Literary fiction

Paul Vigna is a lead blogger on The Wall Street Journal’s celebrated Moneybeat blog, and the screen host of the web show of the same name (on which he frequently hosts Casey as a guest).

Michael Casey is a Wall Street Journal columnist, media commentator, and critically acclaimed author of The Unfair Trade: How our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class (Crown, 2012) and Che’s Afterlife (Vintage, 2009), which was chosen by Michiko Kakutani as top of her New York Times’ Best Books of the Year list.

GUILT TRAP: New Motherhood and the Natural Parenting Industry by Amy Tuteur

AGENT: Gillian Mackenzie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER: US - Dey Street (HarperCollins)

DEL. DATE: summer 2015

MATERIAL: proposal available

ABOUT THE BOOK: Whether one has recently had a baby or not, it is virtually impossible to ignore the very vocal natural parenting movement, extolling the virtues of birth without medical interference; encouraging mothers-to-be to “listen to and trust” their bodies; eschewing doctors’ pressures to have epidurals or a C-sections; stressing the importance of breast feeding and warning of the consequences of formula-feeding; and pushing new mothers to keep their babies close to them as much as possible. The pressures to be a mother who does all these things – a nearly impossible feat – are huge, and lead nearly always to “failure” and subsequent feelings of guilt.

Dr. Amy Tuteur -- an obstetrician-gynaecologist who left her practice to raise her own four kids; a former instructor in obstetrics at Harvard Medical School; and a prominent blogger and author on new motherhood – is no stranger to the insidious nature of this guilt, propagated by what she terms the natural parenting “industry” – a big business just like any other, complete with profit motives and lobbyists on Capitol Hill. And she wants this guilt to stop. Her new book, GUILT TRAP: New Motherhood and the Natural Parenting Industry (a working title), is based on her own experiences as OB-GYN, her research on the latest childbirth science, and her popular blog, “The Skeptical OB” -- on track for over 5 million page views this year alone, with an extremely loyal following of women (and men!*) eager for her sound, scientifically-based wisdom about childbirth.

In GUILT TRAP, Dr. Tuteur aims to set the record straight, exposing the truth behind the natural parenting industry, in order to free new mothers of the pervasive guilt so many of them feel today – while providing all readers fascinating insight into a force shaping our culture today.

ECOLOGY
THE GREEN AND BLACK: America’s Energy Revolution and What It Means for You by Gary Sernovitz

AGENT: Gillian Mackenzie Literary Agency

PUBLISHER: US – St Martin’s Press

PUBL. DATE: Winter 2015

DEL. DATE: summer 2015

MATERIAL: proposal available

ABOUT THE BOOK: Energy-industry insider and novelist/essayist Gary Sernovitz’s THE GREEN AND THE BLACK paints the complete picture of one of the most significant – and extraordinary – changes in the last decade: the American oil and gas boom. In many ways, the book can be seen as a sequel to Dan Yergin’s Pulitzer-winning The Prize (and its follow up, The Quest), whose endings have now changed. THE GREEN AND THE BLACK details this next act, showing how this unexpected boom has upended conventional industry wisdom and affected everyday life, businesses, the environment, and the economy on a local, national, and global level. While a few other books have explored fracking to date, none have provided the same comprehensive, first-person account of both the natural gas and oil phases of the shale revolution and their global impact. And none are told from the vantage point of an expert with an intimate understanding of how the pieces all fit together, and by a writerly writer with a sharp wit and knack for making complicated concepts accessible. Infused with personality and nuance, this is far from being a dry book about the oil and gas business. Sernovitz’s definitive account is as useful to business leaders and policymakers as it is entertaining to everyday readers.

