Serpent's Tail unveils four 'electrifying' new acquisitions

Leonora Craig Cohen, commissioning editor at Serpent’s Tail, has announced a raft of “electrifying” new acquisitions. 

She acquired four new titles from three international talents for publication between 2023 and 2026. “There is so much to look forward to in the future and I can’t wait to share these three distinctive, utterly compelling novels with readers,” she said. “Each author skilfully challenges our initial expectations and provides total immersion in worlds made new.” 

The first book will be Bliss and Blunder by Victoria Gosling, described as a “magisterial, exuberant retelling of the King Arthur legend for the modern age”. Craig Cohen acquired world all language rights from Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton. US rights were handled by Lucy Carson at The Friedrich Agency. It will publish in August 2023. 

The synopsis says: “Arthur, a tech billionaire, prepares to celebrate his 40th birthday while his unfaithful wife Gwen awaits a message from a blackmailing hacker—and their old enemy Morgan is heading back to the town of Abury hellbent on revenge. Bliss and Blunder takes on timeless themes of love, betrayal, war, misogyny and Englishness.” 

Craig Cohen also snapped up two books from debut American writer Gianni Washington. She bought UK and Commonwealth rights, with exclusive European rights, to Flowers from the Void and Janus from Charlotte Colwill of the Bravo Blue Agency. US rights are still available. 

Flowers from the Void is a collection of dark, hauntingly weird short fiction that explores the outer limits of empathy, encompassing a witches’ coven, a girl with no shadow and a reaper of souls.  

Janus will be Washington’s debut novel, tracing the toxic relationship of Black twin sisters growing up in the South who are given two lockets that unlock supernatural abilities and unsettle the balance of power between them. The novel asks hard questions about empathy, memory and vengeance as Jane becomes a violent sociopath and Jill becomes a contract killer who struggles with intimate connection.

The collection will be published in spring 2024 and the novel in 2026.

Navid Sinaki’s Medusa of the Roses completes the list. Craig Cohen signed UK and Commonwealth rights from Florence Rees at A M Heath on behalf of Mariah Stovall at Trellis Literary Management, for the Iranian-American’s debut. The book will be published simultaneously with Grove in the US in winter 2024. 

It is described as “a gorgeously lyrical debut queer noir set in contemporary Tehran”. The synopsis says: “Anjir and Zal are childhood best friends turned adults illegally in love. Zal gets attacked after being caught with another man in public, but Anjir forgives the infidelity as they formulate a plan for their future: Anjir, who’s always identified with the mythical gender-changing Tiresias, will become a woman, and they’ll move to a new town for a fresh start as husband and wife. Then Zal vanishes, leaving only a cryptic note behind.”