The Lost Queen finds home at Atlantic
Atlantic Books has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Dr Sophie Shorland’s THE LOST QUEEN: The Surprising Life of Catherine of Braganza, Britain’s Forgotten Monarch from Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock, in a two-book deal.
Acquired by former Atlantic Non-Fiction Editorial Director James Nightingale, The Lost Queen will be published in hardback and ebook on 6th June 2024.
Dr Sophie Shorland is a former Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, with a PhD focused on celebrity in Renaissance England. She works as an editor and filmmaker in London. The proposal for this biography was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize in 2020.
Despite Catherine of Braganza’s crucial place in British history, and that of its Empire, she has since been overshadowed by stories of the king’s many mistresses and forgotten as Charles’ boring, powerless wife. This could not be further from the truth. In an absorbing narrative, historian Sophie Shorland not only tells the full story of this long-overlooked figure and her difficult relationship with Charles II, but also reveals how Catherine changed the country in ways both large and small: from popularising trousers for women, tea, Baroque art and music, to bringing Britain’s first territory on the Indian subcontinent, Bombay, into the Empire as a part of her dowry.
Dr Shorland says,
‘Catherine joins a cast of women very much forgotten by history. Queen twice over, I’m thrilled to help give this trouser-wearing politician the second look she deserves.’
Erika Koljonen, editor, says,
‘I was swept away by Sophie’s colourful, vibrant portray of Catherine of Braganza, and of the era. She brings so much life to a broad cast of characters, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be publishing this exciting and revelatory biography.’
Steminist Rom-Com Talk Data To Me to be published by Corvus
Sarah Hodgson, Publishing Director of Corvus, has acquired World All Languages in Rose McGee’s Talk Data to Me as part of a two-book deal from Gaia Banks at Sheil Land. Talk Data to Me will be published in PBO in summer 2025.
Rose McGee holds a degree in English from Stanford University and lives in the Bay Area of California. Talk Data to Me is her debut novel.
The Love Hypothesis meets The Hating Game, with a sprinkling of You’ve Got Mail, in this sweet and sexy STEMinist romcom.
Physicists Dr Erin Monaghan and Dr Ethan Meyer are bitter rivals. They are each at the forefront of their opposing fields and competing for everything: grant money, lab time, government backing. But fate has lined up a meet-cute on the pages of sci-fi magazine Galactica. Erin’s short story and Ethan’s illustration are paired for publication, and when they meet online as their alter egos ‘Aaron Forster’ and ‘Bannister’, sparks fly.
Will the course of true love for once run smooth when Erin and Ethan are forced to collaborate on a government contract? Or will their rivalry prevent them from realizing the truth about their feelings in the material as well as the virtual world?
Rose McGee says, ‘I’m delighted that Talk Data to Me has found a home at Corvus Books under Sarah Hodgson’s clever hand. I’m excited to share my love for science, ice cream, and steamy workplace rivalries—plus a bit of patriarchy-smashing and one very good golden retriever—with readers soon.’
Gaia Banks says,
‘I’m thrilled that Rose’s delightful romcom has found such a wonderful home at Corvus and the ideal editor in Sarah Hodgson, who has been a champion from day one.’
Sarah Hodgson says,
‘I pretty much inhaled Talk Data to Me in one sitting – it’s a gorgeously emotive and engaging romcom featuring several of my favourite tropes: enemies to lovers; forced proximity; workplace romance. I feel incredibly lucky that Rose has entrusted Corvus with introducing readers to Erin and Ethan, and I know romance lovers everywhere will fall in love with them as I have.’
Please direct rights enquiries to Alice Latham alicelatham@atlantic-books.co.uk
Shy Trans Banshee to Atlantic
James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, has acquired World rights including audio and FTV in Tony Santorella’s Shy Trans Banshee. Bought directly from the author on the first day of London Book Fair, Shy Trans Banshee will be published Halloween 2025 in hardback, trade paperback and ebook.
Minority Report meets Slow Horses. With banshees.
