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—Dina Gachman, The New York Times
In 2024, I read more books in one year than he ever did before. In 2025, I’m scaling back and focusing on creating better coverage for emerging writers. We’ll have excerpts, cover reveals, more web Q&As, in-person and virtual events, and more top-secret ideas I can’t reveal now. The first step to 2025 is always revealing the debut books that have caught my eye. As of Thanksgiving 2024, I’ve been sent almost 100 physical and digital galleys for debut books coming out in 2025. I tried to read 20-50 pages of them all.
A week out from this year's Frankfurt Book Fair, Summit Books publisher Judy Clain has preempted North American rights to Nelio Biedermann's Lázár, described by Summit as a "fairytale-esque novel in the vein of Kazuo Ishiguro and Daniel Kehlmann" that "follows a noble Hungarian family over several generations, from the beginning of the 20th century through the Nazi era, the ensuing expropriation and deportation by the Soviets, to the Hungarian national uprising in 1956."
A French anarchist targets a passenger train in the taut latest from Donoghue (Learned by Heart), which is inspired by a true story. On Oct. 22, 1895, Mado Pelletier boards the express from Granville to Paris with a homemade bomb in tow. Born into poverty, she’s furious over the plight of the working class, which is made all the more plain to her by the arrangement of the train’s carriages: first-class passengers are placed at the center of the train to cushion the blow in the event of a crash.
PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers winner Erin Singer’s DANGERLAND, a screwball romantic comedy about Eugenie and Kurt, whose will-they-won’t-they story has messed with the lives of everyone they love, set against the squalor and glamor of Las Vegas, its professional poker players, 24-hour daycares, rundown gated communities. A big-hearted, irreverent epic about marriage and love and the big bets we take in life, in the vein of Maria Semple, Kevin Wilson, Carl Hiaasen, to Laura Perciasepe at Summit, in a pre-empt, by Marya Spence at Janklow & Nesbit (NA).
We’re thrilled to share that an upcoming Summit title, GREAT BLACK HOPE, has been selected for the Winter/Spring 2025 #IndiesIntroduce program! The Indies Introduce program unites booksellers from across the U.S. to highlight exciting debut titles in adult, middle-grade, and young adult categories.
The Paris Express, due out March 18, 2025, is based on an 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station. Set on a train packed with characters who hail from Brittany, Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania and Cambodia, it's a historical fiction driven by the power of locomotion — and the designs of those on board.
Publisher Judy Clain preempted world English rights to Rob Franklin’s debut novel Great Black Hope, in a deal brokered by Trident Media Group’s Ellen Levine and Audrey Crooks.
Summit Books is continuing to grow its inaugural list. The revived imprint has so far acquired 10 titles slated for publication in 2025.
In a preempt, Amanda Uhle, executive director and publisher of McSweeney’s, has sold world English rights to Destroy This House to Judy Clain at Summit Books.
In its first major move since being acquired by KKR, Simon & Schuster announced that longtime Little, Brown editor-in-chief Judy Clain will join S&S as senior VP and publisher of Summit Books, with a mandate to revive and refocus the imprint.
Judy Clain was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, and immigrated to New York City in 1979. She started her career in the rights department at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She spent a decade in the movie business as an agent at Triad Artists, selling film rights of books, and then as a production executive at Sony/Mandalay Entertainment. She joined Little, Brown and Company in 1998 and was named Editor-in-Chief in 2011. In addition to managing the editorial team, some of the books Judy edited at Little, Brown include I Am Malala by Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, Homeland Elegies by Pulitzer Prize–winning Ayad Akhtar, Room by Emma Donoghue, The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron, and many more.
