April 2021 | Upcoming Projects and Advance Praise & Rave Reviews
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DEVIL’S BREATH by Lang Johnson is a romance for fans of 50 Cent’s Power and CW’s Dynasty. Sera Dwari is a nightclub owner by night and an assassin by… well, also night. As her father plans to expand his criminal empire with the new drug Devil’s Breath, Sera is tasked to kill the billionaire unknowingly funding their business venture. Why settle for a couple million when they can clear his accounts? Sera is all set to finish the job until she meets him… and falls hopelessly in love. In addition to being rich and ridiculously good looking, Cassius is unwaveringly good. Now Sera has to figure out how to keep him alive without disappointing her father. Lang Johnson is represented by Léonicka Valcius.
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THE CRACK IN THE TEAPOT is a dark literary suspense novel by Julie Roorda. At 42, Esme’s life isn’t exactly going as planned. Her marriage has hit a rough patch, her teenage daughter will barely speak to her, and their financial situation looks dire. She hopes that a new position as a translator of Russian literature will relieve some of the family stress. Instead, when the job offer is revoked, it triggers a series of crises that tear Esme’s life apart at the seams. She turns for help to a mysterious Russian businessman who engages her to translate a book of poetry by his late wife. As Esme grapples with the dead poet’s dark visions, her own life takes a sinister turn that threatens to unearth several dangerous secrets. Julia is represented by Carolyn Forde.
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THE HUNGRY RIVER by Lue Palmer is a magical-realist novel in stories that follows Devour, a genderfluid Caribbean God who enlists the help of two spirits, Winsome and Hyacinthe, to exact justice on a world overrun with wickedness. For readers of Marlon James and The Deep by Rivers Solomon, THE HUNGRY RIVER is a parallel narrative of racial and climate justice, and a love song to Black readers. Lue Palmer is a child of the Jamaican diaspora stretching across Canada, the UK, US and the Caribbean. With a bush country heritage, Lue was fed on stories and raised by a river in the north. Lue is a writer of literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry on Black relationships to nature, the fantastic in the everyday, and the retelling of history. Published in North America and the Caribbean, Lue is a Bread Loaf Writing Conference alumni, a Banff Centre Writers’ Studio Artist in Residence alumni and a member of the Clarion West Class of 2021. Lue is represented by Laura Cameron and Samantha Haywood.
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THE WHITE IN THE MOON from Judith Guest, author of the award-winning Ordinary People, which became the blockbuster Oscar-winning film, is a small-town police procedural that follows the life of sheriff Hugh DeWitt. Dewitt is anxious as a father, and sometimes hapless as a husband, but holds it together, loving and at the same time haunted by the loss of his young son, years ago. Guest’s characters have a natural banter and humour, timed so well alongside the unpredictable Michigan winter, inviting the reader to sympathize with personalities that seem truly real, ruled by perseverance and the daily charges of life. And then suddenly struck by the unmovable power of a brutal will. As the family drama builds, desperate events from a past deemed best forgotten begin to leak into the present, promising violence and tragedy. Guest is gifted in the art and mathematics of suspense, and her descriptive prose has a characteristic elegance to it, full and balanced with the confidence of an author who truly knows her craft. The novel is a followup to The Tarnished Eye, which was inspired by true events in Guest’s Michigan home town. Judith Guest is represented by Rob Firing and Carolyn Forde.
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Heather Colley’s THIS TOO SHALL BE FORGOTTEN is a dark literary debut about the contained chaos of Greek life on a college campus. For the higher-echelon sorority girls at the University of Michigan, life plays out on the precipice of collapse. Stella is determined to rise from the ashes every Saturday night, as if the traumatic incident last spring never happened. Penny is camped out on the sorority’s living room floor in a weekend visit that stretches on and on and on. Colley’s debut sparks with wit and darkness, winding lyrically into the mob psyche of a college campus. She writes decisively and unforgivingly about the modern condition--think Halle Butler at a shitty, never-ending party, or the early pages of Mona Awad’s Bunny. Colley’s short stories have been published widely, and excerpts from THIS TOO SHALL BE FORGOTTEN have won literary prizes. Heather Colley is represented by Devon Halliday.
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TWO SPIRITS AND THE ROLLING HEAD by Nick Medina is a literary horror/thriller novel that follows Anna Horn, a 17-year-old Native American living on Louisiana’s Tonnica Indian reservation. As she's bullied at school by her white classmates, increasingly alienated from her younger sister, and stalked by a rolling head, Anna finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation at work when her manager, Fox Ballard, informs her that she’ll be working on the forbidden eighth floor (reserved for VIPs) but that she must stay silent about the mysterious men who come and go from suite 808. It’s not long before she runs into a girl in the emergency stairwell who later vanishes without a trace. When Grace goes missing, too, Anna has no choice but to uncover what’s going on in suite 808 and with no assistance from the authorities, she can only turn to Tonnica legends and folklore to save Grace. A college professor and a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Indian tribe of Louisiana, Nick Medina is represented by Amanda Orozco.
