Picador triumphs in five-way auction for Thompson's 'gorgeous' debut

Picador has won Anyone’s Ghost, a "stunning" debut novel from August Thompson, in a five-way auction.

Editorial director Anne Meadows acquired UK and Commonwealth rights and audio rights from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Duvall Osteen at Aragi. US rights sold at auction to John Burnham Schwartz at Penguin Press. 

Anyone’s Ghost follows Theron and Jake – two teenagers who are meant to be. "But Jake is taken, and Jake is in denial, and soon the world sends their paths spinning apart. When Theron and Jake meet years later, they find themselves crashing into one another in surprising and beautiful ways. Now Theron knows: he wants to be Jake, and he wants Jake. But is Jake brave enough to want him back?"

Meadows commented: "It is a gorgeous, modern love story of the collisions we see coming, and those we don’t, told by a startling new voice. I am so glad to be publishing August’s debut at Picador."

Thompson added: "I wrote this book to explore and dramatize feelings which had existed in me for years as sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful abstractions. The question of what it means to want someone as much as you want to be them has always been central to my identity and writing. To be able to write a whole book about that, about love, about becoming, has felt lucky from the beginning."