Current Projects and Authors

Fiction

A Kingdom for the Sea         Literary Fiction 

John Walsh

We all have dreams. Many of us put them off until it’s too late. Sarah and Brid seize the moment and, with only a vague notion, set off from Dublin to the West to realize their dream. They have the energy of youth, the spirit of adventure, a blindness to the mistakes they are going to make.

Their dream takes shape in the form of Eamon Tierney’s rundown house in the village of Kilbeg. Even as they make the decision to take on the massive task of giving it a new life, the tensions and the differences between them surface. But undeterred, and with the encouragement of the musician Peadar and Jackie, the local shopkeeper, they settle in to their own alternative lifestyle in a community that is otherwise suspicious of them.

In the process of their dream becoming real, they grow and learn about themselves, work their way through disappointments but in the end find everything they have created threatened by a harsh underlying reality of violence and revenge. A Kingdom for the Sea captures the idealistic spirit of the seventies, the journey of two young women into a mostly male domain, and the atmosphere of conflict that defined that period in Ireland.

Author's Home: Connemara, Ireland.  World Rights.

Once Upon a Time     Cozy Mystery

Sally-Anne Stephenson

Once Upon a Time is set in Richmond’s historical fan district. It features a young divorced woman called Alex and her three boisterous young sons, a rampant canine called Bert and a nervous floppy eared bunny called Bugs. Alex has a neighbour called Neris who loves guns, karate, brandy, skateboarding, and drives a Mustang called Sally despite the fact that she’s over seventy years old and has a blue rinse (the neighbour, not the Mustang).

There’s action, romance, lots of humour, and an accidental involvement in a crime and a questionable alibi. All making Alex’s life even more complicated than it already was. Alex is trying to keep a balance in her life, protect her son’s and deal with her feelings for the man who has to keep coming to fix her windows. And most of all, she wants her ex-husband to stay as far away from her as possible.

Alex feels that her life has become unrecognisable and is now a cross between a romantic comedy and a Quentin Tarentino film. She is trying to keep a grip on all of it without losing her sanity (well what little sanity she had to begin with). So if the police could just find the person who is trying to kill her and solve the alibi problem, she can get her boys back, concentrate on her budding relationship, find out why the dog wants to hump everything within a five mile radius and stop Neris buying that rocket launcher she’s seen on e-bay!

Once Upon the Time is Sally-Anne’s first novel. The sequel, Jenna’s Journey, featuring Paul’s daughter Jennifer and all the other characters, is completed, and the third, fourth and fifth novels in the series are in progress.

Author's Home: London. World Rights.

The Far Side Of Paddy Crabtree        General Fiction

Aiden McGlew

Aspiring scriptwriter Paddy Crabtree flew into Ireland a free man on the morning of his Uncle Conny’s funeral. Ninety three hours later he sailed out of the Dublin dockside a wanted man, in the aftermath of the death of his aunt Veronique.

In the intervening period, he fell in love with the girl who was stalking him, was questioned in relation to the apparent suicide of his film school mentor, and helped bring an end to an internecine family feud. He found himself embroiled in a discussion on the rights and wrongs of euthanasia, which then went beyond theorisation, and was bequeathed a sea view cottage plus thirty four thousand Euros.

Paddy inspired the setting up of the myspace.com/ucantavoidjustice website and was the focus of a manhunt up, down and across the Connemara mountains by the world’s major media outlets. His best friend Reinaldo helped him flee on the proviso that he would have first option on the screenplay of Paddy Crabtree’s sorry week.

Loosely based on actual events, The Far Side… is Paddy’s story.

Author’s Home: Middlesex, England     World Rights

The Irish Twins       Historical Fiction

Bob Huerter

Twin Irish boys, the product of an illicit union between a priest and a young woman in his parish, are adopted, one to live in Belfast, the other in America, and their lives become intertwined years later as The Troubles envelop all of Ireland. Bob Huerter delivers a fast paced, engrossing historical novel, filled with action, passion and politics, all against the background of The Troubles.