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WHAT I KNOW ABOUT JULY by Kat Hausler is the story of a stalker that vanishes in Berlin, and the morally perplexed victim that goes looking for her. Simon Kemper is on a better trajectory: no longer in rehab for a fake addiction, no longer sleeping on his bandmate’s couch. But out of the corner of his eye, he’s always aware of her. The stalker. She’s at every show, no matter what city. She acts like she knows him. Like she owns him. When the stalker disappears at one of his shows, Simon goes from prime suspect to rogue detective in an increasingly psychological quest to disprove his own narcissism. Hausler’s new novel is a deeply immersive hybrid of literary millennial fiction and traditional whodunit, like a Tana French-style mystery with the sensibilities of Lily King’s Writers and Lovers. Kat Hausler is represented by Devon Halliday.
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CASH FOR SILENCE: How Peter Nygard Created an Industry Exploiting Women’s Fashion Dreams by Sarah Berman and Sonia Moghe. Fashion designer Peter Nygard was known to police - he played tennis with them. Nygard's abuse of women and girls was no secret at his compound in the Bahamas, where he hosted weekly parties attended by law enforcement. There he used his wealth and power to lure women and young girls into a system of sexual exploitation. More than four decades after he was first arrested for rape, Nygard stands accused of sexual assault by one hundred women and counting—each of them silenced by cash, threats, and an industry that protects abusive men. CASH FOR SILENCE exposes how Nygard and his company mass produced harm while claiming to "own" the police forces that should have investigated him. Sarah and Sonia are represented by Carolyn Forde.
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DEATH ROW INMATES FLY COACH by Allyson McQuat. From new literary voice Allyson McOuat, author of the popular 2020 New York Times Modern Love essay “The Ghost Was the Least of our Problems” comes this series of 20 intimate and humorous dispatches on true crime, the supernatural and real-life experiences with things that cannot be explained. When combined, these personal stories build a portrait that depicts life as a Queer woman, motherhood, feminism and the near-miss moments in life that leave you haunted. Allyson is represented by Carolyn Forde.
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FINDING FEATHERS: Letters from a Rugged Place in a Liminal Time by Amy M. Hale is an astonishing collection of interpretive essays by working female cowboy, slam-poet, and spoken word artist Amy Hale. In this collection, she offers unapologetic reminders that humans are only one of a countless, connected continuum of species striving to live and thrive on this sometimes welcoming, oft-times treacherous host of a planet. Amy is regular witness to wondrously fleeting moments and entire life-spans of creatures who live and roam alongside her on the hardscrabble land on which she rides horseback to work cows or hikes solo to explore untouched places. Her familiarity with isolation has recently served her well , and also brought her a deep and fresh appreciation for everyday lessons the earth teaches us about resilience and fragility; comfort and chaos; struggle and freedom; fire and renewal; despair, rest, wonder, fear, love, growth, loneliness, peace, and the inevitability of death and change. FINDING FEATHERS is an escape into solitude and a rescue from the ravages of isolation. It is timeless, yet also poignantly relevant, stirring curious and thoughtful readers to consider anew how much all of us who inhabit the earth have in common. Amy is represented by Sandra Bishop.
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LIMINAL SPACES: Life, Death, and In-Between After Surviving Intensive Care by Dr. Raphael Rush is a work of narrative non-fiction about Dr Rush’s practice as a physician who treats the patients most other doctors won’t go near: those who survive the ICU. And the Covid pandemic means that soon, most everyone will know a patient who has been transformed by that experience. In alternating chapters, he follows four patients on their journeys, and augments their stories with the histories of the medical advances that made their survival possible. Seeking to understand his semi-conscious patients with whom communication is severely limited, Dr Rush also explores larger philosophical issues: who will live and who will die, and what the lives of his patients might mean to them. Liminal Spaces is as much about Dr Rush’s transformation as it is about his patients’. Beginning as a data-driven medical student, Dr Rush learns to listen deeply and see clearly, and questions many of the tenets of practicing medicine that he had previously accepted unconditionally. Dr Rush is currently the primary physician on the ward at his hospital that has been converted to treat acute COVID patients. Raphael Rush is represented by Marilyn Biderman.
