative Year by Stuart Davidhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/i/91rixqbqtwl.jpg

AGENT: Hardman & Swainson

PUBLISHER(S): WEL – Little Brown

PUBL. DATE: April 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: Belle & Sebastian have been making critically acclaimed music since 1996. They have played hundreds of gigs, won a Brit Award, their music has been featured in films such as High Fidelity and Juno and their unsettling, often surreal, songs, delicate melodies and alternative approach to pop stardom has earned them armies of fans all over the world.

In The All-Night Café is founder member Stuart David's charming and evocative account of Belle & Sebastian's early history. A fascinating portrait of the group, it is also a story that will resonate with anyone who has put together (or thought of putting together) a band.

Set against a vivid background of early 90s Glasgow, In the All-Night Cafe begins with the fortuitous meeting of Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David on a course for unemployed musicians. It tells of their adventures in two early incarnations of Belle & Sebastian and culminates in the recording of the band's much-loved and highly-praised debut album, Tigermilk.

A highly praised novelist and musician, Stuart David brings to life the music and the early days of this most enigmatic and intriguing of bands.



PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY & SELF HELP
THE NARCISSIST YOU KNOW: The Science of Trust and why it Matters by Joseph Burgo

AGENT: The Gillian MacKenzie Agency


PUBLISHER(S): US – Touchstone, ANZ – PanMacmillan

RIGHTS SOLD: Chinese – Beijing Mediatime Books, Turkish – Paloma


PUBL. DATE: September 2015

DEL. DATE: May 2015

MATERIAL: proposal available

ABOUT THE BOOK: THE NARCISSIST YOU KNOW is to narcissism as Martha Stout’s bestselling ‘The Sociopath Next Door’ was to sociopathic behavior. Taking a page from Stout’s storytelling approach and accessible tone, Burgo brings the reader on a journey through the inner workings of narcissism, a widespread condition he argues occurs on a spectrum, from the extreme examples of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (as defined by the DSM), to the less severe yet insidious behaviors of the “Everyday Narcissists” all around us—who sometimes include ourselves. Using stories from his own practice, Burgo illuminates how narcissistic behaviors are found in people all around us—Everyday Narcissists—in less severe but harmful forms. As we begin to gain a clearer understanding of the intense vulnerability that lies underneath narcissistic defenses—much of it rooted in early childhood trauma, whether it be parental abandonment or parental idealization—we are better equipped to spot and cope with the Everyday Narcissists in our own lives. The book then asks us to turn the mirror on ourselves, encouraging us to rein in narcissistic behavior that may be detrimental to our children’s development; to our relationship with spouses, co-workers, relatives, and friends; and ultimately to our own ability to embrace our authentic selves, warts and all. THE NARCISSIST YOU KNOW is aimed at a broad readership, written in a lively, engaging narrative style, and covers the whole spectrum of narcissism.

Joseph Burgo blogs for Psychology Today and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. He has practiced psychotherapy for more than 30 years, holding licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist.


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