FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE FRANKFURT 2020 - Maria Massie Jade Wong-Baxter
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FOREIGN RIGHTS GUIDE
FRANKFURT 2020
Maria Massie
maria@mmqlit.com
Jade Wong-Baxter
jade@mmqlit.com
1
FICTION
2
Chantel Acevedo
MUSE SQUAD: The Mystery of the Tenth
The Muse Squad is back in this standalone novel, the
second in the debut middle grade duology by award
winning author Chantel Acevedo.
Callie Martinez-Silva is finally getting the hang of this
whole goddess within thing. Six months after learning
she was one of the nine muses of ancient myth, she and
the other kid-muses are ready for new adventures.
Except first Callie has to go to New York City for the
summer to visit her dad, stepmom, and new baby
brother.
Then the Muses get startling news: an unprecedented
TENTH muse has been awakened somewhere in
Queens, putting Callie in the perfect position to help find
her. And she’ll have help—thanks to a runaway mold
problem in London, Muse Headquarters is moving to the
New York Hall of Science.
But balancing missions and family-mandated arts camp
proves difficult for Callie, especially once mysterious
messages from spiders (yikes!) begin to weave a tale of
ancient injustice involving Callie’s campmate, Ari.
Now Callie and her friends have to make a choice: find the tenth muse as per orders, or trust that
sometimes fate has other plans. As chaos erupts, will the Muse Squad be able to master their
newfound powers in time to thwart the Cassandra Curse . . . or will it undo them all?
U.S./Canada: Balzer + Bray (July, 2021)
Chantel Acevedo was born in Miami to Cuban parents. She is the acclaimed author of adult novels
including The Distant Marvels, which was a finalist for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in
Fiction, and she is also a professor of English at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, where she directs
the MFA Program. Chantel lives with her personal Muse Squad, aka her family, in Florida.
3
Chantel Acevedo
MUSE SQUAD: The Cassandra Curse
“Chantel Acevedo’s middle-grade debut is a wonderful
reminder that we are all worthy of magic. Every kid will want
Callie Martinez-Silva to inspire the (s)hero within. ¡Bravo!”
– Pablo Cartaya, bestselling author of The Epic Fail of Arturo
Zamora
A debut middle-grade fantasy adventure about a Cuban
American girl who discovers that she’s one of the nine
muses of Greek mythology. Perfect for fans of The
Serpent’s Secret, the Aru Shah series, and the Percy
Jackson and the Olympians series.
Callie Martinez-Silva didn’t mean to turn her best friend
into a pop star. But when a simple pep talk leads to
miraculous results, Callie learns she’s the newest muse
of epic poetry, one of the nine muses of Greek mythology,
tasked with protecting humanity’s fate in secret.
Whisked away to muse headquarters, she joins three
recruits her age, who call themselves the Muse Squad.
Together, the junior muses use their magic to inspire and
empower—not an easy feat when you’re eleven and still
figuring out the goddess within.
When their first assignment turns out to be Callie’s exceptionally nerdy classmate Maya Rivero,
the squad comes to Miami to stay with Callie and her Cuban family. There, they discover that
Maya doesn’t just need inspiration, she needs saving from vicious Sirens out to unleash a curse
that will corrupt her destiny.
As chaos erupts, will the Muse Squad be able to master their newfound powers in time to thwart
the Cassandra Curse . . . or will it undo them all?
U.S./Canada: Balzer + Bray (July, 2020)
Chantel Acevedo was born in Miami to Cuban parents. She is the acclaimed author of adult novels
including The Distant Marvels, which was a finalist for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in
Fiction, and she is also a professor of English at the University of Miami, where she directs the MFA
Program. Muse Squad: The Cassandra Curse is her debut middle grade novel. Chantel lives with her
personal Muse Squad, aka her family, in Florida.
4
Lisa Barr
WOMAN ON FIRE
“Artful, feminist, and emotionally gripping.”
—Helen Hoang (The Kiss Quotient) on The Unbreakables
The suspenseful tale of a young journalist embroiled in
a major art scandal around a Nazi-looted masterpiece,
forcing the ultimate showdown.
“Woman on Fire”, the last masterpiece by murdered
Expressionist artist Ernst Engel, has been lost to history
for over seventy-five years. But after a secret treasure
trove of modern art, worth $1.5 billion dollars, is stolen
in Munich from the heir of Hitler’s “art thief”, rumors swirl
that the infamous painting is among the loot. Art dealer
Margaux de Laurent, the ruthless scion to the art
world’s most prominent dynasty, will stop at nothing to
stake her claim to the artwork. Meanwhile, Ellis Baum,
a fashion icon with a hidden past, is also determined to
find “Woman on Fire” and bring her home. Ellis
employs investigative reporter Dan Mansfield to help him, but insists the mission must remain top-
secret. Dan, in turn, recruits young and brilliant journalist Jules Roth to follow the trail. What begins
as a race to find a long-lost painting becomes a thrilling story of deception, revenge, and harrowing
family secrets.
In the vein of Cristina Alger’s The Banker’s Wife, with prose as glittering and luminescent as a
Klimt painting, Lisa Barr returns with a riveting novel of art and love.
US/Canada: HarperCollins (January, 2022)
Lisa Barr is the award-winning author of The Unbreakables and the historical thriller Fugitive Colors. She
served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post, managing editor of Today’s Chicago Woman, and an
editor/reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She has been featured on Good Morning America and TODAY
for her work as an author/journalist/blogger.
5
Janet Beard
THE BALLAD OF LAUREL SPRINGS: A NOVEL
“Both page-turning and illuminating, The Atomic City Girls brings
to life an eerie piece of world history.”
—Madeline Miller, NYT bestselling author of The Song of
Achilles and Circe
From Janet Beard, internationally bestselling author of The
Atomic City Girls, comes a new novel, set in and around
the mountains of Tennessee, moving across 120 years to
tell the story of multiple generations of women in one family,
each visited by violence at the hands of men. Each chapter
of The Ballad of Laurel Springs is framed around a
different Appalachian "murder ballad": songs that have
been cautioning and titillating listeners for centuries with
stories of young women being murdered.
