Headline snaps up 'powerful and provocative' novel from US author Fowler

Headline has snapped up a “powerful and provocative” novel about warring families from US author Therese Anne Fowler.

Commissioning editor Jess Whitlum-Cooper secured UK and Commonwealth rights for A Good Neighbourhood from Jenny Meyer at Jenny Meyer Literary Agency in the US, where rights have been sold to St Martin’s Press.

The novel is set in a tight-knit North Carolina neighbourhood, where professor Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. The synopsis explains: "All is well until the Whitman’s move in next door – an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenage daughter. With little in common except a property line, these families quickly find themselves at war. But as they fight, they fail to notice a romance blossoming between their two teenagers - a romance that may cause everything to shatter.”

Whitlum-Cooper said: “This powerful and provocative novel is page-turning and electrifying, with a conclusion that will shake you to your core. This is a timely and urgent story, and I’m delighted to be bringing Therese’s formidable writing to the Headline list.”

Fowler, whose novel will be published in February 2020, is the author of previous books Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (Two Roads) and A Well-Behaved Woman (Two Roads).

She said: “Every novel (and every author!) needs to find its right, best home, so I’m delighted to have A Good Neighbourhood at Headline, in such enthusiastic and capable hands.”

Meyer added: “A Good Neighbourhood is a searingly intelligent page-turner of a novel which deserves a global audience – I couldn’t be more thrilled by the brilliant partnership we’ve struck with Jess Whitlum-Cooper and Headline for the UK and beyond.”