Harvill Secker pre-empts Nicci Cloke’s 'utterly unique' thriller

Harvill Secker has pre-empted a new thriller from Nicci Cloke, about a waitress on trial for the murder of four wealthy members of a private club.

Deputy publishing director Katie Ellis-Brown bought UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada), but including e-book and audio, to Her Many Faces from Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown. North American rights were acquired at auction by Danielle Dieterich at William Morrow, and Her Many Faces will publish simultaneously in summer 2025.

“When four wealthy and influential men are poisoned at London’s most exclusive private club, a young waitress is charged with their murder after being caught running from the scene of the crime,” the synopsis says. “As the trial grips the nation, five men begin to question how well they really knew her. Her father, her childhood friend, her lover, her barrister and the journalist investigating the case. To each of them, she is something different. But which is the true face of Katie Cole? And is she capable of murder?”

Ellis-Brown said: “Nicci Cloke is an incredible talent who has constructed an utterly unique thriller; I adore how she’s used the five different unreliable narrators to explore how the voiceless, the powerless, or those forgotten by society, can so easily have their own narratives stripped from them. Her Many Faces is compelling, bruising, and very, very clever, and I can’t wait to share it with readers.”

Cloke added: “Her Many Faces is a novel about guilt, bias, online conspiracy theories and their real-world impact, and about the roles we play for the people closest to us and the versions of those people we write in turn. I’m so delighted it’s found its perfect home with Harvill Secker, and feel incredibly lucky to be working with Katie Ellis-Brown and the team, and with Danielle Dieterich in the US.”