15 February 2021

Television rights to Kate Summerscale's The Haunting of Alma Fielding, which was recently shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, have been acquired by New Pictures. Writer Charlotte Stoudt (Fosse/ Verdon) and director Minkie Spiro (The Plot Against America/ Downton Abbey) have set to work in translating the true ghost story for the screen, and they have also signed on as executive producers alongside New Pictures CEO Willow Grylls.

The Haunting of Alma Fielding traces how Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman in 1930s suburban London, begins to experience supernatural events, and follows the investigations of Nandor Fodor, chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research. Summerscale is best known for her bestselling book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which was adapted into an ITV drama by Hat Trick Productions in 2011, with Paddy Considine and Olivia Colman starring.

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11 February 2021

Elaine Feeney's debut novel, As Your Were, has been shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. This darkly comic book, which tackles the intimate histories, institutional failures and the darkly present past of modern Ireland, was published last year by Harvill Secker and was selected among The Guardian's top ten best debut novelists of 2020. 

Launched in 2013, the Rathbones Folio Prize is the only literature prize open to all works of fiction and non-fiction originally published in the English language. Last year the prize was awarded to RCW author Valeria Luiselli for her "fiercely imaginative" autobiographical third novel, and her first to be written in English, Lost Children Archive (Fourth Estate). The winner will be announced in a digital ceremony hosted with the British Library on 24th March 2021.

02 February 2021

Alex Michaelides’ forthcoming book The Maidens, the first of a series of books about the Greek psychologist who investigates mysteries, is set to be developed into a premium television series by Scott Steindorff and Dylan Russell’s Stone Village Television.

The story, set on the Greek island of Naxos and also in the town of Cambridge, England, is described as a well paced murder mystery with sudden twists and turns. It is centered around Mariana Andros who is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on a secret society called “The Maidens,” when one of the members, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered at Cambridge. Mariana becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, a Classics professor named Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. Her determination to prove him guilty will send her life spiraling out of control, to destroy her career, her relationships- even if it costs her life.

“This is the kind of story I’ve been wanting to help tell my whole career,” said Scott Steindorff, Managing Partner of Stone Village. “It has everything I love: a layered and heroic lead woman, academia, Greek Islands, classics, complex psychology...

28 January 2021

Netflix and See-Saw Films are adapting Alice Oseman's YA graphic novel series Heartstopper, and The Daniel Edwards CDG Team have just launched open casting. The eight-part TV series is an LGBTQI+ look at life for the current generation of young teens with an ensemble cast, made up of young gay, lesbian, bi and trans characters, placed firmly in the spotlight. It seeks to deliver all the fireworks of teen life, the sparks of first love, the anxieties of school… every facet of being a teenager in the UK.

They are looking for someone who is 16 years or over, able to play a 14-16y/o, and is UK-based.

While the characters Nick and Tara are in advanced casting stages already, Netflix and See-Saw Films are still actively seeking people to audition for the lead roles of Charlie, Tao, Elle, Darcy and Isaac, and they're also on the look out for Tori, Harry, and Ben. These roles do not require any prior acting experience. Just email a recent photo and a short paragraph about yourself to heartstopper@danieledwardscasting.com, and put HEARSTOPPER CASTING in the subject b...

28 January 2021

The Branford Boase Award 2021, the lengthiest longlist in the award's history, sees Joseph Elliott, Francesca Gibbons, L.D. Lapinski, Jenny Pearson and Vincent Ralph in the running for this year's award. The award, which is sponsored by Walker Books, is given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children, and also recognises the editor of the winning title:

The Good Hawk by Joseph Elliott, edited by Annalie Grainger and Megan Middleton (Walker)

A Clock of Stars: The Shadow Moth by Francesca Gibbons and illustrated by Chris Riddell, edited by Nick Lake (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

The Strangeworlds Travel Agency by L D Lapinski, edited by Lena McCauley (Orion)

The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates by Jenny Pearson and illustrated by Rob Biddulph, edited by Rebecca Hill and Becky Walker (Usborne)

Are You Watching? By Vincent Ralph, edited by Tig Wallace (Penguin)

20 January 2021

Authors Inua Ellams, Elaine Fenney, C Pam Zhang and RCW colleague Katharina Volckmer are among the 20-strong longlist for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021. Ellams is longlisted for The Actual, a collection of fifty personal and political poems, and Feeney, Zhang and Volckmer for their debut novels As You Were, How Much of These Hills is Gold and The Appointment respectively.

