Category: Latest Deals

Rights to Sean Egan’s new book have gone to Jawbone Press.

2025 marks sixty years since his annus mirabilis; the year when Bob Dylan changed popular music and the world forever.

By telling the story of Bob Dylan’s first calendar decade as a recording artist, one crucial in setting the template for his genius and encompassing the bulk of his influence and greatest work, this book will provide a unique angle on an endlessly fascinating career.

Decade of Dissent will seek to bring to life Dylan and his milieu at that point where he was making music that was not merely aesthetically magnificent but sociologically earthshaking. Sean Egan has interviewed, down the years, many of Dylan’s associates from this period, much to this day unpublished including Roger McGuinn (The Byrds), Eric Burdon (The Animals), Tom McGuinness (Manfred Mann).

All during this time he was engaged in a personal voyage that saw him first embrace the blandishments of fame and then emphatically reject them.

Sean Egan has been working as a freelance journalist, author and editor since 1993 and is the author has authored Rod Stewart: The Classic Years; The Clash on the Clash; The Mammoth Book of Bob Dylan; and Rough Guide to the Rolling Stones.

The book publishes on May 20, 2025. Pre-order here.

Flint Books, an imprint of The History Press in the UK, has acquired rights to urban naturalist and nature writer Amanda Tuke’s first book.

In Wild Pavements, naturalist Amanda Tuke shares her delight in the overlooked and under-appreciated wildlife in our UK cities, finds the people who care for it, takes groups out to enjoy it and explores what the current thinking in ecology and conservation means for the future of urban nature. The author explores London from the City out to the suburbs and visits Manchester, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Hull, Aberdeen and other cities in the British Isles, exploring the diversity of our urban nature and the surprising places you can find it.

With at least 85% of the UK population living in towns and cities, Wild Pavements encourages us all to experience the urban environment differently, through the eyes of urban naturalists, ecologists or even wildlife.

“Amanda Tuke is a standout among the new generation of urban nature writers. With beautifully written prose and practical advice, she makes nature and nature writing more inclusive and accessible to readers of all experience levels.” — Stephen Moss, author of 10 Birds That Changed the World, shortlisted for the 2023 Wainwright Nature Writing Prize

Amanda Tuke is a consultant botanist, urban plant walk leader, and associate lecturer for Bath Spa University’s MA in nature & travel writing. She writes a monthly column for Bird Watching Magazine on urban birds and has contributed to RSPB Magazine, BBC Countryfile Magazine, Resurgence Magazine, and the London Wildlife Trust Blog.

From 2021 to 2022, she was the nature-writer-in-residence for the London Wildlife Trust’s Great North Wood project.

Her work appears on her blog, The Urban Naturalist, and she shares updates on social media as @suburbanwilduk.

 

Cinto Press, an imprint of Bath Publishing, has signed Tom Gaisford’s “ambitious” debut novel, Sanctuary.

Alex Donovan is a young refugee lawyer in crisis.

Helping desperate clients reach safety is what gives his job meaning. But he now finds himself demoted, signed off sick for stress, and facing redeployment to the firm’s subterranean billing department.

Then there is Amy, the woman he adores. The irresistible junior barrister seems to be drifting away from him.

With little to lose and all to prove, Alex dreams up a madcap plan to restore his honour and secure Amy’s affection.

Chaplin commented: “When Tom’s debut novel landed in our inbox, we knew why his agent had sent it to us. The wit and insider knowledge he uses to construct such an ingenious, irresistible tale from the intricacies of immigration law immediately appealed, given our grounding in law. But Sanctuary is not just a riveting good read, it shines a light on the murky world of asylum in the UK—still a very live issue. We are delighted Tom has given us the chance to bring it to a wider public.”

Gaisford added: “Cinto Press’ growing fiction list, background in legal publishing and fearless interest in gritty stories about social justice made it the perfect fit. But it was also its appreciation of the novel’s lighter side, the humour and the love story, which permeate the narrative, that sealed the deal.”