U.S./Canada: Gallery (October, 2021)
Born and raised in East Tennessee, Janet Beard moved to New York to study screenwriting at NYU and
went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She has lived and worked in Australia,
England, Boston, and Columbus, Ohio, where she is currently teaching writing and raising a daughter.
6
Nickolas Butler
GODSPEED
“What begins as a novel of optimism and ambition morphs
into a dark warning about the end-game of American
capitalism. With his characteristically rich and transporting
prose, Nickolas Butler continues the urgent examination of
class and culture he began in his beloved debut."
—John Larison, author of Whiskey When We're Dry
In this riveting new novel by the bestselling and award-
winning author of Shotgun Lovesongs, three troubled
construction workers get entangled in a dangerous plan
to finish building a home against an impossible
deadline.
Why is it being built here, and why so quickly? These
are the questions Cole, Bart, and Teddy, the three
principals of True Triangle Construction, ask
themselves when they are hired to finish a project for a
mysteriously wealthy homeowner. Nestled in the
mountains outside of Jackson, Wyoming, the house is a
masterpiece, unlike anything they've done before. Once
finished, it promises to be the architectural prize of
Jackson and could put True Triangle on the map, immersing them in the promised land of vacation
homes and estates far outside the reach of their small community. But despite the project's lure,
the owner is intent on having it built in a matter of months, an impossible task made irresistible by
the exorbitant bonus that awaits them if they succeed. A bonus that could change the course of
their business, and their lives.
Up against the fateful deadline, and the looming threat of a harsh Wyoming winter, Cole, Bart,
and Teddy are willing to do anything to get the money, even if it means risking life, limb, and
family. And what becomes an obsession for all three quickly builds to tragic consequences for
some. Struck through with heart-pounding danger and an arresting lyricism, Godspeed is a stark
exploration of the have and the have-nots, a cautionary tale of greed and violence that asks: How
much is never enough?
U.S./Canada: Putnam (March, 2021)
France: Editions Stock
Italy: Marsilio
U.K.: Faber
Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He is a
graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the author of
the novels Little Faith and The Hearts of Men, the internationally bestselling and prizewinning novel Shotgun
Lovesongs, and the acclaimed short story collection Beneath the Bonfire. He lives in Wisconsin with his
wife and their two children.
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Nickolas Butler
Backlist
France: Stock
Germany: Klett-Cotta
Italy: Marsilio
Spain: Libros del Asteroide
Spain (Catalan): Enciclopedia Catalana
U.S./Canada: Ecco Press
U.K.: Faber
Denmark: Klim
France: Autrement (Finalist for the Prix Medicis)
Germany: Klett-Cotta
Italy: Marsilio Editori
Norway: Pax Forlag
Spain (Catalan): Empuries
Spain: Libros del Asteroide
U.K.: Picador
U.S./Canada: Ecco Press
TV/Film: Side Porch Productions, Inc.
Denmark: Klim
France: Autrement
Germany: Klett-Cotta
Italy: Marsilio Editori
Israel: Yediot Ahronot Books
Netherlands: Ambo/Anthos
Norway: Pax Forlag
Portugal: Presenca
Spain (Catalan): Circulo des Lectores
Spain: Libros del Asteroide
U.K.: Picador
U.S./Canada: Thomas Dunne Books. SMP
TV/Film: Paul Schnee
8
Jai Chakrabarti
A PLAY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
A dazzling debut novel--the story of a turbulent,
unlikely romance, a harrowing account of the
lasting horrors of the Second World War, and a
searing examination of one man's search for
forgiveness and acceptance.
NEW YORK CITY, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor
of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardener, a
southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the
first bloom of love when they receive word that
Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious
circumstances in a rural village in eastern India.
Travelling there alone to collect his friends'
ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself caught up in
local efforts to stage a play in protest against an
oppressive government--the same play that he
performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of
resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings
for Lucy (who, unbeknownst to him, is pregnant with his child), Jaryk must decide how to honor
both the past and the present, and to learn how to find a happiness he is not sure he deserves.
An unforgettable love story, a provocative exploration of the role of art in times of political turmoil,
and a deeply moving reminder of the power of the past to shape the present, A Play for the End
of the World is a remarkable debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.
U.S./Canada: Knopf (Fall, 2021)
Jai Chakrabarti’s stories have been published in Best American Short Stories, A Public Space, Hayden’s
Ferry Review, Michigan Quarterly, Slice, awarded the O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, and performed at
Selected Shorts at Symphony Space. In addition to writing, Chakrabarti is an engineer with Spotify. He lives
in Brooklyn.
9
Te-Ping Chen
LAND OF BIG NUMBERS
A Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books Fall/Winter Selection
"An intricately constructed, tenderly observed collection--the sort
of stories that skillfully transport you into the daily experience of
characters so real, who speak to you with such grace and tangible
presence, that you could almost reach out and touch them.
Through the lens of these different voices, each vividly alive, Te-
Ping Chen shows us how much life, loss, and quiet pleasure exists
in the world, just out of view."
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like
Mine and Intimations
A debut collection from an extraordinary new talent, vividly
giving voice to the men and women of modern China and its
diaspora.
Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers depicts
the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their
government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily,
violently, but still beautifully—into the present.
Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek
magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where
mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the
other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is
followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations
of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped with no reason, on a subway
platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.
With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in
China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable
cultural critic as well as an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.
U.S./Canada: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (February, 2021)
Germany: Aufbau
UK: Scribner
First serial: Granta; The Atlantic; Oprah Magazine online
Te-Ping Chen’s fiction has been published, or is forthcoming from, The New Yorker, Granta, The Atlantic,
Tin House, and Oprahmag.com. She is a Wall Street Journal correspondent based in Philadelphia, where
she writes about workplace issues. From 2014–2018, she was a Beijing-based correspondent for the paper
covering politics, society, and human rights. Before that, she was a Hong Kong correspondent, covering
the city’s politics and pro-democracy movement. Prior to joining the Journal in 2012, she spent a year in
China interviewing migrant workers as a Fulbright Fellow and worked as a China reporter for the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in DC.
