W&N buys 'chilling' debut

Weidenfeld & Nicolson has won an auction for a debut novel featuring a "chilling" ghost tale.

Deputy publishing director Arzu Tahsin bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Rawblood by Catriona Ward from Sam Copeland at Rogers, Coleridge and White for a five-figure sum.

Tahsin said: “Rawblood is one of the most genuinely chilling novels I’ve read. Filled with all the key ingredients of a classic ghost story and set in Dartmoor, Rawblood features generations of one family who carry the legacy of being haunted by a ghost so terrible that the sight of her literally kills them. But who is the ghost and what does she want? The answer is as chilling as the ghost herself.

“The writing is impeccably calibrated to deliver a moving story with a truly petrifying twist. It will haunt your dreams.”

Ward was born in Washington DC and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco, and spent summers at Dartmoor.

She works for the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation and lives in London.

Rawblood is due to be published in September 2015.