Category: Latest Deals

World Rights to Ed Peppitt’s two-wheeled journey of discovery around 327 of England & Wale’s Lighthouses, have been snapped up by Icon Books.

This is a story of a 3,500-mile cycle ride to explore the onshore and offshore lighthouses around the coastline of England and Wales, proving that a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis needn’t mean giving up on a lifelong dream.

Over the course of his journey, he meets with former lighthouse keepers, current lighthouse staff, lighthouse enthusiasts, and people who were born and brought up in lighthouses. This is more than a personal journey, it’s a social one.

The book will be accompanied by a set of original, hand-drawn illustrations of every lighthouse.

Ed is an active member and regional representative of a vibrant association for lighthouse keepers, engineers and enthusiasts, and presents and produces a fortnightly podcast about lighthouse heritage called Keeping Watch, available on all popular podcast platforms.

Peppett’s background is in educational publishing, having been publishing director at Letts Study Guides throughout the 1990s. He has done work for The Booksellers Association and more recently has worked on educational and business publishing projects with Channel 4, GL Assessment, Hodder & Stoughton, the Guardian, Commonwealth Education Trust and Bournemouth University. He is the author of seven business and computing titles, all published by Hodder & Stoughton.

Peppitt commented: “I am so grateful to Tom [Cull], my agent, for finding me the perfect home for The Beacon Bike, and I am pleased to be working with the Icon Books team. Icon shares my vision for this project – a journey of discovery, a celebration of our maritime heritage, and a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the people who kept watch. I’m looking forward to sharing my story, and I’m confident that, with them, my book will shine as brightly as the lighthouses themselves.”

The book will be published in spring 2024.

https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/icon-acquires-story-of-a-cycle-ride-exploring-the-lighthouses-of-england-and-wales

World English Language rights have been acquired by Editorial Director Duncan Proudfoot for Ad Lib Publishers, for climate journalist and host of the ClimateGenn podcast Nick Breeze‘s COP OUT: HOW GOVERNMENTS HAVE FAILED THE PEOPLE ON CLIMATE.

This book will take a look at why, after 30 years of international climate negotiations to reduce carbon emissions, the UN process has failed to deliver a survivable outcome; from Paris to Egypt, finding out what on Earth is going on and exploring the widening gap between public concern and political leadership.

From an on-the-ground perspective at every COP from COP21 Paris in 2015 up until COP27 in Egypt, COP OUT takes us on a fast-paced tour of how the UN process has achieved the exact opposite of what it first set out to achieve as far back as the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Duncan Proudfoot: ‘People tend to turn away, perhaps understandably, from the key existential issue of the day: climate change, or collapse. Nick Breeze succeeds in engaging us in the very human narrative of successive COP conferences: a story of imperfection, failure even, but not yet defeat. He shows clearly that it is not Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil or other climate protesters who are the extremists; the true extremists are the
policymakers who undermine efforts to reduce emissions. Governments have failed the people on climate; Nick shows us how, why, and what we can do about it.’

Nick Breeze: ‘The story of COP OUT has emerged over the course of the last decade from my experience of attending the UN COPs, speaking with many experts and reflecting on the terrifying gap between scientific reality and political action. Thanks to my agent Tom Cull for believing in the project and teaming up with my editor, Duncan Proudfoot, both of whom got the story from day one.’

Breeze explores the widening gap between public concern and political leadership. An IPSOS poll in the UK was headlined ‘8 in 10 Britons concerned about climate change – half think net zero target should be brought forward’. In the United States, the Yale Programme on Climate Communication reported, ‘over 70 per cent of people are worried’. Despite this, global policy is still not taking the appropriate action that scientists have been prescribing since the 1980s.

Nick’s book is a personal story, less about the intricacies of science and more about the mainstream perception of how we are understanding and responding to the problem. It seems that, for the most part, society and governments regard protesters who glue themselves to roads or buildings as the lunatics; the truth, however, is that it is those in positions of power who are the true lunatics, failing to respond in the ways that we need to to save the biosphere that sustains us.

Nick Breeze has been interviewing climate scientists and related experts since 2009. In 2017, he co-founded the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series (CCLS) with Professor Hugh Hunt in Cambridge and also began a podcast series during the lockdown in 2020 and has an active YouTube channel that typically receives 30-60k views per month.

Prior to engaging with climate change in 2009, Nick was a wine journalist and soon after began mixing climate change and wine. In 2022, and now in 2023, Nick is the Sustainability Ambassador to the Wines of Alentejo (Portugal) Sustainability Programme (WASP).

