Author of CHLOE CATES IS MISSING, Mandy McHugh’s next domestic thriller, PLAY THE FOOL, about a woman who loses everything to her bumbling husband and plots his murder, only to get set up when someone else beats her to it, to Luisa Smith at Scarlet, in a nice deal, by Anne Tibbets.
New York Times Bestselling author Jim Butcher sold THE DRESDEN FILES: BIGFOOT, the sixth graphic novel in the ongoing series. Creator Jim Butcher returns alongside co-writer Mark Powers and artist Joe Cooper to re-imagine some hard to find Dresden short stories. Combined with new material, it sees the noted professional wizard taking on a new assignment from the famous cryptid. Dresden Files: Bigfoot features a cover from Chris McGrath. Slated for release in February, it will be available in hardcover and a limited edition signed by Butcher. Dynamite Entertainment acquired rights via Jennifer Jackson.
New York Times: Caitlin Starling’s THE DEATH OF JANE LAWRENCE is a jewel box of a Gothic novel, one filled with ghosts and sorcery, great stores of romance, medical curiosities and so much galloping about in carriages that there is hardly a moment to catch your breath.
Audio rights to Becker Gray’s HELLFIRE CLUB SERIES, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, in a five-book deal, at auction, to Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to New York Times bestselling author Monica Murphy’s THE RELUCTANT BRIDE, THE RUTHLESS GROOM and THE ARRANGED MARRIAGE, to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media, in a three-book deal, at auction, to Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to USA Today bestselling author K Webster’s CINDERELLA TRILOGY, TRIPLE THREAT and DEATH WISH, to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, at auction, in a five-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to USA Today bestselling author Amelia Wilde’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST TRILOGY, DARK REIGN, SWEET MERCY and LAST RESORT to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, at auction, in a six-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Giana Darling’s DANGEROUS TEMPTATION and BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARE, to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to New York Times bestselling author Skye Warren’s ONE FOR THE MONEY, TWO FOR THE SHOW and THREE PIECE SUIT, to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, at auction, in a three-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Audio rights to New York Times bestselling author Pam Godwin’s LESSONS IN SIN, to Kate Runde at Podium Audio, at auction, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
German rights to Chelsea Polk’s THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN, to Piper, at auction, by Sarah Knofius at the Thomas Schlueck Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Caitlin McDonald.
Spanish rights to Robert Jackson Bennett’s THE FOUNDERS TRILOGY, to Trini Vergara, in a three book deal, by Amaiur Fernanadez at International Editors’, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Cameron McClure.
Spanish rights to New York Times bestselling author Tamsyn Muir’s NONA THE NINTH, the third book in the Locked Tomb series, to Nova, by Amaiur Fernández at International Editors’ Co. in association with Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson.
Turkish rights to David Gerrold’s THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF, to Ithaki, by Merve Ongen at ONK Agency on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass.
Tor.com: Nothing but Blackened Teeth fills the mouth like a big bite of tendon—meat that requires chewing with all the muscle in your jaw, mixing savor with a visceral density. As a novella, of course, “one big bite” is especially apt. At the exact moment the brutality of the climax started to provoke the first wash of nausea for me, the grisly tension unspools and the remainder can be swallowed whole.
Khaw has a truly deft hand at crafting gruesome poetics within their prose fiction. Whether it’s the sensation of sipping from a water bottle to find it clogged with algae and old hair, or watching a friend use his fingernails to dig loose his own tooth roots and all, or devouring a sumptuously marrow-fatty wedding/funeral meal… the novella’s world is a felt world, one the characters engage through their bodies. It’s as nasty as it is delicious, as much rotten as sweet.
Which brings me to the other aspect of Nothing but Blackened Teeth that made me wriggle with delight: the merging and twisting of several generic forms into one dense, scary package. Khaw effortless interweaves source materials from the gothic to youkai tales, spooky traditions such as hyakumonogatari kaidankai to literary tropes about “loathsomely rich twenty-somethings and their murderous interpersonal drama.” And, more to the point, they explain none of those wellsprings to the audience. You’re either going to come along, or you aren’t. I appreciate being required to engage with a text on multiple levels—and Khaw’s novella allows the reader to dig as deep or coast as light as they like.
Critiques of power and violence are also woven into the manor’s original ghost story—an entombed young bride and the hundreds of girls murdered to be with her over the decades creating a ghost made from loss and desire, betrayal and loneliness. Ultimately, there is an intense emotional realism underlying the blood-soaked, claustrophobic horror of a night spent in the haunted manor. From the twistiness of Cat’s limping psychological recovery, to her miserable friends and their miserable attachments to one another, Khaw constructs a memorable and cautionary spooky story of their own.
Turn down the lights and give it a read, some dark night.
