Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
131 Bloor Street West #711 Toronto Canada M5S 1S3 Telephone 416 964 9598 email beverley@slopenagency.ca www.slopenagency.com
Spring 2016
Mystery
Tony Aspler Nightmare in Napa
E
zra Brant has a dream job. He makes a living writing about wine, consulting about wine, and judging wine, which means he travels to the most glorious wine regions of the world.
Tony Aspler is co-founder of a charitable foundation Grapes for Humanity, which raises money for children with disabilities and victims of land mines. Honors include the Order of Canada, induction into the New York Media Wine Writers Hall of Fame, and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal. “It’s good to see Ezra Brant back in action again, this time in a caper involving mixed-up baggage and biker gangs in the Napa Valley. Its nimble pace should keep you on your toes, and it cries out for an accompanying glass of Stag’s Leap!” Peter Robinson
It also gives Ezra a close-up view of the rivalries, power grabs, and displays of ego by wealthy wine hobbyists, wine producers, wine journalists and judges. In Nightmare in Napa, Ezra is looking forward to covering the annual Premiere Napa Valley Barrel Auction. The other attraction is C.C. his lively, undemanding long-distance lover who is a respected wine producer. On the plane from New York to San Francisco, Ezra’s seatmate is an appealingly flighty red-head named Mona who is also bound for Napa to visit her twin sister Lisa. Not until they land does Ezra suspect that Mona, through her New York prison connections, has acquired something that rival motorcycle gangs in Napa would kill for. Mona has made it appear to her pursuers that she has slipped Ezra the tiny, precious object, putting him in the crosshairs of the fearsome Hells Angels gang. Also in Napa is a billionaire winery owner who is murdered and Ezra is the major person of interest for the police. Ezra has to escape from the wrath of the gang members and prove his innocence. He would also like to keep C.C. in his life, but that may be a goal too far. Tony Aspler is the author of nine novels including three previous Ezra Brant mysteries that were published from 1994 to 1996 in the UK by Headline. Rights have now reverted. He has also written more than 17 books on wine and food in his 30-year career.
Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Young Adult Fiction
Henry Aubin Ride Hard, Shoot Straight, Speak the Truth
S Henry Aubin is author of the groundbreaking history, Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance Between Hebrews and Africans in 701 B.C, (Doubleday Can and Soho US) and the novel Rise of the Golden Cobra. He lives in Montreal. Praise for Rise of the Golden Cobra: “This is a well-crafted and intriguing adventure that exposes students to a different world.”
School Library Journal
“What gives the novel its pull as an adventure story is Nebi himself — a brave, earnest hero who has to struggle with his personal hatreds and humble status before he triumphs.”
Toronto Star
“A fine yarn -- a good old-fashioned page-turner with a solid historical grounding... Lots of heart-in-your-throat descriptions of battles.”
Montreal Gazette
“Compelling... A fast-moving and intriguing plot of military genius.”
Resource Links magazine for Canadian teachers Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
etting: A little known but remarkable period when black Africans from Kush, aka Nubia, ruled Egypt (728 to 663 BCE) and defended that country from invasion by the only superpower of the day, the Assyrian Empire. For ages 12-14. Fifteen-year-old Hip, a Kushite horseman, is the youngest member of the Pharaoh’s cavalry when, seeking glory, he goes to war. The underdog army’s historically documented mission: cross the Sinai Desert and strike pre-emptively at the Assyrians while they are besieging Gaza. Hip is captured in battle, escapes and helps lead a hit-and-run raid against the enemy’s strategic supplies. His actions fulfill the conventional definition of heroism, but under the influence of Meryt -- an Israelite girl who has learned to abhor violence -- he learns that a higher, yet often unsung, form of heroism exists. Author Henry Aubin knows well this rise of African power: his non-fiction book on the Kushite military, The Rescue of Jerusalem: The Alliance between Hebrews and Africans in 701 BC, changed the way scholars think about that period and received the Canadian Jewish Book Award for History. His award-winning YA novel on the Kushites in Egypt, is Rise of the Golden Cobra.
Distinctions: -Africana Book Awards Honor Book (sponsored by the African Studies -Association, U.S.) -Silver Nautilus Book Award (U.S.) -Skipping Stones Honor Book for Older Readers (U.S.) -“The Year’s Best” List, Resource Links magazine for teachers (Canada) -Young Adult Fiction Top 10 List 2008, Ontario Library Association -Best Books for Kids & Teens, Canadian Children’s Book Centre -Finalist: Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People (sponsored by TD Bank and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre). Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
Lita-Rose Betcherman The Richest Girl in England The Marriages of the Duchess of Buckingham
K Lita-Rose Betcherman is author of the acclaimed Court Lady and Country Wife and other awardwinning works of history. Praise for Court Lady and Country Wife “...an intimate view of Stuart England” The New York Times
“This is popular history at it’s best.”
Jane Dunn
“Having reached adulthood on the eve of Charles I’s succession, the sisters lived through one of the most turbulent periods of British history…a fascinating introduction to two closely united lives— housewife and public figure—all the more interesting because of the contrast between them.” Times Literary Supplement
atherine Manners was a girl when she fell under the spell of the magnetic George Villiers, later the Duke of Buckingham. His family estates were nearby her father’s castle Belvoir but George, a favourite of King James, scarcely noticed her. The attention lavished by King James on George scandalized many who watched in horrified fascination as James kissed and fondled the dashing young man. George, a legendary womanizer, had no qualms about using the King’s desire and dependence to his advantage. Kate’s passion for Buckingham made her family uneasy. But Kate, the richest girl in England, was aided by George’s mother who had the young woman kidnapped and forced the marriage, much to Kate’s satisfaction. She coped with Buckingham’s numerous dalliances, his long absences on missions to Europe for both James and his son King Charles, his lavish spending, his huge debts, and his growing unpopularity. His bloody assassination left her devastated. For seven years as a wealthy young widow with a distinguished title, Kate spurned her numerous suitors. At age 32 she became intimately involved with Randal, Earl of Antrim, an Irish nobleman six years her junior and married him when she was already pregnant. With Buckingham, Kate used her influence for good works but with Antrim she had political influence as well. In the growing storm of rebellion and deadly tensions between Catholics and Protestants, Kate was suspected of influencing Antrim to join the rebel side against the King. Through the lens of Kate’s life we get a vivid view of the times, the great political battles and alliances, and the unseen role of women in this rich pageant that spans the first half of the 17th century.
Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Hugh Brewster Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage
The Titanic’s First Class Passengers and Their World
T Praise for Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: “This is one of those rare books on the subject that provides information both new and relevant, in a scholarly readable way. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the social history of the early 20th century.” Library Journal “Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember and James Cameron’s awardwinning movie set the Titanic bar high. In Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, Hugh Brewster clears that bar with ease and shows again why the story never gets old.” Newark Star Journal “Hugh Brewster’s colourful anecdotes and telling details show how 1912 - with its love-hate affair with celebrity, its romance with technology and contempt for the power of nature - sounds eerily familiar a century later.” Globe and Mail
he wealthy and glamorous passengers who boarded the Titanic, history’s most famous ship, provide “an exquisite microcosm of the Edwardian era.” But in most books about the doomed voyage, their stories are incidental to the ship’s collision with an iceberg on April 14, 1912. The cast includes artist and writer Frank Millet, the Director of Decorations for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair; White House aide Archie Butt; John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim; and Lady Lucile Duff-Gordon, a leading couturiere, among others. Through these vivid characters, we gain insight into the arts, politics, culture, and sexual mores of a world both distant and near to our own. All converge on the boat deck of the Titanic during the ship’s final hours and we become witnesses to a heartbreakingly poignant scene where some survive and some do not. The final chapters recount the rescue of the passengers in lifeboats by the Carpathia and the trip back to New York with only 705 of the more than 2,200 on board. Some men who survived lived under a cloud of cowardice. Others left a remarkable legacy. Hugh Brewster is a former publisher, who has written and produced award-winning books of fiction and non-fiction for children. This is the book about the Titanic tragedy that he wanted to read.
HarperCollins Canada 2012 Crown/Random House US 2012 Gawsewitch France 2012 Piemme Italy 2012 Mondadori/Random House Spain 2012 Robson Press UK 2012 Wydawnictwo Literackie Poland 2013
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
Tim Brook Mr. Selden’s Map of China Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer
T
his is forensic history at its best, presenting an ancient map reveals the origins of world trade, and surprising twists in China’s history.
“Brook is a true practitioner of the broad, rich and currently endangered concept of the humanities... reads like a perfect day at the liGlobe and Mail brary.” “Alternating between early modern and modern history, England and China, biography, science and culture, Brook holds us spellbound.” Financial Times “King James II is there, witnessing a food fight at the Bodleian in 1687. Ben Jonson appears...The story is full of Chinese pirates and English adventurers. Most fascinating of all, though, is Selden himself...” The Economist “...a fast-moving, conversational narrative, which flies by before you realise you have just been guided through some of the more esoteric aspects of Chinese science or folklore... personal anecdotes and trenchant observations on how the past continues to shape the present—especially when dealing with China.” Literary Review Bloomsbury US 2013 Anansi CAN 2013 Profile UK 2014 Ohta Shuppen Japan 2015 Nermer Books Korea 2016
www.slopenagency.com
In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city’s first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, the map remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was ‘a puzzle that had to be solved’: an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modernlooking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe—and which now powers China’s ascent. It raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who reimagined the world in this way? And most importantly—what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers—including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China’s relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China’s history. And it has the compelling John Selden, the epitome of the 17th century renaisance man. Timothy Brook was Shaw Professor of Chinese at Oxford when he first saw the Selden Map, and is now professor of history at the University of British Columbia. The author of eight books on Chinese history, his most widely read book is Vermeer’s Hat, which won the Mark Lynton Prize. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
Tim Brook Vermeer’s Hat
The 17th Century and the Dawn of the Global World
“Vermeer’s Hat ... provides not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.” “a spellbinding book…mind-expanding.”
The Times, UK
“Brook is a wonderful storyteller... I doubt I will read a better book this year.” The Telegraph, UK
“Timothy Brook is one of those historians who can tell world history like an adventure novel and economic history like a crime novel...After reading [this] one sees Vermeer’s world differently. And one’s own too.” Spiegel, Germany
“..provides…not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.” The Washington Post, US Winner: Lynton Prize in History
Bloomsbury US 2008 Chungrim Korea 2008 Edition Tiamat Germany 2009 Europa Konyvkiado Hungary 2009 Gradiva Portugal 2011 Iwanami Japan 2010 Kalima Arabic 2010 Payot & Rivages France 2009 Penguin Canada 2008 Profile UK 2008 Record Brazil 2009 Yuan-Liou Taiwan 2009 Wenhui Press China 2009 Wereldbibliotheek Netherlands 2010 Einaudi Italy 2015
www.slopenagency.com
Michael Dirda, Washington Post
T
he story opens in Vermeer’s studio in Delft with his stunning portrait, Officer and Laughing Girl. This intimate tableau, in which the officer wears an extravagant hat of beaver felt, subtly captures the widening world. Beaver fur from northern Canada financed voyages of the explorers looking for a route to the riches of China. Lust for luxury goods drove expansion. Pursuing beaver pelts, Champlain introduced his gun, the arquebus in 1609, and it had a profound and bloody impact on North America’s indigenous peoples. The silken wrap of Paolo’s robe, and Wen’s silver vase reveal much about east-west commerce at the time. The craving for porcelain spawned as much bloodshed as beauty. Astoundingly, tobacco and the spread of smoking is the great unintended consequence of North American discovery. It spread to Asia within decades of North American discovery, thanks to the seeds carried by the sailors. Here also are tales foreshadowing religious conflict. Globalization in cultural, legal, political, and moral spheres is very much with us, but these trail the economic web which began in the 17th Century. Timothy Brook is the author or editor of 12 books on China, including Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement and Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. He is editor of a six volume series on China published by Harvard University Press. He is currently Professor of History at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His recent book decodes the secrets of a Chinese map at Bodleian Library, known as the Selden Map (from Bloomsbury, Profile, Anansi.) Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Martyn Burke Music for Love or War
C
omic ironies and absurdities abound in this love story set against the thunderous clash of civilizations.
Praise for Music For Love or War “Martyn Burke gives new meaning to the term ‘muscular prose’... in this entertaining, well-told war story” Now Toronto
“A glorious globetrotting epic spanning class, race, and ethical borders. Burke’s personal history as a Hollywood filmmaker and combat-zone documentarian makes this book seem less written than lived—it is filled with the crystalline details and hard-earned truths that can only be gained through on-the-ground experience. Burke is a marvel. Read this book.”
Craig Davidson, author of Giller nominated Cataract City
“Burke has written a beautiful, gripping, and timely story of love, friendship, and war. This is stunning storytelling that will make your heart race, break, then soar.”
