Penguin USA to publish Someone Else's Skin and Long Gone

My happy news of the week is that Penguin have bought the US rights to my first two crime novels. My sister put it like this, "Penguin! Remember all those Penguin Classics on the bookcase when we shared a room, growing up? And now you're going to be one of them!" Well, not quite, but I know what she's means and I'm just as excited. My editor, Emily Murdock Baker, is Sophie Hannah's editor in New York, and she recently co-edited the Pulitzer Prize winning, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Between Penguin in the States and Headline in the UK, I feel very lucky to be in safe hands for this big adventure.

It occurs to me that I've said very little about the two books themselves, so I'm linking (below) to my agent's website which has a synopsis for each book:

Someone Else's Skin

No two victims are alike

DI Marnie Rome knows this better than most. Five years ago, her family home was a shocking and bloody crimescene. Now, she's tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim. Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defence. A crowd of witnesses saw it happen. But as the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women's shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory. A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.

Long Gone

Being the perfect family has become a deadly pastime

 

DI Marnie Rome knows the sinister secrets that families can hide. She’s still trying to uncover the truth of what drove her foster brother to murder her parents five years ago, and he’s equally determined to keep her in the dark. But this new case surprises even her. Surely the corpses of two small boys, lying under concrete in a London garden, should be claimed by someone – grieved by someone?

In other news, I'll be at CrimeFest in Bristol from Thursday 30 May to Sunday 2 June. I'm looking forward to meeting up with fellow crime writers. Then I'm off to Crime in the Court in London on Thursday 4 July, which will be my first time at this infamous gathering hosted by Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court - an old haunt of mine from when I lived in Westminster. Finally, I'm returning to Harrogate for a second year of the marvellous mayhem that is the Theakstons old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, from 18 to 21 July (that's my brilliant agent, Jane Gregory, on the left of the group photo). My last year as an unpublished crime writer, so I must make the most of the anonymity...!

Tweet