Brian, Nik and Darby – three friends practiced in ennui, binge-drinking, hooking up with strangers and fighting supernatural crime (when Brian’s not committing it as a werewolf once a month) – have been sent by Abe Van Helsing (yes, one of those Van Helsings) to try to track down a colleague who has gone missing in London. As they putz around the city, following any leads that might help them find their British counterpart, they uncover a clairvoyancy smuggling ring, located right in the heart of the financial district. Who’s kidnapping all the fortunetellers in Soho and why? And is it coincidence, fate or something more sinister altogether that Maeve, a timid trans woman taking time out of her job to track down her birth mother, turns up on the gang’s doorstep at exactly this moment in time…and has the uncanny ability to know just what’s going to happen next?
Acquired on day one of the book fair, Shy Trans Banshee is the follow-up novel to Tony Santorella’s Bored Gay Werewolf, the next addition to an expanding universe of Grindr hook-ups, chosen families and magical misdeeds. Bored Gay Werewolf was an indie hit for Atlantic Books, selling close to 15,000 copies in the UK in first outing and landing film and tv rights with See-Saw, the makers of Netflix’s Heartstopper.
Tony Santorella was born and raised in Danvers, Massachusetts, site of the Salem Witch Trials and related hauntings. He moved to Washington, DC in 2005, where he waited tables until beginning his decade-long career in international development. He is the author of Bored Gay Werewolf. When he’s not writing, he’s spending time with his husband Robert and their cat, Fannie Mae.James Roxburgh says, ‘Perhaps my proudest moment as a literary publisher is being there right at the hot, soupy, primordial start of the Bored Gay Werewolf Universe™. Shy Trans Banshee is a fabulous addition to the expanding cosmos: anarchic, sharp, joyful and big-hearted, a novel that wrestles with determinism, fintech capitalism, finding your chosen people and figuring out what to sing at karaoke.’
Tony Santorella, author, says,
‘Living through one too many ‘once in a lifetime’ events can really wear a werewolf out. I’m grateful to have the support of Atlantic Books – who else would entertain my pitch of ‘what if a banshee had imposter syndrome?’ Truly cannot have a better partner for this. I’m so excited to share what’s next for the Bored Gay Werewolf Scooby Squad as they reluctantly use their supernatural gifts to fight the banal cruelty of the financial sector.’
Rights contact: Alice Latham AliceLatham@atlantic-books.co.uk
Prix Goncourt winner ‘Watching Over Her’ to Atlantic
Joanna Lee, editor at Atlantic Fiction, acquired World English rights to Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s Prix Goncourt winning Watching Over Her/Veiller sur Elle. Rights were bought from Sophie Langlais at BAM, to be translated by Frank Wynne. Watching Over Her will be published in hardback in July 2025, with a paperback to follows.
Born in 1971, Jean-Baptiste Andrea is a writer, script-writer and French director, awarded the most prestigious literary prize in France in 2023, the Prix Goncourt, and the Prix du Roman Fnac, France’s premier bookseller prize. The first part of his professional career was devoted to cinema. He is the author of Ma Reine (2017), which won the Prix Femina des Lycéens and the prix du premier roman; Cent millions d’années et un jour (2019); Des diables et des saints (2021). Veiller sur elle was published in 2023 to great critical and commercial success, with 600,000 copies circulating in France. It is currently being translated into 26 languages. Andrea’s works are renowned for their narrative and emotional strengths. He tackles themes such as childhood, friendship, art, love and loss.
Watching Over Her is a sweeping love story across the class divide set against the backdrop of political turmoil in twentieth-century Italy, following Mimo, an impoverished sculptor and Viola, the wealthy daughter of a powerful family, who love and lose each other countless times over a lifetime.
Jean-Baptiste Andrea says,
‘I’m very excited to start a new journey with Atlantic, a venture which seems to be a perfect fit for what I’m trying to achieve: literature that doesn’t forget its primary purpose: storytelling. Storytelling has a magical function, and I’m trying to have, and share, a lot of fun when writing. This book was pretty special for me. All my books are, but for this one I wanted to fully share my vision of the world, that magic I perceive behind the fabric of life. I feared for a moment that nobody would understand a story which mixes friendship, love, history, religion, politics, art, and maybe a bit of magic. Apparently, I was wrong. Phew.’
Joanna Lee says,
‘I’m delighted to be publishing Watching Over Her, a hymn to friendship and freedom that has captivated over half a million readers in France already. This is a love story for the ages: full of heart, craft and a deep commitment to the power of art, one to sit alongside perennial favourites such as Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Julian Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat. We’re thrilled to have the brilliant Frank Wynne on board to translate, and can’t wait for Watching Over Her to connect with readers across the world.’
The Art of Not Eating to Atlantic
James Pulford, senior editor, acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) including e-book, audio and serial from Kate Evans at Peters Fraser + Dunlop in a competitive four-way auction, to Jessica Hamel-Akré’s The Art of Not Eating: A Doubtful History of Appetite and Desire.
Jessica Hamel-Akré is an award-winning historian of ideas, literature and medicine, and a social sciences consultant. An expert in the history of women’s health, the body and feminist thought, she was a postdoctoral scholar in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Newnham College. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Montreal. Hamel-Akré co-created and presented on the BBC Radio 4 documentary The Unexpected History of Clean Eating.
A luminously original exploration of the relationship between appetite, diet, desire and oppression by an award-winning historian.
The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne – an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as ‘Dr Diet’ – it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women’s appetite and a personal unravelling.
In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today’s diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.
Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire and rationality, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat.
James Pulford, senior editor, says:
‘I was completely mesmerised by Jessica’s high-wire investigation into the origins of society’s troubled relationships with food, appetite and the body. The Art of Not Eating is a bold and beautifully told journey through the past that reveals how men like George Cheyne medicalized female rationality and desire in the eighteenth century, and how these disturbing and oppressive ideas are still at work today. I can’t wait to publish this brilliant book.’
Jessica Hamel-Akré says:
‘I hope this book, through its immersive form and content, will offer fresh perspectives for how we think, speak, and feel about diet culture and body image by inviting readers to reflect in unique ways on the inescapable pressure these standards put not only on our physical bodies, but on our many interactions with those we love and with ourselves. Ultimately, is it a work of reconciliation with the self.’
The Art of Not Eating will be published on 22 August 2024 as a royal hardback, trade paperback and e-book.
Award-winning Christine Dwyer Hickey ‘magnificent’ new novel Our London Lives to be published by Atlantic
Clare Drysdale, group associate publisher of Atlantic Books, has bought World English language rights to Christine Dwyer Hickey’s Our London Lives from Faith O’Grady at Lisa Richards. Our London Lives will be published in royal hardback, export trade paperback and ebook on September 5th 2024.
Christine Dwyer Hickey was born in Dublin and is a novelist and short story writer. Her most recent novel, The Narrow Land, won two major prizes: the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the inaugural Dalkey Literary Award. 2020 also saw her 2004 novel Tatty chosen for UNESCO’s Dublin One City One Book promotion. Her work has been widely translated into European and Arabic languages. She is an elected member of Aosdana, the Irish academy of arts.
- In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.
Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.
Christine Dwyer Hickey says,
‘When I was young, I worked one summer as a barmaid in London. From behind the bar, I watched the melting pot of London life – so different to the Dublin where I was reared. Over the years, I have often gone back. I have watched London change shape and have noted the psychological effect it has on its people. There are two main characters with Irish roots in this novel, Milly, a poor Irish Protestant who becomes a barmaid, and Pip, a boxer who has an English father. They are not part of the Irish community in London, nor do they ever really fit into their London lives. Yet London enables them to be who they are – invisible and, at the same time, part of something. The novel is a love story of sorts, following the lives of two misfits over a period of forty years. And it’s a meditation on the city of London over the same period. It looks at many things: isolation, alcoholism and the peculiarities of the human heart.’
Clare Drysdale, group associate publisher of Atlantic Books, says,
‘This magnificent, epic, irresistible story feels like the book Christine Dwyer Hickey was born to write. I read it with my whole heart, profoundly moved as I followed Christine’s beautifully-formed characters through decades and changes of fortune. Anyone who fell for Trespasses or Normal People or One Day will want to surrender to Our London Lives immediately, but ultimately this wondrous book is its very own thing, a gripping love story expressed in gorgeous language.’
