Simon & Schuster pre-empts two-book deal from Lord Brown

Simon & Schuster has pre-empted The Golden Hour in a two-book deal from Kate Lord Brown. 

Publishing director Clare Hey acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Lisa Highton at Jenny Brown Associates. The Golden Hour will be published in summer 2025. 

"I’m so pleased to be working with Kate on The Golden Hour and to have found her the perfect home with Clare and S&S UK," said Highton. "Her novels are a return to those long-missed epic stories that I love. So many readers to come will be completely swept away by this story."

In 1970s Beirut Lucie Fitzgerald’s mother is dying and, on her deathbed, tells Lucie the story of her childhood best friend Juno, their life in 1930s Cairo and the search for Nefertiti’s tomb. It is a "transporting and moving story of a lost generation transformed by war and a study of great love and sacrifice in all its forms" the publisher said. 

Hey said: "The Golden Hour is the perfect blend of the epic and the intimate. Kate sweeps the reader away into a world that is both familiar and unknown, and tells the story of a mother and daughter, of great love, and of great loss. It’s the perfect novel for readers looking for something both escapist and deeply satisfying and I am so excited to be welcoming Kate to the S&S UK list."

Lord Brown added: "I’m delighted to be working with Clare and her wonderful team. I loved their enthusiasm for The Golden Hour. The novel brings together my experiences living and working in the Middle East, and a lifelong fascination with Ancient Egypt. The story of women desert explorers just had to be told."