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Adult

Please note: These are the entries for the Pitch Wars season beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2022. Please note that our Agent Showcase ends at 9:00 p.m. ET on Monday, February 14, 2022. Agents will not be able to leave comments requesting material after that time.

PW2021 Adult #19: I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL (Women’s Fiction)

Eleanor Oliphant X The Office 

Office misfit Jolene manages her petty grievances with her colleagues via passive aggressive stunts. When she accidentally gains access to everyone’s emails, she realizes they’ve all got something to hide—and she might actually like them. But as Jolene uses her newfound knowledge to help them, her own carefully constructed lies are at risk of being exposed.

PW2021 Adult #20: THE TRANSLATION OF YOU INTO ME (Near-Future Science Fiction)

When status-conscious engineer Sam invents a technology that enables inhabiting others' bodies, her mission to achieve startup success takes her on a genre-hopping journey through her friends’ lives. She has a handle on everyone’s problems, including her own, until the invention’s evolution and a competing tech mogul’s schemes force her to decide whether her long-sought success and self-worth outweigh the danger of changing what it means to be human. SENSE8’s character-focused body-sharing meets RECURSION’s cerebral technology.

PW2021 Adult #21: SAINTS OF STORM AND SORROW (Romantic Fantasy – #OwnVoices Bisexual, Filipina)

Filipino EMPIRE OF SAND X POPPY WAR

Lunurin, a mestiza stormcaller, hides in a convent—from the Inquisition branding her a witch, and the Goddess of Storms, who sings of drowning colonizers. When she’s discovered, a marriage-of-convenience might save her from the Church, but not her Goddess. A typhoon is brewing in Lunurin’s bones. Freeing it will destroy the violent colonizers, but also the family she found in the convent and her new marriage.

PW2021 Adult #22: HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT (Contemporary Romance)

Maggie’s determined to prove she can handle the heat of the family coffee business—but trouble brews when a trendy espresso bar opens across the street, managed by arrogant (and inconveniently sexy) hipster Seth. When their rivalry boils into undeniable chemistry, letting their guards down means risking their jobs, families, and hearts. A PNW rivals-to-lovers romance perfect for fans of The Ex Talk and Simmer Down.

PW2021 Adult #23: GRIGORI BLUES (Paranormal Mystery, LGBTQ)

Juniper Fenn—broke paranormal investigator—agrees to banish a vengeful ghost in return for a desperately needed paycheck. But a simple banishment isn’t going to lay this case to rest. As the body count rises, she’ll have to rely on her loyal, shapeshifting partner and a skeptical detective to help her keep Vancouver—and her family—safe.

DRESDEN FILES x UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR

PW2021 Adult #24: THE DARK BETWEEN (Psychological Thriller)

Crows filled the yard the night Danni’s parents were murdered. Years later, she can’t shake the feeling they’re still watching from her dreams—or a stranger’s eyes. Desperate for answers, Danni searches for the “Otter,” a cybercriminal whose vendetta against her parents’ lab, and the drug they developed, seems personal.

But the crows watch him too—and their brief virtual exchange propels her parents’ killer back into her life.

Now hunted, Danni must decide if she can trust the enigmatic online stranger who is tempted to go down his own dark path. Because the terror that haunts their dreams is real—and coming for them.

PW2021 Adult #25: KEYSTONE COMBINATION (Contemporary Romance – Trans & Gay #OwnVoices)

Casey McQuiston’s voice/themes X PITCH (TV)

Gene’s season goals:
1. stay under the radar despite being the first openly trans player in professional baseball;
2. help his minor league team make the playoffs;
3. get the new shortstop—his former rival/current anxious wreck Luis—out of his hair;
4. don’t fall for Luis in the process.

PW2021 Adult #26: ONE LUCKY SUMMER (LGBTQ Rom-Com)

Dr. Lucas Monroe needs money for his sister’s medical care, so when Nicolas Park, a washed-up boybander on the verge of a comeback, ends up in his ER, he agrees to join the grumpy workaholic’s team as his tour doctor. Amid the chaos of a multi-city stadium tour, Nicolas and Lucas find refuge in late night dinners. But when the world assumes their emerging friendship is more, they must choose between following their dreams, or chasing a new one, together.  

PW2021 Adult #27: A CROOKED VENGEANCE (Fantasy)

Klepto-adjacent Josefine trusts her pistol, her forbidden magic, and sometimes, the truth. But none can free her brother from prison. When a magic-hunting prince hires her in exchange for her brother’s release, Jo takes on her biggest heist yet. The job would be simple, save for the asshole-shaped backstabber in the way: Commander Kassian, who put her brother behind bars. Luckily, they’ve got dirt on each other.