‘Tom Gaisford’s insider knowledge makes his cleverly constructed legal thriller a compulsive and genuinely enlightening read. Alex’s passionate hope is that a story can change the public’s perception of asylum seekers. Maybe this one will.’
Suzi Feay, literary critic for The Financial Times

‘Tom Gaisford’s gripping novel explores an urgent subject – the UK’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers…(it is) both affecting and memorable.’
Lucy Popescu, Chair of the Author’s Club and the Best First Novel Award

Tom Gaisford is a human rights barrister with over ten years’ experience working in immigration law. He lives on Guernsey with his wife and their two young daughters and Sanctuary is his first novel.

Rights to Melissa Butcher’s first trade book have gone to Manchester University Press.

Designed as a cultural map of contemporary America, The Trouble With Freedom will enable readers to navigate through this morass of vitriol, conspiracy theory and argument, understanding how, why and in what direction America is changing.

In conversation with Americans across the country, from all walks of life, the book is extremely timely, produced in the midst of a raging culture war and the run up to the 2024 Presidential election. However, the issues are timeless and relevant not only to the USA but other countries like the UK, subject to similar processes of change and where comparable social divisions are evident. Written as narrative non-fiction with an ‘outsider’s eye’, in the style of ‘Alexis de Tocqueville in the 21st Century’, the book will appeal to audiences with an interest in social and current affairs, using a blend of original research, reporting and personal narrative.

Professor Melissa Butcher is a social and cultural geographer at Cumberland Lodge and Royal Holloway, University of London. She has produced to date two monographs (2003, 2011), five edited collections, over 30 academic journal articles, as well as numerous pieces of journalism. She has had regular invitations to present her work at public events including in the past the Bloomsbury Festival and the Dublin Science Museum.

Icon Books have snapped up travel writer Daniel Stables’ first full length book.

Fiesta is a journey through human festivity, told through colourful travel narratives set at some of the world’s most eye-catching festivals and interweaved with insights from the fields of anthropology, history, psychology, and folklore, examining why we celebrate festivals in the ways we do.

The work will examine human culture and the natural world through rich, first-person travel narratives, infused with humour and embroidered with background and detail from the worlds of history, psychology, anthropology, and more.

Connor Stait, editor at Icon Books commented, ‘‘Daniel Stables is a terrific writer and the perfect guide for readers looking to learn more about festivals around the world. I’m excited to be publishing his debut book.’

Daniel Stables has been working as a travel writer for the last decade, first writing guidebooks for Rough Guides, and later writing articles for National Geographic, the BBC, and national newspapers. He has won acclaim and recognition for his work, having been shortlisted for Travel Writer of the Year at the Freelance Writing Awards in 2021, and for Travel Feature of the Year at 2023’s British Guild of Travel Writers awards.

“Daniel has the rare ability to seamlessly take fascinating anthropological and psychological perspectives and weave them into exciting travel narratives. A unique insight into the human condition through the lens of gatherings of all description – thought-provoking and inspiring.” Levison Wood

Rights to Shafik Meghji’s new book has gone to Hurst Publishers.

A captivating blend of travel writing, history and reportage, Small Earthquakes: Exploring Britain’s Lost History in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay journeys from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego, Easter Island to South Georgia, exploring Britain’s forgotten connections with this part of South America.

Drawing on 15 years of experience of living, working and travelling across South America for DK Eyewitness, Lonely Planet, the BBC and Rough Guides, award-winning journalist, travel writer and author Shafik unearths a shared history featuring nitrate kings and tech utopians, footballers and pirates, polar explorers and freedom fighters, cowboys and missionaries.

Small Earthquakes will reveal how these three countries have shaped Britain in profound and unexpected ways, including a meatpacking plant in Fray Bentos that changed the way the world eats and a Buenos Aires waterworks that triggered a London banking crisis. And it explores how they provided an escape for everyone from Welsh nonconformists dreaming of a new life in Patagonia to gold miners seeking their fortunes in
some of the harshest conditions imaginable.

Meghji’s first book, Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia (Latin America Bureau, 2022), was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year and named one of the travel books of 2022 by the Washington Post, National Geographic Traveller and Wanderlust.

He has co-authored over 45 guidebooks for respected publishers like Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, and DK Eyewitness and his writing has been featured in prominent publications including BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveller, and The Guardian. His work has been recognised with numerous awards, including accolades from the Travel Media Awards, British Guild of Travel Writers Awards, and Freelance Writing Awards. He was shortlisted for Travel Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards in 2022 and 2023.