Human Rights, Robot Wrongs – pioneering AI book to Atlantic
James Pulford, senior editor at Atlantic, acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Susie Alegre’s Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI from Charlie Brotherstone at Aevitas Creative Management UK, to be published on 2 May 2024 as a B-format flapped paperback original and in e-book.
Susie Alegre is a leading international human rights lawyer who has worked for NGOs like Amnesty International and international organisations around the world. She is currently a Member of the Commission for Control of Interpol’s Files and is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). She has been a legal pioneer in the field of digital rights. Susie’s first book, Freedom to Think, received wide acclaim, was chosen as a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and the Telegraph, and longlisted for the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing and shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize.
An urgent and pioneering argument for a better future, Human Rights, Robot Wrongs reveals why we must protect our human rights in the age of AI.
No longer an uncertain technology of the distant future, artificial intelligence has already started to shape every aspect of our daily lives, from how we think to who we love.
In this urgent polemic, leading international human rights lawyer Susie Alegre shines a light on the ways in which artificial intelligence poses a grave threat to our fundamental human rights – including the rights to life, liberty and fair trial; the right to private and family life; and the right to free expression – and why we must protect those rights.
Exploring the profound ethical dilemmas posed by emerging technologies, and full of fascinating case studies, Human Rights, Robot Wrongs is a rallying cry for humanity in the age of AI.
Susie Alegre says:
‘The existential risks of AI are not theoretical future threats. Deployment of AI and emerging technologies is already having profound impacts on the way we live and what it means to be human. This book reminds us that none of this is inevitable – we can use our human rights to chart a future that benefits us all.’
James Pulford says:
‘From big tech whistleblowers warning that artificial intelligence is out of control to large language models taking the world by storm, 2023 was the year AI finally entered the mainstream. In Human Rights, Robot Wrongs Susie brings the moral urgency and deep humanity readers will recognise from her last book, Freedom to Think, to the task of showing how our fundamental human rights are under threat – and why we must protect them. We are delighted to be publishing Susie again.’
Corvus pre-empts Berlin Duet by S. W. Perry
Corvus has pre-empted Berlin Duet, an epic tale of love, espionage and war that flits between silent-movie Hollywood, the nightclubs of pre-war Vienna and the ruins of Soviet-occupied Berlin.
Sarah de Souza, editor at Corvus, bought world rights for the novel from Jane Judd at Jane Judd Literary Agency. Berlin Duet will be published in hardback and eBook in August 2024.
Described by the publisher as a “lush, moving, ambitious novel of a love which endures the devastations of war”, Berlin Duet follows English spy Harry Taverner and Jewish photographer Anna Cantrell, whose lives become unexpectedly intertwined over two tumultuous decades. In 1934, they share a night dancing at Berlin’s most elegant hotel before parting ways, neither expecting to meet again as the shadow of Nazism darkens Europe. But years later, they cross paths amongst the ruins of a defeated Germany, and their fateful reunion sparks a stunning revelation that binds their shared pasts. As the Cold War dawns, Harry and Anna walk a treacherous line between love and duty, integrity and survival, fear and faith.
“S. W. Perry’s rich, intelligent prose has been beloved by readers of the Jackdaw series for years and this book marks an exciting new chapter in his acclaimed body of work,” de Souza said. “Berlin Duet is a love story, a spy story and an epic page-turner that made me laugh, weep and gasp with surprise and will delight historical fiction fans everywhere.”
S. W. Perry said:
“I’m thrilled that the fantastic team at Corvus who made the Jackdaw series a success, have helped me tell a story I’ve been itching to write since the November day in 1989 when I stood in the crowd at Checkpoint Charlie and watched the Berlin Wall open up.”
S.W. Perry worked as a broadcast journalist with several radio stations before retraining as an airline pilot. His debut novel, The Angel’s Mark, was listed for the CWA Historical Dagger.
Twelve Sheep go to Allen & Unwin UK
Allen & Unwin UK have acquired World rights in all languages from Marianne Gunn O’Connor in John Connell’s Twelve Sheep: Life Lessons from a Lambing Season. Twelve Sheep will be published in B-format hardback and ebook on April 4th 2024, with an audio sublicense to WH Howes.