Author's Home: Nebraska, U.S.   World Rights

Flake         General Fiction

Tara West 

What is love? What is art? And what makes a better hangover cure – cold curry, warm gin or finding out your mother has sex while suspended from the ceiling? For thirty-something Tommie Shaw, these are the questions which keep her awake at night… well, that and her housemate Blob - a morbidly obese Morrissey impersonator – who prefers her company when he ‘vogues’ around their kitchen at midnight.

Unexpectedly promoted at the magazine where she works, Tommie suddenly finds herself responsible for keeping her long-suffering colleagues in the jobs they hate. Life doesn’t get any easier whenever her mother’s sensational memoir is launched, airing the family’s sad and sordid laundry, or when her boho ex-boyfriend comes back to channel her inner pyromaniac, and certainly not when she attends the boozy reunion of her teenage friends, the ones who know her most humiliating and desperate secret, the secret that has dominated her life - until now.

Forced to start living again after fifteen years in a walking coma, this is the story of Tommie’s final awakening from depression and what she discovers when she opens her eyes, not least of which is an unexpected source of enduring love. But as the pressure mounts, can her ‘poetic soul’ take the heat?

Fresh, highly original and darkly funny, Flake is a subtle, bittersweet account of one woman’s struggle to stop falling apart. True to form, in this latest novel, West’s writing combines a droll delight in the everyday with the depth of insight and compassion of a truly gifted author.

Author's Home: Country Antrim, N. Ireland. World Rights.

The Venetian Secret, A Nun’s Tale 1620    Historical Fiction

Giulia Morosini

An epic drama set in the heart of Venice, a city riddled by deceit.

Intelligent and passionate, Marietta, 19, lives at a time when dowries are reaching for the skies. Child of a prestigious noble family, the Morosinis, she is no more than a pawn in a frenzied money game to win honour and social status, and consequently, she falls victim to religious fervour and political machinations. Forced by her family to take the veil, Marietta contemplates the impossible. She makes up her mind to defy God, throw off the chains of her destiny, and try to escape to a life in exile with her childhood love, her peer, the nobleman Tommaso Contarini.

An old, forgotten painting by Paolo Veronese, showing her beautiful great aunt Rosalba Morosini as a young bride to be, turns out to be essential for her plans to leave behind bleak convent life, the hellfire of the Inquisition, her hateful mother and vile brother, and the convent confessor Orsolo Lupi. Rosalba‘s romance brings the passion back into Marietta’s life.

This is a story of love and the striving for personal freedom in a world where paradox and hypocrisy rule. Historical facts blend with fiction in this tale of the dark side of early 17th century Venice.

Author Home's: Venice, Italy. World Rights.

When the Messenger Meets the King    Science Fiction Thriller

Liam McCann

Former cop and university lecturer Ed Sampson discovers that an apparent natural disaster was actually caused by a mysterious rogue satellite. When he learns that the power behind the incident intends to use new technology to create a space-based weapons system that will permanently alter the world’s climate, he is thrown headlong into a nightmare. Meanwhile, the same technology is being used by the villains to terraform the Martian surface and make it habitable by man.

With investigative teams drawing blanks, and with death stalking him at every turn, Sampson follows the trail to the European Space Agency, and to a solar furnace hidden high in the Pyrenees. There he learns that the free world is threatened by a conspiracy so terrifying that even the superpowers must face the prospect of global annihilation. A race against time leads to pitched battles at the solar furnace and on the Martian surface that will decide the fate of those on Earth.

Liam McCann’s science-fiction thriller takes the reader on a roller coaster ride and lends itself perfectly to adaptation as a major Hollywood blockbuster.

