Faber snaps up Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson
10 February 2025
Described as ‘a memorably dark and playful mystery about childhood sweethearts and a very bad marriage’, Publishing Director Angus Cargill acquired UK & Commonwealth, excluding Canada, rights for Kill Your Darlings by Sunday Times-bestselling author Peter Swanson from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Sobel Weber Associates. The book will be published in the UK in July 2025. Amazon/MGM have optioned the film rights for a substantial sum.
‘Marriage can be murder,’ the synopsis reads. ‘After forty years, Thom Graves has become a disappointment to his wife, Wendy – he drinks too much, flirts with other women and, worst of all, is in danger of revealing their darkest secrets. Reasoning that her life will be better without him, Wendy’s starting to think the only way to bury the truth is to bury her husband with it – all she has to do is get away with it. Starting at the end, and ending at the beginning, Kill Your Darlings is an ingenious drip-feed mystery about two people’s life together, and the secrets that fatally bind them.’
Peter Swanson’s bestselling novels include two Richard and Judy picks (The Kind Worth Killing and Rules for Perfect Murders), Nine Lives, The Christmas Guest and, most recently, A Talent for Murder. He lives in Massachusetts.
Swanson said:
I’ve been fortunate to have Faber as my UK publisher since the very beginning of my career. And I’m thrilled that they have embraced the idea of a thriller told entirely in reverse, and will be publishing my latest, Kill Your Darlings.
Cargill said:
For over a decade now Peter Swanson has been thrilling us with his dark, witty novels, always marked by his memorable characters and deft plotting. With Kill Your Darlings he has outdone himself, as he combines a technically ingenious plot with the very moving portrait of this marriage filled with both heart and horror – one not to be missed.