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Veronique Baxter

I joined David Higham Associates in 1999 and was made a Director in 2007.  I’m very proud of the eclectic list of adult fiction, children’s books and non-fiction I have built since then.

I represent authors of literary and genre fiction including Naomi Alderman, Belinda Bauer, Carys Bray, Oliver Harris, Holly Gramazio, Sarah Hilary, S.E Lynes, Stephen Kelman, Charlotte Philby, Sarah Pinborough, M. L. Rio, Rachel Seiffert, Harriet Tyce, Scarlett Thomas, Nicola Upson, Tim Winton and Charlotte Wood.

On the children’s side my clients include Cressida Cowell,  Nick Crumpton, Maz Evans, Nicola Davies, Jamila Gavin, Diana Wynne Jones, Geraldine McCaughrean, Michael Morpurgo, Jonathan Stroud and Jenny Valentine.

I’m also a keen reader of non-fiction and my most recent projects give a good indication of my taste. They include Anthony Bales’s A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, Cato Pedder’s Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa, Timothy Phillip’s The Curtain and the Wall: A Modern Journey Along Europe’s Cold War Border, Philip Short’s Putin: His Life and Times,  Jane Robinson’s Trailblazer: The First Feminist to Change our World.

My authors have won or been shortlisted for many prizes and accolades including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Sunday Times New Writer of the Year, the Costa Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Greenaway, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, the Desmond Elliott First Novel Prize, the Booker Prize, the Orwell Prize among others.

I love to receive submissions and I’m always on the look out for exciting new projects. My taste in both adult fiction and non-fiction is broad but I’m predominantly attracted by the quality of the prose, strong and distinct voices, nuanced characterisation, ambitious storytelling and compelling, original plots.

In non-fiction, I find a storytelling element very appealing and particularly enjoy tales of survival – think David Grann’s The Wager or Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer – and books that transport me to faraway places like Cal Flynn’s Islands of Abandonment and William Atkin’s Exile: Three Island Journeys. I’m also keen to find more true crime in the vein of Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body and Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.

If you are an established author who might be looking for a fresh start and a new perspective on your work, I would also be delighted to hear from you.

Submissions:

I am assisted by Sara Langham and Kara Abraham.

On the lookout for

Fiction

  • Literary fiction of all kinds including historical, horror and speculative
  • Multi-generational novels – my all-time favourites being Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex and Carol Shield’s The Stone Diaries
  • High concept book club fiction
  • Devil-in-the-detail domestic dramas by authors like Tessa Hadley, Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler
  • Crime and thrillers – particularly those set in unusual places or that take the genre conventions and do something a bit different with them.  I also enjoy fictionalised true crime and gravitate towards the darker end of the spectrum
  • Caustic, funny novels –  favourites include Magnus Mills, A.M. Homes, Paul Murray, John Irving and Katherine Heiny

Non-Fiction 

  • History, current affairs, travel, food, psychology, feminism and memoir.

Children’s

  • High concept stories told with humour and heart. At the older end, I love mysteries and whodunnits.
On the lookout for

Fiction

  • Literary fiction of all kinds including historical, horror and speculative
  • Multi-generational novels – my all-time favourites being Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex and Carol Shield’s The Stone Diaries
  • High concept book club fiction
  • Devil-in-the-detail domestic dramas by authors like Tessa Hadley, Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler
  • Crime and thrillers – particularly those set in unusual places or that take the genre conventions and do something a bit different with them.  I also enjoy fictionalised true crime and gravitate towards the darker end of the spectrum
  • Caustic, funny novels –  favourites include Magnus Mills, A.M. Homes, Paul Murray, John Irving and Katherine Heiny

Non-Fiction 

  • History, current affairs, travel, food, psychology, feminism and memoir.

Children’s

  • High concept stories told with humour and heart. At the older end, I love mysteries and whodunnits.

Recent Highlights