march 2015
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Curtis Brown March Newsletter 2015TRANSCRIPT
Curtis Brown Australia
March 2015 Newsletter
Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd | Literary Agents PO Box 19 | Paddington NSW 2021 | Australia
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| Non-fiction | 304 pp | March 2015 |
LEILA’S SECRETKooshyar Karimi
In fundamentalist Iran, new life sometimes means certain death.
Published by: Penguin | PaperbackRights available: Film/TV Agent: Pippa Masson ([email protected])
Description: Born in a slum to a Muslim father and a Jewish mother, Kooshyar Karimi has transformed himself into a successful doctor, an award-winning writer, and an adoring father. His could be a comfortable life but his conscience won't permit it: he
is incapable of turning away the unmarried women who beg him to save their lives by ending the pregnancies that, if discovered, would see them stoned to death.
One of those women is 22-year-old Leila. Beautiful, intelligent, passionate, she yearns to go to university but her strictly traditional family forbids it. Returning home from the library one day – among the few trips she's allowed out of the house – she meets a handsome shopkeeper, and her fate is sealed. Kooshyar has rescued countless women, but Leila seeks his help for a different reason, one that will haunt him for years afterwards and inspire an impossible quest from faraway Australia.
Spellbinding and heartbreaking. Leila's Secret shows us everyday life for women in a country where it can be a crime to fall in love. But for all its tragedy, this unforgettable book is paradoxically uplifting, told from the heart of Kooshyar's immense sympathy, in the hope that each of us – and the stories we tell – can make a difference.
Praise for Leila’s Secret:
'Leila's Secret brims with compassion and yearning and eloquently shares the story of a regime suffocating its people and losing all that was great about it. To read this book is to see inside a culture and understand the desperation of its people.' The Hoopla
'A riveting account of one girl's innocent spirit defying the tyranny of Iran's crushing regime. It is a masterpiece of moral impossibilities and climactic suspense.' Bob Brown
Kooshyar Karimi was born in Tehran and now lives in Sydney. He is the author of several books on Iranian, Chinese and Assyrian myths and history, one of which was banned from publication by the Iranian government. His memoir I Confess: Revelations in Exile was published in Australia in
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2012. He is also an award-winning translator of Gore Vidal, Kahlil Gibran and Adrian Berry, among others.
| Fiction | 368 pp | March 2015 |
HIS OTHER HOUSESarah Armstrong
Does love always mean telling the truth?
Published by: Pan Macmillan | PaperbackRights available: Film/TV, Translation excl. German language rights, Audio, North AmericaAgent: Pippa Masson ([email protected])
Description: He was dismayed how readily he took to lying. He'd always thought of it as a decisive abandonment of the truth. Instead, he realised, it was simply a matter
of one word slipping into the place of another.'
Dr Quinn Davidson and his wife Marianna have endured years of unsuccessful IVF and several miscarriages, and Quinn can't face another painful attempt to conceive. Marianna is desperate to be a mother and their marriage is feeling the strain. At a small-town practice a few hours from their home, Quinn meets Rachel, the daughter of one of his patients. Drawn to each other, it's not long before they find themselves in a passionate affair and Quinn realises he must choose between the two women. Then Marianna announces a surprise natural conception, news that will change the course of all their lives. Set in the lush Australian subtropics, this taut emotional drama poses questions about moral courage and accountability, and asks whether love means always telling the truth.
Praise for Salt Rain:
‘Sarah Armstrong's first novel is seamlessly structured and very readable.’ The Age
In her twenties Sarah Armstrong was an award-winning radio journalist and television researcher at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Her first novel, Salt Rain (Allen & Unwin), was shortlisted for several awards including the 2005 Miles Franklin. Sarah lives in the coastal subtropics of New South Wales with her partner and young daughter.
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| Fiction | 320 pp | March 2015 |
TURTLE REEF Jennifer Scoullar
Can Zoe protect the reef she loves? Or will fighting to save it mean that she loses everything?
Published by: Penguin | PaperbackRights available: World excl. ANZ; Film/TV Agent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: Unlucky-in-love Zoologist Zoe King has given up on men. Moving from Sydney to take up an exciting new role in marine science in the small sugar town of Kiawa is a welcome fresh start. Zoe is immediately charmed by the region's beauty – by its rivers
and rainforests, and by its vast cane fields, sweeping from the foothills down to the rocky coral coast. And also by its people – its farmers and fishermen, unhurried and down to earth, proud of their traditions.
Her work at the Sea-Life Centre provides all the passion she needs and Zoe finds a friend in Bridget, the centre's director. So the last thing she expects is to fall for her boss's fiancé, cane king Quinn Cooper. When animals on the reef begin to sicken and die, Zoe's personal and professional worlds collide. She faces a terrible choice. Will protecting the reef mean betraying the man she loves?
Praise for Jennifer Scoullar:
'Jennifer Scoullar's passion for the land shines through . . . Highly recommended.' Sunshine Coast Daily
'A crisp, well-written tale . . . Sings like a Bunya mountain breeze.' Courier-Mail
'Celebrates the country and, more importantly, the bush as a life-changing environment . . . A heart-thumping romance.' The Weekly Times
Jennifer Scoullar lives with her family on a rural property in West Gippsland. Her house is on a hilltop, overlooking valleys of messmate and mountain ash. She grew up on the books of Elyne Mitchell, and all her life she’s ridden and bred horses, in particular Australian stock horses. Jennifer is the author of five novels; Wasp Season, Brumby’s Run, Currawong Creek, Billabong Bend and Turtle Reef. Currawong Creek was a finalist in the 2014 RUBY (Romantic Elements) Award.
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| Memoir | 288pp | March 2015 |
RANSACKING PARISPatti MiIler
This story of a year writing and reading in Paris explores truth and illusion, self-knowledge and identity - and evokes the beauty, the contradictions and the daily life of contemporary Paris.
Publisher: UQP | PaperbackRights available: World Excl. ANZ; Translation, Film/TVAgent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: What does it mean to fulfil a dream long after it seems possible? When Patti Miller
arrives to write in Paris for a year, the world glows ‘as if the light that comes after the sun has gone down has spilled gold on everything’. But wasn’t that just romantic illusion? Miller grew up on Wiradjuri land in country Australia where her heart and soul belonged. Mother of grown-up boys with lives of their own, what did she think she would find in Paris that she couldn’t find at home? She turns to French writers, Montaigne, Rousseau, de Beauvoir and other memoirists, each one intent on knowing the self through gazing into the ‘looking glass’ of the great world. They accompany her as she wanders the streets of Paris – they even have coffee together - and they talk about love, suffering, desire, motherhood, truth-telling, memory, the writing journey, how to know who we are in the family and in the cultures which shape us.
Praise for Patti Miller:
‘Patti Miller is Australia’s most eloquent memoirist. In Ransacking Paris, she turns her clear-eyed gaze on herself, in a gorgeous meditation on what it means to let go as a mother, to re-engage as a partner, to take risks as an artist -- by realising a long-deferred dream to live and write in Paris. A portrait of Paris, a lively conversation with French memoirists of times past, an investigation of the impossibility of pinning down the self in writing, and a heartfelt account of a couple with grown sons celebrating their new independence while still mourning the end of the phase of being intensely needed by their children -- Ransacking Paris is magical, and deeply moving.’ Ceredwyn Dovey, Only the Animals
PATTI MILLER grew up in country NSW and has worked teaching writing for over twenty-five years. She teaches memoir writing at the innovative Faber Academy in Sydney and offers writing courses in Paris and Bali. Her many books include Writing Your Life, The Last
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One Who Remembers, Child, Whatever the Gods Do and The Memoir Book. Patti’s memoir The Mind of a Thief (UQP) won the NSW Premier’s History Prize – NSW Community & Regional History Prize, was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction and longlisted for the Nita B. Kibble and Stella Prize.
| Non-fiction | 120,000 words | August 2015 |
WOMEN I’VE UNDRESSED Orry-Kelly
The fabulous life and times of a legendaryHollywood designer and a genuine Australian original.
Publisher: Random House | PaperbackRights available: Film/TVAgent: Tara Wynne ([email protected])
Description: Orry-Kelly created magic on screen, from Casablanca and The Maltese
Falcon to Some Like it Hot. He won three Oscars for costume design. He dressed all the biggest stars, from Bette Davis to Marilyn Monroe. He was an Australian. Yet few know who Orry-Kelly really was – until now.
Discovered in a pillowcase, Orry-Kelly’s long-lost memoirs reveal a wildly talented and cheeky rascal who lived a big life, on and off the set. From his childhood in Kiama to revelling in Sydney’s underworld nightlife as a naïve young artist and chasing his dreams of acting in New York, his early life is a wild and exciting ride. Sharing digs in New York with another aspiring actor, Cary Grant, and partying hard in between auditions, he ekes out a living painting murals for speakeasies before graduating to designing stage sets and costumes.
When The Kid from Kiama finally arrives in Hollywood, it’s clear his adventures have only just begun. Fearless, funny and outspoken, Orry-Kelly lived life to the full. In Women I’ve Undressed, he shares a wickedly delicious slice of it.
Orry-Kelly was born Orry George Kelly in Kiama in 1897. His love of theatre and nightlife flourished when he moved to Sydney at 17. In 1922 the aspiring actor and artist moved to New York, where he painted murals for nightclubs and graduated to designing stage sets and costumes. This led to Hollywood and a job as chief costume designer at Warner Brothers. Orry-Kelly went on to create some of the most iconic looks in film history, including Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, in a career spanning 30 years and 295 films. He won Oscars for Some Like it Hot, Les Girls and An American in Paris.
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Recently DeliveredFICTION
RELATIVITYAntonia HayesGenre: FictionDescription: A two-month old baby is rushed to hospital with a suspected brain injury. Experts conclude he was shaken by his father who, when arrested, denies all charges. Twelve years later, the boy meets his father through an intercepted letter and begins a relationship.Due to be published by: Penguin | July 2015Rights available: English language excl. ANZ, US; Translation, Film/TV, Audio via Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown UK. Agent: Pippa Masson ([email protected])
THE BEAST’S GARDEN Kate Forsyth Genre: Fiction Description: Kate Forsyth retells this German fairy tale as an historical novel set in Berlin during the Third Reich. A young woman marries a Nazi officer in order to save her father, but fears her new husband and the regime for which he works. Ava becomes involved with an underground resistance movement in Berlin called the Red Orchestra, made up of artists, writers, diplomats and journalists, who pass on intelligence to the American embassy, distribute leaflets encouraging opposition to Hitler, and help people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country. The Beast's Garden is a compelling and beautiful love story, filled with drama, intrigue and heartbreak, taking place between 1938 and 1945 in Berlin, Germany. Due to be published by: Random House | August 2015Rights available: World Excl. ANZ; Film/TV, Audio Agent: Tara Wynne ([email protected])
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