GUY BURT

AGENT: VALERIE HOSKINS

PRODUCER:

On a spring day in England, six teenagers venture to a neglected part of their school where there is a door to a small windowless cellar. Behind the door, the old stairs have rotted away. A boy unfurls a rope ladder and five descend into The Hole. The sixth closes the door, locks it from the outside, and walks calmly away. The plan is simple: They will spend three days locked in The Hole and emerge to become part of the greatest prank the school has ever seen. But something goes terribly wrong. No one is coming back to let them out . . . ever.

AGENT: VALERIE HOSKINS

PRODUCER:

In a dark room of a dilapidated house, as a storm rages outside, Matthew lights a candle and places it in the center of the floor. Its light spreads across the wall and illuminates Sophie, tied up in a chair facing him. She is frightened, fearful of what he might do next. But for now, it seems, all Matthew wants to do is talk. Talk about the events of nearly twenty years ago, about their strange childhood, and about the summer when Sophie grew up and everything changed . . . forever.

Young Mattie and Sophie lived in a world seemingly without constraints. Their cold mother barely paid attention to her children. Their father, a mere shadow in their lives, was never home. So Mattie and Sophie had the run of the gardens and the woods beyond. They played youthful games, but Sophie was extraordinarily intelligent, a fact she took great pains to hide from her teachers, so as not to stand out. Sophie was everything to Mattie, and he worshiped her. He wanted to know her secrets, the things that went on inside her brilliant mind. But Sophie was changing. And the summer before she went away to boarding school, the things she had worked so hard to conceal would come spilling out—and Mattie would have to live with the shocking consequences.

Now he’s all grown up, too, and Matthew wants answers to the questions that still darken his mind—no matter what the cost. . . .

AGENT: VALERIE HOSKINS

PRODUCER:

Also known as The Dandelion Clock.

“I want to turn back the hands on the clock and change it all, make it different; three friends who meet up by chance in an old city and share a beer and laugh at old stories and jokes. But it wasn’t like that; and the clock has no hands, so I can’t turn them back.” [p.171]

Alex Carlise has returned to a place he thought he’d never see again, outside of his dreams. As he walks the ochre-dusted road to the house in which he grew up, the memories of his young life in a small Italian town push all other thoughts out of his thoughts about the major exhibition of his artwork opening soon in London, thoughts of the myriad things he should be doing in preparation–everything subsides to make room for the warm flood of a time long past.

When he opens the door to the now-deserted house, he is suddenly seven again. There is Jamie, his first friend, his best friend; Anna, his first love; and the delicious days they spent exploring the valley and swimming in the cerulean blue Mediterranean Sea. It all comes back to Alex in a way he can neither control nor discern. But the memories are insistent, demanding. Soon Alex loses entire hours to the past, overwhelmed by the haunting memories of a youth turned tragic.

Alex remembers the day he, Jamie, and Anna went to their favorite place, an abandoned church far up in the hills. There they stumbled upon a man, injured and sick. From this discovery, a series of events tumbled forth that would change them all forever. Alex now realizes that he must confront the truth about himself, about the echoes of the past that still haunt him, and about the friends whose legacy has meant only devastation.

AGENT: VALERIE HOSKINS

PRODUCER:

In 1986, with Chernobyl smouldering on the news and the Cold War casting a deep shadow, Scott becomes convinced that nuclear conflict is inevitable. Sensitive, watchful, and haunted by personal grief, he immerses himself in post-apocalyptic stories and survival games, drawn to the clarity they offer when the future feels out of control.

Jodie is brilliant, abrasive, damaged. Fiercely determined to keep the world at arm’s length, she wears loneliness like armour, trusting her solitude to protect her.

Drawn together by their fears, Jodie and Scott form an uneasy, wary alliance. But as time passes, their shared vision of cataclysm becomes increasingly seductive.

The Glass Field is an intimate, quietly unsettling novel about what we cling to when the world feels close to breaking.