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Maddalena Cavaciuti
David Higham Associates
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About
Maddalena Cavaciuti is a literary agent at David Higham Associates, one of the UK's leading literary agencies. She works across adult fiction and nonfiction, with a focus on literary and upmarket commercial fiction. She joined David Higham after experience in publishing and rights.
Currently Looking For
I represent adult and YA romance, fantasy, crime & thriller. Across the board I am looking for hooky one-line pitches, compelling characters, and the kind of stories which turn into obsessions. I’m a fangirl at heart and love talking about books almost as much as reading them, so I want projects on my list which spark discussion, inspire fandoms and demand to be revisited again and again. I read and love romance across all subgenres but mainly represent the kind that come wrapped in brightly coloured paperbacks. Give me all your cowboys, mafia dons, ice hockey captains, campus heartbreakers, bikers and billionaires. I want emotional stakes that feel impossible to ignore, an original and unforgettable voice, side characters who feel like family (I’m still emotionally living with Liz Tomforde’s cast in the Windy City) and heaps of yearning and banter between two MCs who leap off the page. Right now I am especially looking for romance with a darker edge, a F1 romance with a unique hook, romcoms which thrive on chaos, paranormal romance and love stories with a clever twist of magic like Rebecca Serle’s In Five Years. In fantasy I still need a heavy dose of romance (read: spice) along with a deadly premise, an imaginative world which feels wide and cinematic, an intriguing magic system and a strong female character facing impossible decisions. There’s a shortage of monsters on my list – I’m keen to see more vampires, dragons and werewolves but particularly excited to meet monsters less often found in fantasy books. If your book features brutally competitive characters or if ‘there’s only one horse’, please send it to me. Writers in this space who I admire include Devney Perry (monsters!), Keri Lake (atmosphere!), Nisha J. Tuli (trials!) and Lauren Palphreyman (love triangles!). When it comes to crime fiction, I’m chasing big, smart summer thrillers with serious plotting power and high-concept hooks executed with pace and precision. I’d love to find a classic-feeling murder mystery with a modern twist (e.g. Alex Pavesi’s Eight Detectives or Alex Michaelides’ The Fury) and a crime novel which works through the mechanics of a good murder plot from an ambitious new angle (Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time). All of my favourite crime writers tell stories about characters behaving in the messy, maddening way that humans do, and uncover secrets that make sense psychologically. I’m drawn to main characters who are clever and active problem-solvers; experts in their fields (like Dr Kez Lanyon in Dorothy Koomson’s Give Him To Me) who are pushed beyond their limits by equally competent adversaries. Above all, I want propulsive one-read sittings which have me turning pages into the night in the way Strange Sally Diamond and The Devotion of Suspect X did. I am not looking for non-fiction, saga, sci-fi, space operas, horror, poetry or short story collections. I studied English Literature at the University of Bristol and joined David Higham Associates in 2
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be emailed to maddalenacavaciuti@davidhigham.co.uk Please submit directly to Maddalena. All adult fiction submissions should include: The first three chapters of your book A one- to two-page synopsis A covering letter Guidelines & Details Vital Info maddalenacavaciuti@davidhigham.co.uk @@maddal_agent Website
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