Author's Home: Surrey, England.  World Rights

The Wizard of Dublin         Crime Thriller

Sean McGinty

In modern Ireland, there exists a crisis of epidemic proportions. A heartbreak claiming more lives than the Famine, more culturally divisive than The Troubles, namely, a cornucopia of drugs, guns, and gangland murders—and an eager willingness by the average Irish citizen to employ all three. The Wizard of Dublin, a riveting supernatural crime thriller, details precisely how one man's life is changed, from a doting father and husband, in the blink of an eye, into the mirror image of those he believes are the genesis of his pain. The unflinching, constant torment caused by the loss of his wife and daughter in a drug related car accident brings the protagonist, Gene Kearney, to the line-blurred world between being a good man and doing truly evil things.

Author's Home: Massachusetts, USA.  World Rights.


Biddy Weirdo            General Fiction

Lesley Richardson

A spare and moving account of the devastating effects of a relentless campaign of bullying on its subject, a shy young loner with an exceptional talent for drawing and an emotionally crippled father. Set in a fictional seaside town in Northern Ireland, this story with universal appeal is at once full of pathos and speckled with black humour. Reminiscent of Brian Moore's Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne in its acute portrait of the quiet desperation of the socially inept, this is a very promising first novel from a writer with much potential.

 Author's home: Bangor, N. Ireland. World Rights

Phoebe and Thelonius   Literary Fiction

Trina Boyer Barchi

A lyrical, heartfelt look at a brother and sister, the people they encounter and the relationships they form in a pivotal summer in Campo de Fiore in Rome.

Author's Home: Rome, Italy. World Rights.

Russian Dolls           Literary Fiction

Tanya Ravenswater

Beautifully written with a simple lyricism which is sustained apparently effortlessly throughout, this is a compelling first novel of rare integrity and compassion which breaks down the barriers between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, and gives us a unique insight into the world of the obsessive-compulsive – and the power of friendship, compassion and love.

Author's Home: Cheshire, England. World Rights.

          Also by Tanya Ravenswater:     

Middletown Tales       Short story collection

A collection of quirky, darkly humorous tales, all set in the fictional Northern English town of Middleton.   The events and characters portrayed in individual stories intertwine to create a pleasing sense of unity of time, place and community. Gentle satire with a sometimes savage twist in the tale.  World Rights.

Crime Thriller

Fiona Mackenzie

A young musician stands trial for murder, and the guilty sit in judgment on the innocent. Half brothers Robert Darwin, who applies Darwinian theory to solve crimes, and the Reverend Gideon Flint, who believes in creationism, battle for the soul of Robert’s estranged son Levi Capra. Trapped between the two half-brothers, Darwin’s estranged son is on trial for a violent murder of a young girl.  Someone has framed him, and Darwin is determined to find out the truth and make amends. Along side Darwin’s efforts to find the evidence to free his son, the narrative moves to tell the dark secrets of the twelve jurors sitting on Levi’s trial.  Each one has killed, and each carries the toxic burden of guilt.  Levi becomes their scapegoat.

Author's Home: Dorset, England. World Rights.

Inside Out; Under the Rainbow, Time and Tide

Irish Women’s Fiction

Mary O’Sullivan

The fourth, fifth and sixth novels by Irish author Mary O’Sullivan. Mary’s books are published by Poolbeg in Ireland. She is ready for the world stage. The next Maeve Binchy?

Author home's: County Cork, Ireland.  World Rights  (Ireland sold) 

Dance Me to the End of Love and Rocket Park     General Fiction

Adrian White

In Dance Me to the End of Love we meet Bernard Lynskey, a bitter man in his late thirties. Having accepted a cash settlement to concede the bitter custody battle for his daughter, Bernard Lynskey travels aimlessly across Europe and North Africa for several years. When he returns to Britain, he is arrested and held without trial. On his release, he meets Juliette and sees in her the hope of some sort of redemption for the life he has led. Given this chance of a new and better life, Bernard chooses instead to hurt Juliette and complete his fall from grace.

Rocket Park, a companion piece, takes the reader back to Bernard in his youth, and gives a subtle insight into why he became the man that he did. Adrian White’s first novel, An Accident Waiting to Happen, was published by Penguin Ireland in 2004, and was described as ‘Gripping, disturbing and irresistible’ by the Irish Independent. Penguin also published Where the Rain Gets In in 2006, described as ‘Exceptionally well-written’ by the Daily Star.

