William Boyd returns to Penguin

Viking has acquired three new titles – a collection of short stories and two novels – by William Boyd.

The story collection, The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth, will be published in autumn 2017. William Boyd’s first new novel in the latest deal will be published the following autumn.

The deal marks a return to Penguin, where much of Boyd's backlist is published, including such titles as Any Human Heart (Hamish Hamilton) and Brazzaville Beach (Penguin). He has been published by Bloomsbury since moving there for Restless, published in 2006, aside from his James Bond novel Solo, which was with Jonathan Cape.

His most recent novel Sweet Caress was published by Bloomsbury last year.

Mary Mount, publisher at Viking, who acquired the three books from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown, said: "I have been a great admirer of William Boyd’s work for many, many years. The stories we are publishing next autumn are as brilliantly vivid and acutely observed as any of his fiction and then we have the very exciting prospect of a new Boyd novel only a year later. It is a great thrill and privilege to be his publisher."

Boyd’s bestseller in the Nielsen BookScan era is Restless, with 366,275 copies sold. The paperback of Sweet Caress has so far sold 107,777 copies via BookScan. In total Boyd has sold 1.62 million printed books for £11.8m through BookScan.