Little, Brown snaps up 'revelatory' book from Ben Machell

Little, Brown has snapped up Chasing the Dark, the "revelatory" investigation from Times writer Ben Machell. 

Richard Beswick, publishing director at Abacus, and Colin Dickerman, vice-president and editorial director in non-fiction at Grand Central, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Richard Pike at Conville and Walsh. The book will be published in October 2025. 

Chasing the Dark is a "gripping and unputdownable narrative" that uses the case files of Tony Cornell, a Second World War veteran and Cambridge scholar who investigated psychical phenomena, to "examine and attempt to understand our interactions and fascination with the unexplained". 

The publisher continued: "Today, at a moment when public appetite for stories about the supernatural has rarely been greater, Chasing the Dark will allow us to take the longer view, examining the roots of our obsessions, and showing how often they reveal something deeper about the human mind, and about the things we have come to believe, the anxieties and tensions that exist within society, and the very limits of scientific knowledge."