Terry Fallis
Cormorant CAN 2015
In the blistered landscape of Afghanistan, a small unit of US soldiers is dependent on the Internet connection to Constance, a Hollywood psychic who provides advice on tactics in love and war. Two men in particular seek her out. Danny, a sniper who has been up close and personal with his Taliban prey, tortures them by blaring the music of Liberace from the mountain peaks. He also displays a giant portrait of Liberace prancing in a white sequined costume, bringing a bizarre bit of Las Vegas to the Afghan killing fields, and enraging the Taliban. Danny’s obsession is finding his high school sweetheart Ariana whose terrorist father married her off to a brutal warlord. Can Constance help? His friend Hank has fled to the Afghan war to distance himself from the decadent world of Hollywood which has swallowed his beloved in its rapacious drug and celebrity culture. Constance receives them when they use their home-leave to visit her. This also is the story of a friendship forged through trials of love and danger. Will Hank and Danny survive and prevail? Can they rescue the women they love? Music For Love or War is a soaring love story and a literary tour-de-force. Martyn Burke knows war-riddled Afghanistan where he has filmed documentaries. He knows Los Angeles where he lives and works. And he knows about terrorist families based in multi-cultural Toronto, his second home. In 2012, his feature documentary Under Fire: Journalists in Combat won a Peabody and was short-listed for an Academy Award. He is now writing a pilot for an HBO mini-series based on his 1984 novel The Commissar’s Report. In 2015, Martyn received the Auteur Award from the International Press Academy. Previous recipients include Guillermo del Toro, Baz Luhrmann and George Clooney. Click here for The International Press Academy’s video highlighting Martyn’s career
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Martyn Burke The Commissar’s Report
T Martyn Burke works in a multitude of worlds. He is the author of six highly acclaimed novels and co-writer of the classic comedy film Top Secret. As a film and TV producer/director, his dramas and documentaries have been nominated for Emmys and Director’s and Writer’s Guild awards. His documentary feature Under-Fire: Journalists in Combat won a 2012 Peabody Award and was short-listed for an Academy Award. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Toronto. Praise for The Commisar’s Report “...original…plot is fast and wildly complex and the twists are clever.” People Magazine “...consistently funny, surprising and inventive.” LA Times
he Commissar’s Report, originally published by Houghton Mifflin in 1984, is having a wonderful new life. HBO in the US has purchased rights for a T.V. mini-series and Martyn Burke has been commissioned to write the pilot. The novel, set in the Cold War era when Stalin was still alive, was lauded as “a wonder of intense, cinematic storytelling…honest, inventive, and memorable.” (Wall Street Journal). In this witty, comedy where missteps are deadly, Dimitri, a young hero of the Russian Revolution and Kremlin spy is secretly smitten by the sirens of capitalism. His posting to the Soviet consulate in New York is a dream come true. The dream quickly becomes a nightmare. Dimitri’s Soviet boss despises him, his wife is obsessed with the unsocialist pursuit of a Bergdorf ’s charge account, and his boyhood friend is now a CIA agent who stalks him, plotting revenge. On Wall Street, he is plagued by his wild talent for making money in the stock market. His bosses in Red Square would find this difficult to overlook if they knew. And, as Dimitri fears, the old men of the Kremlin have a dangerous habit of knowing everything, sooner or later. Burke creates a unique and highly entertaining tale of dark humor and rich understanding that is timeless. Martyn Burke, acclaimed novelist, screen writer, director and documentary film producer has a new novel, Music for Love or War scheduled for publication March 2015.
Rights Available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-fiction
Tiffany Chow The Memory Clinic
U
Dr. Tiffany Chow studied or trained variously at Stanford, Rush Medical College, UCLA, and was Clinical Core Director at the University of Southern California Alzheimer’s Research Center with a research program for frontotemporal dementia. Her research at Baycrest Brain Helath Memory Disorder Clinic focused on behavioural disturbances brought on by dementia as well as their apparent opposite, apathy, and how these symptoms relate to brain chemistry as seen with functional neuroimaging. “This book is the wise and compassionate friend you desperately want when you discover that you or someone you love has dementia.”
Ruth Ozeki
“ nless you are planning to die before age 65, you too are at risk for dementia, regardless of family history.” This is the sobering observation of Dr. Tiffany Chow, a prominent clinician and researcher in dementia. Yet Dr. Chow also offers knowledge and hope for an illness where there is, as yet, no cure. “This book is a summary of what I’ve learned through my research or from my colleagues about prevention and management of dementia,” she says. “Despite facing a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, there are things that those at risk can do to prevent its onset or progression.” Through her grandmother Ah Quan, born in 1906 in Hawaii of Chinese ancestry, she too, has a genetic legacy for Alzheimer’ s disease. Comparing her life to grandmother’s life, Tiffany probes what she and other women can do mitigate the impact of genetics, through nutrition, exercise, and the concepts of cerebral reserve and brain plasticity. But it is in her front-line role managing the suffering caused by dementia and aiding caregivers where Tiffany’s compassionate voice soars. She notes four goals for caregivers to address each day with the afflicted. Do I feel safe? Do I feel healthy? Do I feel happy? Do I feel loved? Taking action if at least one answer is “no” requires honesty and a higher integration with others. To answer yes to all four questions demonstrates skill at balancing life and is itself part of the protective shield against dementia’s effects. Tiffany Chow, an empathic physician and an accomplished scientist is a reassuring guide through the mysterious twists of the brain and the grace of loving relationships flowering in adversity.
Penguin Canada 2013 Commonwealth Publishing Group (China) 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Farzana Doctor All Inclusive A National Post Best Book of the Year! Two secrets grip Ameera’s life. One is the big unknown fact of her existence—the identity of her father and the reason he abandoned her. The other is a secret shame she hides from others.
“Ambitious, original, mysterious, sensual—a terrific read”
Born to a young white woman in Canada who had a fling with a student from India en route home, Ameera has no way of assuaging her curiosity about the fleeting and haphazard donor to her genetic pool.
“An ambitious, thematically voracious novel on love and the wounds we didn’t know we had”
Her other secret is her obsessive pursuit of sexual dalliances with married couples. But rumors are circulating, complaints have reached head office, and her job at a resort in Mexico where she sells excursions to tourists, is threatened.
The Toronto Star
The Globe and Mail
“Her outstanding characterization and the depth of language establish the importance of Farzana Doctor’s writing. In her startling and evocative description of the lives of people in the tourist industry, All Inclusive is more than just a title.” Austin Clarke, Giller Prize winner, The Polished Hoe
“Farzana Doctor’s original, provocative new novel seduces (and challenges) readers on every page. All Inclusive is Doctor’s best—and sexiest!—novel yet.” Angie Abdou
Farzana Doctor, a skilled and sensitive writer, tells the story, not only from Ameera’s point of view but also from the perspective of her father Azeez and his family in India. Azeez had spent five years in Canada completing his Ph.D. To celebrate this milestone, he added another—losing his virginity. Then, he boarded that fateful Air India flight which had been sabotaged by a terrorist bomb. It crashed off the coast of Ireland killing all the passengers. Azeez’s family knew nothing of his child Ameera and attempts by Ameera’s mother to find and contact them failed in an agonizing progression of missed communications. At the all-inclusive Mexican resort, Ameera confides in a Canadian guest who listens sympathetically and volunteers to use her archival skills to see what she can uncover. Can Ameera emerge from the gaping hole in her history and the shame of her secret desire? Readers, stirred by empathy and admiration for her will be cheering her on all the way. Farzana Doctor is the author of acclaimed novels Stealing Nasreen, and Six Metres of Pavement, winner of the 2012 Lambda Literary Awards for lesbian fiction. She lives in Toronto .
Dundurn Canada 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
Modris Eksteins Solar Dance Van Gogh, Forgery, and the Eclipse of Certainty
T Winner, $40,000 B.C Award for NonFiction 2013 Finalist, Hilary Weston Prize for NonFiction 2012
“Mr. Eksteins has a knack for pinpointing moments in the rise of Modernism that expose the deep social forces that have shaped our world... Solar Dance conveys the heady atmosphere that made Berlin the first European capital to embrace the transforming potential of art in a secular age.” Wall Street Journal
“Subtle and engaging…Eksteins tells his story in a suitably looping and layered manner, with many darts and artful reverses, suing a range of knowledge and allusion reminiscent of his 1989 masterpiece, Rites of Spring.” Globe and Mail
“Eksteins is a major historian and Solar Dance, like everything he writes, deserves a wide and attentive readership.” National Post “A marvellous, brilliant book, one that gives a clearer undersatnding of our cultural moment than just about anything published in ages.” Literary Review of Canada Harvard UP April 2012 Knopf Canada Feb 2012 Zysk Poland 2013
www.slopenagency.com
he 19th century was the century of certainty – of Marx, Darwin, Wagner; it was the century of expansion and empire. It believed that there was a line to be drawn between the subject and the object. It believed in category. The 20th Century was the century of doubt – of Marcel Duchamp, Werner Heisenberg, and Monty Python; it was the century of contraction and decolonization. It disrupted all category. A man whose spirit straddled the two ages was Vincent van Gogh. Repudiated in his own time, he became the most loved and expensive artist of the 20th Century. He was the great synthesizer who captured in his art the exhilaration of life but also its fragility and tragedy. Modris Eksteins, whose subject is the 20th century, approaches the era through the lens of the sensational trial of a Berlin art dealer Otto Wacker and his role in the forgery of 33 Van Gogh paintings. In 1925, Wacker began releasing these hitherto unknown works which he cleverly had authenticated by experts. Through the progress of this drama Van Gogh’s commercial value rocketed skyward. Doubt and disaster also were crucial to Van Gogh’s posthumous success-- his own madness and suicidal end, and the subsequent near-destruction of European civilization in fratricidal war. In the Wacker-Van Gogh story, with its cast of characters who both delight and frighten us, is the story of Weimar Germany, the rise of Hitler and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this thrilling book, Modris Eksteins illuminates the major themes of the modern world where a culture of vitality, life, and art has overwhelmed one of authority, form, and law. Modris Eksteins is the author of acclaimed books on modernism, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age and Walking Since Daybreak: A story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
History
“Eksteins is as gifted a stylist as he is a scholar. One reads it with fascination and intellectual gratitude.” Alfred Kazin
Modris Eksteins
Modris Eksteins
Rites of Spring
Walking Since Daybreak
The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
I
T
his classic, award-winning book, in print “…a witty and enterpris- since 1989, is celebrated by ing scholar” scholars and readers alike. It Kurt Vonnegut even inspired a Hollywood “...nothing less than a film, Max, starring John retrospective of our en- Cusack. tire century. Art and politics, dance and war, have never been the same. ...It is the start of a new history.”
“The Great War was the psychological turning point for modernism,” argues Eksteins. “The urge to creJames Carroll ate and the urge to destroy “This provocative and had changed places.” disturbing reappraisal of modernism rings with authority.” Publishers Weekly
Winner Trillium Award Macmillan UK 2000 OP Houghton Mifflin USA 1989 Knopf /Can 2012 Dogan Turkey 2014 Rowohlt Ger 1990/OP Plon France 1990 OP TBS Britannica Japan Editora Rocco Brazil Standard Uitgeverij Holland PIW Poland Geulhangari Korea Editorial Pre-Textos Spain Social Sciences Academic Press China
With originality and discerning historical analysis, he describes the origins, impact, and aftermath of WWI from the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, to the final dance by the denizens of Hitler’s bunker in 1945. This is a remarkable cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and think about the future.
“A deeply moving and intellectually challenging view of modern history.”
Los Angeles Times
“...a beautiful meditation, written with both intellectual and moral urgency.”
n his journey to 1945 and the firestorm in Berlin, Eksteins weaves the story of his family in Latvia into the major events of the era, merging the subjectivity of the modern style with the objectivity of the scholar.
Empire, war, communism, fascism, the Holocaust, Publishers Weekly genocide, the huge tide of European refuges, New “...an important reas- World immigration, freesessment of WWII and dom...These are the markers its outcome...provaca- of our turbulent age. tive and ambitious.”
Kirkus Reviews
Awards Winner Pearson Literary Prize
Standaart Nthlds 2007 Houghton Mifflin US1999 Macmillan UK 2000 OP Key Porter Canada 1999 Atena Latvia 2002
Born in Latvia, Eksteins arrived as a child in 1950 among the displaced in Canada. He surveys the wreckage from two angles: by looking back from 1989 and the collapse of the Berlin Wall and, at the same time, moving forward from the perspective of the 19th century borderlands between Russia and Germany. It is an astute and thrilling panorama from the imperial age of coherence to our current confusions and fragmented logic.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Mystery
Howard Engel City of Fallen Angels A Mike Ward Mystery
I Winner of The Crime Writers of Canada’s Grand Master Award
“This is a terrific novel from one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. It has all Engel’s trademark wit, with his superb command of the noir genre in a style uniquely his own.” The Globe and Mail
“Mr Engel is a born writer, a natural stylist...This is a writer who can bring a character to life in a few lines.”
Ruth Rendell
“Engel can turn a phrase as neatly as Chandler...Benny Cooperman novels [are] first-class entertainment, stylishly written, the work of an original, distinctive, and distinctively Canadian talent.”
Julian Symons
“Benny Cooperman is a lot of fun to hang out. I’m delighted to see him getting into trouble again.”
Donald E. Westlake
“a Canadian icon of the mystery genre.”
