A&U acquires James’s “The Wreck”

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to crime novel The Wreck by Riley James in a deal brokered by Caitlan Cooper-Trent of Curtis Brown Australia.

In 1998, researchers are travelling to a remote island in Bass Strait following a potential sighting of the wreckage of a plane belonging to the famous aviator Van Spector Spector, who disappeared in 1978 after making a series of bizarre final communications suggesting he was being tailed by mysterious lights. When the group’s boat sinks in a storm, they are marooned on the island with no way of communicating with the outside world. But they soon realise they’re not alone.

Publisher Genevieve Buzo said the novel was “a little bit Lost, a little bit Yellowjackets and a little bit Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None”.

Raised in north-west Tasmania, James lives in Melbourne. She trained briefly as a journalist before becoming an academic, and is the author of The Chilling, which was shortlisted for Best Debut Crime Fiction at the 2025 Ned Kelly Awards and longlisted for Best Adult Crime Fiction at the 2025 Davitt Awards.

James said the idea for her second novel “came from a childhood fascination with spooky aircraft disappearances over Bass Strait, and morphed into something bigger when I fixated on Tasmania’s reputation as a sanctuary from the nuclear apocalypse”.

“I’ve always been interested in what happens to good people when the world falls apart,” said James. “That’s why The Wreck is a UFO mystery and a survivalist thriller, but also a tale about love and longing.”

A&U plans to publish The Wreck in September.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions