Sara J. Henry

Crooked Lane Books

My Manuscript Wish List®

Sara J. Henry grew up devouring anything by John D. MacDonald and Mary Stewart novels, and got her start at a small daily newspaper in the Adirondacks. She worked as an editor at Rodale Books and a non-fiction book doctor (and a bicycle mechanic) before writing her first novel, the award-winning Learning to Swim. She’s been an editor at Crooked Lane Books since 2020.

What I’m looking for: well-written novels with strong characters that can qualify as a “mystery” – it has a crime; it’s a thriller; it’s a suspense novel, or any combination thereof. A touch of supernatural or horror is fine. No cozies, please, unless historical or other worldly (i.e., have a vampire or some such).

Submission Guidelines

Guidelines:

We publish novels and an occasional short story collection.
We do not publish individual short stories, novellas, or essay collections. We do not consider previously published novels. Additionally, we aren’t likely to consider books in a series where earlier books in the series were self-published without significant sales.
Word count should be between 60,000 and 100,000 words.
For unagented authors, please send your submission to Crooked Lane through Query Tracker.
Agents, please send to Sa**********@**************ks.com.
Due to the volume of submissions received, we are unfortunately unable to respond to all queries. We will contact you if we are interested in reading further.