At this year’s London Book Fair, U.S. agents will be talking up works by André Aciman, Miranda July, Matthew McConaughey, Lisa Scottoline, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jesmyn Ward, and Kerry Washington, among others
Aevitas Creative Management
A History of Burning
■ Janika Oza Grand Central, May
This historical fiction debut, set at the turn of the 20th century, follows a teenage boy, taken from his village in India to work on the East African Railway for the British, who “commits an act to ensure his survival that will haunt him forever,” according to the agency.
Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential
■ Rina Bliss HarperWave, Apr.
Genetics expert and sociology professor Bliss considers “what it truly means to be ‘smart,’ ” per the agency, in a book that explores why standard assessments of intelligence are misleading and “what everyone can do to optimize their potential.”
What Grows in the Dark
■ Jaq Evans Mira, spring 2024
The agency describes this contemporary horror as The Babadook meets The Blair Witch Project, starring “a phony spiritualist desperate for her next viral video” who’s “drawn back to her hometown to assist in an investigation that eerily mirrors her sister’s death 16 years prior.”
Baror International
Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World
■ Joe Roman Little, Brown Spark, Nov.
Conservation biologist Roman explains “how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying,” the agency says, “and how these fundamental biological functions could save us from climate catastrophe.”
Sword Catcher
■ Cassandra Clare Del Rey, Oct.
From the bestselling author of the Shadowhunter Chronicles, this epic fantasy novel, the start of a new series, is about two outcasts “caught in a web of forbidden love, dangerous magic, and dark secrets,” per the agency.
The Cheney Agency
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
■ Cat Bohannon Knopf, Sept.
The agency calls this an “ambitious, eye-opening, myth-busting, and paradigm-shifting history of the evolution of the female body,” by a scientist with a PhD in the evolution of narrative and cognition.
Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
■ Kashmir Hill Random House, Sept.
This is a “fly-on-the-wall account of the tech startup that sold a radical new form of facial recognition to law enforcement and ended privacy as we know it,” per the agency, from tech reporter Hill.
The Clegg Agency
Ours
■ Phillip B. Williams Viking, spring 2024
Set in the 19th-century South, this debut novel features “an enigmatic conjure woman on a mission to abolish slavery” who “uses her powerful magic to establish a town for liberated ex-slaves,” which is threatened when strangers arrive from the outer world, according to the agency.
The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters
■ Benjamin Moser Norton, Oct.
This study of the great painters of the Dutch golden age—including Hals, Rembrandt, and Vermeer—from Pulitzer Prize winner Moser “seeks to explain how such resplendent beauty can flourish in a world so endlessly marred by tragedy,” the agency says.
Creative Artists Agency
Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
■ Stephanie Land One Signal, Oct.
The agency describes this as a memoir “about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid” from the bestselling author whose life as a house cleaner inspired a Netflix series.
Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance
■ Azam Ahmed Random House, Sept.
This is the “riveting true story of a vigilante mother in Mexico who fought back against the drug cartels to avenge the murder of her daughter,” says the agency, from New York Times global investigative correspondent Ahmed. Screen rights have been acquired by Blumhouse.
Thicker than Water
■ Kerry Washington Little, Brown Spark, Sept.
Actor Washington’s memoir intimately details, per the agency, “how she overcame a series of challenges and setbacks, crossing the threshold into stardom and political advocacy, and ultimately discovering her truest self.”
Defiore & Company
Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator
■ Keith Houston Norton, Aug.
This is a “global, hidden history” of the calculator that, the agency notes, “spans thousands of years and involves Scottish lairds, Restoration spies, the Cold War, and NASA,” and explains how the device “changed our world, until it was supplanted by something even smaller and more powerful that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create.”
Just Because
■ Matthew McConaughey, illustrated by Renée Kurilla Viking, Sept.
Actor McConaughey’s picture book explores “life’s little complexities and contradictions through the eyes of children,” per the agency, “and encourages the spirit of fun, imagination, adventure, and discovery.”
Playing the Witch Card
■ KJ Dell’Antonia Putnam, Sept.
Pitched as Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic, this novel from Dell’Antonia (The Chicken Sisters) concerns a woman’s return to the town where she swore off magic, “and where she must reclaim it in order to create the life she desires,” according to the agency.
Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
The Long Game
■ Elena Armas Atria, Nov.
This is a “small-town love story in the vein of Ted Lasso and It Happened One Summer,” per the agency, about a disgraced soccer executive who enlists the help of a retired soccer star to coach a ragtag children’s team in North Carolina.
On Wars
■ Michael Mann Yale Univ., Aug.
Sociologist Mann breaks down “the history of war across the ages and around the globe,” says the agency, concluding that political leaders “rarely act rationally in beginning a war and seldom achieve their desired results.”
Dunow, Carlson & Lerner
Black River Orchard
■ Chuck Wendig Del Rey, Sept.
