Nita Prose Books In Order

Publication Order of The Maid Books

Publication Order of Obsession Collection Books

Nita Prose is not the typical novelist as she is a publishing director and vice president of the Toronto office of Simon & Schuster. She began working in publishing years ago when she used to photocopy edited manuscripts as an intern.

Prose used to secretly snoop on the margin conversations between writers and editors which she found fascinating. As editorial director at Simon & Schuster she has had the privilege of working with an incredible array of publishing colleagues and authors.

Her many colleagues have taught her the wondrous craft of writing book by book, manuscript by manuscript. Some of the top authors that she has worked with include Gretchen Rubin, Ruth Ware and Paula Hawkins. She has also worked with countless writers that she shepherded through the process of getting published.
However, while she has a lot of experience in the industry, getting The Maid, her debut novel published, was a very different kind of experience as she was on the other side of the table.

The novel is set to be made into a film with Florence Pugh the Oscar nominee set to play the titular character.

Like so many people who work in publishing, Nita always thought that she could one day use the tools of her trade to become a novelist. Writing is something she has always done and at some point she even worked as a ghost writer.

But dreaming of becoming a novelist is something very common. Even if she had an idea for a novel she believed that there were so many ideas out there. The only ideas that counted in her line of trade were those that stuck even if those were the most easy to miss and struck in the strangest of places and ways.
It was not until she was struck by the idea of the maid that she thought she had something that could make for a great novel. While she was working for the Canada office of Simon and Schuster, she attended the London Book fair in her role as editorial director and vice president.

She had gone back to her hotel room following a session and completely startled the maid. The latter had completely retreated into a corner with a pair of sweatpants in hand.

When Nita Prose went back to the conference session she grabbed a napkin and started writing about a maid. They are these phantoms that come into your room when you are out having fun with no care about the mess you left behind and clean it all up for you.

Even though she never realized it at the time, she had just begun developing the idea for The Maid, her debut novel. What she put down in that napkin was something of a prologue that can be found in the now published work. Once she was back home she started writing furiously and in five months she was done writing the manuscript.

She found inspiration from the master of mystery Agatha Christie. She writes a story with a Knives Out feel combined with something of Clue, the board game. She has said that just like Christie, her inspiration she always wanted to keep her readers guessing.

Working inside a hotel room that lens a very closed nature to the set as it trasnforms into a murder scen it makes for an excellent murder mystery.

Even though Nita Prose works for Simon & Schuster Canada, when it came to publishing she decided to put her book up for auction. After a fierce bidding war between six publishers she finally published with Harper Collins in the United Kingdom, Viking in Canada and Ballantine Books in the United States.

She worked with three editors for the different territories she was going to publish in even though it was for the most part a collaborative endeavor. Charlotte Brabbin who is in charge of editing her work for HarperCollins suggested that she needed to have more descriptions of her setting.

It turns out that she had a mild case of author blindness as she has always struggled with not allowing reader participation and giving too much in the description. It was the editors who fleshed out everything and allowed readers to use their imagination while just giving enough for them to outline a picture.

Even though most of her editors do not agree with her, she believes that her novel is a feel good work of fiction that is inspired by a life affirming spirit of hope.

Nita Prose’s novel The Maid is one of the most compelling closed room mysteries ever written by a debut novelist. The lead in the novel Molly Gray who could not be any more different than anyone you know. She often misreads the intentions of other people and has poor social skills.

Her grandmother used to help her by interpreting signals in the world that she codified into simple rules that Molly used as a guide. She recently lost her grandmother and the twenty five year old has been forced to deal with the complexities of life all on her own.

Still she puts in her all, working as a maid at a her hotel. She soon becomes known for her obsession with proper etiquette and cleaning which makes her a model maid.

Molly loves wearing her crisply pressed uniform at the crack of dawn as she stocks her cart with small bottles and soaps and once they leave she gets busy restoring their rooms to a state of perfection.

But her life is turned upside down when she steps into the king suite of Charles Black a wealthy but infamous man and finds it in a state of disarray. The man is dead on his bed and before she can collect her wits she is the lead suspect in a police investigation. It is not long before she is in an intricate web of deception that she cannot untangle.

Fortunately for the young woman her colleagues and friends work with her trying to find clues that could get her out of a huge jam. But will they be able to find the killer before she goes to jail for a crime she did not commit?

One Response to “Nita Prose”

1. Noreen Brewster: 10 months ago

   While it was slow starting for me, I ended up finishing The Maid without regard to the late hour and my need for sleep.
   With 2 special needs children, I’m so pleased that Molly had friends looking out for her to untangle the unsuspecting mess in which her “friends”, Rodney and Giselle, got her involved!
   Looking forward to another read of your novels!

   Reply