North American rights for Hawaii’s Women of War have gone to US publisher Pegasus Books.

In focusing on the work of women in wartime Hawaii, this book will cover the war in the Pacific and will examine historical events such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway from a totally new angle. It will offer a novel and interesting contribution to Hawaii’s history, as well as to US history.

Though some work has been carried out on American nurses in the Pacific, especially those taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese in the Philippines and in Guam, there remains a conspicuous gap in Pacific war history where women should be. It will examine the work of American women, but it will also look at the wartime work of Pacific Islanders and Polynesian women, many of whom have never before been considered in a study of the Second World War.

Sarah-Louise Miller is a graduate of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and is uniquely qualified to write this book, having spent the past five years working full time on researching women in British intelligence roles.

In June 2022 she appeared as a historical expert on the British Pacific Fleet on an episode of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are, featuring actor Ralf Little. In late June 2022 she filmed with Channel 4 for the documentary series, My Grandparents’ War, explaining to actress Keira Knightley what her grandmother’s World War II service entailed, and she featured as a historical expert on a brand new documentary series alongside Professor Alice Roberts.

Sarah regularly films in London studios, most recently for a four-part historical documentary for Sky History. She was also featured as a historical expert in a six-part international documentary series for Sky History, entitled The Bomber: Terror of World War II.

World rights to historian and lecturer Dr Sarah-Louise Miller’s debut work The Women Behind the Few: Women in WWII British Air Intelligence has gone to Biteback Publishing.

The book will investigate the work of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force behind significant and famous air operations in the Second World War, including the Battle of Britain, the Dambusters raid, the Thousand Bomber Raids and the discovery of the German V weapons using aerial reconnaissance.

It also examines the rationale behind the RAF not wanting to employ women in intelligence work, and the emotional reactions of women to warfare and their ability to keep secrets as part of this examination.

Sarah-Louise Miller graduated in May 2022 with a PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and is uniquely qualified to write this book, having spent the past five years working full time on researching women in British intelligence roles.

Most recently, she appeared on a six-part television documentary series for Sky History speaking about the bombing campaigns of the RAF during WWII. She also helped actor Ralf Little investigate his grandfather Arthur’s experiences during the Second World War on BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?

1 April 2023 is the 105th anniversary of the creation of both the Royal Air Force and its women’s counterpart, the Women’s Royal Air Force (which, in WWII, was renamed and became the WAAF). The book will coincide with the commemoration of this date in 2023.

World English Rights have gone to Burning Chair for the former assistant to Queen Rania and author long listed for The Caledonia Prize Lucy Hooft‘s THE KING’S PAWN and THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE, the first two books in the Sarah Black spy series, based on the author’s real-life experiences.

The series follows the career of a spy who begins as a naïve young graduate, enticed into a career with MI6 (or so she thinks) by a silver-tongued spook; struggling to understand her place in her mentor’s murky hierarchy.

The first novel sees Sarah sent to the Caucasus by Michael, the head of an off-the-books operational section of MI6. She is being used as an expendable and deniable agent, but through her natural pluck (and a hefty dose of luck) she survives and uncovers the real villain and a Russian plot to assassinate the Georgian and US Presidents.

In the second book, Sarah – still inexperienced but significantly tougher with the confidence of a lucky start behind her – strikes out on her own without Michael’s help to war-torn Sierra Leone to bring the villain of book 1 to justice.

The History Press has secured World Rights to the first authorised biography of the racing driver, aviator, war hero, and industrialist Whitney Straight.

A gripping tale of speed, heroism, romance, determination, and tragedy: Whitney Straight was born into great wealth in New York, the eldest of three children – his sister would become an Oscar-winning actress and his brother the youngest of the Cambridge spies. He dropped out of Cambridge to become an outstanding racing driver and ran his own team against Hitler’s Silver Arrows. A qualified pilot at 17, he revolutionised aircraft design.

His extraordinary war saw him rise from Flying Officer to Air Commodore. He survived the disastrous invasion of Norway, a crash-landing in occupied France, and spent a year as a PoW. He turned down Churchill’s proposal of a career in politics to become CEO of BOAC, transforming it from a sales vehicle for outmoded aircraft into a national airline to be proud of. At Rolls-Royce, he railed against a company dominated by engineers who made poor businessmen, and after the national tragedy of the great company going bust, played a fundamental role in the splitting of the auto and aero businesses still seen today.

Paul Kenny has been granted unfettered access to Straight’s diaries and photograph albums and has scoured archives on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of the first full story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest mavericks.

The book will be published in September 2023. Audio Rights have been sold to Blackstone Audio USA.