Gary Sernovitz is perfectly positioned to write this book. As a managing director at Lime Rock Management, an oil and gas–focused private equity firm with $5.5 billion under management, part of his job entails clearly explaining America’s oil and gas boom to investors worldwide. An essayist and book reviewer whose pieces have been published in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Republic online, and n+1, Sernovitz is an incisive writer whose polymathic intelligence allows him to draw on a wealth of material, helping ideas come to life on the page. And the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Great American Plain and The Contrarians, both published by Henry Holt, Sernovitz is adept at coloring his prose with personality and levity.

THE NEW WILD: Why Invasive Species will be Nature’s Salvation by Fred Pearce

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, The Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER(S): US – Beacon, UK - Icon

PUBL. DATE: April 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK:  Alien species are many environmentalists’ number one enemy.  Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating super-weeds, snakeheads and other biological adventurers are travelling the world in ever greater numbers, usually hitchhiking with humans and sometimes causing ecological mayhem on arrival.  They are, it sometimes seems, taking over nature.  They are often called the second biggest threat to biodiversity, after agriculture.  But do we fear them too much?  Is our dislike of them a green parallel to the antipathy many have towards foreign humans -- and as misguided?  Do we blame them unfairly for all the ills of ecosystems?  Some ecologists are beginning to think so.  They say invader species are not so alien, and not so nasty.  Most ecosystems are a hotchpotch of native and alien species, and none the worse for that.  In a world without biological borders, many of nature’s desperados and stowaways are ecological heroes.  Far from being destroyers, they may be its re-invigorators, its salvation even.  In fact, they say, alien species are necessary and their colonizing skills could even be the saviour of ecosystems threatened by human activity. 

Trained as a geographer, Fred Pearce is a freelance author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environment, science and development issues from 67 countries over the past 20 years. He writes regularly for the Guardian and Mail on Sunday newspapers. He won a lifetime achievement award for his journalism from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011, and was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001. His other recent books include Confessions of an Eco Sinner, Earth: The Last Generation (on climate change), Deep Jungle, and Peoplequake.

SALES OF PREVIOUS TITLES: Chinese/complex – Commonwealth, Dutch – van Arkel, French – La Martiniere, German – Antje Kunstmann, Italian – Pearson Italia, Japanese – Nikkei (When the Rivers Run Dry) & NHK (The Last Generation and Confessions of an Eco-Sinner), Korean – Breinds

NEW NATURE WRITING
BEING A BEAST by Charles Foster

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, The Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER: UK – Profile, US – Metropolitan

MATERIAL: proposal available

ABOUT THE BOOK: A totally original nature book by a passionate naturalist who has lived like the animals he studies.

Charles Foster wanted to know what it was like to be an animal. So he tried it out. He was a badger for weeks, living in a hole in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms; he caught fish in his teeth whilst living like an otter; he rummaged through East London dustbins like an urban fox; he followed the swifts on their journey to Africa; he crouched on a cliff ledge amongst fulmars.  

This is an intimate and completely radical look at the life of animals, incorporating neuroscience, psychology, nature writing, memoir and more. Foster takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, containing wonderful moments of humour and joy, but also providing important lessons for all of us who share life on this precious planet.

Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and teaches medical law and ethics at the university. He is a practising barrister and a qualified veterinarian with a particular interest in veterinary acupuncture and animal behaviour. A lot of his life has been spent on expeditions, many in the desert involving camels. Recent trips include the Algerian Sahara, the Western Desert of Egypt, Sinai and the Danakil Depression. He has run the Marathon des Sables (the 150 mile race in the Sahara), skied to the North Pole, and ‘bled in many beautiful and desolate landscapes'. Nowadays he is more likely to be found in Devon or Greece. Foster is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. He lives in Oxford and Exmoor with his wife and six children.

COMMON GROUND by Rob Cowen

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, the Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER: UK – Hutchinson

PUBL. DATE: May 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: 'Sensitive, thoughtful and poetic, Rob Cowen rakes over a scrap of land with forensic care, until the ordinary becomes extraordinary.' Michael Palin

'I am dreaming of the edge-land again'

After moving from London to a new home in Yorkshire, Rob Cowen finds himself on unfamiliar territory, disoriented, hemmed in by winter and yearning for the nearest open space. So one night, he sets out to find it – a pylon-slung edge-land, a tangle of wood, meadow, field and river on the outskirts of town. Despite being in the shadow of thousands of houses, it feels unclaimed, forgotten, caught between worlds, and all the more magical for it.