10Katie Crouch
EMBASSY WIFE
“Katie Crouch has some sharp, urgent and intricate
things to say about colonization and race, privilege and
power, and the often explosive intersection of all of
these things in today's Namibia. It is a fascinating
novel, and beautifully told.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida
Everyone knows the U.S. State Department has a
presence in almost every country across the
globe. But what, exactly, are these diplomats
doing? How do they live? Do they like each other?
Do they sleep with each other? Are there
scandals? And what is it like to be a family formally
representing America abroad, when the country is being led by the most outrageously crass
leader the United States has ever seen?
Persephone Wilder is a displaced genius and the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. She
takes her job as a representative of her country seriously, and comes up with an intricate set of
rules to survive problems such as: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too
much skin, how not to look drunk at Embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace.
She also suspects her husband is not actually the Ambassador’s General Counsel, but a secret
agent in the CIA. Ever the Embassy Wife, she takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda Evans,
under her wing.
Depressed and homesick, Amanda accepts the attention of Persephone and befriends Mila
Shilongo, an intimidatingly glamorous Namibian wife of a high-up government official with a
devastating history. But when Amanda’s daughter becomes in an actual international conflict,
lines are drawn in the sand, and it becomes clear that her own government won’t stand up for her
or her daughter. How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruptness can
Persephone purposefully ignore? And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad
when you don’t like your country anymore?
Light in tone and offering a juicy insider’s look into life abroad, Embassy Wife is a modern farce
with an earnest message and big heart.
U.S./Canada: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (March, 2021)
Film/TV: Clearwater Entertainment
Katie Crouch is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks. Her other novels include Men
and Dogs, The Magnolia League young adult series, and Abroad, a literary thriller set in Italy. Julia Glass
wrote of Abroad: "With uncanny psychological precision and a dark, dead-on wit, Katie Crouch explores
how the casual follies of youth all too quickly turn tragic.” From 2016-2018, Katie taught creative writing in
Windhoek, Namibia. A MacDowell fellow, Crouch currently teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in
Vermont with the writer Peter Orner and their children.
11Jennine Capó Crucet
SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
“Both urgently of-the-moment and destined to be a
classic.”
―Curtis Sittenfeld / Vanity Fair on Make Your Home
Among Strangers
By turns satirical and surreal, Say Hello to My
Little Friend combines elements of the
quintessential immigrant-story-gone-haywire film
Scarface with the classic novel Moby Dick, all set in
a sinking Miami in 2017.
When his career as an unauthorized Pitbull
impersonator comes to an abrupt end, Israel “Izzy”
Reyes decides to model himself after Tony
Montana in Scarface: like his idol, he’ll learn to
smuggle Cuban refugees into the U.S. Along with
his sidekick Rudy, Izzy’s digressions take the pair
around the city of Miami: its malls, its neighborhoods, its unhealthy obsessions with breast
augmentation and leg days at the gym, and its nightclubs past and present.
When Izzy and Rudy head to the Miami Aquarium for inspiration, they meet the novel’s other
protagonist: Lolita, a captive orca. She finds that she can hear Izzy’s thoughts and influence his
actions—though she can’t be sure if this is real or if it’s a result of her intense loneliness. As an
impending hurricane threatens to upend Miami, Izzy, Lolita, and a cast of characters are drawn
together in an epic quest and a story that asks: what makes a hero, and what dreams are worth
chasing?
U.S./Canada: Little, Brown (2022)
UK: Riverrun
Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of Make Your Home Among Strangers, winner of the International Latino Book
Award and cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, the Guardian, and the Miami Herald; and of How to Leave
Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the John Gardner Book Prize. A Contributing Opinion Writer for
The New York Times and a recipient of an O. Henry Prize, she is currently an associate professor at the University of
Nebraska. Her essay collection, My Time Among the Whites, was published by Picador in September 2019.
12Peter Ho Davies
A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF
“There are some stories that require as much courage to
write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies’s achingly honest,
searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a
story...The world needs more stories like this one, more of
this kind of courage, more of this kind of love.”
—Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author
of The Friend
A heartbreaking, soul-baring novel about the
repercussions of choice that “will strike a resonant
chord with parents everywhere,” (starred Kirkus)
from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and
The Fortunes.
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces
the complex consequences of one of the most
personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences
a family can have: to have a child, and conversely,
the decision not to have a child. A first pregnancy is
interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and
uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught
birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests—and questions that reverberate down the
years.
When does sorrow turn to shame?
When does love become labor?
When does chance become choice?
When does a diagnosis become destiny?
And when does fact become fiction?
This spare, graceful narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day
practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as
touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of
fatherhood.
U.S./Canada: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January, 2021)
U.K.: Sceptre
Peter Ho Davies is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of The Fortunes and The Welsh Girl
(long-listed for the Booker Prize). Chosen by Granta as one of the Best of Young British Novelists, he is
on the faculty of the graduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan. He lives in Ann
Arbor, Michigan.
13Cassidy Lucas (aka Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger)
SANTA MONICA
“Part riveting mystery, part incisive domestic drama, Santa Monica is a
sharp look at the superficial lives of the pretending-to-be-perfect in
gorgeous seaside California, expertly walking the line between satire,
suspense and biting social commentary.”
—Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of
Reconstructing Amelia and A Good Marriage
A debut novel in the vein of Liane Moriarty and Tom Perrotta,
about dark secrets brought to life after the mysterious death
of a handsome and charismatic trainer to the elite women in
Santa Monica.
On the western edge of Los Angeles is the gorgeous
beachside city of Santa Monica, where the sun-kissed,
wealthy residents seem to inhabit real-life California dreams.
