Kate Riordan
After an auction between six publishers, two novels from Kate Riordan were signed by Penguin division Michael Joseph for a six-figure sum.

Fiercombe Manor is a story of two women in different eras, the 1890s and 1930s, set within an isolated Gloucestershire manor house. The second novel signed is another dual-narrative historical novel.

Vanessa Curtis
The Earth is Singing by Vanessa Curtis is the story of Hanna, a 15-year-old Jewish girl of Riga, whose life is turned upside down when her father is taken away by Soviet forces. Hanna and her family move to a ghetto with 30,000 others and endure starvation, forced labour and imprisonment.

The novel is based on the true story of the Jews of Riga. Publication is due on January 27, 2015 which is Holocaust Memorial Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Marilynne Robinson

Lila, new from Marilynne Robinson, is based on the same world as her previous novels [Pulitzer-winning] Gilead and [Orange Prize-winning] Home. Lila is the wife of character John Ames, and Robinson’s new novel will tell her story. Robinson has also won the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel with her 1981 title Housekeeping.

TR Richmond
What She Left is the debut psychological thriller by TR Richmond, predicted by its publisher Rowland White of Michael Joseph to join the ranks of Gone Girl as a book that would capture the reading public’s imagination. The book follows a young woman, revealed through the trail she leaves behind.

Richmond said: “Each of us leaves a trail nowadays more than at any point in history—whether it’s handwritten letters, comments on Facebook, our school reports or our Twitter stream. I wanted to write a book with a contemporary young woman at its heart, but reassemble her story, jigsaw puzzle-like, through her trail.”

The hardback will be published in spring 2015.

Nadine Dorries
MP Nadine Dorries has signed a six-figure deal for three novels. The first, The Four Streets, is the first in an autobiographical trilogy of novels set in 1950s Liverpool around Irish Catholic families struggling against poverty, hardship and abuse. The Four Streets will be published as hardback and e-book in April 2014.

Laline Paull
The Bees is the debut novel by British playwright Laline Paull.

Described as being like no other novel, the author takes the reader into the consciousness of a species alien to us and yet crucial to our survival. The hardback will be published in May 2014. Paull said: “I wrote The Bees in a state of feverish isolation in my garden shed.”