Actor Rosie Day's 'beautiful and confronting' debut novel goes to Serpent's Tail

Miranda Jewess has pre-empted actor Rosie Day’s “beautiful and confronting” debut novel. The Serpent’s Tail publishing director snapped up Vipers from YMU’s Anna Dixon. Publication is scheduled for 2027.  

The book begins during a bitterly cold New York February, with Cece attending Fashion Week. Meanwhile, actress Angie’s distracted manager also sends her to the Big Apple for a pilot. The two end up sharing a foldaway bed in a run-down apartment on the Upper East Side, then must “navigate the turmoil of the entertainment industry, always returning home to each other. Cece walks through the world with ease, her biggest threat being the power she possesses but is unaware of. Angie is a shy, slip of a girl who never lost her baby incisors, which resemble viper fangs. But, then one night everything changes…”

Day is an actor who has appeared in Outlander and as Sarah Jessica Parker’s daughter in All Roads Lead to Rome. She is also a screenwriter, playwright and author of the forthcoming non-fiction book I Think I Like Girls.

Jewess said: “This is a beautiful and confronting book. Angie and Cece’s friendship, their co-dependence, their fierce love in the face of an entertainment industry that sees them as a disposable product – it will speak to so many women, and to the teenagers they once were. Rosie’s own experiences in the industry give a haunting authenticity to this story, and I am delighted to be publishing this extraordinary novel.”

Day added: “Vipers is a visceral account of the dark edges of girlhood, female friendship and the pursuit of power.”