in his field of expertise – detective literature. However, the detective work will be more than merely academic. In the mountains, barriers break down, and a truth that was hidden for years is about to be revealed. Is it possible that one of the guests is, in fact, a murderer? As always with Maya Arad’s works, BEHIND THE MOUNTAIN combines multiple genres while staying true to all of them. This is a perfect golden-age mystery and at the same time a contemporary academic novel, a meditation on literature, and a biting satire on immigration in the Bay Area. Above all, it is a moving tale about human nature: love, hate, envy, and the entire range of emotions that bring people to the verge of crime – and beyond. World rights ex. Israel: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann KATE BIRDSALL KATE BIRDSALL was born in the heart of America’s “Rust Belt”. She is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, where she teaches first-year writing, creative writing, cultural studies, and an interdisciplinary arts and humanities class on representations of crime in American popular culture. Previously, she was a manager for a motion picture exhibition corporation. When not writing, she plays in the all-girl grunge-rock band Pink Plush. Kate is hard at work on the second in the Det. Boyle series. FORMS IN THE SHADOWS (Red Adept, August 2017) FORMS IN THE SHADOWS introduces Det. Elizabeth Boyle, a Special Homicide detective with a mind as sharp as her tongue, a disdain for grey areas, and a distinct aversion to introspection. When Boyle is called down to the seedy Cleveland Flats to tackle a new case, she can’t help the cold sweats when she sees the small figure beneath the sheet. Det. Boyle is a tough nut, but she hates kid cases: Liz Boyle was once one of three siblings, until her baby sister’s disappearance almost thirty years ago. It’s a dark chapter in the family’s past, with echoes that still haunt the three remaining members. When Liz and her partner get to work hunting
for the killer of young Kevin Whittle, they find that nothing is as it seems. No one, not even the victim’s family, seems prepared to tell the full story. But things take a sudden turn for the worse when DNA evidence comes back linking the victim to Liz’s brother Christopher. Liz knows Christopher didn’t do it… doesn’t she? Behind the curtain, someone else is pulling the strings, someone whose past may have intersected with Liz’s a long time back. But who? Kate Birdsall’s setting is an American heartland of overlapping universes: from below-the-breadline families to high-powered academia, sleazy finance moguls and exotic dancers, with the cold wind from lake Erie never far away. World English rights: Red Adept. Audio rights: Audible Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Hoffmann PIEDAD BONNETT PIEDAD BONNETT is a Colombian poet, playwright and novelist. She has published eight poetry books, four novels, and five plays. She has represented Colombia in numerous poetry festivals including the Berlin International Literature Festival and Hay Festival in Segovia. LO QUE NO TIENE NOMBRE, a ground-breaking memoir of her son’s life, struggle with mental illness, and suicide, was a national sensation. THAT WHICH HAS NO NAME (LO QUE NO TIENE NOMBRE) (Alfaguara Colombia, 2013) “We cross the kitchen and the little living room and slowly enter the bedroom. The first thing my eyes register is the enormous open window, and beyond it the fire escape that leads to the street. I examine it all briefly, in one glance: the scrupulously made bed, the desk crowded with books, the notebooks that have taken over the bedside table. For a few seconds we say nothing, we do nothing, even though a storm of emotions is roiling inside us. Then Camila opens the closet and we see the shoes lined up, the organized sweaters and shirts. It’s the room of a meticulous, rigorous, tidy person. Confused, exchanging short sentences that seek to be efficient, we divide the spaces
ambitious book about Benjamin ever written.” World English rights: Stanford University Press. Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann ISAAC MARION Marion was born in north-western Washington in 1981 and has lived in and around Seattle his whole life, working a variety of strange jobs like delivering deathbeds to hospice patients and supervising parental visits for foster-kids. His debut, WARM BODIES, was a New York Times bestseller and the basis for the hit movie of the same name, produced by Summit Films (“Twilight”), starring Nicholas Hoult and John Malkovich. His website is: . THE BURNING WORLD (Emily Bestler Books, February 2017) Being alive is hard. Being human is harder. But since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress. He’s learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love, and the city’s undead population is showing signs of life. R can almost imagine a future with Julie, the girl who restarted his heart—building a new world from the ashes of the old one. And then helicopters appear on the horizon. Someone is trying to return things to the way they were, the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak. With their home overrun by madmen, R, Julie, and their ragged group of refugees plunge into the otherworldly wastelands of America in search of answers. But there are some answers R doesn’t want to find. A past life, an old shadow, crawling up from the basement The New York Times bestseller WARM BODIES captured hearts worldwide in twenty-five languages, inspiring a major film and a cult fandom. Now R the reluctant zombie continues his journey in this sequel.
American rights: Emily Bestler Books. UK and Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann. Sold in Korea (Minumin) and the UK (Vintage) Film rights: Howard Sanders at UTA DAPHNE MERKIN DAPHNE MERKIN is a former staff writer for The New Yorker. One of the most sought after cultural critics in the US, she has written regularly for Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. Her previous books include ENCHANTMENT, a novel, and the essay collections DREAMING OF HITLER and THE FAME LUNCHES, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in New York City. THIS CLOSE TO HAPPY – A Reckoning with Depression (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, February 2017) Born into privilege but deprived of the most elemental human warmth throughout her childhood, Daphne Merkin showed signs of a melancholy disposition from an early age. Now, many decades later, she casts her penetrating gaze back on her life – a life of considerable professional and artistic accomplishments, but also a life lived in the shadow of often severe depression. Trying to understand a condition that afflicts millions all over the world, Merkin carefully investigates the possible causes of depression in her own and other people’s lives, and candidly discusses her on-going quest to make sense of an illness that steadfastly refuses to succumb to rational explanations. Erudite and wide-ranging, intimate and unapologetic, THIS CLOSE TO HAPPY is destined to join modern classics like William Styron’s DARKNESS VISIBLE, Lewis Wolpert’s MALIGNANT SADNESS, and Andrew Solomon’s THE NOONDAY DEMON, as an essential text on what Winston Churchill famously called the “Black Dog.” World English rights: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann
Audrey niffenegger and Eddie campbell AUDREY NIFFENEGGER’s debut, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, has sold more than seven million copies, been translated into forty languages and released as a film in August 2009. HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY (Scribner, 2009) was another New York Times and international bestseller. Niffenegger is also the author of three “novels-in-pictures,” THE THREE INCESTUOUS SISTERS, THE ADVENTURESS, and THE NIGHT BOOKMOBILE. She collaborated with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, on an original ballet entitled “Raven Girl”, with the accompanying illustrated novella published in May 2013. Niffenegger’s visual art resides in permanent collections of the Library of Congress and Harvard University’s Houghton Library. INVITING DEMONS TO TEA – A Graphic Story Collection (Abrams, 2018) Written by Audrey Niffenegger and illustrated by acclaimed graphic novelist Eddie Campbell (FROM HELL), INVITING DEMONS TO TEA is a collection of sixteen stories about love, loss, fairies, misbehavior, regret, misguided generosity, wanton wrongheadedness, cats, supernatural exterminators, girls with problems, guys who are too polite, spies, ghosts, anorexia nervosa, more cats, more fairies, and a handful of ex-boyfriends – and, ultimately, about the strangeness of humans, how we are tender and horrible and how we try very very hard to behave ourselves but somehow never quite get it right. North American rights: Abrams. UK and Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann. Sold in the UK (Jonathan Cape) Film rights: Regal Hoffmann GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS is the author of the global publishing sensation SHANTARAM, which has been published in more than three dozen languages and sold close to four million copies worldwide.
(Bloomsbury USA, January 2017) A masterful, enthralling debut novel about fate, family secrets, and the stories our bodies tell. Magdalena has an unsettling gift. She sees the truth about people written on their dates, details both banal and profound—and her only relief from the onslaught of information is to take off her glasses and let the world recede. Mercifully, her own skin is blank. When she Neil, she is intrigued to see her name on his cheek. He’s in Paris for the summer, studying a medieval pilgrimage to the coast of Spain, where the body of Saint Jacques is said to have washed ashore, covered in scallop shells. Magdalena, desperate to make things right after her best friend dies—a tragedy she might have on her own pilgrimage, but not before Neil falls for her, captivated by her pale eyes, charming Eastern European accent, and aura of heartbreak. Neil’s father, Richard, is also in Paris, searching for the truth about his late mother, a famous expatriate American novelist who abandoned him at birth. All his life Richard has clung to a single memory of his mother—her red shoes—which her biographers agree he never could have seen. Kirkus says: “Fans of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife will love Saunders' debut, which takes up the mantle of myth, history, and storytelling with beautiful, sure-footed prose.” World English rights: Bloomsbury. Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann. Sold in Poland (Kobiece) Film rights: Regal Hoffmann LEE SIEGEL Lee Siegel has been a senior editor and TV critic at the New Republic, book critic for the Nation, staff writer at Harper’s, Talk magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and weekly columnist for the New York Observer and the Daily Beast. His writing has been published by every major magazine and newspaper in the US, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Review of Books. In 2002, Siegel received the National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. THE DRAW – A Memoir (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, April 2017)
Hoping to make a killing in New Jersey real estate, the author’s father, Monroe Siegel, takes a draw from his employer against unearned commission. When the recession hits in the 1970s, Monroe finds himself owing a small fortune to his firm. He sinks toward divorce and bankruptcy, while Lola, Lee's mother, suffers a nervous breakdown that turns her into a different person. Shamed and enraged by his father’s fate, Lee to make a different life for himself. He goes to a private college in the Midwest, is forced to leave due to his father’s bankruptcy, and returns to New Jersey to work a series of menial jobs. He enrolls at a state college and then drops out to seek a better existence abroad, only to return to the United States in debt and in despair. Suddenly, a promising new life opens to him. At a price. THE DRAW touches on fundamental questions: How do we balance our obligations to ourselves with our obligations to others? What do we owe society? Written with startling candor and psychological acuity, Lee Siegel’s THE DRAW is for anyone who has ever struggled with money, or who has tried to break through the barriers of family and class. World English rights: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann
CHILDREN’S & YA TITLES JONATHAN AUXIER JONATHAN AUXIER grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and obtained his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of PETER NIMBLE AND HIS FANTASTIC EYES (Abrams, 2011) and of THE NIGHT GARDENER (Abrams, 2014), which won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, was a Junior Library Guild selection, an Editor’s Pick Best Book by Amazon, and a Top Ten Pick for the American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next list. SOPHIE QUIRE AND THE LAST STORYGUARD (Abrams, April 2016) Twelve-year-old Sophie Quire knows little beyond the four walls of her father’s bookshop. Sophie is a bookmender, salvaging damaged books and dreaming of a more exciting life. But when a strange boy and his even stranger enchanted companion show up with a rare and mysterious book, she is pulled into an adventure beyond anything she has ever read. The boy and his companion, Peter Nimble and Sir Tode, have been sent on a mission: to restore The Book of Who. This book, when combined with its companions When, Where, and What, will give their reader the ability to speak true magic into the world. But when the book and Sophie are kidnapped, it’s just the beginning of a series of daring rescues for Sophie, Peter and Sir Tode. American rights: Abrams. UK & Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann. Sold in Canada (Penguin), China (Trustbridge), Poland (MAC), and Vietnam (Huy Hoang) Film rights: Regal Hoffmann THE SOOT (Abrams, 2018) In the spirit of such classic children’s works as CHARLOTTE’S WEB, Jonathan Auxier’s fully illustrated THE SOOT GOLEM will tell the story of Nan Sparrow, a
orphan who works as a “climbing boy” for a vindictive chimney sweep named Wilkie Crudd. Climbing boys were essentially child slaves in England throughout the 18th and 19th century—the work was brutal and dangerous. Most climbing boys started at age five or six and didn’t live to see their tenth birthday. Nan has managed to survive in this brutal world because she is very good at her job. She was taught how to sweep by her father, who disappeared when she was very small. And she holds out hope that he will someday return to her. When Nan’s every treasured possession is thrown into a fireplace, she unwittingly creates a golem from the ashes of everything she loves. The Golem is a childlike creature named Charlie—as innocent as he is strong. He is able to move through chimneys, and he and Nan create a secret home in an abandoned attic. Even in the darkness and pain of Nan’s life, she is able to show Charlie beauty in the world, and in doing so, she ends up saving herself from despair. Meanwhile Charlie will help Nan find a way to free herself, and the other climbing boys, from Wilkie Crudd. But Charlie can’t be Nan’s hero forever… when Nan created Charlie, one of the “ingredients” was a twelve-month calendar, and that dictated his life span. When the twelve months are up, it will be time for Charlie to pass… World English rights: Abrams. Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann PAUL DURHAM PAUL DURHAM is the author of the LUCK UGLIES trilogy (HarperCollins, 2014-2016), which has received, among others, the ALA Notable Children’s Book Award (2015), the New York Public Library Best Children’s Book (2014), and the Cybils Award for Middle Grade Speculative Fiction (2014). GOYLE, GROTESQUE (Crown Children’s Books, Spring 2018)
learned, and marrying their high school sweethearts. That’s okay with Penny: she’s always known she’d run her mom’s diner, and she’s happy with her boyfriend Logan, whom she’s known since 5th grade. What’s wrong with a cozy life? A small, perfect life. But Penny has a talent. Her high school drama coach thinks she could go far – and when she unexpectedly gets a scholarship to a prestigious acting summer camp, she can't pass it up. But that doesn’t mean anything’s really going to change, right? It’s just one summer. Then slowly, the people she meets at Breakthrough – including a boy called Chase – make her realize how big the world is, and how much other people have been taught to expect from it. Can she really go back to her old life, and be happy? English rights: HarperCollins. UK & Translation rights: Regal Hoffmann Film rights: Regal Hoffmann LIESL SHURTLIFF SHURTLIFF grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah as the fourth child in a combined family of eight. She studied Music, Dance, and Theater at Brigham Young University. Liesl currently resides in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and three children. Her website can be found at . Her previous novels are RUMP: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin (Knopf BFYR, April 2014), JACK: The True Story of Jack and the Beanstalk (Knopf BFYR, April 2015), and RED: The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood (Knopf BFYR, April 2016). They are all New York Times bestsellers. GRUMP: The True Story of the Seventh Dwarf Books for Young Readers, September 2017) Borlen is a dwarf – but he doesn’t love digging for gems like the other dwarflings. He doesn’t like tunnels. And instead of being afraid of heights like any sensible dwarf, he is afraid of depths. He just doesn’t fit in. When he’s assigned to a mining crew and sent down to the diamond mines, his parents are very proud, but Borlen is horrified. The rest of his crew – the Six – don’t understand him. One of them, Rudger, bullies Borlen, and one day they get into a fight that causes part of the mine to collapse. Borlen is