When movie-star-handsome heartthrob fitness coach Zack
Doheny, is found dead on the floor of his gym, the tragedy
shocks the elite community, especially those who’d spent
many hours each week exercising with the charismatic
trainer.
As the narrative flashes back to the months leading up to Zack’s death, it quickly becomes clear that
things in this coastal paradise are not as glittering as they seem. Lettie – Zack’s secret half-sister and
an undocumented housekeeper for the toned, entitled women of Santa Monica – holds her brother
responsible for a horrific family accident, and desperately needs his money to prevent her deportation.
Regina, type-A exercise addict and entrepreneur, will do anything to get out of debt and to claim Zack
for herself. And Mel – a New York City transplant who finds herself forty pounds heavier and far more
cynical than the lithe women of Santa Monica – discovers an electric attraction to Zack that threatens
to disrupt his bond with Regina and upend Mel’s own marriage. As these residents of Santa Monica
begin to crack under the stress of their secrets, one question hangs above it all: what really happened
to Zack Doheny?
As addictively suspenseful as it is sharply observed, hilarious, and compassionate, Santa Monica is
the rare novel that captures readers with propulsive storytelling alongside emotional urgency,
irresistible characters, ambitious themes, and a vivid sense of place.
U.S./Canada: Harper (October, 2020)
Contact for U.K. and France: Maja Nikolic at mnikolic@writershouse.com
Julia Fierro is the author of the novels CUTTING TEETH and THE GYPSY MOTH SUMMER. Her writing and novels
have been featured in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Oprah, Buzzfeed, and Glamour, among other
publications; and she has been profiled in the L Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Observer and The Economist. A
graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Julia founded The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in 2002.
Caeli Wolfson Widger is the author of the novels REAL HAPPY FAMILY and MOTHER OF INVENTION, which The
New York Times called "downright prescient," Margaret Atwood praised as a "pacey thriller!" and was featured on
NPR's "Marketplace". Caeli lives in Santa Monica with her husband and three children, where she runs a recruiting
agency.
14Kathleen Glasgow
Backlist
U.S./Canada: Delacorte (April, 2019)
ANZ: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Croatia: Znanje
Czech Republic: Dobrovsky
Romania: Storia
Spain: Urano
Turkey: Yabanci
U.K.: Oneworld, Rock the Boat
U.S./Canada: Delacorte Press
ANZ: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Brazil: Planeta
China: White Horse Time
Croatia: Znanje
Czech Republic: Dobrovsky
Estonia: Päikese Kirjastus
Germany: Fischer
Italy: Rizzoli
Hungary: Konyvmolykepzo
Poland: Jaguar
Romania: Storia Books
Russia: AST
Spain: Penguin/Random House Spain
Turkey: Marti
U.K.: Oneworld, Rock the Boat
Vietnam: Triducbooks
15Sarah Jackson
A BIT MUCH
Alice is in the midst of a breakdown. The twenty-four-year-
old has lost her job, which she hated but needed. She’s
finding it difficult to eat and is losing too much weight; she
can’t sleep; and she spends her days lying in bed, scrolling
through social media, instead of responding to concerned
friends and family. Alice has a singular focus: Mia, her
closest friend since childhood, who’s currently being
treated for a serious illness. Mia has always been an
emotional anchor, and Alice can’t stand to watch her best
friend’s body break down.
Still focused on all things Mia while trying to do “normal”
activities to convince others she’s a stable, happy woman,
Alice meets her new neighbor, James. He’s interested in
her, but Alice is resistant. She’s never had luck with dating,
so doesn’t feel hopeful about James: besides, why focus on
anything else when Mia so clearly needs her?
Mia encourages Alice to keep moving, to date, go out, work,
even as her own condition worsens and the relationship
between the best friends becomes strained. But as Alice tries to push herself to do more and to
connect with James, she struggles to get out of her own head and out of her own way.
Reminiscent of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and the shrewd observations of Halle Butler’s The
New Me, A Bit Much is a sharp and dazzling debut, heralding a new voice in millennial fiction.
Canada: Penguin (2022)
Sarah Jackson works in publishing. She studied English Literature at the University of Toronto, and lives
in Toronto.
16EJ Levy
THE CAPE DOCTOR
“A master of [her] form…Levy is skilled at bringing [her]
characters to life, each story searingly made real through [her]
subtlety and fastidious attention to detail.”
—Publishers Weekly for Love, In Theory
The fascinating novel based on Cape Town's renowned
Dr. James Barry, born in 1795 as Margaret Anne Bulkley,
an Irish girl who changed her name, lived as a man, and
revolutionized medicine in the Western world.
Dr. James Miranda Barry was a brilliant nineteenth-
century Irish physician who rose to the rank of Inspector
General of military hospitals in the British colonies. Barry
reformed medicine for women, slaves, and native
peoples; performed the first successful caesarian in
Africa; and advocated for the humane and proper
treatment of leprosy; but his achievements were
overshadowed by the discovery, upon his death, that the
doctor was born female and had carried a pregnancy late
to term. E. J. Levy's deeply researched, enthralling novel
brings this captivating character vividly alive, and shines
a radiant light on Dr. Barry's momentous, groundbreaking
career and life.
Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Barry's journey from daughter to son in order to enter
medical school and provide for his mother, but Barry soon embraced his newfound freedom and
opportunity. From successful medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and
quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Barry thrived in his new environment. But when Barry
befriended the Cape Governor, they were publicly accused of a homosexual affair that scandalized
the colonies and nearly cost them their lives. The Cape Doctor is the story of Barry's rise from
penniless Irish girl to one of the most celebrated and accomplished figures of his time, a time that
looks -- in its technological discoveries, revolutionary fervor, battle over gender identity, race,
religious intolerance, and social unrest -- remarkably like our own.
U.S./Canada: Little, Brown (June, 2021)
France: Editions de L’Olivier
Italy: Mondadori
Spain: Grijalbo
E. J. Levy's writing has appeared in Paris Review, Best American Essays, Salon, Rumpus, and The New
York Times, among other places, and has won a Pushcart Prize, among other honors. Her debut story-
collection, Love, In Theory, won the 2012 Flannery O'Connor Award, a 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year
Award, and the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award; it was named a 2013 Kirkus Best Indie Book of the Year
and called "a brilliant debut" by Cheryl Strayed.
17Lydia Millet
A CHILDREN’S BIBLE
Finalist for the 2020 National Books Awards
“Millet’s boldly playful and intellectually charged body of
work combines lightning bolts of emotional acuity, moments
of precise poetry and subversively dark comedy along with
investigations of existential ideas and real-world concerns.”
—The New York Times
A lucid, indelible novel of teenage alienation and adult
complacency in the face of the unraveling of the
familiar world.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime novel — her
first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet
Lamb of Heaven — follows a group of eerily mature
children on a lengthy, forced vacation with their parents
at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders,
who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children
— led by three strong but jaded older girls — are driven
out into the chaotic landscape after a great storm
descends on the summer palace. As they struggle to
survive, the story’s narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the
safety of her beloved little brother, who interprets the
crisis through a picture Bible he’s been given.
Millet, praised as “one of the funniest writers of American fiction” (Christian Lorentzen, New York
Magazine), has produced a brilliant, heartbreaking commentary on the generational legacy of
climate change denial — and an unnerving vision of what awaits us on the other side of
Revelation.
World English: W. W. Norton (April, 2020)
France: Editions Les Escales
Film/TV: Sister Pictures
Lydia Millet has written twelve works of fiction, which have won PEN-USA and Academy of Arts and Letters
fiction prizes and been New York Times Notables and Pulitzer Prize finalists, among other honors.
18Eric Nguyen
THINGS WE LOST TO THE WATER
A stunning debut novel about an immigrant
Vietnamese family who settle in New Orleans
and struggle to remain connected to one
another as their lives are inextricably reshaped.
When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her
two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and
worried about her husband, Cong, who
remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin
to settle into life in America, she continues to
send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful
that they will be reunited and her children will
grow up with a father.
But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she copes with this
loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a
country trapped in their memory and imagination. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in
America in different ways: Huong takes up with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in
town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now
going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for
identity—as individuals and as a family--tears them apart. But when disaster strikes the city they
must find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.
Viet Thanh Nguyen to blurb and support publication.
U.S./Canada: Knopf (June, 2021)
Eric Nguyen is a contributing writer to diaCRITICS.org, the blog covering Vietnamese diasporic arts. He
has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary, Voices of Our Nation Arts (VONA), and the Tin House
Writers Workshop. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from McNeese State University.
19Tom Perrotta
Backlist
A coming-of-age novel about the sexual awakening of a middle-aged
woman, Mrs. Fletcher is a provocative, witty look at contemporary sexual
politics and timeless moral dilemmas--a moving and funny examination of
sexuality, identity, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when
they're no longer sure who they are and where they belong.
Brazil: Editora Planeta
France: Fleuve Editions
Germany: DTV
Hungary: Geopen Kiado
Poland: Znak
Romania: Editura Polirom
Spain: Libros del Asteroide
U.K.: Corsair
U.S./Canada: Scribner
TV/Film: HBO (October 2019)
Bulgaria: Ibis Publishers Spain (Catalan): Edicions del Periscopi
Brazil: Editora Intrinseca Ltda. Spain: Editorial Hidra
Croatia: Algoritam Taiwan: Rye Field Publishing
Czech Republic: Albatros Thailand: Amarin
Estonia: Varrak Turkey: Siren Yayincilik
France: Fleuve Editions U.K.: HarperCollins UK
Germany: Random House U.S./Canada: St. Martin’s Press
Italy: Edizioni E/O TV/Film: HBO
Hungary: Geopen Kiado
Korea: Book Plaza
Netherlands: Lannoo
Poland: Znak
Portugal: Bertrand Editora Lda.
Russia: AST
ANZ: Hodder Headline Australia
China: Jia-Xi Books Co., Ltd.
Germany: Ullstein
Italy: Rizzoli
Netherlands: Bezige Bij
Norway: Schibsted Forlagene
Russia: Amphora Publishers
Spain: Salamandra
U.K.: Alison & Busby
U.S./Canada: St. Martin’s Press
TV/Film: New Line Cinema
20Rishi Reddi
PASSAGE WEST
“The sweeping narrative is deeply researched and offers a
fascinating look at a historic era from a fresh perspective.... The
lives of two Indian immigrants are scarred by forces still alive a
century later." —Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping, vibrant first novel following a family of Indian
immigrant sharecroppers at the onset of World War I,
revealing a little-known part of California history
Ram Singh arrives in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican
border in 1914, reluctantly accepting his friend Karak’s offer
of work and partnership in a small cantaloupe farm. Ram is
unmoored; fleeing violence in Oregon, he desperately
longs to return to his wife and newborn son in Punjab—but
is duty-bound to make his fortune first.
In the Valley, American settlement is still new and the rules
are ever-shifting. Alongside Karak, Jivan and his wife
Kishen, and Amarjeet, a US soldier, Ram struggles to farm
in the unforgiving desert. When he meets an alluring
woman who has fought in Mexico’s revolution, he strives to
stay true to his wife. The Valley is full of settlers hailing from other cities and different continents.
The stakes are high and times are desperate —just one bad harvest or stolen crop could
destabilize a family. And as anti-immigrant sentiment rises among white residents, the tensions
of life in the West finally boil over.
In her ambitious debut novel, Rishi Reddi, award-winning author of Karma and Other Stories,
explores an enduring question: who is welcome in America? Richly imagined and beautifully
rendered, Passage West offers a moving portrait of one man’s search for home.
U.S./Canada: Ecco Press (May, 2020)
Rishi Reddi is the author of the story collection Karma and Other Stories, which received the 2008 L.L.
