Bloomsbury wins 'page-turning' new novel by Susannah Dickey

Bloomsbury has won to pieces, a new novel by Susannah Dickey, exploring the "connections and disconnections between us".

Publishing director Emma Herdman acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada and audio, from Sophie Scard at United Agents, following a select submission. Bloomsbury Trade will publish in hardback, e-book and audio in spring 2026.

"A family assemble over one weekend at their home in Ireland for the funeral of their father, a gentle, remote man who has taken his own life," the synopsis says. "Through their alternating viewpoints, a picture of alliances and factions is painted, rich and long concealed personal histories revealed—if only to the reader. to pieces is a remarkably clear-sighted novel about the complexity and depth of the bonds that tie us to each other, and the constant tension between the individual and that many-layered, impossible thing—the family."

Herdman added: "We are beyond happy to be welcoming Susannah to the Bloomsbury Trade list. In her hands, the everyday is illuminated, the connections and disconnections between us examined with precision and elegance and insight. And all tied up in a page-turning story."

Dickey is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons (Doubleday) and Common Decency (Penguin), which was an Irish Waterstones Book of the Month. Her debut poetry collection ISDAL (Picador) was a Guardian and Irish Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the John Pollard Prize. She was the winner of the 2024 Irish Chair of Poetry Travel Award and was a recipient of an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2020. Her short fiction was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award and shortlisted in The Moth Nature Writing Prize.

"Emma and Gurdip responded to the book with such generosity and incisiveness, as well as a real appreciation for the direction I want to take my writing in," the author said.