Eve Smith -In The Bookseller

Orenda Books has snapped up Eve Smith's debut thriller in a two-book deal. 

Karen Sullivan, publisher of Orenda Books, acquired world English language rights for The Waiting Rooms and a second book, with the working title Off Target, in a two-book deal, negotiated with Harry Illingworth of DHH Literary Agency. The Waiting Rooms will be published in July 2020.

The Waiting Rooms, described by Sullivan as a "stunning piece of speculative fiction" by Sullivan, takes place in the very near future where an antibiotic crisis has led to widespread death and a population in peril. 

"Routine operations, even cancer treatment and Caesarean sections, are no longer possible and a simple scratch can be fatal. No one over 70 is allowed antibiotics, and if they become ill, they are sent to the ‘Waiting Rooms’ … ostensibly hospitals with no treatment," the synopsis reads. "There they can choose to have their lives terminated or suffer their infection and face inevitable death. A second plot line focuses on a nurse’s post-crisis search for her birth mother, which leads to a startling revelation that puts her family in danger."