Tinder Press acquires 'breathtaking literary page turner' from Owen

Tinder Press, Headline's literary imprint, has acquired Small Angels by Lauren Owen, author of The Quick (Vintage, 2014).

Publisher Mary-Anne Harrington acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Jenny Hewson at Lutyens & Rubinstein. Tinder Press will publish as its lead fiction launch title on 26th May 2022, with Random House US publishing simultaneously.

Small Angels "updates the classic ghost story for the 21st century", says the publisher, as a wedding in a Suffolk village sees woods long shunned by locals stir with an unsettling magic, and forces a troubled family’s secrets out into the open. 

Harrington said: "Reading Small Angels was the kind of experience you dream of as an editor: a book I could just lose myself in, a multi-layered, hugely ambitious exercise in storytelling, deeply rooted in landscape and in the traditions of folklore and ghost stories that have been told and retold for generations but have lost none of their power to enchant and terrify. And it’s such a passionate story at heart—a coming-of-age story that is a story too about the bond between sisters and all the headiness and danger of first love. I’m thrilled to be publishing Lauren Owen at Tinder Press, and can’t wait to see readers and booksellers fall under Small Angels’ spell next summer."

Owen commented: "I'm absolutely delighted to be working with Mary-Anne and Tinder Press. I adore the kind of books that are best read after midnight (my copy of M R James' ghost stories is almost worn out) and I hope that Small Angels will be a treat for readers who love them too."