Marina joined The Soho Agency in 2016, after working for several years in the editorial departments of Little, Brown and HarperCollins. She works with #1 New York Times & Sunday Times bestselling authors, and #1 Kindle & #1 Audible bestsellers. Her clients’ books have been selected as Waterstones’ & WHSmith’s Books of the Month and for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club, among others. In 2023, Marina was selected as a Bookseller Rising Star.

 

Marina is actively building her list of authors writing upmarket commercial, reading group and accessible literary fiction, alongside a select and eclectic children’s, YA & non-fiction list. She is looking for big stories & ideas, compelling writing and unforgettable characters. She reads across all genres in fiction, except for straight horror & sci-fi, and gravitates towards stories told through a female lens. She loves reading submissions and would especially like to see:

 

In adult fiction:

• A fun, fresh ‘bonkbuster’ for fans of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals 
• An epic (and possibly tragic) love story – a novel with the emotional punch of The Titanic or the scope and structure of David Nicholls’ One Day.
• Upmarket/literary historical fiction with a clear hook.
• Witty epistolary novels – Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society are two of her all-time favourites.
• Zeitgeisty book club/reading group fiction – something you want friends to read immediately so you can discuss.
• Rom-coms you can pitch in one line.
• A novel with a complex, competitive & ruthless (but also loyal, loving & unforgettable) family at its core – something like TV’s Peaky Blinders, Succession, Yellowstone or Kin.
• Equally, a sweeping family saga for fans of Lucinda Riley and Rosamund Pilcher.
• Novels with unusual structures, in any genre.
• Thrillers/procedural crime with a point of difference. She’d also love to see legal thrillers & courtroom dramas.
• Witty, dry, sharp contemporary literary fiction, like Monica Heisey’s Really Good Actually.
• Speculative fiction rooted in our world, with just one subtle shift from reality – something like Apple TV’s Severance.
• A heist novel.

 

In children’s & YA:

• Crime & thrillers across the board. She’d especially love to see a YA locked-room mystery/thriller in the vein of Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder or Karen M. McManus’ One of Us is Lying. Equally, for younger readers, she adored Robin Stevens’ Murder Most Unladylike series.
• A contemporary YA novel with the heartbeat of a Taylor Swift song.
• Middle grade adventure, with a little magic sprinkled in. Have you written a modern-day Famous Five or The Worst Witch?

But this list is not exhaustive. Among other things, she is drawn to books that feature: action, and lots of it; mysteries; heatwaves and/or raging storms; plot twists; hotels; secrets simmering under the surface; dramatic landscapes, a vivid sense of place; an unusual structure; richly drawn characters; but also characters who are not what they seem; cults; against-the-odds survival; dry humour; a light dusting of myths and folklore; animals, preferably dogs; chemistry that leaps off the page; love triangles, family tensions, heady affairs and forbidden romances – relationships under pressure, essentially.

 

Novels she has loved recently include: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, The List by Yomi Adegoke, In Memoriam by Alice Winn, Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister, The Housemaid by Freida McFadden and Kala by Colin Walsh.

 

Marina is a trained copyeditor and proofreader – and takes spelling and grammar too seriously. In addition to her agenting work, Marina has a rare insight into the publishing industry – she is a published author and has studied creative writing at the Faber Academy.