Toronto Star
Cormorant CAN 2014
www.slopenagency.com
t’s 1940, Europe is at war, and Canadian journalist Mike Ward, who has spent 20 years covering the major upheavals in Paris, London, Moscow, and Berlin, is removed from the main action. He is posted to Los Angeles where news is mostly celebrity gossip churned out by movie studios. Mike is not happy. He came of age in Hemingway’s Paris of the 1920s, got close ups of the rise of fascist dictators, wrote about the fall of governments, and watched while the war dreams began to beat louder. He can’t imagine that the movie business will be as compelling. But Hollywood is a place where the glitz and glamor of the silver screen meet the grit and grime of the criminal underworld. Mike has barely unpacked when the big story lands in his lap—the “suicide” of studio executive, Mark Norman. Some suspect Norman was killed by his first wife, but as Mike follows the trail through a thicket of enemies, other possibilities emerge. Along the way, the personable journalist befriends Errol Flynn who guides him through Hollywood’s intrigue. Soon Mike is partying with John Barrymore, lunching at Chasen’s, escorting young starlets, and tangling with cops over his efforts to get the story. Set during a time of upheaval in the capital of cinema, and populated by a who’s who of colourful historical personalities from both the film and criminal worlds, City of Fallen Angels—the latest from Arthur Ellis Award-winner Howard Engel—is a classic period whodunnit. Howard Engel is on the shortlist for the Libris Award for Lifetime Achievement. His novels have been published in more than countries since his debut in 1980 and have won literary prizes. Two have been adapted for TV films. He is well known for his Benny Cooperman series of mystery novels and his memoir, The Man Who Forgot how to Read, about dealing with the affects of a stroke that nearly ended his writing career. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Mystery Series
Howard Engel Grand Master of Mystery
Captivating insights, beautiful phrases, lovable characters and grisly crimes spill effortlessly from Howard Engel’s sleeve. His classic series of Benny Cooperman mysteries and two historical crime novels have won prizes and are widely translated. In 2014 he was named the Grand Master of Canadian mystery writers. Best of all, there is a new Engel novel, City of Fallen Angels, set in 1940’s Hollywood. The rabbi and the president of Grantham’s synagogue hire Benny when a lawyer absconds with the life savings of the congregation.
The local crime boss wants Benny to find out who is trying to kill him, and Benny can’t refuse.
Did heiress Gloria Warren collude in her own kidnapping? Where is the money? Benny, the Mob, the cops and Gloria want to know.
Benny mixes with Grantham’s elite who buy, trade and steal paintings -and also murder.
Vanessa Moss, the sexy siren in the executive suite, hires Benny to protect her. He gets more trouble than he expected.
A Hollywood movie crew is shooting more than film at Niagara Falls.
Benny’s environmental anxieties fester when a trucker with hazardous cargo is murdered.
Benny suffers a vicious blow to the head and is diagnosed with a rare condition, alexia sine agraphia. No longer having the ability to read, Benny must unmask his assailant.
Benny is awash in black-flies, cults, and murder in the Canadian wilderness, while tracking a celebrity evangelist.
An old woman whose estate is plundered leads Benny to corrupt lawyers and intrigue at a TV news station.
An old friend pleads for Benny’s help just as he’s on the verge of retirement. Her husband Jake went missing along with their life savings.
Dr. Zeckerman, Grantham’s wealthy psychiatrist, loses a patient to suicide. Benny suspects homicide.
CBC TV Film
CBC TV Film
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis Poles Apart
H
ail, Gender Warriors! Be prepared to submit to the beguiling spell of Poles Apart. Humor is the best option for the serious topics of feminist aspirations and male confusion and rage.
Praise for Terry Fallis: “Quite possibly the most fun you can ever have while reading about the struggle for equality. Light-hearted, wickedly funny and surprisingly touching, this novel lights up the lovability of feminism and its defenders.”
Michele Landberg
“Fallis employs an easygoing yet compelling writing style ... So what’s in a name? When it’s Terry Fallis, you know it means a good book.”
National Post
“Terry Fallis writes with a light touch and fine sense of the inherent humanity of humour, while still addressing one of the biggest questions we all have to face: Who are you? Who are you really?”
Will Ferguson , author of 419, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
“Gently satirical and intelligently frothy, Up and Down achieves a delightful weightlessness as transporting as the space voyage it deals with.” Andrew Pyper, bestselling author of The Demonologist
McClelland/Random House CAN 2015
www.slopenagency.com
Everett Kane is a darling – a man who is a committed feminist. His strong mother, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, begs Ev not to tell his girlfriends. It is the reason, she says, that Ev is still single at 37. (What? Are male feminists not sexy?) Ev’s father, Billy Kane, a former autoworker on the line at Ford, is a stubborn throwback about a women’s place –i.e. firmly in the home. His attitude drove Ev’s mother to depart. Ev has suffered male guilt ever since. The Kane family comes together when Billy, now retired to Florida, is debilitated by a stroke. Ev, a free-lance writer, moves south (with his mother’s financial support) to help his father through rehab. In the same hospital, Ev meets his idol from his days as a student activist for women’s rights, the formidable feminist leader, Beverley Tanner. Warm, funny, and brilliant, Bev and Ev develop a special bond. Meanwhile, below Ev’s rental apartment, an “upscale” strip joint moves in. Longing to rekindle the idealism of his youth, Ev secretly starts a feminist blog, Eve of Equality, which rallies feminists, and has the misfortune to go viral. Ev’s cloaked attacks on the strip club anger the dancers, his mother who had a real estate deal with the owner, and the club’s owner, who brings dangerous, mob-style “heat” to the battle. Ev’s male identity is about to be revealed, potentially unleashing the fury of his feminist fans. Worse, his secret life as a feminist blogger thwarts his blossoming romantic passion for the young woman lawyer representing the strip mogul. Terry Fallis is the author of four previous, bestselling, hilarious novels that have won distinguished literary awards and been adapted for a TV mini-series and a stage musical. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis No Relation Winner of the Leacock Medal for Humor
N Praise for No Relation: “Terry Fallis writes with a light touch and fine sense of the inherent humanity of humour, while still addressing one of the biggest questions we all have to face: Who are you? Who are you really?”
Will Ferguson , author of 419, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize
“Born of a cheerful mood and a clever mind, Terry Fallis’s No Relation is an endearing book with a big heart.”
Trevor Cole, author of Practical Jean, winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
“Fallis employs an easygoing yet compelling writing style ... So what’s in a name? When it’s Terry Fallis, you know it means a good book.”
National Post
o Relation by Terry Fallis is the story of a man who believes his name has blighted his life and thwarted his ambitions. His name? Earnest Hemmingway—spelled differently from that the iconic Ernest Hemingway, but laughable all the same. Life has been good for Hem, a middle-aged copywriter at a New York ad agency. He has had the same job for 20 years, a live-in girlfriend, and a great apartment. But as a writer, Hem believes his family name, bestowed on four generations of Earnest Hemmingways, has blocked him from his destiny as a great novelist. Hem’s cozy world shatters on a single day when he loses his wallet, his girlfriend and his job. His humiliating melt down while he tries to renew his driver’s license, which goes viral on YouTube, is the final blow. Hem’s father, however, sees it as a perfect time for his son to return to Chicago and take the helm of Hemmingwear, the storied underwear manufacturer led by three previous generations of “Earnests.” Hem has other plans. Besides, his younger sister is eager to take the job—if she can convince their misogynist father. Hem and his sister team up to expose traitors and foil a hostile takeover. Hem, meanwhile, assembles the sweetest support group this side of Freud--composed of people burdened with famous names. It allows Fallis to flirt with looping comic scenes while addressing serious issues of identity and the weight of expectations. It is a funny, endearing novel crafted by a master.
McClelland/Random House CAN 2014 Shui- Ling Taiwan 2015
www.slopenagency.com
Terry Fallis lives in Toronto where he works for a communications company. His four novels, The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, Up and Down and No Relation are each major bestsellers in Canada and are attracting a growing number of readers abroad. One secret of his success—free podcasts of the novels, chapter by chapter, available on iTunes. To see the book trailer, click here. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis Up and Down
Winner 2013 Evergreen Award “Up and Down kept me smiling, made me laugh out loud, and occasionally moved me to tears.” --The National Post
“If Terry Fallis talks like he writes, then I want to meet this man because he is very droll indeed.”
--Montreal Gazette
“In Landon Percival, Terry Fallis brings to vivid life an unexpected hero–tough yet endearing, brave yet vulnerable.”
Cathy Marie Buchanan, New York Times bestselling author
“Gently satirical and intelligently frothy, Up and Down achieves a delightful weightlessness as transporting as the space voyage it deals with.” Andrew Pyper, bestselling author of The Guardians
“Terry Fallis has done it again. Up and Down is another hilarious page-turner that also packs an emotional punch.” Ali Velshi
“A rollicking good ride. Funny one moment, serious the next, always compelling: a reminder that we can all dream.” Marc Garneau, Former astronaut
D
avid Stewart’s first days on the job are not auspicious. He has just joined the Toronto office of an international public relations firm, ruled from New York and Washington. David is assigned to the crossborder team on the NASA account, which is charged with boosting flagging public interest in space exploration. His team leader, the chilly Amanda Burke, is immune to his charms. The tough Washington account exec is equally dismissive. Surprisingly, the NASA client approves David’s suggestion—a lottery to find two ordinary citizens, a Canadian and American who are eager to strap themselves to a rocket headed to the space station for the trip of a lifetime. Through a series of suspenseful hurdles, Fallis keeps us laughing and rooting for David and the “aged” would-be astronaut Landon Percival. But it is the beautifully drawn portrayal of Landon and their touching relationship that stay with the reader long after the book is closed on the campaign. Terry Fallis is a novelist who has done the impossible. He self-published his first novel The Best Laid Plans, a political satire set in Ottawa, which won the Leacock Medal for Humour, and later, after it was released by M&S/Random House Canada, it was winner of Canada Reads as “the essential Canadian novel of the decade.” A 6-part TV mini-series based on it airs on CBC TV in January 2014. His fourth novel No Relation, set in New York and Chicago, is a highly original tale on the question of what’s in a name. In his other life, Terry works in public relations, and is hugely popular on the speaking circuit, with more than 100 appearances annually. He lives in Toronto, is married and the father of two sons.
McClelland/Random Can/ Can 2012
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Terry Fallis
Terry Fallis
The Best Laid Plans
The High Road
Winner of 2011 Canada Reads
Short-listed for Leacock Medal for Humour
Over 103,000 copies sold Globe & Mail Bestseller Amazon.ca Bestseller “It deftly explores the Machiavellian machinations of political culture.”
D
isillusioned by politics and lacerated by romantic betrayal, Daniel Addison, a young political speechwriter, wants out.
Forced to barter his lost ideGlobe & Mail alism with one last obligation, he cajoles a sacrificial “The Best Laid Plans has a candidate to contest the certain charm, some clevelection for the opposition er turns of phrase and a party well-honed appreciation for the absurdities of political life.”
Montreal Gazette
“The plot is advanced with self-deprecating and side-splitting vignettes... The novel is that and much more.” Silhouette’s A&E Magizine
Terry Fallis first selfpublished The Best Laid Plans as a podcast, then as a book. It was later acquired by McClelland & Stewart. Winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour 2008 McClelland & Stewart 2008
T
“…a new brand of pohis deeply funny satire litical satire -- the most continues the story of irreverent, sophisticated Honest Angus McLintock, and engaging CanLit has seen since Stephen an amateur politician who dares to do the unthinkable: Leacock.” Winnipeg Free Press
tell the truth.
Just when Daniel Addison thinks he can escape his job as a political aide, Angus McLintock, the no-hope candidate he helped into Parliament, throws icy water Daniel persuades Angus over his plans. Angus has just McLintock, a crusty EnOttawa Citizen brought down the governgineering Professor to alment with a deciding vote. low his name to be used. “The High Road will Now he wants Daniel to It will be a campaign with entertain. There will manage his next campaign. no signs, no rallies, no be snickers, occasional speeches, and no budget. snorting and hooting, Daniel helps Angus fight an Campaign headquarters is and almost certainly rip- uphill battle against “Flameroaring belly laughs.” Daniel’s jalopy. thrower” Fox, notorious for Chronicle Herald his dirty tactics. Together But politics is filled with they decide to take “The surprises. Angus is cata- Terry Fallis is a part- High Road” and turn the pulted to victory and he ner in Thornley Fallis, race into a nail-biter with hiand Daniel must examine a public relations com- larious ups and downs, This their political principles pany in Toronto, and is deft political satire and and learn how to survive is completing his third laugh-out-loud comedy. novel. the political process, the roughest game around.
Six part TV mini-series telecast on CBC TV.
“an easy-reading page turner...anyone with even a passing or cynical interest in the political process should enjoy The High Road and after the romp be left with some food for thought.”
McClelland & Stewart Fall 2010
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Joanna Goodman The Finishing School
A taut, layered tale of suspense at an elite Swiss school
K Praise for You Made Me Love You:
ersti Kuusk, a scholarship student at a famed boarding school in the Swiss Alps, is awestruck at first by her classmates, these daughters of privilege, who welcome her to their world.
“Goodman...is a witty, energetic storyteller.”
