Frankfurt: women-centred stories dominate

The firing pistol for the annual rights frenzy ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) has sounded, with publishers battling it out to find the next The Girl on the Train as the psychological thriller phenomenon shows little sign of slowing down.

Publishers are moving quickly for stand-out submissions in the genre, paying big advances in what editors are finding a “buoyant” market not yet dented by the UK’s impending Brexit.

HQ pre-empted Sometimes I Lie by Faber Academy graduate Alice Feeney from Curtis Brown’s Jonny Geller less than 24 hours after submission for its “humdinger of a twist”, while C J Tudor signed with Michael Joseph with her début The Chalk Man – described by agent Madeleine Milburn as the fastest-selling début ever on her books.

The deals have taken place in a bullish market, with publishers telling The Bookseller it is “business as usual” ahead of FBF.

Suzanne Baboneau, m.d. of adult publishing at Simon & Schuster, said: “Generally, there is a good mood ahead of Frankfurt. We are having a really strong autumn, we are sending the same number of people we usually do from the UK and the US.”

She added: “I don’t think Brexit will affect the mood in Frankfurt, because our relationships with our partners in Europe are too strong. If anything, I think efforts with European partners will redouble.”

Wayne Brookes, associate publisher at Pan Macmillan, agreed. “Brexit has not [affected the market] yet this Frankfurt. When Prime Minister Theresa May does [activate Article 50] in March next year, then maybe we’ll see what’s happening. At the moment, it’s quite buoyant. I’m withholding judgement, but at the moment there is money to spend,” he said.

Girl power

Editors have told The Bookseller the appetite for psychological thrillers— and “sub-genre of a sub-genre”, the “house thriller”, a term for suspense centred on domestic relationships and around the home, coined by Viking’s commissioning editor Katy Loftus— shows no sign of abating. One much-talked about pre-FBF property is suburban-set The Woman in the Window (Felicity Blunt on behalf of ICM), a claustrophobic thriller whose narrator suffers from agoraphobia.

Loftus, for whom thrillers have formed 75% of total submissions she received recently, said: “There are a lot of thrillers—unreliable narrators and domestic murder is rife, as always.”

But editors are also looking for “something a bit different” in the psychological thriller genre. Unusual settings for thrillers is one way the trend is “evolving”, editors have said. For example, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (Harvil Secker) is set on a cruise liner which follows the Northern Lights.

High-concept supernatural elements in thrillers are also popular in this year’s submissions. The “creepy” The Chalk Man was praised by Bonnier Publishing imprint twenty7 publisher Joel Richardson for its “uniqueness”, potentially steering the genre in “a darker direction”.

At Transworld, commissioning editor Frankie Gray is behind The Widow by Fiona Barton and The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. “Whether it’s new and distinctive settings, or high-concept, or taking it out of that specifically first-person narration, it feels like things are moving on [in the psychological thriller trend], while still speaking to that space in the market. That’s what I’ve been looking for,” she said.

S&S’ Baboneau agreed “a sci-fi element on the edges of dystopian fiction” had been creeping into recent psychological thriller submissions. However, she added: “I think it is becoming quite a crowded market. I think it would be harder for those novels like Clare Mackintosh’s I Let You Go, (Sphere) and Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood (Vintage) to break through now.”

Corvus editorial director Sara O’Keeffe said: “Given how crowded this market has become, I’m very choosy about what I take on in this area,” she said, adding that nothing had “jumped out” at her despite “the tsunami of thrillers” in her inbox. Most recently O’Keeffe signed début All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda that uses “a very different technique” to set itself apart—by telling a story backwards, counting from day 15 to day one.

A grief observed

At the other end of the spectrum in commercial fiction, “a big contemporary love story” is on many publishers’ wish lists, according to editors, along with heartwarming, upmarket “book-club” fiction.

One such title, A J Pearce’s Dear Mrs Bird, set in wartime London in 1941 with a female protagonist, was won by Picador’s editorial director Francesca Main in a “passionately fought” seven-way auction. Main called the title “a perfect tonic for these troubled times”.

Another much-talked about book creating waves ahead of FBF is a début “tear-jerker” We Own the Sky by Luke Allnutt, represented by United Talent’s Juliet Mushens, about a couple whose son is diagnosed with cancer. It taps into a resurgence of “weepies”, following books such as The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Penguin), as well as a trend across fiction and non-fiction for the airing of more “difficult topics” like grief.

Publishing director Arzu Tahsin at W&N bought An Unremarkable Body by Elisa Lodato from Alice Lutyens at Curtis Brown, a “redemptive” and ultimately “uplifting” book looking back at the relationship between mother and daughter, using findings from an autopsy as a springboard, after the former is found dead at the foot of the stairs.

HQ’s Kate Mills said: “Publishers have been paying significant amounts for novels confronting issues like grief and bereavement, terminal illness and infertility. Everyone’s in the mood for a weepie and the book that breaks your heart is much sought after.”

Non-fiction has been comparatively quiet for the time of year. However, in the midst of “the slew of books about surgery, end of life and grief”, Transworld publishing director Susanna Wadeson snapped up Professor Sue Black’s non-fiction book entitled Living with Death about “what death means, both practically and philosophically” after a heated auction.

More “hybrid” non-fiction is also coming through. Commissioning editor Sophie Buchan at Weidenfeld & Nicolson said: “The reading public is becoming more fearless and willing to challenge themselves a bit more, and that comes back to this trend of books about death, and, like H is for Hawk, books that don’t fall neatly into one pitchable statement.”