New publisher Aston Bay Press has acquired world rights to a new Titanic-related historical thriller, due to be published in April 2012.
Alan Watts’ Touched by Angels is the story of an extraordinary woman, Lil, and her nine-year-old son, living in early Twentieth Century London and facing execution for the accidental killing of her landlord during a routine rent-collecting visit. Getting hold of a large sum of money in the process, and becoming the most wanted criminals in the country, Lil and Robert escape London in 1912 only to embark on “a liner” for New York.
Publishing director, Lorena Goldsmith, who negotiated the deal directly with the author, says: “I was struck by the intensity of this amazing story, a story with an almost Dickensian feel. Alan Watts portrays a strikingly vivid and authentic pre-WWI London. The fact that Lil allows her husband to be incarcerated for life for a murder he didn’t commit will come across as controversial to a lot of readers – which makes Touched by Angels the ideal reading group choice. The fact that Lil and Robert end up in the seedy quarters of New York, following their rescue from the Titanic, shows the sheer magnitude of Alan Watts’ ability to surprise and enthral.”
Kent-based début author, Alan Watts, says he is delighted Touched by Angels is published by Aston Bay Press. He describes the novel as “a world in which I immersed myself completely while writing, almost living the hopes of those people, who had no idea that the Great War was just around the corner.”
Touched by Angels will be published in trade paperback and ebook, each format including a reading group guide.
For more information, please email publicity@astonbay.co.uk
Self-editing Fiction that Sells 