The agency calls this a “masterpiece of horror” in which “a small town is transformed by dark magic when seven strange trees begin bearing magical apples.”
Murder by Degrees
■ Ritu Mukerji Simon & Schuster, Oct.
This historical mystery debut, for fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd, according to the agency, is set in 19th-century Philadelphia and follows “a pioneering woman doctor as she investigates the disappearance of a young patient who is presumed dead.”
Time’s Mouth
■ Edan Lepucki Counterpoint, Aug.
This is an “enthralling saga about family secrets,” per the agency, “that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California.”
The Gernert Company
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
■ Kelly and Zach Weinersmith Penguin Press, Nov.
This is a “hilarious off-world investigation into space settlement,” says the agency, from a husband-and-wife research team who consider “perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary.”
The God of Good Looks
■ Breanne Mc Ivor Morrow, May
The agency calls this a “transportive” debut novel, “set within Trinidad’s beauty industry, which follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and a new kind of happy ending.”
I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country
■ Elena Kostyuchenko Penguin Press, Oct.
Kostyuchenko, a journalist at Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s decommissioned independent newspaper, offers, according to the agency, “an unprecedented and intimate portrait of Russia, and a fearless cri de cœur for journalism in opposition to the global authoritarian turn.”
Sanford J. Greenburger Associates
Dead Fall
■ Brad Thor Atria/Bestler, July
This thriller from perennial bestseller Thor is set in the “war-ravaged borderlands of Ukraine,” per the agency, where a Russian military unit has caused the deaths of American aid workers and must now contend with operative Scot Harvath, who’s sent to avenge the killings.
The Failures
■ Benjamin Liar DAW, Sept. 2024
The agency says this first in an epic fantasy trilogy from debut novelist Liar features a “former child-hero and current cynical and disillusioned leader” who, along with a group of “ragtag and failed heroes,” must contend with a recently awakened giant that threatens their civilization.
InkWell Management
The Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most
■ Adam Alter Avid Reader, May
This guide from marketing professor Alter to “breaking free from the thoughts, habits, jobs, relationships, and even business models that prevent us from achieving our full potential” is, per the agency, “the road map we all need to escape our inertia and flourish in the face of friction.”
Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead
■ Jenny Hollander St. Martin’s, Feb. 2024
The agency calls this a “twisty” debut thriller for fans of Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive and Riley Sager’s Final Girls, about a magazine editor whose life is upended when she learns that the bloody, “horrific events” she witnessed years ago are being turned into a movie.
The Rapid Recovery Reflex: Jumpstart Your Body’s Natural Healing Response to Get Better—Faster
■ Victoria Maizes Simon & Schuster (no pub date at press time)
This “groundbreaking and revelatory” wellness book, says the agency, aims to “show readers how to unlock the hidden ability to achieve optimal health,” from the executive director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.
Janklow & Nesbit Associates
Decent People
■ Jessica Guel Doubleday, spring 2025
This multigenerational novel chronicles “a tumultuous year of connection between two teenagers, Omar and Martha,” per the agency. When Martha dies, “Omar begins to piece together the ways systems of oppression in two countries—Mexico and the U.S.—are complicit in her passing.”
The Floating Museum
■ Susanna Kwan (No U.S. publisher at press time)
This debut novel from visual artist Kwan, “set in a drowning San Francisco,” tells “a sweeping, symphonic story of love, art, and resilience at the end of the world, where two Chinese American women form an unexpected, life-changing friendship,” according to the agency.
Now You Tell Me
■ André Aciman Farrar, Straus and Giroux (no pub date at press time)
This is a “luminous, vibrant account of the author’s time spent living in Rome with his family following their exile from Alexandria,” per the agency, from the writer of Call Me by Your Name.
Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency
Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas
■ Karen Pinchin Dutton, summer
This “interdisciplinary narrative,” pitched for fans of Mark Kurlansky and Susan Orlean, addresses “how our insatiable appetite for tuna transformed a cottage industry into a global force (with a billion dollar black market),” says the agency.
The Striker and the Clock
■ Georgia Cloepfil Riverhead, winter 2024
This literary memoir from a former professional women’s soccer player, the agency says, delves into “her career playing for clubs from South Korea to Scandinavia, examining the joy and pain of serious sports and the tenuous status of the female athlete.”
Susanna Lea Associates
To Catch a Storm
■ Mindy Mejia Grove Atlantic, Aug.
The agency says this thriller, set in Iowa during an ice storm, “explores the question, how do we learn to trust people who experience the world in completely opposite ways from ourselves?”
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
■ David Grann Doubleday, Apr.
This true story of the 19th-century British ship the Wagner, from the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, is about “shipwreck, survival, and savagery,” notes the agency, and “a court-martial that reveals a shocking truth.” (Rights handled on behalf of the Robbins Office.)
Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency
The Algebra of Wealth
■ Scott Galloway Portfolio, spring 2024
A marketing professor takes on the subject of wealth in a book that distills “30 years of lessons learned about careers, investments, and the search for economic security,” per the agency.
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI and the Five Breakthroughs that Made Our Brain
■ Max Bennett Mariner, spring 2024
Bennet, an entrepreneur in the artificial intelligence field, discusses “the five ‘breakthroughs’ in the evolution of human intelligence,” per the agency, “and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.”
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies
■ Catherine McKenzie St. Martin’s, summer 2024
This is the first book in a series about a crime novelist who, while on a book tour in Italy, finds herself at the center of a real murder mystery, and, per the agency, has to contend “with a rival set of murderinos, each competing for who has the largest ego—and who can solve the case first.”
Sterling Lord Literistic
Family Meal
■ Bryan Washington Riverhead, Oct.
This is a bittersweet novel “about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a shocking loss,” says the agency, from the winner of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award.
The Librarianist
■ Patrick deWitt Ecco, July
A retired librarian begins volunteering at a senior center in this novel from deWitt (The Sisters Brothers) that, the agency says, “celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.”
You Can’t Stay Here Forever
■ Katherine Lin HarperCollins, June
A widow flees California for the French Riviera to escape her past in this debut novel about “loss, rebirth, modern friendship, and romance,” per the agency, “that blends Sally Rooney’s wryness and psychological insight with Emma Straub’s gorgeous scene setting and rich relationships.”
Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents
Let Us Descend
■ Jesmyn Ward Scribner, Oct.
This novel from two-time National Book Award winner Ward is “a reimagining of American slavery,” per the agency, that takes readers on “a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.”
This Exquisite Loneliness: A Field Guide for Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood
■ Richard Deming Viking, Oct.
This book from Deming, director of creative writing at Yale University, is about loneliness and the “shame and silence” around it, per the agency, and discusses how artists like Zora Neale Hurston and Walker Evans handled loneliness and pain and used it to their advantage.
White Cat, Black Dog
■ Kelly Link Random House, out now
From MacArthur fellow Link, this is a collection of seven fairy tales, “each one ingeniously transfigured and reinvented for the modern world,” that are inspired by “the Brothers Grimm, 17th-century French tales, Scottish ballads, and other source material,” according to the agency.
Jenny Meyer Literary
(handling titles for the Book Group, Helm Literary Agency, Nelson Literary Agency, and the Amy Rennert Agency)
The Blonde Identity
■ Ally Carter Avon, Aug.
This is a rom-com thriller from Carter, “the bestselling author of novels that have epitomized action-adventure YA romance for more than a decade,” according to the agency, about a woman who’s mistaken for a spy and is helped by a “very grouchy, very sexy, very secret agent.”
The Fiction Writer
■ Jill Cantor Park Row, Nov.
Things aren’t as they seem in this “page-turner” about a struggling writer who takes a ghostwriting job working for a mysterious billionaire and finds herself “trapped in a gothic mystery of her own,” according to the agency.
Hello Beautiful
■ Ann Napolitano Dial, out now
An Oprah’s Book Club pick, this family story from bestseller Napolitano (Dear Edward) explores “what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it,” per the agency.
Little Monsters
■ Adrienne Brodeur Avid Reader, July
This is a novel “about Cape Cod, complicated families, and long-buried secrets,” according to the agency, from the author of the memoir Wild Game and the cofounder of Zoetrope: All-Story.
The White Lady
■ Jacqueline Winspear HarperCollins, out now
From the writer of the bestselling Maisie Dobbs series, this “heart-stopping” novel, per the agency, is set in postwar Britain and “follows the coming of age and maturity” of a former wartime operative whose drawn back “into the world of menace” she hoped to leave behind.
Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency
Breathe Deep: An Illustrated Guide to the Transformative Power of Breathing
■ Misha Maynerick Blaise Adams Media, May
The agency says author and illustrator Blaise’s book about “the transformative power of breathing draws on ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science, combining inspiration and instruction on the popular practice of breath work.”
Midnight on Beacon Street
■ Emily Ruth Verona Harper Perennial, winter 2024
This is a debut thriller, pitched for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix, “in which a teenage girl with an anxiety disorder and a passion for horror movies finds herself in the midst of a murder scene while babysitting two precocious yet complicated kids,” according to the agency.
The Titanic Survivors’ Book Club
■ Timothy Schaffert Doubleday, spring 2024
Set in Paris in 1913, this novel follows the steward for the Titanic’s second-class library who, “after narrowly avoiding the ship’s sinking,” per the agency, forms a book society with other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship.