Launched in 2013, the Rathbones Folio Prize is the only literature prize open to all works of fiction and non-fiction originally published in the English language. Last year the prize was awarded to RCW author Valeria Luiselli for her "fiercely imaginative" autobiographical third novel, and her first to be written in English, Lost Children Archive (Fourth Estate). 

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20 January 2021

Directed by Euros Lyn, from a script written by Alice Oseman herself, the TV adaptation of the Heartstopper series is now set to become an eight-part TV show on Netflix. This comes eighteen months after See-Saw Films, the company behind Top of the Lake and State of the Union, optioned the rights to Alice Oseman’s graphic novel series, which was originally launched as a web comic via Tumblr and Tapas before subsequently being published by Hachette Children’s Group.

The television series will be exec produced by Euros Lyn and See-Saw’s Patrick Walters, Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning and Emile Sherman with Zorana Piggott (Fanny Lye Deliver’d) as producer. Alice Oseman says: “I feel incredibly lucky to get to work with a team of passionate, creative people who all adore Heartstopper and want to make it the most beautiful show we can. It’s a joy and an honour to get to re-tell Nick and Charlie’s story for TV and I am so excited to share it not only with Heartstopper’s existing readership, but also a whole new audience around the world.”

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07 January 2021

Film rights to Rob Doyle's debut Here Are the Young Men, which was first published by Bloomsbury in 2014, have been acquired by Well Go USA Entertainment with Eoin Macken signed on to direct the film from a screenplay he wrote based on the novel. Starring in the Irish teen drama are Travis Fimmel (Raised by Wolves, Vikings), Dean-Charles Chapman (Game of Thrones, 1917), Finn Cole (Peaky Blinders, Animal Kingdom), Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit), and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Vikings). 

Here Are the Young Men portrays a chilling spiritual fallout, harbinger of the collapse of a national illusion. Set in 2003, the film follows three Dublin teenagers who leave school to a social vacuum of drinking and drugs, and fall into acts of transgression. It previously played at the Galway Film Fleadh, where it won the Bingham Ray New Talent Award for co-producer Edwina Casey, and at the Giffoni Film Festival, where it was in official competition.

The film will be released on 19 March 2021. Click ...

06 January 2021

A television adaptation of Sally Green's bestselling YA trilogy, Half Bad, is currently in the works at Netflix, with Giri/Haji creator Joe Barton on board as the writer and executive producer along with Andy Serkis, Jonathan Cavendish and Will Tennant from The Imaginarium Studios. 

Based on the YA trilogy books written by Sally Green, Half Bad sees the sixteen-year-old "illegitimate son of a witch" who is monitored for most of his life due to fears he may follow the same destructive path as his father. The 8-part series will see Nathan flirt with the line between "good" and "bad" to find out who he really is.

06 January 2021

The Pembrokeshire Murders, written by police detective Steve Wilkins and ITV journalist Jonathan Hill, has been adapted into a three-part series for ITV. It chronicles the race to convict John Cooper – the serial murderer who was nicknamed ‘The Bullseye Killer’ by the press in the mid-‘oos, and sees Luke Evans star as detective Steve Wilkins who, along with ITV news journalist Jonathan Hill, was instrumental in bringing John Cooper to justice. 

The murderer’s nickname is derived from an appearance he had made on popular ’80s darts-based game show Bullseye shortly before committing his first double murder – with footage from the show having played a key role in helping to identify him as the killer. The three-parter will air across consecutive nights from Monday 11th January 2021, and the book is published by Hachette now.

05 January 2021

Ingrid Persaud, Trinidad-born writer and artist living in London, whose debut novel Love After Love published in 2020 by Faber in the UK has been selected as the winner of the hugely prestigious Costa First Novel Award. The judges said the story tracing the life of a Trinidadian family over two decades, written in Trinidadian prose, was “teeming with life” and “full of unforgettable characters.”

Launched in 1971, the Costa Book Awards is one of the UK's most prestigious and popular book prizes and celebrates the most enjoyable books of the year by writers resident in the UK and Ireland. The prize has five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – with one of the five winning books selected as the overall Costa Book of the Year on 26th January 2021. 

14 December 2020

Alice Oseman's Heartstopper Vol 3, which continues the love story of Charlie and Nick, now open and out and ready to meet the world, has been announced as the winner of Goodreads Choice Awards in the Best Graphic Novel & Comic category with over 44,000 votes. Oseman’s ongoing serialized webcomic has won universal praise for its insightful exploration of LGBTQ+ themes and its quiet celebration of those universal mysteries: love, friendship, and loyalty. Over a quarter of a million Heartstopper books have now also been sold in the English language.

The annual Goodreads Choice Awards, sponsored by National Book Tokens, are compiled by bookshops and then the public is invited to vote for a winning title from each shortlist. Click here for more information. 

30 November 2020

Denise Mina and debut authors Jenny Pearson and Ingrid Persaud have been shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Book Awards. In the best novel category is Denise Mina’s thriller The Less Dead, which judges called “a richly drawn, beautifully paced book … set in the guise of a thriller, but it is actually about humanity.” Jenny Pearson's first book, The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates, has been shortlisted in the Children's Book Award category, and Ingrid Persaud's Love After Love is up for the First Novel Award.

The annual awards, open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland, span 20 titles across five categories. Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on 4th January 2021. The overall winner of the 2020 Costa Book of the Year will recieve £30,000 and be announced at a virtual ceremony on 26th January 2021. 

19 November 2020

Angelina Jolie has signed on to direct Unreasonable Behaviour, a biopic about the legendary British war photographer Sir Don McCullin, which is being produced by Tom Hardy and Dean Baker under their Hardy Son & Baker banner alongside Working Title Films' Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. BAFTA-nominated screenwriter Gregory Burke (’71, Entebbe) is writing the screenplay, an adaptation of McCullin’s autobiography of the same title, an unflinching account of the celebrated British war photographer’s life, which took him from poverty-stricken, wartime London to some of the world’s most dangerous war zones.

Don McCullin said: "Having viewed Angelina’s last film on Cambodia (and having spent so much time during the war there) I was very impressed at how she made such a powerful and accurate representation of the place at that time. I feel as if I am in safe, capable and professional hands with her."

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12 November 2020

Yan Ge's White Horse, which is translated from Chinese by Nicky Harman, has been shortlisted for the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. It follows Yun Yun who, like the author, lost her mother very young. She sees more and more often white horses, fatal omens because relationships deteriorate between adults and ensuing tensions reveal that they are founded on a terrible lie. Through her eyes, we also observe her cousin, Zhang Qing, keen to dive into the excitements of adolescence but clashes with repressive parents. 

The prize is judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett and is worth £1,000, a sum shared equally between the writer and translator. The winner will be announced in an online award ceremony on Thursday 26 November. Click here to discover the shortlist. 

10 November 2020

Moira Buffini (Harlots) has adapted the screenplay based on John Preston’s The Dig, which tells the story of the most famous archaeological dig in modern British history – the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo, known as "Britain's Tutankhamun." The film is directed by Simon Stone and it is currently scheduled for release on Netflix in January 2021.

The screen version casts Ralph Fiennes as archaeologist Basil Brown who makes the discovery – though the site sits on the land of Carey Mulligan’s Edith Pretty. It also stars Lily James as archaeologist Peggy Preston, who – due to the 1939 setting – finds herself faced with misogynistic notions as a young woman in a male-dominated field. Elsewhere, the cast includes Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Monica Dolan, and Ken Stott. 

Click here to watch the trailer.

03 November 2020

Waterstones have put The Book of Hopes edited by Katherine Rundell and The Ratline by Philippe Sands on the Book of the Year shortlist for 2020. Sands' follow up to Baillie Gifford-winner East West Street was praised by the retailer as "a truly exceptional read," meanwhile Rundell's anthology has been commended as “a gorgeous collection of words and pictures that gifted many readers a ray of sunshine to move forward, to make sense of the world, or to get through the day.”

The 12-strong shortlist was drawn up by Waterstones booksellers, who each nominate a book they think is outstanding and would recommend to readers. The winner will be chosen by a Waterstones panel headed by James Daunt and announced on 3rd December.

Click here to visit Waterstones online.