David Owen tackles grief in new YA novel

Atom, an imprint of Little, Brown, has acquired a YA novel about nostalgia and grief by David Owen. 

Grief Angels is about 15-year-old Owen Marlow, whose mother moves them to a new town after his father passes away. Overwhelmed by sadness, he starts to hallucinate that skeletal birds are circling above him. He tells himself that these birds are just his brain’s way of coping until the birds pick him up and take him to an otherwordly forest.

Olivia Hutchings, commissioning editor at Atom Books, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Ella Kahn at Diamond Kahn & Woods Literary Agency.

“David Owen is a master at taking a topical issue affecting young people today and choosing not to explore it under a gritty, cynical lens, but instead to give it a magical realist twist – transforming it into a gripping read not unlike an episode of Black Mirror,” said Hutchings. “Yet David always offers his characters tenderness and hope, and this latest book is no exception.”

Owen is also the author of Panther, The Fallen Children and All the Lonely People, all published by Atom.

Grief Angels will be published in February next year.