Atlantic Books to publish The Bed Trick, a riveting and forensic examination of Gayle Newland’s trials

Atlantic Books is to publish The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial by Izabella Scott in hardback and ebook on 5th February 2026. Originally acquired by Poppy Hampson who bought UK (ex. Canada) rights from Harriet Moore at Aitken Alexander (bought whilst she was at David Higham), The Bed Trick will be published by Clare Drysdale, Atlantic’s Group Associate Publisher.

Two former best friends face each other in court at a sex offence trial. Miss X claims she was tricked into queer sex, many times, by a best friend pretending to be her boyfriend. But that friend, Gayle Newland, tells a different story. They were secret lesbians, she says, lovers in the closet. The boyfriend was imaginary, and part of a role play that had been going on for years. This astonishing case reached UK courtrooms twice in 2015 and 2017, capturing national attention. The trials questioned some of the most basic assumptions about sex, consent, gender and identity. In a riveting and forensic examination of Gayle Newland’s trials, Izabella Scott interrogates the case from every conceivable angle, exposing the slippery side of consent law and the shifting rules of deceptive sex.

Izabella Scott is a writer from London. She is interested in sexuality, crime, art and self-invention. She has written about catfishing lawsuits, queer subcultures and human rights violations. She has been published by the London Review of Books, Financial Times, Granta, The New Enquiry and others. She is the author of Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir (2024), on internet shutdowns, coauthored with Skye Arundhati Thomas. She was formerly co-editor of The White Review.

Izabella Scott says,

‘Throughout this book, my aim has been to show the mechanics of a queer rape trial – to open the bonnet, to show how it works. I ask; Whose narratives are heard? Whose stories do we believe? What is the relationship between storytelling and the law? I am very pleased to be in the capable hands of Clare and the Atlantic team.’

Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher of Atlantic Books, says:

‘In revisiting one of the oddest, saddest cases to come to trial in the UK in recent years, Izabella Scott has written an intriguing, provocative and sensitive book which will be catnip to readers of Helen Garner, Maggie Nelson and those who devoured Sweet Bobby.’