Imogen Morrell

Fiction:

This summer, I’m really looking to read literary and genre crossover: stylish, clever writing with horror, sci-fi, thriller, gothic, mystery, or dystopian elements, that asks wider questions about history or society.

I enjoy reading novels about haunting and repression, and I like the idea that a ghost story can be many things. Examples (that run the gamut) are Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. Anne Rice and Shirley Jackson are classic favourites.

I’m very excited by grounded sci-fi and dystopian novels like The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, The Employees by Olga Raven, Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde, Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, and The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley.

I’m looking for a historical novel that examines the slipperiness of past and present as brilliantly as The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry.

I’d love to find a wickedly plotted, elevated psychological suspense – favourite classics include Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith and In the Cut by Susanna Moore.

I’m always drawn to voice-driven, funny and audacious novels, often about the absurdity of desire, like The Pisces by Melissa Broder, Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, All Fours by Miranda July, and Black Bag by Luke Kennard.

Non-fiction:

I'm keen to work with academics and journalists. I'm interested in history, popular science, political writing, investigative journalism, cultural criticism, memoir, biography, nature, and food. I've sold books on a range of subjects by those I do represent e.g. heat, mythology, domestic objects, perversion, the future, wild mountain shelters, British Chinese history, the internet, endings... I'm looking for writers that can spark curiosity no matter the subject, and marry vivid narrative with deep research. I enjoy working on proposals, too, and I'm happy to speak to non-fiction writers in the early stages of a project.

I'm looking for political and cultural commentaries like Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff; mind-bending non-fiction like Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, Silk by Aarathi Prasad, Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn, and Saving Time by Jenny Odell; narrative biographies, like Fire Island by Jack Parlett, Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, and Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell; memoir about history or landscapes like A Flat Place by Noreen Masud, Free by Lea Ypi, and Late Light by Michael Malay; an insider story like Sea State by Tabitha Lasley and Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener; obsessive, literary true crime like The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson, Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, This House of Grief by Helen Garner.