Union Square Nets Grainger’s British Sleuth Series
Emily Meehan and Claire Wachtel at Union Square & Co. preempted North American rights for Peter Grainger’s DC Smith/Kings Lake Investigation series from Emma Parry at Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
Set in the fictional town of Kings Lake in Norfolk, England, the series centers on the detective DC Smith. Grainger, who has self-published 16 titles in the series, has sold more than a million copies in e-book and audio formats.
Union Square will issue all 16 titles in print for the first time in the U.S., aiming to put DC Smith on the shelves “alongside bestselling contemporaries like Michael Connelly and Louise Penny,” per the publisher.
The first book in the series, An Accidental Death, will be published on May 5, 2026 in trade paperback, followed by Some Sort of Justice, a new novel starring the female detective Cara Freeman slated for June 2026 in hardcover and audio formats, concurrent with the U.K. release by Hutchinson Heinemann.
The rest of the series will be released in trade paperback between October 2026 and August 2027.