WInship /PEN New England Award for Fiction. She was born in Hyderabad, India, and grew up in Great
Britain and the United States. Her work appears in Best American Short Stories 2005, has been broadcast
on National Public Radio, and received an honorable mention in Pushcart Prize 2004; she is also a recipient
of fellowships and grants from MacDowell Colony, Breadloaf, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the
U.S. Department of State. She is a practicing environmental attorney.
21Anthony So
AFTERPARTIES
"Magical, rich, surprising, classic." — George Saunders
A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life—
immersive and comic, yet unsparing—that marks the arrival of
an indisputable new talent in American fiction.
Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the
tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional
depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of
Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out
radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder
the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple
with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family.
A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner
tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage
player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady
uncle’s snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech
entrepreneur trying to launch a “safe space” app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed
with Moby-Dick. And in the sweeping final story, a nine-year-old child learns that his mother
survived a racist school shooter.
With nuanced emotional precision, gritty humor, and compassionate insight into the intimacy of
queer and immigrant communities, the stories in Afterparties deliver an explosive introduction to
the work of Anthony Veasna So.
US/Canada: Ecco (May, 2021)
France: Albin Michel
Anthony Veasna So is a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse
University. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. Born and raised in
Stockton, California, he lives in San Francisco.
22Anthony So
STRAIGHT THRU CAMBOTOWN
A sprawling, seriocomic novel about three Cambodian-American
cousins who inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan sharking
business and then become embroiled in a Hollywood conspiracy,
Straight thru Cambotown showcases an urgent new literary
voice intent on challenging tired depictions of Asian-American
characters.
Darren, Vinny, and Molly are all children of parents who survived
the Khmer Rouge genocide. To counteract the destruction of
Cambodian culture, the three of them make a pact to follow their
own artistic dreams: Vinny aims to become a rapper, Darren a
comedian, and Molly a visual artist. Achieving varying levels of
success in their pursuits— from Vinny’s burgeoning rap career,
to Darren’s copout as a PhD student, to Molly’s moving back in
with her parents—the cousins suddenly inherit their late aunt’s
loan shark business, The Circle of Money. But to recover their aunt’s loaned-out fortune, they
must track down members of their Cambodian-American community. Along the way, the three
become implicated in a Hollywood conspiracy, involving a Cambodian actor adopted by a famous
American actress during Pol Pot’s regime.
Equal parts a coming-of-age story, an absurdist picaresque epic, and a philosophical meditation
on generational trauma and art, the novel takes place in the summer of 2014, in Long Beach,
California. It jolts the “inheritance” coming of age story we saw in The Corrections with the satirical
immigrant story-driven energy of The Sympathizer, all with a dash of the rollicking Hollywood
madness found in Get Shorty.
US/Canada: Ecco (May, 2022)
France: Albin Michel
Germany: btb
Anthony Veasna So is a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse
University. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. Born and raised in
Stockton, California, he lives in San Francisco.
23Karin Tidbeck
THE MEMORY THEATER
“[Amatka is] an unforgettable dystopian novel…equal parts Le
Guin, Kafka and Borges.”
—The Guardian
Imagine Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits written by
Margaret Atwood.
In a world just parallel to ours exists a mystical realm
known only as the Gardens. It is a place where feasts
never end, games of croquette have devastating
consequences, and teenagers are punished for growing
up. For a select group of Ladies and Lords, it's a
decadent paradise where time stands still. For Thistle,
the servant to the cruel Lady Augusta, life is a minefield
of danger and baroque punishment.
In a bid to escape before their youth betrays them,
Thistle and his best friend Dora, set out on a perilous
journey through time and space. Traveling between their
world and ours, they hunt the one person who can grant
them freedom. Along the way they encounter a
mysterious traveler who trades in favors and never
forgets debts, a crossroads at the center of the universe,
our own world on the brink of war, and a traveling troupe of actors with the ability to unlock the
fabric of reality. Meanwhile, Augusta, who has been cast out of the Gardens and is wandering the
mortal world and newly bound by the laws of time, wreaks her own havoc, desperately trying to
find her way back to the eternal Gardens. By defeating Augusta, Thistle may finally be able to go
home—but in a world subject to the ravages of time, how can he know if his home still exists?
Endlessly inventive, Tidbeck’s brilliant exploration of the meaning and power of time takes the
reader to wondrous places where destiny has yet to be written, where life can be a performance,
and where magic can erupt at any moment.
U.S./Canada: Pantheon (February, 2021)
Karin Tidbeck lives in Malmo, Sweden, where she writes and translates in English and Swedish. Her
English debut, the 2012 collection Jagannath (reprinted by Vintage in 2018), won the Crawford Award and
was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her debut novel, Amatka, (Vintage, 2017), which was
shortlisted for the Compton Crook Award, the Locus Award, the Modus Legendi Competition, and the Prix
Utopiales.
24Lidia Yuknavitch
Backlist
Most Anticipated Books of 2020, BuzzFeed
10 Books to Read in February, The Washington Post
World English: Riverhead (February, 2020)
Contact: Hal Fessenden at hfessenden@penguinrandomhouse.com
Poland: Czarne
Turkey: Cinar Publishing
First Serial: BOMB Magazine
Brazil: HarperCollins Brazil
China: Beijing Empyrean
France: Denoel
Germany: Btb
Italy: Einaudi
The Netherlands: Lebowski
Poland: Poradnia K
Spain: Alpha Decay
Turkey: Cinar Publishing
U.S./Canada: HarperCollins
U.K.: Canongate
TV/Film: Lady Lion Productions
Turkey: Cinar Publishing
U.S./Canada: HarperCollins
U.K.: Canongate
25France: Denoel
Germany: btb
Korea: Balgusesang
Poland: Wydawnictwo Czarne
Spain: Carmot
Taiwan: China Times
U.S./Canada: Hawthorne
U.K.: Canongate
T.V./Film: Scott Free Productions (directed by Kristen Stewart)
26NONFICTION
27Christina Anderson
SILENT HUNTER: The Rocketeer Peter Madsen, the Journalist Kim Wall, and
the Submarine Murder Case that Stunned the World
On August 10, 2017, Kim Wall, an accomplished thirty-year-
old Swedish journalist who wrote for The Guardian, Time,
and Slate, stepped aboard the UC3 Nautilus to interview its
maker, Peter Madsen, a celebrated Danish inventor and
adventurer in the mold of Elon Musk. She was never seen
again. The next day, Madsen was “rescued” from his sinking
submarine in Køge Bay near Copenhagen, brought ashore,
and questioned by police, who discovered blood on his face
and green utility suit. He was charged with manslaughter.
