Manuscripts by Porter and Millwood Hargrave head to LBF

Manuscripts from Max Porter, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Candice Carty-Williams are among those agents are taking to London Book Fair (LBF) next month.

Literary agencies have named the top five books in their “LBF briefcases”, including Vardo the first adult novel from bestselling children’s writer and poet Millwood Hargrave, which is inspired by the real events of the 1621 Norwegian witch trails – being sold by Janklow & Nesbit. Porter’s as-yet-untitled second novel is being sold by Aitken Alexander, while the Jo Unwin Literary Agency is selling Carty-Williams’ Queenie, a painful, comic story of a young black woman looking for love – already won by Orion in the UK and Scout Press in the US. The agency is also selling rights to Kit de Waal’s latest novel The Trick to Time, an “against-the-odds love story” set in 1970s Birmingham – UK rights have already been snapped up by Viking.

Curtis Brown has Booker winner Howard Jacobson’s newest, a "wickedly observed story of old age" following the lives of two nonagenarians, entitled Live a Little (sold in the UK to Cape). The agency will also be selling rights to Anthony Horowitz’s second James Bond novel Forever and a Day (also sold in the UK to Cape) as well as Bridge of Clay, which marks the much-anticipated return of The Book Thief writer Markus Zusak with a “breath-taking story of five brothers”.

Jacqueline Wilson’s My Mum Tracy Beaker, the latest story about her much-loved character is being sold by David Higham Associates, which will also be selling nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s Underland, an exploration of the culture and geographies of underworlds.

Kingsford Campbell is selling Nikesh Shukla’s “powerful” children’s novel Run Riot, while Mulcahy Associates is taking Tramp Press publisher Sarah Davis-Goff’s Last Ones Left Alive (World English rights bought by Tinder Press) to trade rights to on the LBF floor. 

More information about literary agents' LBF picks is available here.