At the heart of her tight knit group is her roommate, the luminous Cressida Strauss, a tall beauty who is as brilliant as she is determined. Cressida fiercely pursues what she wants and gets it—until tragedy strikes.
“Ms. Goodman has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a sharp eye for the nuances of life.”
Joy Fielding
One spring night, Cressida plunges from a fourth floor balcony with catastrophic consequences. Officials quickly dismiss it as an accident, but many questions remain. Was it a suicide attempt? Was she pushed?
“Goodman’s solid writing is permeated with commentary on the societal pressures to have it all.”
These questions nag Kersti long after she returns home. She marries, becomes a bestselling writer, and embarks on exhausting cycles of fertility treatments that are straining her marriage. Why was Cressida obsessed with the banned Helvetian Society, and the two students who were expelled twenty years earlier? Why was Cressida intent on finding a missing ledger of the proceedings of a girls’ “secret society”?
Montreal Gazette
Praise for Harmony:
Publishers Weekly
“Joanna Goodman writes with compassion about human connections.” Patti Henry
When Kersti is invited to address a school reunion, she begins probing the cover-up. What she unearths is a frightening compost of deceit and abuse. In one shocking, portentous moment, Kersti makes a decision that will connect her to Cressida forever. It also raises the stakes in her need to solve the mystery, redeem her past, and rescue her marriage. Joanna Goodman is the author of three acclaimed novels. She lives in Toronto with her two children and her husband where they operate upscale retail linen shops Au Lit.
HarperCollins US 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Self-Help
Stacey Gorlicky Food, Sex and You
Untangling Body Obsession in a Weight-Obsessed World
F Stacey Gorlicky is a registered psychotherapist based in Toronto, and the former host of the live TV show Mind Matters. She is a passionate spokesperson for mental-health issues and has a large following in social media. She has been the subject of numerous print articles and has been asked to host a new TV Show to be called Food, Sex and You.
ood, Sex and You is for every woman who feels uncomfortable about her body, who obsesses about her weight; who hides her eating habits; who turns to food for comfort; who yo-yo diets; who avoids mirrors; who weighs herself too often; who binges; who uses laxatives, vomits or over-exercises; who has been told by worried friends that she’s too thin; who is facing health issues related to obesity; who has been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Food, Sex and You is also for every woman who has avoided sex because she felt ashamed of her body; who undresses in the bathroom and has sex in the dark; who hides her sexual self inside layers of fat; who fears the predatory instincts of all men; who believes that owning her sexuality may turn her into a slut; who feels cheated of intimacy because of alienation from her physical self. It’s for women who fail to set safe emotional and physical boundaries in their sexual relationships in their over-desire to please; who always choose the wrong partners; who have become addicted to sex to fill the vacuum inside themselves. Stacey is a beautiful young woman who overcame food addiction and her fear of intimacy with the help of support groups like Overeaters Anonymous, various therapies, treatment for her ADHD, and Eastern spiritual practices such as tantric sex. She also became a registered therapist herself, specializing in addictions, bringing her deep understanding of the issues to help her clients. Stacey reports that in 2007, at age thirty-two, she gave up bingeing as the culmination of her healing journey. Stacey has written this book with the assistance of celebrated author Sylvia Fraser.
Dundurn 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Don Gutteridge Lily Fairchild
P
ioneer life throbs with vitality in this magnificent saga of Lily Fairchild whose story will grip your heart and reduce you to tears.
Early Praise for Lily Fairchild: “In his masterwork of historical fiction, Don Gutteridge captures in fine, fully sensory detail the conflicts and changes of early Canada, and the prejudices, hatreds, disputes and loyalties involved in its development – all depicted through the singular experiences of a woman named Lily through the decades of her long life. There is blood and disgrace, passion and kindness, love and heartbreak and courage in Lily’s Story, every moment vividly, intimately rendered” Joan Barfoot
“Don Gutteridge’s novel is a masterly work that deserves time and attention to devour. That being said, once you start Lily’s Story, you won’t be satisfied till you reach the end. Gutteridge’s ability to draw characters that are so realistic, so likeable, is second to none.” Reader’s Favorite Reviews
www.slopenagency.com
Born in 1840 near the shores of the Great Lakes, Lily begins as a shy, motherless girl, abandoned to play the hand that fate has dealt. In the course of her remarkable life ending in 1922, communities grow around her, husbands arrive and are taken, children are nurtured, and her days are filled with toil. An illiterate washerwoman and cleaner with the gift of wisdom, they are also leavened with friendship and purpose. No one stops fate. Wars are waged, fires reap destruction, runaway slaves from the South seek refuge, oil is discovered, railways arrive bringing hustlers, politicians and princes from afar. But Lily refuses to see herself as a helpless leaf in the winds of change. When the Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria, eyes the young beauty on his royal progress in the colonies, she chooses “agency” and knowingly accepts the Prince’s embraces. She becomes pregnant and gives birth. It affects her life but not in ways we anticipate. Don Gutteridge proves his mastery of the historical saga in Lily Fairchild that has already enchanted early readers. A longer version of it, titled Lily’s Story, was first released in a limited paperback edition of 608 pages and as an eBook. It garnered ecstatic response but at 287,940 words was deemed long by some. He has trimmed 60,000 words from it and tightened the pacing with a view to seeking traditional publication. See reviews on Goodreads here. Don Gutteridge grew up in Point Edward Ontario, the locale of the novel. It is now surrounded by the city of Sarnia on the Michigan border. As a youth he worked on the railway and listened to the voices of the people which he captures eloquently. A prolific poet and author of more than 16 novels, he is renowned for his Marc Edwards series of mysteries set in the 1840s Rebellions era in Toronto
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Kate Hilton The Hole in the Middle A Redbook 20 Hottest Books to Read This Spring 2016
S Kate Hilton has worked in law, higher education, public relations, fundraising and publishing. She has an English degree from McGill University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. “The pacing is fast, the suspense is strong from start to finish.” Roberta Rich
“I thoroughly enjoyed it. Kate Hilton has created a warm, memorable and insightful heroine.”
Joy Fielding
“As moving as it is entertaining, this novel is crammed with funny, truthful moments that will strike a chord with over-extended women everywhere” Hello Magazine
“Wholly deserves to be set apart from other books of its ilk.”
The National Post
ophie Whelan is the epitome of the modern, successful woman. She has a great husband, two adorable children, funny, generous friends, and a high-powered job at a leading children’s hospital. When Sophie operates at peak performance, she can cajole balky employees, trouble-shoot career disasters, and throw a dinner party for 10 without anxiety. But as Sophie’s 40th birthday looms, her seamless life reveals disturbing web-like fractures. Conflict with her boss, blossoming jealousy of her husband’s femme fatale business partner, and feelings of hopeless inadequacy as a mother and daughter, crack the edifice of her life. There is a futher complication—the reappearance of Will Shannon who was the great love and crushing disappointment of her college days. He wants her to work for his family foundation. Ordinarily, it would be a dream job. Instead, the offer presents an ocean of dragons lying in ambush. Kate Hilton has a gift for creating characters who are easy to love, a flair for social comedy, and a talent for the surprising and satisfying ending. The Hole in the Middle, a Canadian bestseller, makes its US debut in 2016. Kate is completing her second novel, Just Like Family, about a woman executive who is juggling her “work husband”, her ex-husband, and her almost husband who wants a commitment. With sharp observational humour and deep poignancy, Kate Hilton explores themes of midlife disappointment and human connection.
Watch Kate Hilton’s interviews on Breakfast Television and The Morning Show HarperCollins CAN Dec 2013 NAL/Penguin Random House US 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Mystery
Mary Jackman Finger Food
A
Praise for Spoiled Rotten: “Liz Walker, [is] a lively and believable character... and grabs your attention. She’s a gem.” The Star Phoenix
“Jackman’s entertaining debut is sure to appeal.”
Publisher’s Weekly
“Spoiled Rotten is light summer fare... fun and full of drama.”
Halifax Chronicle Herald
severed finger is delivered to the Corner Bistro in a lettuce crate. The police soon discover it belongs to Norman Fitzgerald, a recent murder victim found in a crop circle. The macabre story is leaked to the press and the restaurant fills up with diners dressed in Martian costumes. Business is business and Richard Best, manager of Corners can’t believe their good fortune. Roni Taylor, the owner, is not so sure. Roni, curious about the crop circle, visits the farm and receives a brutal welcome. She is attacked, her newly acquired friend Ramona disappears and Alex Silva, Ramona’s husband, is murdered. The most interesting resident, and possible suspect, is Ramona’s lover John Mackinnon, a country playboy with a penchant for married women. Roni is susceptible to John’s entreaties to find Ramona and help clear him of charges. The adventure beats sorting dirty linen and the mundane tasks of running a restaurant. This is the start of a new mystery series with Roni Taylor and the Corner Bistro in Ithaca, New York. Mary Jackman is a witty and lively writer, bringing murder and suspense to the restaurant business. She certainly knows the terrain, she is the former owner of a popular restaurant, Peter Pan in Toronto, where several noted chefs got their start.
SPOILED ROTTEN Mary Jackman A Liz Walker
Mystery
Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Memoir
Eric Koch Otto and Daria:
A Wartime Journey Through No Man’s Land
E Eric Koch who was born in Frankfurt in 1919, lives in Toronto. His grandfather was a court jeweler and his father was an officer in the German army in WWI. Eric was deported to Canada, interned as an enemy alien during WWII. On his release, he remained in Canada, making his career at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also is the author of 14 works of fiction and five works of non-fiction.
ric Koch was 19, on holiday from his studies at Cambridge in August 1938, when he met 17-year-old Daria. She had uncombed hair, sparkling blue eyes and ambitions to be a writer. Eric, a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi Germany, had war and uncertainty in his future. Of Daria, he noted: “Too young for me anyway. What would I do with a schoolgirl.” Yet, their encounter at a two-star hotel in the French Alps was the beginning of a five-year correspondence, set against huge upheavals. Eric was arrested by the British as an enemy alien and sent to an internment camp in Canada. Daria, daughter of a privileged and cultured family in London, struggled to find her path in the maelstrom. Her letters are fresh and reveal a lively intelligence and considerable talent. But as the war and the years unfold, increasingly dark signs emerge. Loneliness and fear propel Daria and Eric to flirt with romantic fantasies of being together after the war. Eric, unmoored from home and the family’s upscale jewelry establishment in Frankfurt, ironically, exhibited greater resilience. Daria, whose father was a renowned musician and whose mother was from the British aristocracy, suffered emotional turbulence in London. Eric had saved Daria’s letters. When he unearthed them five decades later, they shocked him and he sought news of her. Her family rebuffed him, blaming him for grievously disappointing her. Did he lead her on? Were there junctures when different decisions could have meant a vastly different outcome? This memoir of a relationship between two young people in a time of war and internment is an engrossing, poignant tale that will be embraced by readers who admire In the Garden of the Beasts and The Hare With Amber Eyes.
University of Regina Press 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Susan Ferrier MacKay
Susan Ferrier MacKay
Butterfly of Venus
Dragonfly of Venus
A
A
t age 40, Elizabeth Susan Ferrier MacKay Harding, head of a is a journalist and writer who lives hugely successful music talent agency, is nursing a brooutside Toronto. ken heart and harboring a sexual secret- she has never experienced satisfaction with a partner.
Dragonfly of Venus was uthor Susan Ferrier published in German MacKay adroitly blends with Butterfly of Venus an exciting tale with an erotic by Droemer. heart. Elizabeth and Declan are now nested in a secluded retreat in Scotland, saturated in wedded bliss as parents of adorable twins.
Entering her world is Declan Thomas, a stunningly attractive, brilliant young singer/songwriter. Despite her fear of mixing business with romance, and the fact that Declan is 16 years her junior, Elizabeth is won over by the confident young man urging her to share her steamy sexual fantasies with him.
Declan, a star musician, tears himself away to fly out for a short gig. His plane crashes on an isolated rocky Scottish shore and, unbeknownst to others, he wanders in delirium, waiting for rescue. While Elizabeth awaits news, paralyzed by grief, Natasha, the woman who is obsessed with Declan, again works to usurp Elizabeth’s identity as Declan’s wife. As the stakes escalate, Natasha turns murderous. Can Elizabeth and Declan and their children get out alive?
But Declan also has a complex personal life. He is being stalked by a viperous, possessive former lover who insinuated herself into Elizabeth’s office. Elizabeth stands to lose everything: Declan, her business, her balance, and even her life. HarperCollins NA 2014 eBook Dromer Germany 2014
Droemer Germany 2014
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Michael Marrus Lessons of the Holocaust
W
Praise for Lessons of the Holocaust: “Academic memoir, erudite historiographical essay, provocative challenge to a flood of clichés, thoughtful analysis of the nature and purpose of the historical profession, and intellectual feast—Michael Marrus’ Lessons of the Holocaust is all of these and a constant delight to read.”
Christopher R. Browning
“An important argument, relevant to scholars and popular audiences alike: that we must challenge, even discard, our unquestioned pieties regarding the Holocaust. This is an excellent, stimulating book, sure to be both well received and widely discussed.” Susannah Heschel
“Fascinating book by one of the masters...”
Yehuda Bauer
hen the eminent historian Michael Marrus was a student at Berkeley in the 1960’s, the Holocaust—the great catastrophe of European Jewry—was hardly a footnote to the study of WWII. However, as the full horror of Germany’s Nazi regime emerged, the Holocaust grew to become a central and confounding event of the 20th Century. As knowledge about the genocide of European Jews has exploded, the quest to distil its “lessons” has intensified. What can we learn from the Holocaust? Is there a redemptive message, or “take away” that may help prevent such depravity in the future? Teasing these lessons out of the ashes of World War II is far more complex than familiar platitudes might suggest. Who defines the lessons? Where do we look for them—to the victims, to the perpetrators, to the bystanders, to the political leaders? How do we commemorate or memorialize the Holocaust? Indeed, are there lessons? Michael Marrus, an internationally renowned historian and expert on the Holocaust, brings us into the conversation as he surveys this urgent question. Here are such authorities as Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Raul Hilberg, Emil Fackenheim, Christopher Browning, Daniel Goldhagen, and others. Yet, they often come up short on definitive “lessons.” In this brief, sharp, stimulating analysis by a historian still totally engaged with his subject, Marrus offers the reader a new approach to the Holocaust lessons so many of us seek. Michael Marrus is the author of The Holocaust in History, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945-46: A Documentary History, Vichy France and the Jews (with Robert O. Paxton), and Some Measure of Justice, on Holocaust restitution. He is a Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto and the Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies. He is a member of the Order of Canada.
University of Toronto Press 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Ken McGoogan Frozen Bones and Scattered Dreams Voyaging in the Arctic
Praise for Fatal Passage: “In Ken McGoogan’s artful telling, John Rae emerges from the shadows to take his place among the most intriguing of the 19th century arctic explorers. This is delightful reading.” Andrea Barrett
Praise for Lady Franklin’s Revenge: “...an exhaustive and scrupulously researched biography.”
Sara Wheeler Times of London
“His biography is detailed and compulsive.”
The Mail on Sunday (London)
Praise for Ancient Mariner: “Brisk, readable books don’t come much better than this.”
The Observer
Praise for Race to the Polar Sea: “An impressive case for the bravery and importance of the explorer who first identified the Greenland ice sheet.”
Publishers Weekly
As an Arctic historian, Ken McGoogan is tops: • He has corrected serious errors in the record of the Franklin expedition ie: Franklin did not discover the missing link in the Northwest Passage-- it was John Rae, as the recent discovery of one of Franklin’s ships proves; • He captures history’s charismatic personalities with all their courage, persistence and flaws; • He has traveled the land, and sailed the Northwest Passage to experience the environment; • He has addressed the oddities of shifting magnetic poles that have obsessed scientists like Albert Einstein; • He has met and learned from the current residents, the Inuit, with their wealth of oral history In this magnificent book, Ken McGoogan weaves past and present, the personal and the historical, the science and the romance, into a seamless and thrilling tale of 120,000 words scheduled for publication in Canada in 2017 by HarperCollins Canada. A proposal of 72 pages (23,000 words) contains a chapter outline and three chapters from different sections of the book. It is available on request. Ken McGoogan is the best-selling author of a dozen books, among them Fatal Passage, Race to the Polar Sea, and Lady Franklin’s Revenge. He has won the Pierre Berton Award for History, the University of British Columbia Medal for Canadian Biography, the Canadian Authors’ Association History Award, the Writers’ Trust of Canada Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, and an American Christopher Award for “a work of artistic excellence that affirms the highest values of the human spirit.”
HarperCollins Canada 2017
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Michael McGuire Believing
The Neuroscience of Fantasies, Fears, and Convictions
M
ichael McGuire is a psychiatrist by training, a neuroscientist by occupation and a preeminent figure in brain-behavior research.
Michael McGuire is author or coauthor of 5 books, notably Darwinian Psychiatry (Oxford University Press) and God’s Brain. His research findings on serotonin levels and its links to dominance in vervet monkeys has been featured in the New York Times and Newsweek. His distinguished academic career includes positions at Harvard Medical School, University of California Medical School , Director UCLA’s non-human primate research facility for 20 years and Director, Gruter Institute of Law and Behavior. He lives in northern California. “An important book for any believer who now wants to know.”
—Jay R. Feierman, The Biology of Religious Behavior
“From marketing soft drinks to managing genocidal wars, the brain and its beliefs remain central. Believing will clarify how and why. It may even protect you.”
Lionel Tiger, Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University Prometheus NA 2013 Peppermint KOR 2014 Obeikan Saudi Arabia 2015
www.slopenagency.com
His interest in the mechanisms and persistence of beliefs was ignited by a tearful psychiatric patient, who, for years was unable to accept that her parents, whom she loved, were her biological parents, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Her difficulty believing irrefutable evidence led McGuire to undertake decades of research involving vervets and chimpanzees. In this short and lively book, McGuire recounts his investigation on the latest contributions of philosophers, historians, cognitive psychologists, theologians, evolutionary biologists, and brain scientists. Notably, McGuire also draws on his own research on the role of serotonin. Each discipline has something enlightening to offer, but none is sufficient. However, nowhere is there a more complete or entertaining summary of current knowledge on belief. And surprises abound. *Belief does not cause action; action often comes first. *We believe we have made a decision or a plan, that we have free will and choices are not random, but biology says otherwise. *The default state of beliefs is resistance to change. *The brain is the product of millions of years of evolution and the mechanisms responsible for belief are unperceived in awareness. *The brain, its mechanisms and its ways of processing information are unlikely to change soon. McGuire addresses features suggested in Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer but in their work, the biological mechanisms responsible remain to be specified. It is these that McGuire addresses.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
“Portia Adams will prove to be a whip-smart, worthy new heroine.” Quill and Quire
“Misri has made a clever contribution to Sherlock Holmes spin-off literature. Jewel of the Thames will introduce younger readers to the Holmes world while also appealing to seasoned Sherlock fans.” CM Magazine
“The writing in Jewel of the Thames is intriguing and unique. Angela Misri has managed to convey both a sense of the 1930s and old Sherlock Holmes novels through her prose and dialogue.”
-Escape Through the Pages
“A clever and successful contribution to the mythos of Sherlock Holmes…”
-The Book Lounge
Fierce Ink 2014
Angela Misri
Angela Misri
Jewel of the Thames
Thrice Burned
Sherlockians rejoice! There is a new detective at 221 Baker Street in 1930, and she is a treasure. At age 19, Portia Adams inherits the now famous London townhouse from her late grandfather and Sherlock’s accomplice, Dr. John Watson. Portia is studying law and taking on cases as a consulting detective. Her three early forays are chronicled in Jewel of the Thames. Proving her powers of detection, she unmasks a jewel thief, avoids being set up to accuse an innocent woman of murder, and she effects the rescue of a child about to be abducted. Most shocking to her, though, is her discovery that her guardian Mrs. Jones is really the notorious Irene Adler, the on-again, off-again lover of Sherlock Holmes. Their son was Portia’s father!
The youthful, reserved Portia is growing in confidence and enlarging her social circle. Young, flirtatious men are vying for her attention; and she has made a close friend, a lively female journalist who becomes a little too interested in one of Portia’s suitors.
“Thrice Burned is like having new Sherlock Holmes mysteries to read, only now starring an inquisitive and astute young woman (without the Asperger’s Syndrome tendencies) and in a London of the 1930s. And it works so, so well. Elementary, wouldn’t you say?”
-CanLit for Little Canadians
“It is rare, I repeat, extremely rare, to come across a book that is hugely enjoyable in style as well as being authentic and believable in content. Jewel of the Thames is that kind of book…It carries my strongest recommendation to fans of Holmes and would be an outstanding way to introduce new fans to Sherlock Holmes.”
-The Baker Street Babes
The trio of mysteries in Thrice Burned involve arson, art theft and the disappearance of women damned by a local priest. But it is the characters, the way Portia’s mind works to solve the mysteries, and her charm that are captivating, and satisfying. Angela Misri worked at CBC as a news writer, radio producer, digital producer and manager of digital strategy. She now develops websites and teaches journalism. She is married and the mother of a teenaged son. She is writing more adventures for Portia Adams, a Sherlockian tour de force suitable for all ages.
Fierce Ink 2015
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Kim Moritsugu The Showrunner All About Eve meets The Devil Wears Prada
K
im Moritsugu’s novel The Showrunner is set inside the high stakes world of TV series production in Hollywood.
Kim Moritsugu lives in Toronto where she gives walking tours of Toronto’s North Rosedale neighbourhood, sings in a rock choir, and teaches creative writing through the Humber School for Writers. Praise for The Oakdale Dinner Club “Witty, smart, sarcastic, The Oakdale Dinner Club is a compelling read.”
– Eva Stachniak, author of The Winter Palace and Empress of the Night.
“You know when you’re reading a book and it’s so delicious that you can’t decide whether to savor or devour it? It’s like a smart, sarcastic soap opera (Gossip Girl for grownups).”
— Robin Spano, author of the Clare Vengel Undercover Novels.
“I had no idea that reading could be so much fun! This novel is a delicious romp – social satire blended nicely with food and sex, a wonderfully wicked combo.”
– Isabel Huggan, author of Belonging
Stacey McCreedy is the new young firecracker in the Hollywood firmament. She began her career a few years earlier as an acolyte to Ann Dalloni the industry legend. Clever and ambitious, Stacey originated and developed the concept for The Benjamins, brought it to Ann who was her boss at the time, and extracted a partnership agreement to coproduce it and to run it jointly. The show is a mega hit, and Stacey is now chafing to fly on her own, free from Ann’s tyranny. At 63, Ann struggles to hide her increasing vulnerability –she is losing her eye sight, her marriage is crumbling, she is gaining weight, drinking too much, and acting inappropriately. Her distrust and criticism of Stacey is increasing. So far, so stable. Then Ann hires a delightful young assistant, Jenna Kuyt, an out of work actress, who is trying to restart her washed up career at age 20-something. The sweet little thing is a master of manipulation, picking her way through minefields as the animosity between Stacey and Ann becomes murderous. Kim Moritsugu walks the delicate lines of farce and satire with agility, but readers, in a shock of recognition, will find it realistic. Kim Moritsugu is the author of six previous novels: the romantic comedy Looks Perfect (shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award), the domestic comedy Old Flames, the literary mystery The Glenwood Treasure (shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award), the domestic novel The Restoration of Emily (serialized on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers), the Rapid Reads short novel And Everything Nice, and The Oakdale Dinner Club.
Manuscript available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Memoir
Shannon Moroney Through The Glass
W
Shannon Moroney speaks widely on restorative justice. She is also a teacher in Toronto. Learn more at: www.shannonmoroney.com Praise for Shannon Moroney: “A compelling documentation of a flawed penal system, a nuanced look at the humanity of a violent criminal, and a snapshot of the cognitive dissonance required by romantic love. Most of all, it’s a meditation on forgiveness.” - Maclean’s
“A remarkable story... of love and betrayal, of a horribly broken man’s hidden bbrutality and his ex-wife’s boundless capacity to forgive.” - National Post
UK Title: The Stranger Inside
hen Shannon Moroney married in October of 2005, she had no idea that her happy life as a newlywed was about to come crashing down. One month after her wedding, a police officer arrived at her door to tell her that her husband, Jason, had been arrested and charged in the brutal assault and kidnapping of two women. In the aftermath of these crimes, Shannon dealt with a heavy burden of grief, the stress and publicity of a major criminal investigation, and the painful stigma of guilt-by-association, all while attempting to understand what had made Jason turn to such violence. In this intimate and gripping journey into prisons, courtrooms and the human heart, Shannon exposes the far-reaching impact of Jason’s crimes, the agonizing choices faced by the loved ones of offenders and the implicit dangers of a correctional system and a society that prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation, and victimhood over recovery. Through it all, Shannon retained unwavering support from her closeknit family and golden circle of friends. In forging her own path to forgiveness –to let go of hope for a better past-- she won a fellowship to complete a Master’s degree in International Child Welfare in England at the University of East Anglia. She speaks internationally on restorative justice and has extensively toured Canada and the U.S., addressing university and high school students, prison inmates, legal and mental health professionals and law-enforcers on the ripple effects of crime for all victims and for society at large. She is a volunteer with Leave Out ViolencE and is a contributor to The Forgiveness Project, an international charity that encourages people to explore the nature of forgiveness and alternatives to revenge. Her radio documentary, In Harm’s Way, aired on CBC’s The Current in fall 2015.
Doubleday Canada Fall 2011 Simon & Schuster US 2012 Smon & Schuster UK 2013
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Donna Morrissey The Fortunate Brother
“H The exuberance of Donna Morrissey’s fans is boundless. Her six novels have been compared to Dickens, Hardy, Shakespeare and the Bible. Her literary awards are numerous, and her books have been widely published and translated into German, Japanese, Swedish, and Italian. Born in The Beaches, a small fishing outport on west coast of Newfoundland, she now lives in Halifax, Canada. Praise for Donna Morrissey: “Irresistible...Masterful...The rich, rocky terrain of Newfoundland has borne a native storyteller with talent to burn in Donna Morrissey.” Sunday Tribune, Dublin
er writing has what Chekhov called an indispensable layering of fact and feeling,” said author Howard Norman, one of her fans which include Thomas Keneally, Vincent Lam, and Alistair MacLeod. With The Fortunate Brother Donna Morrissey surpasses her previous accomplishments. We once again see the full range of human longing, redemption and exultation through life in a remote fishing village in the North Atlantic. Here, great environmental and technological disruptions shake both land and society. The fish are gone, taking livelihood too. It is a real place but it takes on a mythic timelessness in Morrissey’s powerful story which weaves love, grief and murder. Kyle Now, the 20-year old youngest son of Sylvanus and Addie, is a charming, popular young man. With the tragic death of his brother Chris who perished in a violent explosion in the western oil fields, Kyle feels that it is his responsibility to shoulder the family burdens. His mother, the family’s tower of strength, is undergoing cancer treatment, while his father Sylvanus takes refuge in drinking. Threatening their fragile balance are two men who menace the community. One is the feral Trap who is suspected of causing Chris’s death in the oil sands. The other is Clar Gillard, the abusive husband of Addie’s friend Bonnie. Clar’s vicious insanity was glimpsed when he tied Bonnie to a chair and sprayed her with oven cleaner.
The Sunday Times (London)
Kyle and his father have a nasty altercation with Clar Gillard and when he is found dead on their doorstep, they are suspects in his murder. Desperately, father and son struggle to protect the other from arrest and to hide their danger from Addie.
Penguin Random House Canada 2016
Even tiny, isolated communities harbor secrets, newcomers and outsiders who create turmoil in the social dynamic. Even here there are police seeking to re-establish order. With such simple materials Donna Morrissey has fashioned a breathtaking masterpiece, taut with suspense and infused with compassion.
“Morrissey summons energy ... the writing is poised, charged and tactile, almost biblical in places.”
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Praise for Donna Morrissey’s Novels
“This hauntingly beautiful novel (The Deception of Livvy Higgs) lingers in the imagination like the sight of a stormchurned ocean, and confirms that Morrissey is one of Canada’s great storytellers.”
Vincent Lam
“Haunting, emotionally insistent, lyrical and powerful in its portrait of two unforgettable women--Livvy and Gen-whose fates are entwined by a violent act, The Deception of Livvy Higgs is Donna Morrissey’s best work yet. Her writing has what Chekhov called “indispensable layering of fact and feeling.” Morrissey has brought the WWII era into the present with the disturbing intimacy of a seance. A rare accomplishment.”
Howard Norman
“Readers will gain from spending time with this moving story, by taking away the reminder that no one needs to suffer loneliness ‘when love was but a truth away.’”
Globe and Mail
“Donna Morrissey is an absolute terrific original.” “...Breathtakingly beautiful...A splendidly unique novel.”
David Adams Richards Alistair MacLeod
“Morrissey summons energy and passion to invest this clash of the old versus the new with an epic quality––and succeeds ... the writing is poised, charged and tactile, almost biblical in places.”
The London Sunday Times
“[F]rom its opening pages, Newfoundland native Donna Morrissey’s latest literary novel (The Deception of Livvy Higgs) will pull you in with the force of a riptide.”
Winnipeg Free Press
“Irresistible...Masterful...The rich, rocky terrain of Newfoundland has borne a native storyteller with talent to burn in Donna Morrissey.”
Dublin Sunday Tribune
“Donna Morrissey is a wonderfully gifted writer. The setting of her books is Newfoundland, but their appeal is universal. She unashamedly cares for her characters and sees them as real people with real lives worth caring and reading about. To read one of her books is to wind up laughing or crying or somehow doing both at once.”
Wayne Johnston
“Everything is hyper-vivid in Morrissey’s world, not excluding emotions, dreams and unresolved conflicts ... Morrissey reveals the beauty and the terror of two economic realities, worlds apart from us and from each other.”
Toronto Star
The Fortunate Brother
Penguin Random House Canada September 2016 www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Memoir
Memoir
Marina Nemat
Marina Nemat
Prisoner of Tehran
After Tehran
Finalist for 2012 Canada Reads
O Grinzane Book Award Italy 2008 The FreePress U2007 John Murray UK 2007 Penguin Canada 2007 Artemis Netherlands 2007 Weltbild Germany 2007 Cairo Italy 2007 Quidnovi Portugal 2007 Espasa Calpe/Planeta Spain 2007 Forum Sweden 2007 TV2Forlag Danish 2007 Psichogios Greece 2007 Tammerraamat Estonia 2007 Kinneret Israel 2007 Wisdom Korea 2007 Concept Marathi 2007 Jota Czech 2007 Planeta Brazil 2007 Trivium Kiado Hungary 2007 BWP Taiwan 2008 Alnari Serbian 2008 Duc In Altum Polish 2008 JCGawsewitch French 2008 Pustaka Alvabet Indonesia 2008 Ucila International Slovenia 2009 Pegasus Yayincilik Turkey 2010 Kalimat Arabic 2010 Sarasavi Sinhalese 2011 Film option
n January 15, 1982 Marina Nemat was arrested and sentenced to death for political crimes. It was a deadly time in Ayatollah Khomeini’s new regime, when her mildly critical article of the state in her high school newspaper put her on a watch list. Marina was seized from her family’s apartment in Tehran and taken to Evin prison. In a bizarre twist, one of the Revolutionary Guards, Ali, fell in love with her and plucked her from the firing squad with only minutes to spare. In return, he demanded that she marry him. If she didn’t, he said he would ensure that her family was harmed. After Ali was gunned down by rival factions and died in her arms, Marina was eventually released.
Bestseller in Germany, Italy, Canada • 5 printings in Portugal • 2 printings in Netherlands
“...an account as graceful, honest, and revelatory as her original.”
W
hen Marina Nemat walks out of the notorious Evin prison at age 18, Maclean’s Magazine after being incarcerated for 2 years, 2 months, and 12 days “[a] portrait of an artist for political crimes, and crossand the evolution of an es the busy Jordan Highway activist.” Globe & Mail in Tehran to rejoin her family, she hopes to resume her life. “...a fascinating study of one woman’s struggle to But release from prison promwin back her life from ises a freedom that is elusive. the ravages of a trau- Her loving but flawed parmatic past.” ents are wary of probing the Quill & Quire details of torture and rape. Praise for Prisoner of Her high school sweetheart Andre has waited for her. Yet, Tehran she can’t tell him about her “Gripping, elegantly forced marriage to her captor, written memoir…mas- Ali, a Revolutionary Guard, or about Ali’s death, and the terly.” The Wall Street Journal miscarriage she had suffered. “Her story is unforget- She and Andre manage to table.” leave Iran to come to CanaVogue da in 1991 and to raise two “It is an act of bravery, sons. Despite her attempts to compartmentalize her presthis book” The Globe and Mail ent from her past, survivor guilt, the burden of secrets, Penguin Canada 2010 and flashbacks of the agonies Cairo Italy Nov 2010 she suffered, intrude on her Droemer Germany 2012 life as a housewife and mother Kinneret Israel 2012 with a job as a waitress at a suburban fast food restaurant.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Terry O’Reilly This I Know
Smart Marketing for Small Business
D
on’t outspend the competition, outsmart them!” says Terry O’Reilly.
Terry O’Reilly has won hundreds of advertising awards as a copywriter and commercial director, and is the co-founder of Pirate Radio & Television. Under the Influence is broadcast on CBC Radio and WBEZ Chicago. His audience abroad includes listeners in Britain, Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Japan, China, Philippines and Mexico. The New York Festival awarded the show the Grand Trophy as the Best Radio Program in 2011 and again in 2012. In 2011, iTunes named the show the Best New Podcast of the year, and in 2015 listed it as one of their top podcasts.
O’Reilly is a leading expert on advertising and a life-long practitioner of the marketing arts. He turned his passion into two immensely popular radio series on CBC radio and Sirius networks where he has more than one million listeners a week and more than 9 million podcast downloads. (Ironically, the CBC radio network carries no ads.) This I Know breaks down the techniques of advertising into 15 chapters, enlivened with anecdotes and examples, written in his same warm voice that captivates radio listeners. The contents include: *analyzing what business you are in; *perfecting your elevator pitch; *strategy --and the difference between strategy and tactics; *the power of evoking emotion in advertising; *the joys of narrative; *how to make a persuasive presentation; *timing is everything *going the extra inch *your personal brand His earlier book The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture (with Mike Tennant) was a bestseller. The Washington Post called it, “a lively, anecdotal primer…filled with smart and breezy tales….” Movie Entertainment dubbed it “an instant classic on media literacy.” Publishers Weekly said: “Witty and insightful…(it)will be indispensable to marketers or anyone curious about the power and ubiquity of advertising in modern culture.” This I Know offers strategic advice to small companies who crave the high-level thinking and marketing approach of Fortune 500 firms but can’t afford big agency fees. This book is for them.
Manuscript Available Knopf Canada 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Click here to listen to Under the Influence on CBC Radio. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant The Age of Persuasion How Marketing Ate Our Culture CBC Radio’s Age of Persuasion won five New York Festivals International Radio Awards, including the 2011 Grand Prize in Business and Consumer Affairs
W
“A lively, anecdotal primer...filled with smart and breezy tales told from an insider’s perspective.”
itty, erudite, and irrepressibly irreverent, Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant offer a lively social history of advertising and its impact as a major cultural force in modern life.
“[A]n instant classic on media literacy.”
Terry O’Reilly is the perfect guide to the age of persuasion. As the host, creator and co-writer with Mike Tennant of two wildly popular CBC Radio series on advertising, he is known as a delightful raconteur and scholar of media literature. But unlike academics, his day job as one of the top directors of radio and TV commercials affords him a unique perspective on marketing and how it has driven a change in the way we react to media.
Washington Post
Movie Entertainment
“Witty and insightful... this ragbag of pop culture references, anecdotes, solid research, and advice will be indispensable to marketers or anyone curious about the power and ubiquity of advertising in modern culture.” Publishers Weekly
“O’Reilly and Tennant are exceptionally talented writers...In a straightforward, popular style, The Age of Persuasion is easy-to-read and often subversive.”
Globe & Mail
Terry O’Reilly has won hundreds of advertising awards and is the co-founder of Pirate Radio and Television. The Age of Persuasion is broadcast on CBC Radio and NPR’s WBEZ Chicago. Knopf Canada 2009 Counterpoint US 2010 Cheers Publishing China 2010
www.slopenagency.com
The age of persuasion dawned in the 1880s with the rise of ad agencies. In its fledgling years, advertising was defined as “salesmanship on paper.” That concept was left in the dust with the explosion of media and consumerism. Radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s spawned market research and the idea of persuasion as a “science.” The creative explosion in the 1960s, however, revealed persuasion to be a delicate “art.” In the 1980s, the arrival of a multi-channel universe and MTV’s rapid-fire editing of images and sound, forever altered our attention span and notions of fast and slow, short and long. Terry O’Reilly has another wildly successful show on CBC radio and Sirius, titled Under The Influence. The show has more than one million listeners, plus 60,000 weekly downloads. Its awards include the Grand Trophy at the New York Radio Festival two years in a row. Terry has been signed by Random House Canada for a book with the working title Lessons from Under the Influence for publication in early 2017. US rights for it are available. A partial manuscript or detailed proposal will be available fall 2015.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Mystery
Andrea Geddes Poole Death in a Past Tense
T Andrea Geddes Poole is a graduate lawyer, with a Ph.D in history, experience in commercial litigation, theater management and teaching and writing history.
he French-born baker who fled Paris in the turbulent 1960s for Brooklyn, New York, returns briefly 40 years later to visit his dying mother. When he is found murdered under a bridge on the Seine, the police investigation is assigned to the urbane, wry, intellectual commissaire Maurice Lalonde. At first, the baker, Jean-Marc Verdurin was thought to have left France to avoid the French military draft. But Lalonde and his commandant, Dupont, are struck by Verdurin’s collection of three articles from different newspapers, each reporting a routine school opening attended by local politicians. As Lalonde develops a time-line of Verdurin’s activities during his short family visit, he uncovers a complex past for the secretive baker. The trail leads to Verdurin’s youthful, tragic error, and his role as a witness in a major scandal in French politics. Lalonde’s suspenseful exploration contains splendid details of French life—notably, food, sharp depictions of social class and status wars, insights into the functions of bureaucracy, and the rise of a nasty conservative wing in French political life.
Manuscript available
www.slopenagency.com
Andrea Geddes Poole, who has French roots, was born in London, Canada in 1959, earned a B.A. in history from Bennington College, a B.A. and M.A. in law from Oxford University, an LL.M. in law from New York University and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto. She practiced law in New York in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s she worked in theater with Circle Repertory Company and the La Jolla Playhouse. From 2006 to 2012 she taught history at Trent University. She is the author of Stewards of the Nation’s Art: Contested Cultural Authority 1890-1939 (UTP, 2009), andThe Construction of Victorian Women’s Citizenship: Miss Emma Cons and Lady Frederick Cavendish (UTP, 2014). She is now adding novelist to her portfolio of impressive accomplishments.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-fiction
David Posen
David Posen
The Little Book of Stress Relief
Always Change a Losing Game
Stress has become an integral part of the way we live. In controlled doses, it helps us perform better. Peter G. Hanson, M.D. author of The Joy of Stress But, left, unchecked, stress and Stress for Success can leave us feeling fatigued and overwhelmed, and can “It’s amazing that such lead to a number of health a little book can deliver problems. “The Little Book of Stress Relief is filled with great tips and insights. And it’s fun to read!”
such an impact! Superb!”
Rita Emmett author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook
In The Little Book of Stress Relief, stress expert Dr. Da“I love this guy!” vid Posen teaches us how The Edmonton Sun to take back control of our “Perceptive, instructive, lives and regain a healthy productive and written work-life balance. in an entertaining fashion,”
Dr. Ron Taylor, Toronto Blue Jays Team Physician
Small in size, light in tone, and rich in content, The Little Book of Stress Relief offers 52 prescriptions to help us make small changes that can have a profound positive effect on the quality of our lives.
“Everyone can relate to this book! Dr. Posen teaches us, through practical and entertaining stories, how to make our lives better in every way- and inspires us to take action!” Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series
“This book makes change seem fun rather than a chore. Dr. Posen shows you how to turn dreams into reality. Begin reading any page- you’ll not want to put this wonder book down”
Christine A Padesky, PhD. co-author of Mind Over Mood Director, Center for Cognitive Therapy, Newport Beach, CA
“For a change: a practical book full of the clinical wisdom of an eperienced physician”
Dr. Stanley E. Greben, Psychiatrist
Translated into six languages Firefly Re-issue 2012
“Change is a cure for stress,” says Dr. David Posen, “yet many distressed people resist beneficial change. People keep losing in business, sports, politics and everyday life by following a game plan that doesn’t work. The solution is, always change a losing game.” Although change is potentially threatening, the prospect sounds liberating. It becomes a mechanism for gradually taking control of our lives. Using sports analogies, Dr. Posen helps people look at their failed strategies and shows them how they can change the situation. There is no shortage of advice in this intelligent, entertaining, and inspirational book on the curative powers of change.
Firefly Re-issue 2013
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Tierney Read Overtures A fine romance in the classic tradition
A
Tierney Read lives in Toronto with her husband and three children. By day, she practises as a Knowledge Management lawyer. Overtures is her first novel.
captivating romantic comedy, Overtures hits all the high notes. First, we have the “meet cute.” Zoey Barton, a talented piano student at Juilliard, chokes badly at her audition for the prestigious Artist’s Diploma program, jeopardizing her aspirations for a career on the concert stage. Offering consolation, her two friends drag her along as they crash a fund-raiser at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Fuelled by champagne and drugs, they hijack the piano for an embarrassing, impromptu performance that goes viral. But some are charmed, and Zoey is scooped up in the arms of an amused, handsome millionaire, Charlie Rutherford. The complication: Charlie, who uses sex to mask his fears of intimacy, has a mysterious past. He has been estranged from his older brother for eight years, but now with Zoey by his side, he struggles to mend the breach. However, when Zoey meets his difficult, supremely ethical, and superbly successful brother, James, she is apprehensive that she and James are more in harmony. Can she switch brothers without sacrificing her deepest family values? Does she have what it takes to pursue a life in music and thrive? The sparkling angel dust: poor but committed music students mix with Manhattan’s elite in luxurious Park Avenue apartments, cool galleries in SoHo, and gracious country estates. The glorious soundtrack is provided by Chopin and Beethoven. Irresistible!
Manuscript available
www.slopenagency.com
Tierney Read, a graduate of McGill University, once tried to impress a boy by reading Wuthering Heights. After becoming enamoured by 19th Century English Literature, she pursued her newfound interest all the way to Oxford University. Her edgy Masters’ thesis, titled Victorian Victuals: Food, Fiction and the Construction of Identity in Works by Thackeray and Dickens can be found at the Bodleian Library. Tierney also obtained a law degree from the University of Toronto, “just in case.” Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Historical Thriller
Roberta Rich Trial of a Midwife In 1575, when midwife Hannah Levi rescued the newborn son of wealthy Venetian parents from being slain by his larcenous uncle, she fled with the child and her husband Isaac to Constantinople. Praise for The Midwife of Venice: “Roberta Rich introduces a unique heroine, and her wry humour leavens a serious subject.”
Globe & Mail
“The Midwife of Venice is a compelling and engaging novel, a well-researched high-stakes drama written with elegance and compassion. Fascinating!” Sandra Gulland
Praise for The Harem Midwife: “Rich describes the opulence of royal life in Constantinople set against conspiracy and betrayal... the more heavenly the surroundings, the more treacherous the characters.”
Toronto Star
“The details of 16th-century life in Constantinople are delightfully portrayed, the storyline is compelling …. an entertaining read, sure to please”
Vancouver Sun
“Love, roses, Turkish delight, blood, babies and a plucky heroine who triumphs. A great read!”
National Post Doubleday Canada 2017
www.slopenagency.com
Thus, they exchanged their life in the teeming Jewish ghetto of Venice for a comfortable existence under the Ottomans. Isaac started a silk business and Hannah became midwife to the harem. Also, they were the happily besotted parents of baby Matteo. They allowed themselves to hope there would be no repercussions in adopting Matteo. His entire family had perished in the plague and Hannah and Isaac were his world. But Matteo, heir to fabulous riches of the di Padovani estate, attracted the attention of Antonio Foscari, a scoundrel in desperate need of a fortune. Cunning and flamboyant, sporting a sinister silver nose, Foscari still is no match for his spirited accomplice Francesca. Together they abduct Matteo and abscond with him to Venice. Foscari schemes to have the court to declare him guardian—and then plans to kill the child. When Hannah, in her distress to save her child, is lured to Venice, she is arrested and jailed. She must stand trial for the murder of Matteo’s uncle. In this stew of avarice and deceit, there is one truly noble character, the esteemed architect Andrea Palladio who owns the villa adjacent to the lands once controlled by the di Padovani family. The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich’s first novel introducing Hannah, is a triumph with more than 106,000 copies sold in Canada, and rights sold in 17 territories. It is followed by The Harem Midwife set in Constantinople. The Trial of a Midwife is written with the same elegance and passion as the previous novels. Roberta Rich lives in Vancouver, Canada
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Historical Thriller
Roberta Rich The Harem Midwife
H
annah and Isaac return in this opulent, riveting, and suspenseful tale--a sequel to the #1 national bestseller The Midwife of Venice.
“Rich describes the opulence of royal life in Constantinople set against conspiracy and betrayal... the more heavenly the surroundings, the more treacherous the characters.”
Toronto Star
“The details of 16th-century life in Constantinople are delightfully portrayed, the storyline is compelling …. The Harem Midwife is an entertaining read, sure to please those who enjoyed The Midwife of Venice and certain to find new fans as well.”
Vancouver Sun
“Love, roses, Turkish delight, blood, babies and a plucky heroine who triumphs. A great read!”
National Post
Hannah and Isaac Levi, Venetians in exile, have set up a new life for themselves in Constantinople. Isaac runs a newly established business in the growing silk trade, while Hannah, the best midwife in all of Constantinople, plies her trade within the opulent palace of Sultan Murat III, tending to the thousand women of his lively and infamous harem. But one night, when Hannah is unexpectedly summoned to the palace, she’s confronted with Leah, a poor Jewish peasant girl who has been abducted and sold into the sultan’s harem. The Sultan favours her as his next conquest and wants her to produce his heir, but the girl just wants to return to her home and the only life she has ever known. What will Hannah do? Will she risk her life and livelihood to protect this young girl, or will she retain her high esteem in the eye of the Sultan? An adventurous, opulent and deliciously exciting read, peopled with fascinating, unforgettable characters (a court eunuch; the calculating Sultan’s mother; the beguiling harem ladies; and a very mysterious young beauty from Rome who shows up on Hannah’s doorstep causing much havoc), this novel is sure to please fans of The Midwife of Venice and extend Roberta’s reputation as one of the most beloved historical fiction authors. Roberta Rich has once again brought history to life to delight all readers. She divides her time between Vancouver and Mexico. Learn more at: www.robertarich.com
Doubleday CAN 2013 Randomhouse/Ebury UK 2014 Simon & Schuster/Gallery US 2014 Tericum Kiado Hungary 2014 Boekencentrum Netherlands 2014 Oceanida Greece 2015 Hermes Bulgaria 2015 Juritxen Forlag Norway 2015 Euromedia Czech Rep. 2015 Inkilap Turkey 2015
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Historical Thriller
Roberta Rich The Midwife of Venice
H Roberta Rich divides her time between Vanouver and Mexico. Learn more at robertarich.com “Roberta Rich introduces a unique heroine, and her wry humour leavens a serious subject.” Globe & Mail
“The Midwife of Venice is a compelling and engaging novel, a well-researched high-stakes drama written with elegance and compassion. Fascinating!” Sandra Gulland
Globe and Mail Bestseller No. 1 BESTSELLER on Amazon.ca, and over 11 weeks on Top 100 list Doubleday Canada February 2011 Bloomsbury Berlin Germany 2011 Gallery US February 2012 MA Editions France 2012 Inkilap Kitabevi Turkey 2012 Ebury UK 2012 Juritzen Forlag Norway 2012 Medialive Content Spain 2012 Tericum Kiado Hungary 2012 Hermes Books Bulgaria 2013 Novo Seculo Brazil 2013 Kinneret Israel 2013 Court Echelle Quebec 2013 Alnari Serbia 2013 Boekencentrun Netherlands 2013 Euromedia Czech Rep. 2015 Ikar Slovakia 2015
www.slopenagency.com
annah Levi, a midwife in the Venetian ghetto has gained renown for her skill in coaxing reluctant babies out of their mother’s bellies using her “birthing spoons” as rudimentary forceps. One night a Christian nobleman, Conte Paolo di Padovani, appears at Hannah’s door in the Jewish ghetto with an impossible request. He implores Hannah to help his dying wife and save their unborn child. But a Papal edict has made it a crime, punishable by death, for Jews to give medical treatment to Christians. The Conte offers her a huge sum of money, enough to enable her to sail to Malta to ransom her beloved husband, Isaac. He was captured at sea and is a slave of the Knights of St. John. Hannah delivers the infant, Matteo, a child who captures her heart. As she prepares to depart for Malta to rescue Isaac, she discovers that the baby’s uncles are plotting to murder the child in order to seize the family fortune. Hannah believes she must safeguard Matteo. She enlists her sister Jessica who is a courtesan and living as a Christian outside the ghetto. An outbreak of the plague traps them in Venice and makes them easy prey for the baby’s murderous uncles. Woven through Hannah’s travails are Isaac’s hardships as a slave in Malta. Blessed with wit and charm, he earns scraps of food as a scribe and pins his hopes for freedom on bartering his precious silkworm eggs. To reach Isaac, who believes she has died in the plague, Hannah must outsmart the Padovani family and sail to Malta before Isaac manages to buy his passage to a new life in Constantinople. The Midwife of Venice, which has sold 104,000 copies in Canada alone, has been a triumph internationally. It is followed by The Harem Midwife and a new novel which continues the adventures of Hannah Levi.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Hilary Scharper Perdita
H “Hilary Scharper deftly mines the beauty and wonder of both the human heart and nature in this haunting tale of enduring love.” Cathy Marie Buchanan
“The story moves effortlessly between two love stories, one from a hundred years ago, the other contemporary, both depicted with plausibility... Very suspenseful, the novel kept me guessing to the very end.” Roberta Rich
“Scharper’s prose. . .is just as measured, just as alluringly oldfashioned, as many a Pulitzer or Orange Prize winner before her.”
Globe And Mail
“Canadian author Scharper (Dream Dresses) shines in this surprising and engaging gothic novel… Impeccably researched and beautifully told, this is a tale that will stay with readers long after the final page is turned.”
Publisher’s Weekly starred review Hilary Scharper
istorian Garth Hellyer is bemused when he is assigned to interview Marged Brice, a resident of Clarkson Home for The Aged as part of his work on the Longevity Project. Official records indicate that she is 134 years old, arousing suspicions of bureaucratic error or major fraud. When Garth finally meets her, he is intrigued. Marged, looking as old as polished stone, her sharp mind occasionally drifting to reverie, tells him she wants to die but Perdita won’t let her. Not too old to be charmed by Garth, she entrusts him with her journal which he takes with him to his cottage near the Cape Prius lighthouse of Marged’s childhood. This remote peninsula on the Great Lakes was a summer respite for the elite, including a renowned artist who may have been Marged’s lover, and a prominent ornithologist whom Marged assisted. But Garth is also driven by his curiosity about Perdita, the name of the infant girl in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale who is left on a seacoast to die but is rescued by shepherds. Hilary Scharper masterfully constructs Marged’s story set in the dawn of the 1900s and its impact on the unresolved issues in Garth’s life, offering us a glorious romance of gothic and modern. Fans of Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Possession will enjoy the rich pageant of conflicting passions, wild storms, and the mystery of the supernatural. Hilary Scharper, who lives in Toronto, spent a decade as a lighthouse keeper on the Bruce Peninsula with her husband. She also is the author of a story collection, Dream Dresses, and God and Caesar at the Rio Grande (University of Minnesota Press) which won the Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award. She received her Ph.D. from Yale and is currently Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Simon & Schuster Can 2013 La Courte Echelle Can (French) 2014 Sourcebooks US 2014/15
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non-Fiction
Lionel Tiger Darwin’s Defeat
How The Pill Changed Everything
Lionel Tiger is the author of 10 books including Men in Groups, The Decline of Males, The Pursuit of Pleasure, and co author of The Imperial Animal (with Robin Fox) and God’s Brain (with Michael McGuire). Born in Montreal, a graduate of McGill, he was recruited from Vancouver’s University of British Columbia to Rutgers where he was the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology. He lives in New York City and his articles appear frequently in such leading journals as The Wall St. Journal and The New York Times. His appearances include university panels and TEDx talks. Tiger also has been an anthropoligical consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense on the future of biotechnology. His areas of study include day care, young males, college demographics, the workforce and human alienation from their biological roots. His works have been translated into many languages, such as Korean, Chinese, Dutch, French and Turkish, Japanese, and Spanish. Manuscript available www.slopenagency.com
With his world-changing book On the Origin of the Species published in 1859, Charles Darwin exploded fundamental concepts of God and sex. By revealing two immutable laws of nature –i.e. evolution of species and natural selection, Darwin joined the pantheon of scientists as foundational as Newton and Copernicus. And yet, an unforeseen seismic change occurred. In the 1960s the contraceptive pill and other reproductive technologies spread in the industrialized world, altering core elements of sexual interaction. Lionel Tiger, the Charles Darwin Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Rutgers University, notes: “Sexual selection can no longer function for humans in the manner on which the Darwinian system was predicated. We have to rethink the matter.” Tiger’s first book Men in Groups, published in 1969, was prompted by primate research revealing that relations between adult male primates differed from those with females or children. The book not only introduced male bonding into the language, it inspired female rage. Difference in biology was interpreted as inequality. Darwin’s Defeat abounds with insights on major societal changes. • The Pill works by hormonally simulating pregnancy in women. What is the effect of this on men? Tiger reports its effects on nonhuman primates. • Young men are alienated from the means of reproduction • Young men are increasingly seen as carriers of male original sin. • Women are surpassing men in education –are they studying for two? • Women are surpassing men in work but is a reported wage gap the result of a choice to slow their careers for 5 to 7 years to be with their children? • Birth rates in the industrial world are declining precipitously –47% of women of childbearing years are childless. The ensuing conversation will be lively, informative, and raucous. There is no going back. Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Mystery
Morley Torgov Key Witness
T Praise for Morley Torgov’s Hermann Preiss series: “Torgov has just the right feel for this kind of writing, never coy, solid with his history but not allowing the facts to get in the way of a good joke.” Toronto Star
“You don’t have to be a classical music lover to enjoy this one.” Publisher’s Weekly
“Worthy of Hitchcock.”
The Whole Note
“This is a story well told: Setting, character, plot, enriched by the lifestyles and colours of the time. Murder is investigated, clues unearthed, expanded and timed to keep the reader turning the pages. Music and mystery make captivating partners.”
he cast of Morley Torgov’s new mystery is dazzling. There is Franz Liszt, a virtuoso of the piano, and heartthrob of 19th C Europe. There is PT Barnum, the flamboyant American showman. And there is a young Mark Twain, soon to be a celebrated author and humorist. To assuage Liszt’s concerns about security, Barnum engages Dusseldorf detective Hermann Preiss who captivated readers in Torgov’s two previous mysteries set in the world of classical music. To the main characters, add Liszt’s egomaniacal American rival, a couple of avaricious manufacturers of grand pianos who are fighting to have the Maestro endorse their instruments, and two or three beauties on the prowl for opportunities. With riches, fame, and recognition on the line, corruption is inevitable and so is murder. Morley Torgov is the author of nine novels, including two previous Hermann Preiss mysteries. Murder in A-Major featuring Robert Schumann and The Mastersinger from Minsk featuring Wagner have been translated into French, Greek, and Korean with others pending. His French publisher, Actes Sud, is printing 10,000 copies of Murder in A-Major for a special promotion. Two of Torgov’s books—The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick and A Good Place to Come From—have been adapted for stage, film, and a TV series. His literary prizes include the Leacock Medal for Humour. Although his mysteries are deadly serious, his irrepressible wit is evident.
Hamilton Spectator
Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Morley Torgov Mysteries
Morley Torgov
Morley Torgov
The Mastersinger
Murder in
From Minsk
A-Major
An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery
An Inspector Hermann Preiss Mystery
I
n the city of Munich, 1868, composer Richard Wagner has finally completed the libretto and score for his new opera “Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg.” After a string of extremely difficult years - Wagner’s “Torgov has just the right reputation and financial feel for this kind of writ- stability depend on the sucing, never coy, solid with cess of his new work. Morley Torgov is an award-winning author of nine novels that have been published internationally. He divides his time between writing and practising law in Toronto.
his history but not allowing the facts to get in the way of a good joke.”
When an anonymous note arrives threatening WagToronto Star ner’s premiere, Inspector Hermann Preiss is called to “You don’t have to be a classical music lover to investigate. With the premiere less than two months enjoy this one.” Publisher’s Weekly away, and an enemy list stretching from one opera “Worthy of Hitchcock.” act to another, discoverThe Whole Note ing the perpetrator before opening night will be Preiss’ Magnum Opus. Join Dusseldorf ’s top detective for another mystery in the world of classical rock stars, where life and death hang on a single note.
Dundurn Canada/US 2012 Actes Sud France 2013
The second installment in the Hermann Preiss Series.
“It’s still easy to see why, in the early days of his long writing career, Toronto’s Morley Torgov won two Leacock medals for humour... This is so even in his first venture into crime genre fiction, which shifts back in time to the 19th-century European world of what has become known as classical music.” Joan Barfoot London Free Press
T
ake one of the crowning musical geniuses of midnineteenth centry Europe, surround him with enemies, add several scoundrels, including one who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstances...and there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in Germany of the 1850s. This is a historical mystery that explores what or who was driving Robert Schumann mad. It takes the reader into the world of mid-nineteenth century music, where classical composers were stars, and their egos were just as monstrous as the rock stars of today.
“This is a story well told: Setting, character, plot, enriched by the lifestyles and colours of the time. Murder is investigated, clues unearthed, expanded and timed to keep the reader turning Inspector Preiss tackles a the pages. Music and mysterious off-key A on the mystery make captivatSchumanns’ piano, but are ing partners.” Hamilton Spectator
all mysteries meant to be solved? Inspector Preiss has the final answer.
Metaixmio Publishing Greece 2009 Sallim Publishing Korea 2009 Actes Sud France 2009 Napoleon RendezVous US/ Canada 2008
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Fiction
Rangeley Wallace I Knew You When
Rangeley Wallace moved from Alabama to Washington, D.C. where she is an author and a lawyer. She is the author of No Defense (St. Martin’s Press). Learn more at: www.rangeleywallace.com
Before Annie can celebrate, her husband John lands his dream job— President of the University of South Alabama—which means moving the family from Washington DC to Carsonville and leaving the life she loves. Annie is devastated. Family comes first, though, and she reluctantly accepts a post as a “spousal hire” at USA’s law school to run a legal clinic in environmental law. The problem is that legal clinics require real legal cases and Annie, embarrassingly, doesn’t have one for the start of term.
Praise for No Defense “Wallace avoids any Grishamcome-lately clichés in this interesting novel of southern justice... This page-turner of a novel is refreshing in it’s uncommon perspective, as opposed to the usual legal novel that focuses on lawyers.” Booklist
“Rangeley Wallace has written a taut, compelling Southern drama that is cut from the same cloth as Harper Lee and the early William Faulkner.” Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump
“A riveting courtroom drama… Another fine story in the Southern literary tradition.”
Library Journal
Manuscript Available
www.slopenagency.com
Annie Fitzpatrick is committed-- to her husband, to her kids, and to protecting the environment. She teaches environmental law at George Washington University and has been awarded a prestigious grant to stop gas companies from fracking on public lands.
Then, a great case swims into her orbit, requiring a pact with the devil. William Davidson, the great unresolved love of her youth, enlists her and her students to take the case of saving the Muskogee National Forest, which Annie has grown to love. In her college days at Stanford, Davidson, a notorious and charismatic activist, held Annie in his thrall. He betrayed her, but worse, he seduced her to stray from her ethical bedrock. It is a source of enduring shame which she has kept secret from her family and her husband. She and Billy are united once more by their passion against a common cause, even as the shadows and temptations of their history linger. With the clock ticking and the forest at imminent risk, she and Billy and her students begin the court fight of their lives. But as angry protest demonstrations divide the town and the secrets of her past go viral, the situation becomes explosive. I Knew You When is an engrossing exploration of the intensity of first love and the lengths we will go to follow our passions, It will appeal to readers of Kristin Hannah, Randy Susan Meyers and Karen White and represents Rangeley Wallace’s finest work.
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Non- Fiction
Jennifer Welsh Why the West Hasn’t Won CBC Massey Lectures
I Jennifer Welsh was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. She earned her B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and earned her Masters and Doctorate in International Relations at Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She is the author, co-author, and editor of an impressive and distinguished list of books, articles and studies.
n 1989, the Berlin Wall was breached, the Soviet Union collapsed, and pundits declared end of the Cold War. Shock and jubilation greeted this surprising reversal of history. Francis Fukuyama famously declared in an essay that it was “The End of History.” But some 25 years after Fukuyama’s bold prediction about transcending the struggles of the past, history has returned in a form few could contemplate. The 21st Century has seen arbitrary executions, attempts to annihilate religious and ethnic minorities, starvation among the besieged, annexation of territory, and movement of masses of refugees seeking a peaceful foothold. Jennifer M. Welsh is Professor and Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute in Florence Italy, and a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford. She was previously a Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, and co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. In 2013, she was appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to serve for two years as his Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect. Jennifer Welsh applies her scholarship and her on-the-ground experiences in this book which will be accompanied by five lectures in the prestigious Massey Lectures series delivered in major Canadian cities in Fall 2016 and broadcast on radio by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The tentative table of contents may include: The Prophets of Progress on the factors that seeded optimism; The Return of the “Barbarians, ” on the rise of ISIL, and the compromise of basic principles of humanitarian law; The Return of Aggression on the Russian advancement into Ukraine; The Return of Mass Flight on the explosion of refugees and asylum seekers; The Return of Inequality on the cracks in the liberal democratic model and the risk of crumbling from within.
Anansi 2016
www.slopenagency.com
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency 131 Bloor Street West, Suite 711,Toronto, Canada, M5S 1S3 Telephone (416) 964 9598 email: beverley@slopenagency.ca www.slopenagency.com
Client List Tony Aspler Henry Aubin Lita-Rose Betcherman Hugh Brewster Timothy Brook Martyn Burke Bonnie Buxton Pat Capponi Laurie Channer Ann Charney Michael Decter Ron Dembo Linda Silver Dranoff Dorothy Eber Modris Eksteins Howard Engel Michael Enright Terry Fallis Robert Fulford Joanne Foster Joanna Goodman Stacey Gorlicky
Catherine Graham Lyndsay Green Francesca Grosso Don Gutteridge Kate Hilton David Healy Tod Hoffman Blanche Howard David Israelson Mary Jackman Basil Johnston Martin Knelman Eric Koch Jack Kuper Will Kymlicka Elliott Leyton S.F. MacKay Dr. Mailis-Gagnon Michael Marrus Dona Matthews Leon Major Rona Maynard
Representatives
Brazil RIFF Agency Rio De Janeiro
Greece JLM Literary Agency Athens
China Gray Tan Taiwan
Hungary Katai & Bolza Budapest
France Michelle Lapautre Paris Germany Paul & Peter Fritz AG Zurich
Israel Harris/Elon Agency Jerusalem Italy The Italian Agency Milan Poland Ilene Kreshka
Attendance at selected Book Fairs is supported by
Jack McClelland Ken McGoogan Michael McGuire Sally Melville John Miller Angela Misri Shannon Moroney Kim Moritsugu Donna Morrissey Marina Nemat James W. Nichol David Onley Terry O’Reilly David Penhale David Posen Andrea Geddes Poole Bruce Allen Powe David Pratt Nick Pron Tierney Read Peter Rehak Robert Remington
Roberta Rich Pamela Richardson Jeffrey Rosenthal Hilary Scharper Edward Shorter Philip Slayton Joey Slinger Daniel Stoffman Jaron Summers Mike Tanner Mike Tennant Lionel Tiger Morley Torgov Harold Troper Michael Ungar Robert Jan Van Pelt Michael Valpy Rangeley Wallace William Weintraub Jennifer Welsh Margaret Wente Beryl Young Sherri Zickefoose
Japan Tuttle-Mori Tokyo
Scandinavia Licht & Burr Agency Denmark
Korea Eric Yang Agency Seoul
Spain Julio Yanez Barcelona
Netherlands Internationaal Literatuur BV Amsterdam
Turkey Akcali Copyright Istanbul
Russia Alexander Korzhenevski Moscow
United Kingdom David Grossman London
Beverley Slopen Literary Agency