That same day, when Christina Anderson of the New York
Times started covering the curious story of “Rocket Madsen”
and the disappeared journalist, she had no idea this would
be the beginning of a stranger-than-fiction/darker-than-noir
thriller to rival the crime shows and novels for which
Scandinavia has become so well-known.
Anderson recreates the painstaking search for Kim Wall’s
body that used oceanographers, divers, and canine units trained to sniff the surface of water for
cadavers, and tells the story of how Madsen was finally brought to justice when a Danish court
found him guilty of premeditated murder, mishandling of a body (dismemberment), and sexual
assault. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The book will bring readers into the mind of Madsen, the lives of the police and detectives, and
the fascinating and wild worlds of Danish fetish clubs, internet pornography and snuff films, and
the amateur space race that consumed Madsen.
Silent Hunter is for readers who loved Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Asne
Seierstad’s One of Us, and Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness.
U.S./Canada: BenBella (October, 2021)
ANZ: Penguin Random House Australia
Sweden: Bokforlaget Atlas
Christina Anderson is a freelance journalist and writer, reporting on breaking news from Sweden and the
other Nordic countries for the New York Times. She has lived in Sweden on and off since 1984 and most
recently in Stockholm since 2004. Anderson holds MAs from Columbia University’s School of Journalism
(‘01) and School of International and Public Affairs (‘02).
28Rebecca Carroll
SURVIVING THE WHITE GAZE: A Memoir
"Carroll shows, page after page, how the journey to, and
through, survival, necessitates unrelenting interrogation of
the nation's cauldron of innocence. Carroll has crafted a
book as textured, layered and effective as any memoir
penned in the 21st century."
— Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy: An
American Memoir
A stirring and powerful memoir from black cultural
critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle
to overcome a completely white childhood in order to
forge her identity as a black woman in America.
Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her
rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic
parents who believed in peace, love, and zero
population growth, her early childhood was loving and
idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense
of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older.
Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a
young white woman, who consistently undermined
Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem.
Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her
memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the
loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult,
Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression,
eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen black
family, she was able to heal.
Intimate and illuminating, Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and
racial identity in America today, and an extraordinarily moving portrait of resilience.
U.S./Canada: Simon & Schuster (February, 2021)
Film: TK
Rebecca Carroll is host of the podcast Come Through with Rebecca Carroll, and a cultural critic at WNYC
where she also develops and produces a broad array of multi-platform content, and hosts live event series
in The Greene Space. Rebecca is a former critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, and her personal
essays, cultural commentary, profiles and opinion pieces have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York
Times, The Guardian, Essence, New York magazine, Ebony, and Esquire, among other publications. She
is the author of several interview-based books about race and blackness in America, including the award-
winning Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband
and son.
29David Coggins
THE OPTIMIST
The Optimist will celebrate fly fishing’s enduring virtues—
focus, stillness, practice, a connection to the natural world—
and make the case for embracing those values off the water
as well. It will be a loving consideration of and tribute to a
sport that informs an entire world view. Each virtue that’s
intrinsic to the sport will be married to one of the sport’s
basic technical skills. In nine loving chapters, each devoted
to a different fish, location, virtue, and skill (Cutthroat Trout
/ Yellowstone National Park / Anticipation / Mending), David
will take the reader on a journey into the heart of fly fishing—
through his own angling education and the basics of the craft
to some of the most sought-after fishing holes in the world,
reveling in all the glories that complement the actual
catching of a fish (or, more often, the attempt to): from the
cheap beer that never tasted so clean after a long day, to
the Bahamanian eagle-eyed guides who can spot a
bonefish from sixty feet away, to the secret language of looks, grunts, and shrugs exchanged in
the local fly shop.
This book is a case for fly fishing, but it’s also a case for optimism, the thing that underwrites a
good fishing expedition as well as a good life, and in David’s capable hands readers will walk
away with their spirits buoyed and their cast improved.
The Optimist will celebrate landscapes, local knowledge, and the incredible settings that are the
backdrop, and in many cases, the foreground of fly fishing. The book will move worldwide,
touching down in remote Canada, the South Carolina flats, and the great rivers of Patagonia. It
will detail eccentric traditions and their specific locales, whether landing in a float plane on a
remote pond in northern Maine or chasing striped bass in Jamaica Bay beneath jets taking off
from JFK. The book will also revel in the parts of fishing that aren’t the fishing—the drift boats, the
wise guides, the bad motels, and the even worse beer that are all part of the experience.
In the great tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Shopcraft as Soulcraft
and Paddle Your Own Canoe, The Optimist will celebrate the enduring virtues of fly fishing
(patience, awareness) while teaching readers the basics of the craft (casting, line management).
What Peter Heller’s Kook and Jaimal Yogis’ Saltwater Buddha did for surfing in the Aughts, David
Coggins’ OPTIMIST will do for fly fishing.
U.S./Canada: Scribner (July, 2021)
David Coggins is the author of the New York Times bestseller Men and Style, and he’s written about travel,
tailoring, and etiquette for numerous publications, including Esquire, Bloomberg Pursuits, and the Financial
Times magazine. He lives in New York City and likes to fish at his cabin in Wisconsin.
30Allyson Dinneen
NOTES FROM YOUR THERAPIST
“Allyson Dinneen … puts pen to paper and writes
out the insights you never knew you needed.
Dinneen focuses on trauma, boundaries, friendship,
love and more.”
–– The Huffington Post
When Allyson Dinneen started her Instagram
account, Notes from Your Therapist (290 K
followers), she wanted a place to share insights
about emotional health and relationship skills.
