Tor UK signs new Grady Hendrix horror
Tor Nightfire, part of Pan Macmillan, is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls plus a second horror novel by Grady Hendrix. Editorial director Sophie Robinson acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights, (ex. Canada) in a five-publisher auction from Stevie Finegan at the Zeno Literary Agency on behalf of Joshua Bilmes at JABberwocky. North American rights were also sold to Jessica Wade at Berkley, PRH.
Tor Nightfire, part of Pan Macmillan, is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls plus a second horror novel by Grady Hendrix. Editorial director Sophie Robinson acquired UK and British Commonwealth rights, (ex. Canada) in a five-publisher auction from Stevie Finegan at the Zeno Literary Agency on behalf of Joshua Bilmes at JABberwocky. North American rights were also sold to Jessica Wade at Berkley, PRH.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a Southern Gothic horror novel set in 1970s Florida that follows a group of young women in a home for unwed mothers who find a guide to witchcraft.
Sophie Robinson comments: “There is no horror writer like Grady Hendrix. Darkly funny, Wayward Girls balances horror and heart with dashes of gleeful savagery. It’s masterful, wildly entertaining but also sheds lights on a dark part of American history that has been all but swept under the rug. This is Gothic pop-culture horror at its finest and I can’t wait to publish it next year.”
Author Grady Hendrix says: “The thirty volumes of the Pan Book of Horror Stories is one of the greatest anthologies of horror fiction ever published, so I'm absolutely thrilled to be calling Pan Macmillan my UK home. May the screaming never stop!”
Stevie Finegan at the Zeno Agency says: “We're delighted to have found an incredibly commercial home for Grady's new books that will continue to break him out even more broadly across the horror and thriller markets here in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth. With every book, Grady’s goes from strength to strength and garners more and more loyal fans and the team at Macmillan are proving themselves to be the perfect partners to make him a household name.”
Tor UK will publish Witchcraft for Wayward Girls on 16th January 2025.
About the author
Grady Hendrix is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter living in New York City. He is the author of Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism (which was adapted into a feature film by Amazon Studios), We Sold Our Souls, The Final Girl Support Group, How to Sell a Haunted House and the New York Times bestseller The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (currently being adapted into a TV series). Grady also authored the Bram Stoker Award–winning nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the seventies and eighties, and his latest non-fiction book is These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World. His books have sold over 2 million copies and been translated into 22 different languages.
About Tor UK
Tor UK specializes in speculative fiction and is a destination for the best in imaginative storytelling. A sister company to Tor Books in the US, Tor UK publishes an impressive array of award-winners, bestsellers, household names and talented debut authors. Tor’s mission is to publish out-of-this-world genre fiction and bring readers books that spark joy. It strives every year to increase the diversity of its list, publishing authors from minority backgrounds and increasing positive representation of gender issues through fiction. (www.panmacmillan.com/tor)
About Pan Macmillan
Pan Macmillan is an international consumer book publisher based in the UK, publishing a very broad range of books in all formats, including print, ebook and audio, for today’s readers. Its adult book imprints include Bluebird, Macmillan, Macmillan Business, Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Collector’s Library, Mantle, One Boat, Pan, Picador and Tor. Children’s Book imprints include Macmillan Children’s Books, Campbell, Kingfisher and Two Hoots. (www.panmacmillan.com)
Pan Macmillan is part of Macmillan Publishers International Ltd (MPIL), a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (www.holtzbrinck.com), a large family-owned media company based in Stuttgart.