We are thrilled to announce a major new voice for the MM agency: Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward, a cinematic upmarket psychological mystery playing out on an international landscape.
Erika Imranyi at HarperCollins / Park Row Books won a seven-way auction for US rights and has said that Beautiful Bad is a book that “transcends” its genre and stood out in the crowded thriller market because it brought “something wholly original to the category”. She added that Beautiful Bad‘s unreliable narrator will “join the ranks of Gone Girl‘s Amy and Girl on the Train‘s Rachel”. Stefanie Bierwerth at Quercus / Hachette acquired UK & Commonwealth rights in a six-figure deal at auction and will be launching Beautiful Bad simultaneously with the US in Spring 2019.
Rights have been snapped up around the globe with several pre-empts and auctions, including two deals at Frankfurt Book Fair. Beautiful Bad has now been sold into 10 territories, including Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, and Slovakian, with offers from Portugal and Latvia taking the total to 12.
Annie Ward has a BA in English Lit from UCLA and a MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Her first short screenplay, Strange Habit, starred Adam Scott and won awards at Aspen and Sundance Film Festivals. She lives in Kansas with her two sons and British husband, who she met in the Balkans. She was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and An Escape to Create Artists residency, and is currently working on her second suspense novel.
BEAUTIFUL BAD
Things that make me scared: When Charlie cries. When Ian won’t wake up. When someone shoots kids in a school.
Exploring writing therapy after a horrific camping accident, Madeline Wilson lists her worries.
She gradually reveals her fear of British husband Ian, a private security contractor struggling with PTSD; her concern for the safety of their young son Charlie; and her tumultuous friendship with CIA operative Jo.
Drowning, especially little Syrian kids that wash up dead on the shore. When Charlie hides from me. ISIS.
From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a terrified 911 call summons the police to a blood-splattered house.
That something is really, really wrong with me.
What in this beautiful home has gone bad?
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