Author's home: Galway, Ireland.   World Rights.

Non-Fiction:

Northern Ireland's Greatest Haunts     Paranormal/BBC TV tie-in

Andy Matthews

The BBC TV series “Northern Irelands Greatest Haunts” follows TV presenter/ psychic investigator Andy Matthews as he delves into the historical facts, science and spiritual aspects of what lies hidden within the confines of an alleged haunted buildings in N. Ireland. Each location holds a  story waiting to be told.

Andy, clairvoyant medium Marion Goodfellow and Darren Ansels’ team of scientific investigators have accumulated over 50 years experience in studying the very nature of ghosts. These accounts will not give you definitive proof, for proof stems from personal experience, but as you read the true accounts and analyse the evidence collected from each of the six locations covered in this book, you may begin to see the world a little differently, and discover that your mind has opened up to a menagerie of infinite possibilities.

Author's Home:London U.K. World Rights. 

Israeli Tapestries, Israeli Lives    Photography/Travel/Biography

Melody Amsel-Arieli, Photographs by Ricki Rosen

Israeli Tapestries, Israeli Lives will portray Israel's rich, colorful mosaic of people in words and photographs. Israelis hail from varied ethnic backgrounds, lifestyles, religions, cultures and traditions. They have survived the Holocaust, fought for freedom, arrived from the four corners of the earth, and then carved new lives in our ancient land. Even today, as Israel reaches her sixtieth year of independence, Israelis are still living history. Many lead fascinating lives, many have fascinating tales to tell. 

Authors' home: Israel. World Rights.

The Fame and Defame Game      Memoir/Law/Pop Culture

Paul Tweed

Belfast lawyer Paul Tweed gives and an insider’s view of working against the tabloids on behalf of the rich and famous from the U.S. and the U.K. Tweed’s stellar client list includes Brittany Spears, Van Morrison, Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Lopez, Colin Farrell, Steve Bing and Uri Geller. 

Author's home: Belfast, N. Ireland. World Rights.

Dream On: The Challenge to Break Par in a Year    Sports

John Richardson

Dream On is the saga of John Richardson and his quest to break par at his local golf course within a year.  Previously a hacker who couldn’t break 100, he shot a one-under par 70 four days before his deadline. 

Author's home: Bangor, N. Ireland. World Rights (UK and Ireland sold). 

Humor Titles from Ray Strobling:        Humor

America Kicks Ass

How To Sleep With Your Dog

Not Tonite Dear

Ray’s most recent books, The Ultimate Cats’ Catalog (2002) and A Black Eye Isn’t the End of the World (2004) were both published by Andrews McMeel.

Author's home: Chicago, U.S. World Rights.

Carsten Krieger                   Photography/Ireland

Carsten Krieger is a photographer based in Ireland.  His first book was The Fertile Rock: Seasons in the Burren (Collins Press, 2006).

Author's home: County Clare, Ireland.

Projects in development are:

By the Sea: A Journey Along Ireland's Coast

The Shannon

Spirit: Ireland’s Sacred Places

Ireland’s Flora in Photos

National Parks of Ireland

Landscape Photography in Ireland

World Rights

The Letters and Journals of Mr. Wilfred Ginge    Humor/Cats

Wilfred Ginge with Gayle Curtis

Wilfred Ginge, aspiring author and ginger cat from the McGinge clan in N. Ireland, writes to famous authors for publishing advice, assisted by his faithful friend Gayle, who lives with him rent free. Illustrated.

Author's Home: Norfolk, England. World Rights.

Crude Behavior:  A fundamental tale told by kidd millennium     Graphic Humor/Politics  

Story by Ron Callari, Illustrations by Jon A. Donohoe     

A very funny and caustic history, in graphic novel form, of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. A biting satire that unravels the deceits of the Bush administration and the similarities that fundamentalists share around the world, as men lust for oil.

Author's home: New Jersey, US; Illustrator's home: Dublin,Ireland. World Rights