Martyn Bedford - Writer

I’m delighted and excited to announce that Twenty Questions for Gloria, my new novel for teenagers and young adults, is being published in spring 2016. The UK edition is coming out with Walker Books, Britain’s leading independent children’s publisher, who also published Flip and Never Ending.

The new novel tells the story of a bored and restless 15-year-old girl enthralled by the mysterious, exotic new boy who strolls into her classroom one morning, bent on breaking all the rules. Funny, confident, smart and reckless, Uman is everything Gloria wishes to be. When he whisks her away from the life she loathes and into a more daring, more exciting one, she jumps at the chance of an adventure. But Uman is not all he seems. And by the time she learns the truth about him, she is a long way from home and the whole country wants to know: ‘Where’s Gloria?’

Mara Bergman, senior editor at Walker Books, said, “I loved this novel from the start – with its clever structure, brilliant story and wonderful characters, Martyn proves once again to be a master storyteller. I’m so excited about Twenty Questions for Gloria and can’t wait to publish it.”

I’ve also agreed deals for American and Canadian editions with my previous publishers in those countries: Wendy Lamb Books (Penguin-Random House) in New York, and Doubleday (Penguin-Random House), in Toronto. Gloria will also be published in translation in Germany (DTV), Italy (De Agostini), Spain (Penguin-Random House), France (Nathan) and the Netherlands (Querido).

I’m hugely grateful to my agent, Stephanie Thwaites, and to her colleagues at Curtis Brown and their overseas subsidiary agencies, for negotiating all of these deals on my behalf and for bringing my new book to such a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic.