Atlantic Books signs ‘global sleep phenomenon’ Stephanie Romiszewski
Atlantic Books has signed Think Less, Sleep More, the debut non-fiction book by Stephanie Romiszewski, and has accepted several pre-emptive bids from publishers around the world on the eve of the London Book Fair.
Think Less, Sleep More: From Panic and Perfectionism to Stress-Free Sleep will be published by Allen & Unwin UK, Atlantic’s solutions-based non-fiction imprint, in Spring 2026. Through Alice Latham, Atlantic’s Rights Director, German rights were pre-empted by Martin Janik at Piper; Romanian rights by Publica, Spanish rights by Rocio Carmona at Planeta; and US rights by Elizabeth Beier at St Martin’s Press, in a deal brokered by George Lucas at Inkwell. Drummond Moir, Managing Director of Atlantic Books, bought rights directly from the author.
Stephanie Romiszewski has helped over 10, 000 patients sleep better. A clear-eyed and passionate antidote to both individual sleep anxiety and our current obsessive, perfectionist culture, her first book will unpack the science and fundamentals of sleep – including misunderstood concepts such as sleep drive, sleep debt and sleep sensitivity – and arm readers with simple tools for how we can each improve something we spend a third of our lives doing. Stephanie will debunk several myths and offer a wealth of counterintuitive insights, including why your morning routine is far more important than your bedtime routine; how to trust your body’s natural sleep drive and rhythms; why ‘bad’ nights don’t ruin your health; and why sleep isn’t as fragile as we think: it’s adaptable, resilient, and smarter than any hack you could throw at it.
Stephanie Romiszewski said,
‘I don’t stress about sleep—ever. And that’s not because I’m special or immune to bad nights. I’ve just learned that the more you try to control sleep, the worse it gets. Sleep isn’t the enemy—it’s your best friend. And when you stop blaming it and start working with it, sleeping well becomes so much simpler than we’ve been led to believe. No hacks, no over thinking!’
Drummond Moir said,
‘We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Stephanie. As someone who has always been a terrible sleeper, I’m excited to know that her deep expertise, reassuring voice and liberating philosophy will help readers around the globe transform a third of their lives.’
Stephanie Romiszewski is a UK-based sleep expert who combines academic expertise – including degrees in psychology and behavioural sleep medicine and experience within the NHS and Harvard Medical School, including on studies funded by NASA – with deep and broad media experience across TV, radio, podcasts and social media. Stephanie was the sleep expert in both Channel 4’s ‘Secrets of Sleep’ series and the BBC’s ‘Insomnia and me’ and has appeared on high profile podcasts including The High Performance Podcast with Jake Humphreys and Damian Hughes and The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett.
For Rights please contact Alice Latham alicelatham@atlantic-books.co.uk
Atlantic Books pre-empts Death and the Midwife
James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, has pre-empted World English Language rights in Ben Reeves’ debut Death and the Midwife (tbc) from Laura Williams at Greene & Heaton on 26th February. Atlantic’s Rights Director, Alice Latham with co-agent David Forrer (Inkwell), have subsequently sold US rights at pre-empt to Margo Shickmanter at Avid Reader, and German rights have since been pre-empted by Lucy Harries at DTV. Translation rights remain with Laura Williams.
Travis is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a grey English town and offers people comfort in their final hours of life. He’s stoic, gentle, a little naive, despite what he knows. He’s handsome, he seems young, despite what he is. Each death has a meaning to him; he listens, doesn’t judge and he never tries to change anyone’s fate. Until, that is, Travis meets a young single midwife called Dalia and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, and the two of them begin to teach him what really is the important stuff of life.
Ben Reeves lives in Peterborough with his wife and two children, and he won the Bath Novel Award 2024 for this novel. When he’s not writing, he paints, makes music, and works as a web designer for a book printing company.
James Roxburgh says,
‘This is just a gorgeous, beautifully turned, singular novel, somewhere near Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, but with a vision and a vital magic that is entirely its own. I fell for Dalia and her family as much as Travis does; I love the insight it takes to write a novel in which the inevitability of death, finally, is revealed as the necessary condition for a meaningful life. It’s inventive, life-affirming, compassionate and profound fiction and, although I’m dark-hearted and possibly as dead as Travis inside, its ending fully undid me – and, so far, it’s undone every one of my teary-eyed colleagues, too.
Atlantic Books pre-empt ‘the book on poetry you never knew you needed’ by bestselling author of The Etymologicon Mark Forsyth
Ed Faulkner, Group Non-Fiction Publisher of Atlantic Books, has pre-empted UK and Commonwealth rights in Mark Forsyth’s Rhyme and Reason: A Short History of Poetry for People Who Don’t Read Poetry from Caroline Dawnay at United Agents. Rhyme and Reason will be published in hardback and ebook on their Allen & Unwin UK imprint in October 2025.
Mark Forsyth was given a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary as a christening present and has never looked back. His book The Etymologicon was a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller and was followed by The Horologicon and The Elements of Eloquence. He has written A Christmas Cornucopia on the origins of Christmas traditions and A Short History of Drunkenness. His TED Talk ‘What’s a snollygoster?’ has had more than half a million views.
Rhyme and Reason is a quick, light-hearted and very funny tour through English poetry by bestselling author Mark Forsyth. Hugely accessible and genuinely eye-opening, it’s a history of English poetry from the reader’s point of view. In each chapter we start with the readers: who they were, what they read, and why they liked it. We have a kitchen-maid in Northamptonshire reading Alexander Pope, and writing poems back to him. We have a music teacher in Tudor times finding a love sonnet slipped between the strings of his lute. We have an MP walking into the House of Commons with a proof copy of Paradise Lost and announcing that he is holding the greatest poem ever written in any language. We have a young apprentice wasting his afternoons at the Globe Theatre.
Short, witty and very entertaining, Rhyme and Reason explains to the general reader everything they need to know to enjoy poetry. They will be introduced to all the great movements, and most of the great poets. They will learn the basics of English verse and how poetry works.
Mark Forsyth, says,
‘I’ve been writing a book on the antics
Of Donne, Milton, Pope, the Romantics;
To explain to the amateur
The iambic pentameter;
There’s a deal. Now the rights are Atlantic’s.’
Ed Faulkner, says,
‘Rhyme and Reason is the book on poetry you never knew you needed until now. Mark Forsyth brilliantly demystifies and explains the wonder of poetry for people who feel they should understand it but don’t – like Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss did for punctuation. It’s an irreverent history of Britain through 1000 years of verse – as Unruly by David Mitchell did for English Kings and Queens; and it’s a fascinating and entertaining gift book that tells you something new about the world and should be wrapped under every Christmas tree – like his previous Number One Bestseller The Etymologicon. We can’t wait to publish it and bring the joy of poetry to readers everywhere.’
Corvus acquires Climbing In Heels, new fiction in development by Darren Star
Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher at Atlantic Books, has acquired UK & Comm ex-Canada rights from Sarah Harvey on behalf of Mollie Glick at CAA to Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas’ Climbing in Heels. Climbing in Heels will be published on the Corvus imprint in paperback original in the UK, trade paperback in export markets, and in ebook May 1st 2025.
Beanie, Mercedes and Ella – a Valley Girl, an English rose-with-thorns and a Kentucky blueblood, each denying their past while building their future – together storm the boys’ club that is the hottest talent agency in 1980s Hollywood. A riveting story of friendship, betrayal and survival, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas’s debut novel is also a rollicking tale of sex, drugs and power.
Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas began her career at the William Morris Agency and rose by the late 1980s to become its Senior Vice President, and later the Senior Vice President of ICM, guiding the careers of, among others, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Nicolas Cage and Madonna. More recently, she has produced a broad, successful slate of films and television series including Maid in Manhattan, Mona Lisa Smile, Hustlers, Marry Me and Emily in Paris.
It was announced last week that Darren Star, creator of Sex and the City, Younger and Emily in Paris, is developing Climbing in Heels as an original series for Peacock, following Universal TV pre-emptively buying the rights to the novel in December. Star and Goldsmith-Thomas will co-write and executive produce the proposed series, which he describes as the ‘ballsy and bawdy love child of Mad Men and Sex and the City.’
Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas says, ‘Clare Drysdale and the whole Corvus team not only understood but lovingly embraced the big hair, the big shoulder pads, the big phones and the big dreams of these characters who demanded a seat at a table where they were expected to serve. Here’s to the climb and the climbers.’
Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher of Atlantic Books, says,
‘The recent adaptation of Rivals reminded us all how entertaining and satisfying a great bonkbuster can be. And Climbing in Heels, the tale of three ambitious secretaries at a Hollywood talent agency in the 1980s, will thrill anyone who guzzled down Lace, Lucky or Valley of the Dolls.’
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s new novel Cursed Daughters to Atlantic
James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excl. Canada and Nigeria) to Sunday Times-bestselling author Oyinkan Braithwaite’s second novel, Cursed Daughters, from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander. Cursed Daughters will be published in hardback, trade paperback and eBook on 25th September 2025.
My Sister, the Serial Killer, by British-Nigerian novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite, was a publishing phenomenon that sold close to 500,000 copies in the UK, sold rights in 34 languages, was long-listed for the Booker, shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction and won the Crime and Thriller Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Cursed Daughters will form the cornerstone of Atlantic’s 25th-anniversary celebrations and is the company’s biggest book of the year, accompanied by our most significant marketing campaign of the decade. The marketing will encompass the whole of the trade, with an exclusive edition for Waterstones and another for independent shops, with a huge multi-channel consumer advertising campaign to come on publication. A publicity tour comprising flagship, bespoke events will run throughout the Autumn.
No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…
So goes the family curse, long handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts. And now it’s Eniiyi’s turn – who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, is already used to her family’s strange beliefs, as well as their insistence that she is a reincarnation. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?
James Roxburgh says,
‘If I died tomorrow, my publishing obituary would probably read ‘tall man, acquired My Sister, the Serial Killer’, so I’ve long felt that I have a particular stake in Oyin’s follow-up. Fortunately, it is every bit as mordantly brilliant and original as its predecessor – technically sophisticated, funny and moving on female relationships, perceptive on love and heartbreak, sharp on the meeting point of modernity and an older cultural Nigeria. We think this is a huge step up from Oyin, and a huge publication for Atlantic Fiction. Obituarists, take note: ‘tall man, acquired Cursed Daughters’.
Oyinkan Braithwaite says,
‘And here we are once more with Cursed Daughters, a story of love, generational trauma and superstition. The book is written; but it is near impossible to know how the world will receive a work you have laboured over. Fortunately, I have a fairy agent mother in Clare Alexander, a tall wizard editor in James Roxburgh and an absolute gem of a team behind my successes thus far. So here’s to the continuation of a wonderful collaborative journey.’
Clare Alexander says,
‘My Sister, the Serial Killer arrived like a blast of fresh air into a muggy room. Truth to tell, although there were at least 4 books at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024 that were compared to MSTSK, back in 2017 there were only a couple of UK publishers who wanted to publish it. And it was James Roxburgh and Atlantic Books who recognised it for what it was, and who published it so brilliantly. If I had a concern, it was how Oyin could conceivably follow such an outrageously distinctive and successful debut. But I needn’t have worried. Cursed Daughters has twinned love stories in a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition – with a dash of horror – that more than fulfils her early promise. And we couldn’t be happier that Oyin will be reunited with Atlantic Books and her extremely tall editor for publication of her new book.
Atlantic Books acquires ‘urgent’ reckoning with Israel and Jewish identity
Shoaib Rokadiya, Associate Publisher at Atlantic Books has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza by political commentator Peter Beinart, from Suzanne Smith at Knopf. North American rights sold to Jennifer Barth at Knopf from Tina Bennett at Bennett Literary. It will publish in hardback on 30th January 2025.
The publisher said: ‘In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition, warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine, and is currently being used to justify starvation and mass slaughter. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, Beinart argues that Jews must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be Jewish?’
A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Guardian and MSNBC, Peter Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at CUNY and the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, a magazine and news site committed to activism and culture on the Jewish left.
Peter Beinart says:
‘I wrote this book because I think Gaza’s destruction is a crucible in Jewish history. It requires us to rethink the stories we tell about ourselves, stories that have enabled good people to look away as an entire society is obliterated by a state that speaks in our name.’
Shoaib Rokadiya says:
‘Peter Beinart’s brave writing on Israel’s war in Gaza has been a source of education and solace to many over the past year. His new book is a compassionate, measured and wholly necessary intervention into an escalating moral and human crisis. It will spark a conversation that is long overdue.’
Mohammed Hanif’s satirical novel to Grove Press UK
Morgan Entrekin, Publisher of Grove Atlantic, has acquired World English rights (ex-India) to Mohammed Hanif’s new novel, The Rebel English Academy, for Grove Atlantic and Grove Press UK, from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander. Indian rights have been acquired by Penguin Random House at auction in a bid which included an undertaking to reissue his first two prize-winning books, A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. The book will be published in the UK and US in early 2026.
Mohammed Hanif is the author of three previous novels: A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and Red Birds. A Case of Exploding Mangoes won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in London.
The Rebel English Academy begins with the hanging of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and follows a captain haunted by a botched mission, a district champion runner, a former revolutionary and a progressive imam. As their lives intersect in the Rebel English Academy, a school within the premises of the local mosque of a grim small town, Hanif offers both a critique of authoritarianism and a tale of loss and redemption. Weaving together political satire and dark humour, he explores themes of power, identity, survival and the complexities of faith and resistance.
Mohammed Hanif said:
“Morgan Entrekin is a dream publisher, and I am really excited to be working with him and the Grove team, both in America and now in the UK as well.”
Morgan Entrekin said:
“We are very excited to acquire Mohammed Hanif’s new novel The Rebel English Academy. He is a major voice in world literature and The Rebel English Academy is his best novel yet – an exuberant, rich narrative with a colourful cast of characters that offers a brilliant portrait of Pakistan, political power, religion and the role of language.”
Atlantic Books pre-empt ‘extraordinary and comprehensive’ Swedish book on black holes
Ed Faulkner, Group Non-Fiction Publisher of Atlantic Books, pre-empted World English rights in Jonas Enander’s Facing the Darkness: Black Holes and our Place on Earth from Steve White at Nordin Agency. Facing the Darkness will be published in hardback, trade paperback and ebook in September 2025.
Jonas Enander has a PhD in physics, having conducted research in cosmology and astrophysics. He currently works as a science communicator at the Oskar Klein Centre in Stockholm. He has participated in the construction of the IceCube observatory at the South Pole, Antarctica and regularly writes about physics and astronomy for various popular science magazines. Facing the Darkness is his first book.
Facing the Darkness is a fascinating and enlightening guide to the enduring mystery and majesty of black holes.
From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night’s sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years later, Jonas Enander has travelled the world, visited telescopes and observatories, interviewed world-leading space researchers, and delved deep into the archives to investigate how our relationship with black holes has changed over time. Throughout this journey, Enander explores how our desire to answer the question of the origin of the universe inadvertently led to the invention of WiFi and the calibration of GPS; how our looking outward gave us critical evidence of our impact on climate change that could be the key to the future of all humanity and how colonialism sparked the race for discovery, affecting those most vulnerable, creating a ripple effect being felt to this day.
Discover how black holes work, where they come from, and what role they play in the universe. How is it even possible to know that we are on a 230 million year journey around the Milky Way with an enormous black hole at its centre? How is it possible to determine that this black hole has a mass equivalent to four million suns? What happens when black holes collide? Are we living in a black hole? And how do we even know any of this?
Based on interviews with over 20 leading black hole researchers, including several Nobel Laureates, Facing the Darkness deciphers the most mind-bending science whilst retaining a sense of wonder, in an approachable and spellbinding journey into the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Jonas Enander says,
‘I’m thrilled to have Atlantic publish my book. I’ve put my heart and soul into it, with the goal of telling a modern story about the latest black hole research and how it relates to our lives on Earth. With Atlantic the book is in excellent hands, and I can’t wait for it to be available to English-speaking readers.’
Ed Faulkner said,
‘We all absolutely loved Facing the Darkness here at Atlantic. Jonas Enander is a fascinating and enlightening guide to the enduring mystery and majesty of black holes and this book literally contains multitudes – the whole history of science, the universe, everything, all presented through the prism of black holes. It’s extraordinary and comprehensive and we can’t wait to publish it!’
Grove Press UK to publish legendary editor Graydon Carter’s memoir
Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher of Atlantic Books, has bought UK & Commonwealth (ex-Canada) rights to Graydon Carter’s When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines from Tom Dussel at Penguin Press for Grove Press UK. Grove Press UK will publish When the Going Was Good in hardback, export trade paperback, audio and ebook on March 27th 2025.
“Unsurprisingly Graydon Carter’s irresistible memoir reflects the strengths of his magazine publishing,” says Drysdale. “It’s elegant, dishy, propulsive, meticulously written, generous and merciless as required. Reading Carter’s Vanity Fair at the turn of the millennium was like having a front-row seat to the zeitgeist and I’m certain other readers will share my thrill at getting an all-access look inside its projection room.”
From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood to the courtrooms of Fleet Street, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of magazines when they were the vanguard of culture.
When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of society’s most talented editors and shapers of culture. Carter arrived in New York from Canada with little more than a suitcase, a failed literary magazine in his past and a keen sense of ambition. He landed a job at Time, went on to work at Life, co-founded Spy magazine and edited The New York Observer before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who tapped him to run Vanity Fair.
With his inimitable voice and raconteur’s quip, Carter brings readers inside the drawing rooms of the great and not-always-good of America, Britain and Europe. He assembled one of the best-ever stables of writers and photographers under one roof, and here he re-creates in real time the steps he took to ensure that Vanity Fair during his 25-year run cemented its place as the epicentre of art, culture, business and politics. Charming, candid and brimming with humour, When the Going Was Good perfectly captures the last golden age of print magazines from the inside out.
“I’m delighted that my memoir is in the capable hands of Clare and the Grove Press team in the UK,” says Carter. “You never realize you’re in a golden age until it’s over. I wanted to capture the enterprising spirit and sheer fun of those wonderful years for others.”
Graydon Carter is the founder and co-editor of Air Mail. Before this, he was a staff writer for both Time and Life magazines. He co-created Spy, edited The New York Observer, and for twenty-five years was the editor of Vanity Fair. He is the Emmy and Peabody Award winning producer of more than a dozen documentaries and one hit Broadway play. He and his wife live in New York, not far from the Waverly Inn, and have five children.
Author Phil Rickman dies, aged 74
With great sadness we announce that author and broadcaster Phil Rickman died on Tuesday 29th October at the age of 74.
Lancashire-born Rickman spent most of his adult life in Herefordshire and the Welsh borders. He was the author of 27 novels, including two under the name Will Kingdom and two as Thom Madley, as well as short stories and non-fiction. His debut novel, Candlenight, was published by Duckworth in 1991 and sold over half a million copies worldwide. It was later reissued by his current publisher, Atlantic Books’ imprint Corvus.
He is best known for the popular Merrily Watkins novels, a unique crime fiction series with supernatural elements set in the Welsh borders, whose titular character is both a vicar and an exorcist. Beginning with The Wine of Angels, first published in 1998, the Merrily Watkins series currently spans fifteen novels, with a sixteenth, The Echo of Crows, slated for release by Corvus in 2025. The series was adapted into a three-part ITV drama featuring Anna Maxwell Martin as Merrily Watkins in 2015.
Phil Rickman’s work has been widely reviewed and praised over the years, with his writing acclaimed by an array of authors, including Steven King, Bernard Cornwell, Peter James, Barbara Erskine, John Connolly and Elly Griffiths.
Having started his working life as a journalist and broadcaster, for many years Rickman also presented the BBC Radio Wales programme ‘Phil the Shelf’, which featured book news, author interviews and advice for unpublished writers. He was a long-serving mainstay of the Hay Festival, and lived just up the road from Hay-on-Wye, in a beautiful farmhouse surrounded by rescue donkeys, dogs, and the occasional peacock,
Phil is survived by his wife Carol – his first reader and sternest editor.
Phil’s current editor, Sarah Hodgson, said:
‘I first encountered Phil down the line from a studio at Broadcasting House in London when I participated in an episode of ‘Phil the Shelf’ many years ago, and had no inkling that I would one day have the privilege of publishing his work. He was known for his kindness and gentleness of spirit, and he had a unique creative vision. His loss will be felt deeply by all who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him, and by his many readers around the world. It is some consolation that he had already delivered his next, and now final, novel, a new case for his wonderful heroine Merrily Watkins, which we are proud to be publishing on the Corvus list next year.’
His agents Ed Wilson and Andrew Hewson at Johnson & Alcock added:
‘Crimewriting has lost a true one-off in Phil Rickman – a writer whose kindness and generosity, both with fans and other writers, was as well-known as his brilliant books. His career spanned decades and genres – from the early horror novels, to crime and supernatural thrillers, YA novels (before the term ‘YA’ existed) and even historical, with his two brilliant Dr Dee novels. He was a unique and wonderful man, and managed to be both commercially successful (the Merrily series sold over 300k copies) and also a cult author. His Facebook group PRAS (the Phil Rickman Appreciation Society) was one of the earliest on the platform, and there has been an outpouring of emotion online from the rich and varied community of fans. It is fitting tribute to his indefatigability that his final act was to complete another Merrily novel, which will be published in 2025 for his fans to enjoy.’
Nicolas Cheetham, MD of Head of Zeus, who was previously Phil Rickman’s long-term publisher said:
‘Phil’s Merrily Watkins novels are a masterclass in how to write a series and Phil is entirely responsible for my love of big books, big casts and multiple instalments – not to mention writers doing something just a little to the left of the genre mainstream’.
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