Blake Friedmann Literary Agency

10/07/2025

NEWS: PASSIONTIDE by Monique Roffey nominated for the inaugural CARICON Prize for Caribbean Literature!

PASSIONTIDE is out now from Vintage and AA Knopf

📚🏝️ 📚🏝️

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/passiontide-monique-roffey-caricon-prize

‘Roffey is channelling a woman story so deep and old it feels foundational to who we are and can be. Raw and beautiful and in your face, this novel is a liberating read.’ – Julia Alvarez

‘PASSIONTIDE is a bold rallying cry of a novel. Vital, enraging and brilliant. I loved it.’ – Sarah Winman

‘Beautiful and important… By the end of this book, I was ready to join the revolution.’ – Safiya Sinclair

‘PASSIONTIDE has scale, politics and power – a thrilling read, I loved it’ – Sadie Jones

‘The best book I have read in years. It’s so wonderful: so rich, inspiring, funny, moving. A true chronicle of hope, in sisterhood, community, faith and men’ – Rosie Boycott

‘The spirit of carnival itself is in the writing. A powerful and electrifying novel’ – Jason Allen-Paisant

‘A vital novel that addresses a grossly normalised horror – it’s also fiery, funny and ferociously feminist, written with a singular rhythm and style, a beautiful ease.’ – Diana Evans

08/07/2025

NEWS: Congratulations to Sally Andrew for winning the prestigious 2025 Gourmand World Cookbook Award in the Acknowledgements category with her delightful cookbook, RECIPES TO LIVE FOR, published by Penguin Books South Africa.🏆🎉

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/sally-andrew-recipes-to-live-for-gourmand-award

Sally Andrew’s delightful cookbook, RECIPES TO DIE LIVE FOR, has been announced as the winner for the 2025 Gourmand World Cookbook award in the Acknowledgements category. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards is one of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Founded in 1995 by Edouard Cointre

04/07/2025

NEWS: Kat Lister’s beguiling exploration of art, FRAGILE BODIES: Art Born of Bodily Trauma, won at auction by Weidenfeld & Nicolson for publication in Spring 2027

🎨🖌🏺🖌

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/kat-lister-fragile-bodies-auction-weidenfeld

‘Art can be a response to pain, a way of making sense of the body when it turns against itself. From Henri Matisse’s cut-outs, created when he was no longer able to hold a paintbrush or stand at his easel, to the fragmentary hope of Derek Jarman’s garden in the years he spent living with HIV, via the ephemerality of Eva Hesse’s tragically curtailed sculptural life, these stories illuminate the fragile interplay between the body’s betrayals and the soul’s resilience. Through biography, cultural criticism and personal reflection, Lister explores how bodies in crisis can yield unexpected beauty – and how art can offer resistance when words or medicine fall short.’

01/07/2025

NEWS: GUNNER, the first book in Alan Parks’s brand-new WW2 thriller trilogy longlisted for 2025 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year!

Out on 17 July from Baskerville

📚🔦

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/alan-parks-gunner-longlisted-mcilvanney-prize

‘Great storytelling… I loved it’ – Peter James

‘Great stuff… a vivid sense of place and time and what a main character!’ – Ian Rankin

‘A lean, mean and ruthlessly readable thriller.’ – Vaseem Khan

‘A brilliant milieu, fantastic characters, an exciting story – in other words another typically great Alan Parks novel.’ – Adrian McKinty

‘A superb thriller with a gripping, constantly surprising plot.’ – Andrew Taylor

‘Transports you to the streets of war-torn Glasgow. A gritty, immersive, genuine page-turner.’ – Bridget Walsh

17/06/2025

Exciting news! Sheena Lambert’s Báite to receive premiere at the Galway Film Festival in July 2025.

For more details please read our news story here:
https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/baitepremiere

Listen to Sheena's interview with RTE's Arena program here:
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22521069/

Dublin based screenwriter, playwright and novelist Sheena Lambert’s debut feature film Báite is set to premiere at the Galway Film Festival in July 2025. Báite is an adaption of Lambert’s own novel THE LAKE (HarperCollins, 2015). The story is set in the rural village of Glanaphuca and follows ...

09/06/2025

NEWS: We’re delighted to announce that Kathryn Faulke is this year’s winner of the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize, recognising exceptional works by debut authors over the age of 50, for her ‘riveting and truly heartwarming’ memoir EVERY KIND OF PEOPLE!

Congratulations Kathryn! 🏆 🥳📚🎉🏆

For more details, read our news story:https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/kathryn-faulke-christopher-bland-prize-winner 🗞️

‘A riveting book that treats elderly, infirm and irritable people as the lively and extraordinary human beings they really are. Kathryn Faulke is a shining example to us all… EVERY KIND OF PEOPLE is truly heart-warming and will be in pride of place on my bookshelf of very special books.’ – Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Chair of the Judges

‘EVERY KIND OF PEOPLE reminds us that wonderful kindness and comedy and compassion abound in the care sector, the bourne to which so many of us are destined and for which so few are prepared.’ – Rev. Richard Coles

‘Beyond being a vivid and consistently engaging memoir, it delivers a powerful lesson in humanity that needs to be shared.’ – Margaret Busby

04/06/2025

We’re delighted to announce the 21st novel by Peter James: THE HAWK IS DEAD.

It’s the not-to-be-missed publishing event of the autumn that sees Queen Camilla take a leading role alongside her favourite fictional detective, Roy Grace.

Out 21st October from Pan Macmillan. Read more in our news story: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/the-hawk-is-dead-peter-Peter James

03/06/2025

OUT NOW: check out Tomasz Jedrowski’s new short story ‘Too Good to Let Go’, part of the NO ORDINARY LOVE project for Hinge in partnership with Dazed

❣️ 📖 ❣️

Read now on Substack: https://www.no-ordinary-love.co/p/copy-too-good-to-let-go-by-tomasz

'‘Too Good To Let Go’ is such a beautiful, quietly gripping read. It captures a specific almost-missed connection – when you’re not sure if you should reach out, but something in you does anyway.' – Tahirah Hairston, founder of Ridiculous Little Things

28/05/2025

NEWS: We’re thrilled to announce that Diane Abbott and Kathryn Faulke have both been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize, recognising exceptional works by debut authors over the age of 50

Congratulations Diane and Kathryn! 🥳📚🎉

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/diane-abbott-kathryn-faulke-christopher-bland-prize-shortlist 🗞️

20/05/2025

NEWS: Tomasz Jedrowski pens short story for dating app Hinge’s NO ORDINARY LOVE campaign, in partnership with Dazed

❣️ 📖 ❣️

Read more: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/tomasz-jedrowski-no-ordinary-love-announcement

‘Jedrowski is an authentic new international star.’ – Edmund White
‘Marvellous, precise, poignant writing; the reader is happy to be overwhelmed. The highest talent at work.’ – Sebastian Barry