Harvill Secker UK have signed two new psychological thrillers by Ruth Ware whose debut  is a current paperback bestseller and Richard & Judy…   …pick. The Bookseller, Book2book and Bookbrunch all reported the deal this morning.

In a Dark, Dark Wood spent the first two weeks of 2016 high in the fiction bestseller chart and has been featured in the latest Richard & Judy Book Club promotion, exclusive to W H Smith. Rights to In a Dark, Dark Wood have been sold for publication across the globe in 29 territories while film rights were acquired by New Line Cinema to be co-produced by Gotham Group and Reese Witherspoon.

Ruth’s second thriller, The Woman in Cabin 10, will be published simultaneously in the UK and US this summer. The novel follows travel journalist Lo Blacklock who hears a body thrown overboard on the maiden voyage of a boutique cruise liner, only to discover that no-one has been reported missing from the boat.

Alison Hennessey at Harvill Secker said: “Publishing Ruth Ware’s brilliantly sharp and clever In a Dark, Dark Wood has been one of the highlights of my career, and with the fantastic follow-up, The Woman in Cabin 10, coming this summer and the film of In A Dark, Dark Wood on the horizon, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have signed up two more books from Ruth.”

PRAISE FOR IN A DARK, DARK WOOD:

‘If the premise might be the sort that Agatha Christie would have toyed with had she been a 21st-century graduate, Ware’s analysis of the power-games some women revel in – and the toxicity in the undertow of some female friendships – is more reminiscent of Sophie Hannah, Christobel Kent, or even Gillian Flynn and Harriet Lane’ INDEPENDENT

‘A slickly plotted, whip smart thriller – genuinely chilling and totally compulsive‘

SUNDAY MIRROR

‘Thrilling, gripping & well-written’ METRO

‘[One] of the year’s hottest crime debut novelists’ THE TIMES

‘You won’t be able to put down this creepy page-turner’ CLOSER

‘Tense and packed with suspense, it tears along like a runaway train’ WOMAN AND HOME

Buy the book here