HarperCollins acquires third Ringland novel

HarperCollins Australia has acquired The World Beneath Her Feet, the third novel by Holly Ringland.

The World Beneath Her Feet tells the story of Maggie Byrd, a woman in her 30s living in London with her best friend and partner, while working with fossils and gems at the Natural History Museum. When she learns that she’s inherited her beloved uncle’s rewilded land in a lush valley in South East Queensland, Maggie’s London life begins to fracture.

“Beneath this carefully constructed facade lies a past Maggie buried deep inside herself and resolved never to unearth: the story of a guilt-ridden, heartbroken girl who left Australia in her early 20s and swore never to return.”

HarperCollins said the book was a “luminous and deeply emotional novel about belonging, memory and the loves and landscapes that make us – and what it takes to come home to ourselves and each other”.

Ringland is the author of the novels The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding and the nonfiction work The House that Joy Built (all 4th Estate). According to the publisher, her books have sold over 600,000 copies globally and been published in over 30 international territories, with The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart also adapted for television.

Ringland said, “The World Beneath Her Feet is a novel from the core of my heart, mirroring many things I’ve been contemplating in the last few years: the parts of ourselves we bury in order to survive, the unresolved past that can shape the rest of our lives, and the people and places that call us home.”

The author added, “Publishing a new novel with [HarperCollins head of fiction] Catherine Milne and HarperCollins continues to be everything my younger, past self dreamed of when I was 16.”

Said Milne: “A new Holly Ringland novel is something to celebrate. Holly is the most extraordinary storyteller – tender, lyrical, profound, funny, wise – and her ability to balance between the dark and the light, between grief and joy, and reach a place where she connects with, enchants, comforts, moves and inspires readers is unparalleled.”

HarperCollins plans to publish The World Beneath Her Feet on 1 September.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions