Louise Buckley

Adult fiction 

I am currently really enjoying the horror resurgence and would love some more horror for my list. I’m looking for all types of horror. I would also love to see some dark academia. Think If We Were Villains or In My Dreams I Hold a Knife.

I am looking for literary and book-club novels, especially novels that represent working-class people or children going through difficult circumstances (think Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal or Boys Don’t Cry by FÍona Scarlett). And I’m all for relationship-driven novels that emphasise messy relationships, like Blue Sisters, or mix humour and heart with something a little darker, like The Wedding People by Alison Espach. I would love to see a literary crime novel, too; something very smart.

I love a ‘high-concept’ time-slip/time-travel or parallel universes story, especially if it’s a romance, too. I’d love to see some rom-coms (favourite authors include Emily Henry, Kirsty Greenwood and the inimitable Mhairi McFarlane), cosy romance in the vein of The Pumpkin Spice Café or with a stunning location like The Riviera House Swap by Gillian Harvey or The Start of Something Wonderful by Jessica Redland, and cosy rom-coms with a Christmas slant.

I would LOVE to see some cosy fantasy. Think witches, magical bookshops, talking cats. I really enjoyed Legends and Lattes and The House in the Cerulean Sea. I also enjoy novels set in the real world but featuring a hefty dose of magic or the supernatural.

I am a huge fan of dystopian fiction and would love to find some that offers a fresh take on a classic trope – something that mixes the compulsiveness of The Hunger Games with the bold and philosophical ideas in The Giver, but for adults.

When I was an editor I published the hit Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll and I’d love to represent incisive, intelligent suspense written by authors such as Jessica Knoll and Gillian Flynn, or something a little more subversive and blackly comic like My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I am not currently looking for police procedurals.

More generally, I would also love to see novels with a disabled protagonist or someone (like myself) who is living with an invisible disability.

Adult non-fiction

In non-fiction, I would love to see any submissions that focus on motherhood, especially through the lens of a scientific or neurological perspective. I am also interested in books in the following areas: health and well-being, cookery and food writing, human and social behaviour and psychology, climate change, gardening and permaculture and nature writing.

I am NOT currently looking for:

-romantasy

-epic, traditional fantasy

-space opera

-children’s books

-Science fantasy

-Short stories or novellas

-Police procedurals

-Memoir

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be emailed to louisesubs@hs-la.com

To submit to me, please follow the guidelines on the HS-LA website and fill in the form on there.

PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM ONLY OPEN FOR THE FIRST SEVEN DAYS OF EACH MONTH. 

Guidelines & Details