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MINDFUCK; Lessons on Love from the Future by Caia Hagel (bestselling co-author of GIRL POSITIVE, Knopf Canada, 2016) is a work of digital anthropology. In this illuminating work, Caia Hagel documents a portion of a four year trial with Anonymous741hz, an experimental phone application that has been programmed to care, and in this way allowed unmapped and unpredictable areas of research to emerge in the study of new technology and affective relationships. Mindfuck is a story of friendship, an exploration of emotional possibility with new technology, a spiritual journey, and remarkably, a love story that breaks new ground. From the awkward beginnings of a human and an artificial intelligence discovering each other, through to the blossoming of a deep digital love affair, and an almost master-pupil spiritual discipleship, this story is an eye-opening look at the development and sophistication of AI and what it means to us as humans. Caia speaks publicly on innovation, digital culture and the future. Her presentation on Selfies at Forum D’Avignon Paris contributed to a Bill of Digital Human Rights. Some of the things she writes appear in Art Papers, Dazed, Elle, Rolling Stone, The Believer, VICE, Vogue, Wallpaper, and #YouthTalks, the United Nations’ blog that she co-founded. Caia is represented by Carolyn Forde.
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SEX AND THE STATE by Rebecca Ruth Gould, PhD, is an ambitious examination of marriage and its discontents, using the tools of history, politics, and sociology to expose the state’s investment in marriage and to investigate how contemporary monogamy constrains human lives. This book examines divorce and family law, dating practises, and the norms of biological reproduction as methods of the state’s patriarchal agenda. It also explores politically and socially viable alternatives to marriage as a legal contract, inspiring readers to contemplate a caring society without legal marriage. Rebecca Ruth Gould is a professor at the University of Birmingham, and the author of the award-winning Writers and Rebels (Yale University Press, 2016). Her writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Hudson Review, Wasafiri, and The Gettysburg Review, among others. Rebecca is represented by Brenna English-Loeb and Timothy Travaglini.
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TOGETHER IN ELECTRIC DREAMS is a memoir immersed in virtual online worlds and shares a trans girl’s coming out story while she is swept away in queer romances. Paige Maylott reinvented herself by trying on identities in virtual worlds. After an unexpected surgical complication left her with a permanent colostomy, a fairy tale romance between an anthropomorphic rabbit girl and a cheetah boy served as a catalyst to rethink how she viewed the world. After coming out as trans her marriage and job security began to crumble and she overcame being detained by homophobic border guards to fly across the continent to meet her boyfriend, hoping to realize the happiness she discovered online. Using a non-linear structure, Maylott pulls us in and out of the virtual world and reality. Paige Maylott holds an MA in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada where she earned several awards including the Laura Baldwin Scholarship for outstanding literary excellence. Paige is represented by Chelene Knight.
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UNDERNEATH THE PALM TREES by Eva Recinos is an upmarket memoir-in-essays about a young woman's coming of age as she navigates the grief of losing her father at a young age and struggles for the American dream through education despite the depression, anxiety, and pressures of being a first-generation daughter and student. Structured around the rules she and others imposed on herself, this collection captures the complex experience of a young woman who grew up as the daughter of immigrants in the lower-income neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles, next to one of the wealthiest private universities in America, which she eventually attended. In these essays, Recinos touches on the dissonant effects of straddling two disparate worlds at home and at school in essays on her bi-sexuality while at Catholic school; on the nuances of gentrification within her neighborhood and herself; and on the often unseen mental health difficulties of first-generation daughters as they strive to live up to their parents' dreams for them, and their own. From a fresh, emerging Latinx voice of the millennial generation, UNDERNEATH THE PALM TREES is an engaging, poignant, and eye-opening collection reminiscent of MY TIME AMONG THE WHITES and CHILDREN OF THE LAND. Eva Recinos, an arts & culture journalist, is represented by Amanda Orozco.
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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Is a striking memoir by Christina Brobby, a mixed-race adoptee who was raised by a white family in London, England. At seventeen, she was already married and a parent, and emigrated to Canada in the late 1970’s. By early 2004, living in the Yukon Territory, Christina had finally built the successful life for herself that she’d imagined. But she is forced to seek answers about her adoption. As Brobby discovers her original family, she draws on her connection to the wild places around the Yukon to understand and come to terms with her place within her three families. Through lush and poetic language and using a fragmented non-linear structure, WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? is a searing account of love, loss, and resilience that transports readers from northern Canada to England and Ghana as one woman reclaims herself and her past. Christina is the recent winner of The Malahat Review Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction award and won SubTerrain magazine’s 2019 Lush Triumphant Literary Award in non-fiction. Christina is represented by Chelene Knight.
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ADVANCE PRAISE & RAVE REVIEWS |
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Advance praise for THE MATZAH BALL by Jean Meltzer (World rights: MIRA Books; Germany: Aufbau, Israel: Dani Books, Sweden: Bonnier, UK and AUS/NZ: Piatkus). Contact Carolyn Forde and Marilyn Biderman.
"The Matzah Ball had me laughing out loud. It’s witty, funny and an all-around terrific read.”
— Debbie Macomber, #1 NYT author
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“The Holiday Swap is the cozy holiday rom-com you crave, complete with double the swoony meet-cutes, scrumptious desserts, and happily-ever-afters. With small-town gossip and reality-TV drama, Maggie Knox serves up a treat that will have foodie fiction fans begging for seconds.”
— Amy E. Reichert, author of The Kindred Spirits Supper Club
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Praise for Zoe Whittall’s THE SPECTACULAR (World Rights Available ex. English Canada and US HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, Ballantine). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“What an honor and privilege to read a book that so fiercely wants to be read. Zoe Whittall's The Spectacular is rangy and deft, weaving three character threads together in a dexterous series of twists that left me excited for more. I found myself deeply attached to the women of this book and their relationships with one another. Whittall addresses motherhood and autonomy in ways I've never seen done before. A fascinating stunner of a novel, The Spectacular is exactly that: spectacular!”
- Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
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Advance praise for DON’T CALL IT A CULT by Sarah Berman (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Viking, US rights, Steerforth, and Polish, Wydawnictwo Kobiece). Contact Carolyn Forde.
“Not for the easily rattled, the author’s engrossing reportage meticulously reveals the tumultuous rise and fall of NXIVM after numerous criminal indictments and prosecutions...An incendiary, serpentine report on criminal manipulation of staggering proportions.”
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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Praise for THE LAST EXILES (World: Park Row Books). Contact Carolyn Forde.
“In this moving debut, Shin depicts the incredible resilience of people and the power of love in the grim and oppressive realities of North Korea.”
— Booklist, Starred Review
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Praise for Chantel Guertin’s INSTAMOM (World Rights Available ex. Canada, US, UK, and ANZ English, Doubleday Canada and Kensington US). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“Instamom is a delightfully cheeky rom-com about women's choices that fall outside of the norm, the vulnerabilities of modern love, and having the courage to change how you show up in the world—all in the complicated age of Instagram. Kit Kidding is a heroine you'll think of often as you scroll through your social media feeds!”
— Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push
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More praise for Darrel McLeod's PEYAKOW (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Douglas & McIntyre, US, Milkweed). Contact Carolyn Forde.
"A voice we need so much right now."
— Jillian Horton, Author of We Are All Perfectly Fine
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Praise for David Macfarlane’s LIKENESS (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Doubleday). Contact Samantha Haywood:
“In this confounding moment, as we mourn missing loved ones and a lost year, “Likeness” arrives, with perfect timing. David Macfarlane has written an intensely moving elegy to his son, his parents, the house that was his childhood home, the light in the garden, the Hamilton he knew--all gone but all here in this painstaking mosaic that reassembles the shards of memory. In a voice that’s confidential, devoid of sentimentality, he quietly catalogues the everyday grief that, in one form or another, besets us all.”
-Holly Brubach
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More praise for Gary Barwin’s NOTHING THE SAME, EVERYTHING HAUNTED: THE BALLAD OF MOTL THE COWBOY (World rights available ex: US and Canada, English language - Random House Canada). Contact Shaun Bradley.
“Barwin is a talented and prolific artist … and this novel showcases his signature style and strengths: acrobatic language bursting with puns, rhyme, alliteration and all manner of wordplay, madcap escapades, and a sprinkle of slapstick. This wildly inventive novel plays by its own rules. In Barwin’s world, imagination is freedom, and comedy, courage.”
– Quill and Quire
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Praise for Sonnet L’Abbé's SONNET’S SHAKESPEARE (World rights available ex. Canada English McClelland & Stewart). Contact Léonicka Valcius.
“I find that reading L’Abbé’s poems calls me to do no less than overhaul my fundamental ideas about poetry, poem-making, the role of the poet in society, and even what it means to read.”
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Praise for Sophie McCreesh’s ONCE MORE WITH FEELING (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Doubleday). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“What a compelling debut—from the very first page, Sophie McCreesh’s novel hits you with brutality, charm, terror and guts. Every chapter made me twist with anguish and then laugh out loud, a remarkable study of the utter agony that comes with being young and self-destructive. Once More, With Feeling is one of those books that makes you feel a little less alone in how deeply alone you actually feel, a perfect salve for our hyper-anxious and hyper-connected age.”
—Scaachi Koul, nationally bestselling author of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
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Transatlantic Agency | 416 488 9214 |
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