PW2021 Adult #28: FIRST COMES LOVE MARRIAGE BABY (Contemporary Rom-Com)

When curvy, career-oriented engineer Tess finds herself unexpectedly expecting her BFF's baby, she attempts to catapult herself out of the friend-zone via a mutually-beneficial fake relationship with her steamy ultrasound technician. But when the line between pretend and real blurs, she must decide between the future she’s always imagined and the happily-ever-after she actually deserves . . . before she loses both.

PW2021 Adult #29: WHEN YOU KISS A STRANGER (Contemporary Romance)

HOW TO FAIL AT FLIRTING meets THE HAPPY EVER AFTER PLAYLIST. Allie, a young widow, knows most love stories end with a kiss. But when she kisses a stranger to save him from a blind date, she discovers a kiss can be just the beginning. Trevor is sweet, smart, and sexy, and has her feeling things she hasn’t felt in years. He’d be perfect if he wasn’t her new boss. But Trevor has a secret. He’s hiding his recent cancer diagnosis, because he knows love-shy Allie won’t risk falling for someone she could lose at a young age—again.

PW2021 Adult #30: THE CONQUESSOR (Fantasy – #OwnVoices)

SQUID GAME meets THE WITCHER in a South East Asian-inspired setting.

Debt-ridden and unemployed, a sentimental book thief and an ex-brawler with a heart of gold enroll in the conquessing arena to pay off their bills. But the monsters they battle are far from the worse things they encounter—and the arena’s manipulative match-master just might top the list.

PW2021 Adult #31: HOW TO SAVE BLACK BOYS (Horror – Black #OwnVoices)

Jordan Peele’s US meets MY SISTER THE SERIAL KILLER

Calla thinks it’s impossible to keep a black child safe. She’s right. Still, she does her best to raise her youngest brother, Jamie, with the fickle support of her middle brother. She’s finally getting used to parent-teacher conferences and teenage theatrics when Jamie’s Black Lives Matter activism starts with an explosion and ends with a very dead cop. 

Her brothers think they can trust Calla to save them again when she takes them on the run to a remote cabin. They’re wrong. Calla is fed up with their secrets and her sacrifice.

It’s just so hard keeping black boys alive.

PW2021 Adult #32: SUNSHINE AND SPICE (Contemporary RomCom #DiverseVoices – South Asian)

Incense and Sensibility x The Marriage Game

When struggling brand consultant Naomi lands a career-saving job she’s culturally unequipped to handle, she makes a deal with Dev, the grumpy, anti-marriage son of her traditional, Bengali client: she’ll help him thwart his mother’s matchmaking efforts if he helps her meet the matriarch’s exacting standards. But the line between reality and rumour blurs as Naomi is pulled deeper into lies that could end her career and break her heart.

PW2021 Adult #33: DIAL C FOR CARNOTAURUS (Mystery/Science Fiction, #OwnVoices Neurodiversity)

FINLAY DONOVAN IS KILLING IT meets JURASSIC PARK

Neurodivergent Kassie Hummingbird has a mask for almost everything. So when her boss asks her to time-travel from 2215 to a Mesozoic settlement to fix its crops — and earn enough money to buy her dream home — she agrees. There's just one teensy-weensy problem: she has no idea how to fix prehistoric crops because she might have fibbed about her qualifications. Paleobotanist? Phlebotomist? Same difference. But when someone destroys the time portal and murders the only man who can fix it, Kassie needs more than a mask. Stranded in the past with man-eating dinosaurs and rapidly-depleting food stores, Kassie must find the culprit before the future she’s fought for goes extinct.

PW2021 Adult #34: SUNDOWNING (Psychological Horror)

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST in a locked memory care home

When ninety-year-old Caterina Aosta suspects a sinister force is harming her fellow residents, she plots to expose its evil and redeem herself for a long-buried secret before she becomes the next victim.

PW2021 Adult #35: A RECKONING OF FLOOD AND FLAME (Fantasy; BIPOC)

JADE CITY x JASMINE THRONE

As the brown-skinned adoptive daughter of the Governor, Poppy Sutherland has always been an outcast, rejected by high society and alienated from the people her father colonized. When she discovers her fiancé intends to frame her to further his career, Poppy allies herself with the city’s most notorious gang leader, who promises her a place as heir to their colonized nation–in exchange for his captured brother.

PW2021 Adult #36: WATCH ME (Psychological Thriller)

YOU meets MY FAVORITE MURDER. YouTuber Darby reenacts famous murders with Tinder matches for her popular dating channel. When it gets demonetized amid scandal, she's forced to return to her hometown to reenact the unsolved murder of her high school boyfriend for clicks. But she wakes up to a new body in her backyard and a serial killer convinced he could be her perfect match. As the body count rises, Darby launches her own investigation to catch the killer — and ensure her dark secrets stay buried.