PAST CLIENTS
Lea Carpenter
“Only tactical competence, and humility, impresses me.”
I have been a great admirer of Lea Carpenter since the publication of her debut novel, Eleven Days, from which the above dedication is taken. That novel, about a single mother and her son, who, after 9/11, decides not to apply to Harvard but the Naval Academy, was inspired by her father, who served in Army Intelligence during, and after, World War II.
One of the most appealing aspects of Lea’s work is the authenticity she brings to her narratives (Eleven Days has a 52-page bibliography), and this is certainly true of her latest novel, Illium (Knopf, 2024), the story of a young woman drawn into a joint CIA/Mossad operation to assassinate a Russian intelligence officer living in exile in France.
​
Lea's inspiration for this work: “In 1985, CIA’s Beirut Station Chief, William Buckley, was kidnapped and assassinated by Hezbollah. Twenty-three years later, in 2008, Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in Damascus. Revenge, in a forever war, can take its time.
In these interlocked killings, I found the idea for a story. Ilium is it. Its focus is on a woman who becomes, almost unwittingly, central to an operation. I tried to say something about war’s essential subjectivity, how a hero to one side is an assassin to another, and how espionage is a deeply personal sport. I tried to bring the reader inside the minds of the players on all sides of a brutal, violent, very high-stakes game.”
​
What I loved: There's a line in the book about the new style of espionage being analog, and for this reader, that's what this book feels like: a throwback to an earlier era. The characters and relationships are studied and richly drawn, and the questions it surfaces about truth and identity are fascinating: "At what age are you old enough to know the people you think you love are people you really don't know at all."
Elizabeth Crook
Imagine an author painting on a Texas canvas and coming up with a work that lies adjacent to Lonesome Dove and Don Quixote—that book is The Madstone (Little Brown, 2023).
Set in 19th-century Texas, The Madstone is about a pregnant young mother and her five-year-old son, both on the run from her husband, who wants his son back. Crook's previous novels all met with extraordinary praise, including invocations of Charles Portis's True Grit. This novel is no different. Ben Fountain says "The tale that Elizabeth Crook conjures out of the most basic materials—a man goes on a trip, things happen, and the trip becomes a quest—should take its place alongside the very best novels of the American West, a top rank that includes Lonesome Dove, Little Big Man, News of the World, and Blood Meridian. Yes, it’s that good; I didn't want it to end.”
​
Chris Bohjalian is another fan. He calls the novel “a treasure: a brilliant, beautiful page-turner of a book. Elizabeth Crook has reimagined the Western, giving us a poignant love story and a riveting road novel. I devoured it—and you will, too.”
Mike Finkel
Mike Finkel's The Art Thief (Knopf/2023) is perhaps the most irresistable book on art I've ever read. Finkel's previous book was the bestseller The Stranger in the Woods, about a hermit, Christopher Knight, who lived in the Maine Woods without human contact for decades. About four months after we published the book at Knopf, I said to Mike, "You're gonna have a hard time finding a character to rival Chris." Amazingly enough, he did. In Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of The Art Thief: A Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, Finkel found an unlikely muse. Mike is a great collaborator, and I can't wait for his next book.
​
"Bogaards PR represents the gold standard in book publicity. Paul's advocacy, personal service, decades of experience, crucial contacts, and creative wisdom helped to make The Art Thief a bestseller. I would not want to navigate the insanity of the book business without Bogaards PR at the helm." – Mike Finkel​
Garth Risk Hallberg
One of the most joyful aspects of this work is when single-book collaborations become long-term partnerships. And that is what happened with Garth Risk Hallberg. Garth and I started working together in 2014, shortly after Knopf edsy Diana Miller signed up his debut novel, City on Fire.
City on Fire was published to wide acclaim in 2015, earning accolades from critics worldwide and debuting at #5 on the New York Times bestseller list. Stephen King hailed the work as “Dickensian, massively entertaining, as close to a great American novel as this century has produced,” while Michiko Kakutani praised the novel’s “bone-deep knowledge of [its] characters’ inner lives that’s as unerring as that of the young Salinger."
In 2023, the Apple+ series, “City on Fire,” had its global premiere, and Garth said the Apple TV+ series took him “right back to the city I fell in love with in my early twenties—raucous and human and grieving and also joyous as hell."
​
In 2024, The Second Coming, Garth's long-awaited follow up to City on Fire, was published by Knopf. Helen Schulman, writing in Air Mail, described the novel thusly: "dazzling... heartfelt... The dance of life and death between these two characters, father and child, is the heart and soul of this book, a complex, moving, insanely passionate, frightening, and hopeful story of 'I can't quit you.'"
