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UQP acquires darkly funny and sexy novel from debut author Samantha Byres
Posted 22.10.2024

UQP acquires darkly funny and sexy novel from debut author Samantha Byres

UQP is delighted to announce that we’ve acquired Samantha Byres’ darkly funny and sexy mystery, Dead Ends from agent Jane Novak.

The novel opens as all-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins returns home to New Zealand to fulfil family duties for a mother and brother she’s barely seen since she made her small-town escape as a teen. Coming back from overseas isn’t the triumph it should be: she’s got nothing to show but a string of failed relationships, crappy jobs and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-girlfriend and former boss, Lucrece. Nell settles right back into old habits, sparking a relationship with her dead best friend’s brother Mick Purdle as well as the newly arrived and equally unreliable Katya, who is working for once-famous TV psychic Petronella Bush. Driven by her lust for Katya, an empty bank account and her own desire to come to terms with two deaths in her past that have shaped her, Nell is drawn deeper into Petronella’s charismatic web.

Dead Ends is a beguiling, bighearted portrait of love and loss and the ways we live through them together; a novel where the impossibility of closure and the desire to fix the past collide. UQP acquired world rights from Jane Novak and will publish in July 2025.

Publisher Aviva Tuffield says:

‘Dead Ends is just so sharp and full of bite. Nell’s voice is deliciously acerbic; she’s the kind of protagonist who can’t help but make terrible life decisions, and yet readers will love her despite – or, perhaps, because – of them. Think Top of the Lake meets Deadloch. I simply adore this novel.’

Samantha Byres says:

‘I’m thrilled that Dead Ends is in the hands of publisher Aviva Tuffield and the UQP team. This book was inspired by chance encounters with psychics, small-town teenage gloom, and chaotic love lives. I wanted this sometimes-grimy little book to be fun, while acknowledging the tragedy of some of its stories, and the team at UQP have understood that perfectly.’

About Samantha Byres

Samantha Byres is a writer from Whanganui, Aotearoa. She attended the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington and her work appears in: Turbine, JAAM, Sport, and Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.