In January 2024, Judy joined Simon & Schuster as Senior Vice President and Publisher of the newly revived Summit Books imprint where she plans to build an internationally relevant list. Her forthcoming titles for Summit include books by the critically acclaimed authors Emma Donoghue, Ayad Akhtar, Peter Godwin, Daniel Kehlmann, Heather Rose, and Lauren Redniss, as well as memoirs by notable figures such as former editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Alexandra Pringle, McSweeney’s publisher Amanda Uhle, and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad. Judy has also acquired debut novels by filmmaker Mo Ogrodnik, Brooklyn based writer Katie Yee, and 21-year-old upcoming international literary star Nelio Biedermann.
Laura Perciasepe joined Summit Books in March 2024 from Riverhead Books, where she edited a wide range of award-winning, best-selling, and critically acclaimed writers from around the world. Her authors have included Katie Kitamura, Bryan Washington, Álvaro Enrigue, Garrard Conley, R. O. Kwon, Akwaeke Emezi, Aja Gabel, Etgar Keret, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alia Trabucco Zerán, Michelle Hart, Santiago Jose Sanchez, National Book Award winner Samanta Schweblin, and National Book Award winner Yu Miri. Forthcoming titles from Summit Books include works by Rob Franklin, Cédric Sapin-Defour, Qudan Rie, Claudia Durastanti, Erin Singer, Nneoma Ike-Njoku, and more to be announced.
Josefine Kals joined Summit Books in February 2024. Josie started her career in 2009 at Penguin Random House’s Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and over her fifteen years at KDPG she represented and worked on the book publicity campaigns for novelists, poets, and nonfiction authors alike, including Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kaveh Akbar, Judy Blume, President Bill Clinton, Esi Edugyan, Art Garfunkel, James Gleick, Yaa Gyasi, Margo Jefferson, Daniel Kehlmann, Jhumpa Lahiri, Robin Coste Lewis, Deborah Lipstadt, Javier Marías, Toni Morrison, Maggie O’Farrell, Sharon Olds, Michael Ondaatje, Orhan Pamuk, Tracy K. Smith, Art Spiegelman, Kevin Young, and Charles Yu.
Anna Skrabacz joined Summit Books in May 2024, coming from Pushkin Industries where she spearheaded marketing and publicity campaigns for renowned authors and podcasters, including Jill Lepore, Steve Martin, Michael Lewis, Lake Bell, Sophia Bush, and Malcolm Gladwell. She previously worked at Thames & Hudson and W.W. Norton where she created marketing campaigns for beloved storytellers such as Judy Chicago, Jen Campbell, and Quentin Blake.
Jade Hui joined Summit Books in April 2025 from Atria Books, where she supported the publications of New York Times bestselling authors including Rebecca Serle, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Lisa Jewell, Jamie Ford, and Patti Callahan Henry, among others. Some of her authors include Emily Austin, C. Michelle Lindley, Warona Jay, and Brian Schaefer. Jade previously worked at William Morris Endeavor, Vice Media, and holds a BA in English and Sociology from Connecticut College. She is drawn to fiction with a strong message at its core featuring vibrant casts of characters and seeks to champion anyone who has a story in their heart.
Kevwe joined Summit Books in February 2024. She graduated from New York University with an honors degree in Africana studies and two minors in French and psychology. Her publishing aspirations are influenced by her family of talented storytellers and an admiration of writing as a craft. She’ll read anything with rich voice, great command of language, and a whole lot of mess. Kevwe is especially drawn to books by, for, and about people who live in the margins—particularly queer people of color. She is thus excited to be part of Summit Books’s beginning and contribute to platforming authors and stories that add depth to our collective understanding of the world. Aside from books, Kevwe also enjoys archival work, fashion, and torturing herself by watching awful reality TV shows. She assists Judy Clain.
Luiza de Campos Mello Grijns joined Summit Books in April 2024. Originally from New York, she received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Development at McGill University. Fluent in Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, she plans on leveraging her international background in order to further Summit’s mission to “Read the World.” To that end, she’s happy to share that she has recently acquired her first book, A DELICATE COLLECTION OF ABSENCES by Aline Bei, a Brazilian literary novel to be published by Summit in 2027.
