Hellie Ogden

I'm on the lookout for high-concept thrillers and suspense with fresh hooks, big ideas and daring twists. A new crime series with a protagonist that you want to come back to again and again and love stories from exciting new voices. I adore historical fiction, I'm always open to original, courageous ideas and seeing a time/place/person in a new light. Page turning literary fiction tapping into the millennial experience, nostalgia, sexuality, and family complexities always interest me. I'm proud to represent a list that is conversation-starting, diverse and eclectic.

Favourite authors include Maggie O'Farrell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tana French, Rachel Joyce, Liane Moriarty, Isabel Allende, Marian Keyes, Sarah Waters and Chris Riddell. I love those books that hit the reading group sweet spot - upmarket, but with a clever commercial hook so something like Where'd You Go, Bernadette? which has real flair and heart. Or Queenie for its pure joy and painful honesty. I thought Where the Crawdads Sing was extraordinarily good and I'm often drawn to family stories, and writing that is sharp, witty and warm like Lessons in Chemistry. Female-led mysteries in the vein of How To Kill Your Family, the beautiful Girl A and the skilfully crafted Such A Fun Age are firm favourites.

I read broadly, literary through to commercial, and in a bookshop I will hunt for moral complexities, unusual twists and prose that will floor me emotionally and challenge me too. I always want to be transported out of my comfort zone and to feel genuine emotional depth in the pages I read. I never tire of the mother/daughter dynamic, and now raising three young girls myself, that feels particularly acute. I'll forever enjoy work that celebrates women.

On the YA-side it's stories with a big heart and voice that tackle the often messy side of growing up. Books like We Were Liars and Heart-shaped Bruise. I’ll happily read any romantasy and great world building. When it comes to middle-grade I'm open to all sorts, but I have a real love of adventure mixed with magic, and I read on repeat Eva Ibbotson. I devoured the Skandar series and love something eccentric and mad and outrageously fun. I will always hunt out books that make me cry. The Boy at the Back of the Class I thought was phenomenal.

In non-fiction I focus on memoir, standout cookery/lifestyle writers and moving narrative nonfiction projects as well as work that has a social following with cross-media potential. I was in awe of Dolly Alderton and her debut Everything I Know About Love, Emilie Pine's Notes to Self, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo and the extraordinary Candice Brathwaite's I Am Not Your Baby Mother.