Obsessively revisiting this contested ground, Cowen ventures deeper into its many layers and lives, documenting its changes through time and season and unearthing histories that profoundly resonate and intertwine with transformative events happening in his own life. Blurring the boundaries of memoir, natural history and novel, Common Ground offers nothing less than an enthralling new way of writing about nature and our experiences within it. We encounter the edge-land's inhabitants in immersive, kaleidoscopic detail as their voices and visions rise from the fields and woods: beasts, birds, insects, plants and people – the beggars, sages and lovers across the ages. Startlingly personal and poetic, this is a unique portrait of a forgotten realm and a remarkable evocation of how, over the course of a year, a man came to know himself once more by unlocking it. But, above all, this is a book that reasserts a vital truth: nature isn’t just found in some remote mountain or protected park. It is all around us. It is in us. It is us.

H IS FOR HAWK by Helen Macdonald

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, The Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER(S): US - Grove Atlantic, UK - Jonathan Cape, Canada – Penguin

RIGHTS SOLD: Catalan – Atico, Chinese – under offer, Danish – Gyldendal, Dutch – de Bezige Bij, French – Univers Poche, German – Ullstein, Italian – Einaudi, Japanese – Hakushuisha, Korean – Minumsa, Norwegian – Press, Polish – Czarne, Portuguese/ Portugal – Lua de Papel, Portuguese/ Brazil – Intrinseca, Spanish – Atico, Swedish – Brombergs, Taiwanese – under offer, Turkish - Monokl

PUBL. DATE: August 2014
ABOUT THE BOOK: Winner of the Samuel Johnson prize, Winner of the Costa Biography and overall award, and a number one bestseller in the UK. This eloquent and heart-felt book is at once the story of a relationship between a young woman and a goshawk and also ‘a natural history of the dissolution of the mind and its recovery in an English landscape’.

Helen Macdonald’s father died very abruptly, on a London street, from a heart attack, surrounded by strangers. His warmth and charisma, even in death, made a deep impression on them.  The hole left by his absence in his daughters’ life was one which would take a long, long time to fill. As her grief started to swamp her, Helen turned to the wild in the hope that it might affect a cure; ‘looking for goshawks is like looking for grace’. An accomplished falconer, she bought a goshawk, a bird she had never previously related to and was handed the bird in a cardboard box. She called her Mabel (from amabilis meaning loveable or dear). She wanted to detach from her pain and the world, she wanted to soar above it all and see through the eyes of a hawk.

The journey of this book is the developing relationship between bird and woman while its quest is Helen’s attempt to leave behind the pain of grief and move into wellness. It’s a deeply intelligent book, with rich digression.  She explores amongst other things: the literary history of falconry, (particularly T.H. White), falconry’s dark historical credentials, (Goering kept a goshawk) and the place of animals and landscape in human lives. The book describes a wrestling match between the wild and the human, informing both, and challenging the concept that running away to the wild can cure us. It also manages, despite everything, to be full of humour.

‘This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration: elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk found - and in the finding also a celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind and the environment, it is immediately pre-eminent.’ Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate

‘It just sings. I couldn’t stop reading.’ Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

‘This is a book made from the heart that goes to the heart… It combines old and new nature and human nature with great originality. No one who has looked up to see a bird of prey cross the sky could read it and not have their life shifted.’ Tim Dee

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian, and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. H IS FOR HAWK is her first work of literary non-fiction and reached No 1 in the Hardback Non Fiction charts.
LANDMARKS: A Collection of Essays by Robert Macfarlane

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, The Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER(S): UK – Hamish Hamilton

PUBL.: March 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: A joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two, from the bestselling author of The Old Ways.