For John Connell, the lambing season on his County Longford farm begins in the autumn. In the sheep shed, he surveys the dozen females in his care and contemplates the work ahead as the season slowly turns to winter, then spring. Like the flock that he shepherds, Twelve Sheep is both simple and profound, a meditation on the rituals of farming life and a primer on the lessons that nature can teach us. As spring returns and the sheep and their lambs are released into the fields, skipping with joy, John recalls the words of Henry David Thoreau, reminding us to ‘live in each season as it passes.’
John Connell is a multi-award-winning author, film producer, investigative journalist and farmer. His documentary programs have won over a dozen international awards. His number-one bestselling memoir The Cow Book was awarded Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2018. He lives in County Longford.
John Connell says,
‘I am just so thrilled to have Twelve Sheep published with the Allen & Unwin UK imprint of Atlantic Books. It’s a real dream come true after a number of years working on this book. As a farmer and a writer, I can’t wait to share my new work with the world.’
Clare Drysdale, Group Associate Publisher of Atlantic Books, says,
‘John Connell’s The Cow Book was an absolute sensation for Granta in 2018, winning awards and supergluing itself to the Irish Times top ten for months. We feel extremely fortunate to be working with John on his love letter to another cherished form of livestock. This is a book which will enlighten and inspire all who read it.’
‘A beautiful and soothing book, at once far-reaching and intimate, it serves as a sublime exhortation to stop and savour our precious and fleeting time on earth, to be grateful for the life we’re given.’ – Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island
Atlantic Books acquires a revealing new history that uncovers the life of a powerful and charismatic Ancient Roman woman
Atlantic Non-Fiction Editorial Director James Nightingale has bought UK and Commonwealth rights in A Thoroughly Rapacious Female: How Fulvia Played the Game, Broke All the Rules, Won, and then Lost in Ancient Rome by Jane Draycott from Doug Young at PEW Literary. A Thoroughly Rapacious Female will be published in hardback in 2025.
A Thoroughly Rapacious Female tells the dramatic story of Fulvia, who amassed a degree of political and military power unprecedented for a woman in Ancient Rome at that time. Married three times to men who moved in powerful circles, including Marc Antony, Fulvia was not content to play the usual background role that was required of a wife, instead she challenged the Roman patriarchy and sought to increase her influence in the face of determined opposition. Her actions had such an impact on Roman society that abusive tirades were written about her by male detractors, such as Cicero and Plutarch, who disapproved of such unfeminine behaviour.
Using original sources to piece together her life and sort fact from fiction, while also exploring the role of women in Roman society, Jane Draycott retells Fulvia’s life anew and offers an original and fascinating take on the chaotic period when Rome was violently transitioning from a republic to the dictatorship of the Roman Empire.
Dr Jane Draycott is a Roman historian and archaeologist, and the author of Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen, published by Head of Zeus in the UK and Liveright in the USA. She was awarded a BA (Hons) in Archaeology and Ancient History and an MA in Ancient History from Cardiff University, an MSc in Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology from Cranfield University, and a PhD in Classics from the University of Nottingham. Jane is currently Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Glasgow and co-director of the University of Glasgow’s Games and Gaming Lab.
Jane Draycott says,
‘I’m delighted to be moving to Atlantic Books to further my career as a popular historian. They are the perfect platform from which to launch A Thoroughly Rapacious Female and unleash Fulvia on the world. With her as our guide, we can visit an unfamiliar Rome, one in which women played a crucial, albeit less high profile, role in many of the events leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic.’
James Nightingale says,
‘I’ve long been looking for a smart, original and engaging work of classical history and A Thoroughly Rapacious Female delivers that and more. Jane is an incredibly talented historian and storyteller, and we are all very excited to be publishing her on the Atlantic non-fiction list.’
Doug Young says,
‘Jane has done a wonderful job of bringing Fulvia back to life. Part of her task has been to reverse-engineer a life story from the screeds of invective written over the years by men like Cicero and Plutarch, who clearly hated Fulvia and could not countenance the idea of a powerful woman. Fascinating and revelatory stuff!’
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