Jane Rotrosen Agency
The Block Party
■ Jamie Day St. Martin’s, July
In this novel from the pseudonymous Day, when a murder takes places at a summer block party in an affluent neighborhood, “the neighbors’ gossip, secrets, and possible motives for the crime come to light,” per the agency.
THE COWORKER
■ Freida McFadden Sourcebooks, Aug.
This thriller about a woman who’s thrown into a deep mystery when her colleague doesn’t show up for work reveals “an office filled with secrets,” according to the agency.
Trellis Literary Management
Shanghailanders
■ Juli Min Spiegel & Grau, spring 2024
This novel in stories, “a Shanghai version of Dubliners meets A Visit from the Goon Squad,” per the agency, “moves backward in time from 2040 to 2014, telling the story of one wealthy, mixed-race Shanghai family and those living in their orbit.”
Taste
■ Mai Sennaar SJP Lit, spring 2024
This globe-trotting debut, set in the 1960s, concerns the disappearance of a Senegalese singer who leaves “his pregnant American manager-slash-girlfriend to contend with his formidable immigrant mother in the Swiss countryside, where the two women must confront the lingering questions of their pasts as they scramble to find him,” says the agency.
Trident Media Group
Reading Genesis
■ Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, winter 2024
Pulitzer Prize winner Robinson “presents a brilliant and dramatic close reading of the first book of the Bible,” per the agency, “focusing on the complex nature of God’s relationship with mankind.”
The Truth About the Devlins
■ Lisa Scottoline Putnam, spring 2024
This domestic thriller from perennial bestseller Scottoline involves a family of lawyers who, according to the agency, get entangled “in a conspiracy determined to destroy them.”
The Unsettled
■ Ayana Mathis Knopf, Oct.
This sophomore novel is a multigenerational story “set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Ala., about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival,” the agency says.
United Talent Agency
The Bullet Swallower
■ Elizabeth Gonzalez James Simon & Schuster, spring 2024
This family saga, “epic in scope but compact in form,” per the agency, contemplates “border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting.” Film rights have been optioned by MGM.
The Power Code: More Joy. Less Ego. Maximum Impact for Women (and Everyone)
■ Katty Kay and Claire Shipman Harper Business, June
The agency describes this as a survey of “the nature of women’s power—in the workplace, in politics, and at home,” from the bestselling authors of The Confidence Code, that aims to help women become their best selves.
Sky Full of Elephants
■ Cebo Campbell Simon & Schuster, summer 2025
This debut novel is “set in a world without white people” in which characters “explore a truly postracial landscape as they search for a new place to call home in a radically different yet deeply familiar land,” according to the agency.
William Morris Endeavor
Come and Get It
■ Kiley Reid Putnam, Jan. 2024
From Reid (Such a Fun Age) comes a novel about “an ambitious college senior and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students,” the agency says.
Leftover Woman
■ Jean Kwok Morrow, Oct.
This is a literary suspense novel about “a young Chinese woman, newly immigrated to the United States, who becomes a suspect in the murder of her lover,” per the agency.
Romantic Comedy
■ Curtis Sittenfeld Random House, Apr.
The agency says this “deeply tender” novel from Sittenfeld (Rodham) is about a comedy writer who has sworn off love, “until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions.”
Writers House
Happiness Falls
■ Angie Kim Hogarth, Sept.
This family drama from the author of the Edgar Award–winning Miracle Creek spotlights a biracial Korean American family in Virginia “whose lives are upended,” according to the agency, “when their beloved father and husband goes missing.”
Liminal Minds: Predictable Success in an Unpredictable World
■ Anne-Laure Le Cunff Avery, fall 2024
This book from academic Le Cunff presents a “radical reinvention of how we plan and achieve goals,” the agency notes, and introduces “a model that not only helps us get our work done but keeps us engaged, curious, and thriving.”
Say You’ll Be Mine
■ Naina Kumar Ballantine, winter 2024
This debut novel, pitched as “My Best Friend’s Wedding with a desi twist” by the agency, is about a woman who’s asked to be the best man at the wedding of her ex and fakes her own engagement as a way to cope.
The Wylie Agency
All Fours
■ Miranda July Riverhead, spring 2024
Author and filmmaker July’s second novel features a 40-something female artist who embarks on a road trip, sans her husband and child, and reinvents herself. The book “transcends expectation,” the agency says, “while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.”
Shattered
■ Hanif Kureishi (No U.S. publisher at press time)
This book from author and Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia), who suffered an accident in 2022 that has left him paralyzed, builds on dispatches he started while in the hospital and offers “compelling reflections on his illness, on writing, and on life,” according to the agency.
Supercommunicators: The Power of Conversation and the Hidden Language of Connection
■ Charles Duhigg Random House, spring 2024
Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and author of The Power of Habit, tackles human communication in a book that considers “what happens inside our minds when we open our mouths and ears—and the surprising and unexpected reasons so much goes right and wrong,” per the agency.
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