Monica Heisey
When I started this business, a PR colleague said to me, “only take on projects you love.” I took her advice to heart, and signed on Monica Heisey as a result. I fell in love with her debut novel, Really Good, Actually (Morrow, 2023) and I knew readers would too. Readers did, in fact, fall in love with the book, which became a bestseller on both sides of the pond. Among the BPR campaign highlights for Monica's debut: a segment on ABC-TV's GMA, as well as a GMA Buzz Pick, a feature in the LA Times, a Marie Claire book club selection, an interview with the podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, and a Beauty Uniform feature on Cup of Jo.
Sonny Mehta Fellowships
Endowed by Gita Mehta
Sonny was both a mentor and friend. No one cared more about supporting authors and their work. The goal of these fellowships, at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, is to support aspiring writers from underrepresented countries.
“The Fellowships are driving worldwide interest in the Workshop,” said Director Lan Samantha Chang, “and we are experiencing increases in international applications as a result.”
​
For those interested in making a contribution to the Sonny Mehta Fellowships, here is a link to the giving page.
Clémence Michallon
Novelist and Journalist for The Independent
Clémence was among the first clients I took on when I launched BPR. Her debut, The Quiet Tenant (Knopf, June 2023), knocked me out (it remains one of the most assured debut thrillers I've ever read). Our collaboration was incredibly rewarding as we were able to launch the book as an immediate USA TODAY bestseller, with reviews and features in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CrimeReads, and a segment as a GMA Buzz Pick. We also partnered with Blumhouse Television on their announcement about the acquisition of The Quiet Tenant.
"Paul Bogaards was an early supporter of my debut thriller, The Quiet Tenant. Well before publication, he was instrumental in crafting copy and messaging that helped the book find its readers. In the lead-up to publication, he made important connections and key introductions, got the book on the radar of major publications, and was there to offer guidance. He's a true and trusted advocate for authors, and he knows the publishing business inside out." - Clémence Michallon
Lynne Olson
New York Times Best-Selling Author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War
Historian Lynne Olson has always been drawn to unsung heroes—individuals of moral courage and conscience who helped change their country and the world but who, for various reasons, have slipped into the shadows of history.
Our collaboration with Lynne was focused on expanding her readership and social footprint, and drawing attention to the remarkable subjects she has written about.
Lynne’s latest book, Empress of the Nile (Random House, February 2023) focuses on Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the daredevil woman archaeologist who saved Egypt’s ancient temples from extinction.
Dani Shapiro
New York Times Best-Selling Author of Inheritance
It has been enormously gratifying to observe the evolution of Dani’s work, and her growing readership, book by book. Signal Fires, her first work of fiction in fifteen years, is a powerful novel about families and the ties that bind them, and the secrets that can break them.
 
“All my writing life, I’ve been obsessed with secrets,” says Dani, “Why we keep them, what they do to us, the legacy they leave. Over a decade ago, I was visited by an array of characters, all of whom stayed with me. In Signal Fires, I was finally able to discover their connection to one another—a constellation of lives informed by tragedy, one devastating secret kept, and the resulting path each life takes over the course of fifty years.”
 
Finally: if you haven’t listened to Dani’s podcast, Family Secrets, we recommend you do so now. It’s a deeply personal look at secrets and storytelling and life, featuring conversations with many writers we admire.
Julius Taranto
Julius Taranto’s blisteringly irreverent debut novel, How I Won a Nobel Prize, was published by Little Brown in 2023. It’s about a physics graduate student who finds herself exiled to an island university where disgraced and unpalatable professors get safe harbor to operate at the tops of their respective fields. I was struck by the intelligence, polish, and wit of this work. Julius enters the rough seas of American discourse with a bravado that maps brilliantly to his characters and their campus. How I Won a Nobel Prize is a novel of ideas, one that is guaranteed to both ignite conversation and ruffle feathers.
​
It is not surprising that Taranto’s debut arrives as a fully realized novel, and with such artful execution, given he is something of a completist when it comes to the work of other writers (you can read his much-discussed essay on David Foster Wallace here). He’s done the homework and it shows. Julius’s command of character, place, and subject, and his ability to tether them to a novel about the ideological wars of our time, is resonating with critics and readers across America and around the world, with coverage including a feature in Publishers Weekly and reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Minneapolis Star Tribune.
“Don’t you see,” says an aging, iconoclastic novelist in How I Won a Nobel Prize, “wokeness is a theology? But a theology with no text, no god, no organizing myth of principles, no traditions. There is in this millennial religion only the vaguest sense of good and evil, applied to daily life by an ever-shifting clergy of popular priests and priestesses.”
Taranto’s debut novel is refreshingly thought-provoking and wise, a book that offers a masterly exploration of work, marriage, technology, and individuality.
