Europa Editions appoints Daniela Petracco

Independent literature-in-translation specialist Europa Editions has appointed Daniela Petracco, previously an agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates Literary Agency, as director of Europa Editions UK.

Petracco will manage publicity, marketing and sales for the newly launched London office, and will work closely with the company's head office in New York and additional Rome office.

Europa's editorial director and founder Sandro Ferri said: "Daniela is a genuinely nice person, and, at the professional level, she knows books inside and out and has an intimate understanding of the UK market. We are thrilled to have someone of her calibre and with her passion for books leading operations in the UK."

Europa UK will begin publishing in January 2012 with eight trade paperback originals, with the list to include a mixture of translations as well as English literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. The first four titles will include A Novel Bookstore, a literary thriller by French writer Laurence Cosse, about two booksellers who receive threats when their shop begins to do well. It will be published in January, along with Treasure Island!!! by Sarah Levine, about a graduate who decides to redesign her life according to the values of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.

A third novel, The Nun by London-based Italian writer Simonetta Agnello-Hornby, will also be released in January. Set in Messina in 1839, it follows the daughter of a wealthy family who tries to elope, only to have her affections confused by the English captain of the ship on which she makes her escape.

In February, the publisher will release Three Weeks in December, a novel telling interconnected stories unfolding on the African continent, one in the present, the other at the end of the 19th century.

The further four titles for the winter season are still to be announced.