LANDMARKS is about the books that taught Robert to write and taught him to see. To locate you in literary terms we’re talking The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd, The Peregrine by J.A Baker, Waterlog by Roger Deakin, My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir, Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez - travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it. LANDMARKS is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather.

“There is no abstraction in how we love, all is specificity. Love is the most precise knowledge we have. Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks is a book of love – for place, for literature, for friends. In his often aching account of lives lived, Macfarlane advocates a way of being in the world. Landmarks is saturated with loss and the tasks of memory; it is an exploration of how language grasps the ephemeral. One could read the landscape glossaries gathered in this book like poetry to a lover at night, so intimate is the ache of language to hold what it loves.” Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces

SALES OF PREVIOUS TITLE(S): Chinese – Shanghai 99, Dutch – Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, German – Matthes & Seitz, Italian – Einaudi, Korean – Book Comma, Spanish – Pre-Textos

NARRATIVE NON-FICTION
ALL STRANGERS ARE KIN: Travels in the Arabic Language by Zora O’Neill

AGENT: Gillian Mackenzie

PUBLISHER:

PUBL. DATE: June 2016

MATERIAL: ms available

ABOUT THE BOOK:

MAD by Jay Griffiths

AGENT: Jessica Woollard, the Marsh Agency

PUBLISHER: UK – Hamish Hamilton

DEL. DATE: May 2015

ABOUT THE BOOK: The signs are different in different cases. Some people know they're going over the edge when they catch themselves buying two hundred yellow pencil sharpeners. Others, when they cannot stop crying. Others yet, when they have slept with a dozen people in half a dozen nights. Me, it's when I become obsessed with 'learning' Indo-European. If I can understand that, I will know the runes of language, I will be able to trace the vital roots running their subterranean song, through words from India to England, and everything will connect.

I have manic depression. But I'm lucky with it: most of the time, I'm fine. Occasionally, I have steep and awful periods of depression.

I am, now, recently out of one of these episodes which lasted a year. It hit me sixteen months ago, and hurled me into a hurricane of madness, including hallucinations (I could see people's wings), suicidality, sleeplessness, going blind in one eye, two near car-crashes, numerous doctor's appointments and psychiatric medication starting with anti-psychotics because I went mad. I don't apologise for that word: I know many people don't like it, but I do. It does what it says on the tin. I know, because I was. The same goes for the term 'manic depression', which is descriptive, warm, textured and accurate, rather than the bland quasi-geographical clinicality of 'bipolar disorder.'In that madness, I had three wishes. Prayers, really.

Not to go mad. (Failed.)

Not to commit suicide. (Succeeded.)

To bring something back. (This book.)

I can comprehend manic depression as an illness, with causes, symptoms and treatments - and my first gratitude will always be to the doctor who helped me through these months.

I can also sympathise readily with the idea that manic depression is a condition with a spiritual dimension; that the visions or hallucinations seem to connect one to a further world beyond the mundane.

But my heart lies with a third interpretation that there is an especial relationship between manic depression and metaphor - in its deepest sense. Not metaphor as a literary device, but rather metaphor as an entire Otherness in the mind, the psyche's fertile earth, the insights of the poet, the music of the mind, and this is the gold I wanted to find in the dark veins of the mind, this is the 'something' I wanted to bring back. Something worth the agony of it all. I am convinced that there is something universal to the human mind in each individual's experience of manic depression.

Jay Griffiths is the author of Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for the best new non-fiction writer in the USA (2003), Wild: An Elemental Journey and Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape. Her writing has appeared in various publications including the London Review of Books, the Idler, the Ecologist, Resurgence, the Observer and the Guardian and translated in to numerous languages.

READING THE WORLD: Postcards from my Bookshelf by Ann Morgan

AGENT: Hardman & Swainson

PUBLISHER(S): UK – Harvill Secker, US – WW Norton

PUBL. DATE: February 2015