Dead Ink Books signs its largest deal yet, for two from Erin E Adams

Dead Ink Books has signed Jackal in a two-book deal with Erin E Adams which saw the publisher offer its largest advance yet. 

Commissioning editor and director Nathan Connolly acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Rachel Kind, vice-president and executive director of foreign rights at Penguin Random House. 

Already published in the US, Jackal will be released in the UK in October 2024 and will be followed with One of You in spring 2025. 

Jackal follows Liz who is reluctantly returning home to Johnston, Pennsylvania, for her best friend’s wedding. The synopsis adds: "But on the day of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the bride’s daughter, Caroline, goes missing—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood. As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls." 

In One of You, the story follows sisters Judith and Bea, members of the Beauclaire family who immigrated to New York City from Haiti. When their mother dies unexpectedly "Judith and Bea are forced to dive into a hidden world of mythos. What they learn could threaten the bedrock of the entire Beauclaire family . . . and reveal a rot that goes deeper than the roots they first made in this place." 

Connolly commented: "Reading Erin E Adams, one comes away immediately knowing this is an author who is going to rise to the stratosphere and we’re grateful to Erin, her agent Kerry D’Agostino at Curtis Brown and Rachel Kind at Penguin Random House who have all come together to make this deal happen. It is impossible not to be drawn into the atmospheric and compelling stories told by Erin, and her writing is precise and evocative."