Mantle dives in for Lizzie Pook debut

Mantle has won a multi-publisher auction for two books from journalist Lizzie Pook amid a clamour for rights across the world.

Associate publisher Sam Humphreys acquired UK rights for Pook's debut Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter and second book Maude Horton and the Rope from Madeleine Milburn at Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency. The first book will be released in the UK as a super-lead hardback in 2022, positioning alongside authors like Jessie Burton, Sarah Perry and Stacey Halls.

ANZ rights were acquired in a separate deal by fiction publisher Beverley Cousins at Penguin Random House Australia in a “significant” six-figure pre-empt, while North American rights were sold to Carina Guiterman at Simon & Schuster US with Sarah St Pierre at Simon & Schuster Canada in another six-figure deal. German rights have been auctioned by rights director Liane Smith, and have gone to Penguin Random House.

Set in late 19th-century Western Australia against a backdrop of dangerous pearl-diving, crocodiles and storms, historical novel Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter tells the story of Eliza Brightwell, a 20-year-old Englishwoman, who sets off to uncover the truth about her eccentric father after he goes missing under suspicious circumstances.

Humphreys said: “From the very first page, I was swept up in Eliza's story; Lizzie writes with a pitch-perfect combination of precision and passion, tension and atmosphere, and Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter is a joy to read, from start to finish. With a mystery at its heart, it's also an account of an independent young woman defying the gendered expectations of the time, and, as such, tells a story that will resonate with readers everywhere. I'm thrilled to be publishing it in the UK”

Pook is a journalist and travel writer who has won or been shortlisted for over 10 awards. She was inspired to write her first novel after visiting a tiny exhibition about the Broadhurst family in Perth’s Shipwreck Museum and subsequent trips to the remote coastal town of Broome. During her research, “she became fascinated with the swaggering lawlessness of the early pearling era and wanted to shine a harsh light on a lesser-known time in British colonial history and the brutal pearl-diving industry”.

Milburn said: “Lizzie has masterfully recreated a hidden history, beautiful and grotesque, everything rendered with astonishing clarity. The story is so atmospheric and transporting, I feel as though I’m still trying to recover my land legs.”

Guiterman added: “I've been desperate for a novel that will transport me away from the real world for a bit, and Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter was just the thing to do it. I lost myself completely in Lizzie's atmospheric prose, in her lush, evocative descriptions of Bannin Bay's sticky heat, surrounding mangrove swamps—and the crocodiles that fill them—and the dangers that lurk, both within this small pearling town and from without. I fell hard for this sweeping feminist adventure story and the brave protagonist at its centre, and I can't wait for readers to fall for Eliza Brightwell too."