Sara Cox's 'big-hearted' debut novel Thrown lands at Coronet

Sara Cox’s debut novel, Thrown, about four women who attend a pottery class held at a community centre, has gone to Coronet.

Hannah Black, publisher at Coronet, bought world rights from Melanie Rockcliffe at YMU. The "major" fiction debut will be published on 12th May 2022. The audiobook edition will be read by Cox. 

Cox hosts the weekly TV book programme “Between the Covers” on BBC2 and has a tea-time show on BBC Radio 2. She has also appeared recently on shows such as “The Great Pottery Throwdown” (BBC2) and three series of “Back in Time” (BBC2). Her memoir, Till the Cows Come Home (Hodder & Stoughton), was published in 2018 and become a bestseller and a Waterstones paperback of the year choice. 

Coronet said Cox's presenting skills have paved the way for her foray into fiction. A statement read: “Sara has transferred her remarkable talent for connecting with listeners and viewers to the page, where she is sure to make a deep connection with readers too."

The synopsis reads: “Thrown is a gloriously big-hearted novel about four women who attend their local community centre pottery class. The women all live on the same estate; a place where circumstances have led most to live guarded, private lives. At the heart of the estate sits a dilapidated community centre, which is no longer the cherished and hopeful place it once was. The new pottery class could be a fresh start for the centre and the students. And, as the clay is hesitantly moulded, so the lives of four women at the heart of this wonderful story begin to be revealed."

The publisher added: “Weaving timely themes, perfectly observed characters and an unevenly shaped jug-full of hope, Sara Cox’s debut marks the arrival of a wise and welcome new voice in the fiction market."  

Cox said: “Writing this book has been a bit like being pregnant—there were occasional tears, I was often grumpy with my husband and had an aching back from being hunched over my laptop—but ultimately it was so exciting to deliver something so lovely at the end. I can’t wait for people to meet the four brilliant women in Thrown. I really hope that readers will come to love these characters as much as I do, and maybe see a little bit of themselves in them too.”  

Black says: “I’m thrilled to be publishing Sara’s first novel and to be launching what we believe will be a significant new career for her as a novelist. Thrown shares many of the same qualities as her 2018 memoir Till the Cows Come Home which made it such a huge commercial and critical success. Sara is a wonderfully compassionate writer: she understands people—their hidden longings, their hopes and fears and their heartaches—and this is what makes Thrown such an accomplished and irresistible debut. While touching on themes of loss, coercive control, infertility and loneliness, the novel nevertheless manages to be consistently warm, funny and wise in a way that is trademark Sara.”