Having experienced her share of trauma—her
mother’s early death, a childhood marred by
emotional abuse, and the death of her beloved
husband when they were new parents—and as
a therapist herself, she was motivated to help
others struggling through pain. Brought up to
keep difficult feelings to herself, she knew all
too well the corrosive effects of emotional
repression, how it can drive us into deeper
isolation and fray our connections with others. Jotting down her insights on scraps of notepaper
and sharing the photos, she hoped to help others feel less alone, but she never expected the
overwhelmingly positive response her posts inspired.
But the response isn’t all that surprising. The notes are humble: simple reminders that we humans
are social creatures; that we are wired for closeness and connection; that we are complex, and
difficult emotions are nothing to shy away from; that we do best when supported by good listeners
and owe the same compassionate attention to the ones we love. Allyson has a gift for creating
intimacy; in their very simplicity, her notes distill age-old wisdom and present it anew, seeming to
speak directly to the reader. Each of the 100 plus handwritten notes stands alone, a single lesson
about navigating relationships and achieving emotional well-being while learning to embrace our
own vulnerabilities. Imagine if Brené Brown, Lori Gottlieb, and Cheryl Strayed got together to write
down notes of encouragement, love, and compassion, the result might be something like Notes
from Your Therapist.
Notes from Your Therapist is based on Allyson’s Instagram account, but 100 notes for Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt’s edition will be exclusive to the book. Fans include Jessica Williams, Antoni
Porowski, Suleika Jaouad, Ashley Ford, Emma Gannon, and Chrissy Metz.
U.S./Canada: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January, 2021)
Allyson Dinneen is a psychotherapist with an M.Ed. in both Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental
Health Counseling. She lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.Jessica Donati
EAGLE DOWN
A Publishers Lunch Buzz Book for Fall/Winter
The Wall Street Journal's national security reporter-formerly
based in Kabul from 2013-2017 takes readers into the lives
of U.S. Special Forces on the front lines against the Taliban
and Islamic State, where a new and covert war is keeping
Afghanistan from collapse.
In 2015, the White House claimed triumphantly "the longest
war in American history is over." But for some, it was just the
beginning of a new and covert war, fought far from public
view, with limited resources, little governmental oversight,
and contradictory orders.
Take Hutch, a battle-worn Green Beret on his fifth combat
tour in 2015, tasked with a high-stakes mission: lead a small
band of men into Kunduz, recapture the city from the Taliban,
and turn it over to the Afghan government. The U.S. role was
meant to be a secret-after all, the war was over. Then,
disaster struck. He called in an airstrike on a Doctors Without
Borders hospital, killing dozens of doctors and patients.
Or Caleb, who stepped on a bomb during a raid on a Taliban hideout in notorious Sangin. Or
Andy, trapped in Marjah with a crashed Black Hawk and no air support. From Hutch to Caleb to
Andy, Eagle Down is a dramatic and intimate portrayal of this ongoing forgotten war that moves
from the desperate battlegrounds in muddy Afghan villages all the way to the White House.
Pulitzer Prize Finalist Jessica Donati, with big picture insight and on-the-ground grit, reveals how
America came to rely on U.S. Special Forces, through successive policy directives that ramped
up the war under the Obama and Trump administrations. Donati argues the covert war is failing
to stabilize Afghanistan, and without a long-term plan, is undermining U.S. interests both at home
and abroad.
Relying on Donati's daring on-the-ground reporting, first-hand accounts from Special Forces,
military documents, and declassified reports, Eagle Down is an account of the heroism, sacrifice,
and tragedy experienced by those that continue to fight America's longest war.
World English: Public Affairs (January, 2021)
Contact for UK rights: amber.hoover@hbgusa.com
Jessica Donati covers foreign affairs for The Wall Street Journal in Washington DC, and has reported from
over a dozen countries in the role. She joined the paper as the bureau chief in Kabul in 2015, and lived in
Afghanistan for over four years. Her work on a series on the war in Libya was chosen as a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2012. She is British-Italian, and grew up in Italy.
32Ashley C. Ford
SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER
“The gravity and urgency of Somebody’s Daughter
anchored me to my chair and slowed my heartbeat—like no
book has since Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Ashley
Ford is a writer for the ages, and Somebody’s Daughter will
be a book of the year.”
—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of
Untamed
One of the most prominent voices of her generation
debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the
story of a childhood defined by the ever-looming
absence of her incarcerated father and the path we
must take to both honor and overcome our origins.
For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put
her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague
memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes
he's the only person in the entire world who
understands her. She thinks she understands him too.
He's sensitive like her, an artist, and maybe even just
as afraid of the dark. She's certain that one day they'll
be reunited again, and she'll finally feel complete.
There are just a few problems: he's in prison, and she
doesn't know what he did to end up there.
Through poverty, puberty, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley returns to her image
of her father for hope and encouragement. She doesn't know how to deal with the incessant
worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted
attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother
hates; when the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she
keeps secret from her family, Ashley finally finds out why her father is in prison. And that's where
the story really begins.
Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl, exploring how
isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment,
she provides a poignant coming-of-age recollection that speaks to finding the threads between
who you are and what you were born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.
U.S./Canada: Flatiron Books/An Oprah Book (June, 2021)
Ashley C. Ford lives in Brooklyn by way of Indiana, and has written or guest-edited for The Guardian,
ELLE, BuzzFeed, OUT Magazine, Slate, Teen Vogue, New York Magazine, Allure, Marie Claire, The New
York Times, Netflix Queue, Domino, Cup of Jo, and various other web and print publications. Her writing
has been listed among Longform & Longread's Best of 2017. She has been named among Forbes
Magazine's 30 Under 30 in Media (2017), Brooklyn Magazine's Brooklyn 100 (2016), Time Out New York's
New Yorkers of The Year (2017), and Variety’s New Power of New York (2019). She lives in Brooklyn with
her husband and their chocolate lab.
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