Renegade's six-figure, 48-hour pre-empt for a 'White Lotus' meets 'Ripley' debut

Renegade has acquired the debut and one other book from a Women’s Prize Discoveries longlistee in a six-figure, 48-hour pre-empt. Christina Demosthenous, publisher at the Dialogue imprint, acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Rebecca Taylor McKay’s The Call of the Void from Laura Williams at Greene & Heaton.

Renegade’s buy was followed by pre-empts in Germany and France, while Caroline Eisenmann at Frances Goldin currently has the title on submission in the US. 

The Call of the Void is scheduled for July 2026, and will be a Renegade superlead. Set on the Amalfi Coast in the scorching summer of 1961, it follows Clara and her wealthy husband Spencer on their honeymoon. As the beautiful days stretch on, Clara begins to think that all is not as it seems. Then a note is slipped under her door saying her husband is lying, that "this isn’t his first time in Italy... or even his first time staying in this hotel’s honeymoon suite. And Clara must face the possibility that [Spencer] isn’t the man she thought he was".

Taylor McKay said themes in Call of the Void were inspired by her experiences as a working-class writer and care leaver, and someone with a long-term neurological health condition. The West Yorkshire-based writer joined Greene & Heaton through the Greene Door project, the agency’s open submissions initiative. An early version of the novel was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Curtis Brown Discoveries Prize in 2022, and shortlisted for the 2022 Northern Writers’ Awards Sid Chaplin Award for working-class writers.

Demosthenous said she was "obsessed" with Taylor McKay’s "‘White Lotus’ meets The Talented Mr Ripley in sun-drenched Positano" novel. She added: "I was completely mesmerised from page one, under the spell of Rebecca’s lush, hypnotic writing. Transporting the reader to the breathtaking beauty and opulence of the Amalfi Coast, we’re invited to meet what seems like the perfect couple, and their elite world. But nothing is as it seems."

Taylor McKay said: "The inspiration for the novel came after my own honeymoon was cancelled during the pandemic. Instead, my husband and I would dress up in our best clothes every Friday night to watch old Hitchcock films and somewhere along the way, the claustrophobia of lockdown, all the old-Hollywood glamour, and a yearning to escape to sunnier climes combined, and The Call of the Void was born. 

"As someone who’s often felt like an outsider, existing between spaces and dancing on the margins, I wanted to capture what it’s like to find yourself living a life that doesn’t quite feel your own and how that impacts the way you move through the world."