Lit Agent Fishman Lands YA Deal
Seth Fishman, a literary agent at Gernert Company, has sold a novel... his own. Kirby Kim at William Morris Endeavor represented Fishman, selling North American rights to a young-adult thriller series, in a two-book deal, to Stacey Barney at G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. The series follows a 16-year-old girl whose town has been beset by a lethal virus that is turning the young into the very old; the heroine decides to break quarantine in order to save the town. The first book in the series, set for winter 2014, is called The Well’s End.

Brit Quiz Masters Head to Norton
At Norton, John Glusman bought U.S. and open market rights to 1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off by John Lloyd, James Harkin, and John Mitchinson. The trio wrote the bestseller Book of General Ignorance (Crown) and the “facts” here will be adapted from information that appeared on the popular BBC quiz show, QI (which stands for “quite interesting,” and which Lloyd produces). Lisa Baker at Faber & Faber handled the sale, and Norton is planning a September publication.

Penguin Rides MacRae’s ‘Mayflower’
Robin Straus has sold North American rights to Sigrid MacRae’s Miss Mayflower and the Hun to Kathryn Court at Penguin Books. The nonfiction work is based on the experiences of MacRae’s parents. Her mother, who married a Russian exile in the late 1920s, wound up a widow with six children after her husband was killed in World War II (fighting for the Germans). The book, which is scheduled for 2014, is, Viking said, “an extraordinary tale of love, courage and survival.”

Levitin Gets ‘Organized’ at Dutton
Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music, sold a new work called The Organized Mind to Dutton. Stephen Morrow nabbed North American rights from agent Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency. Focused on how successful people organize themselves, the book, Dutton said, “will offer insight into how we can all take control of our time and the details that have begun to overwhelm us.” The combined North American sales of This Is Your Brain on Music and Levitin’s earlier book, The World In Six Songs, have, Dutton noted, topped half a million copies.

‘Wreck This’ Writer Lands New Deal
Keri Smith, author of the bestseller Wreck This Journal, sold two new books to Perigee. Meg Leder, Smith’s editor, took world rights to Everything Is Connected and The Imaginary World Of... from agent Faith Hamlin at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. The publisher described Everything, which is presented as a series of postcards, as “a collection of missions encouraging readers to reimagine everyday life.” Imaginary is, per Perigee, “an interactive guide to creating and exploring a land of your own.” Wreck This Journal has sold over one million copies.

Briefs
Agent William Clark, of William Clark Associates, sold North American rights to Guy Spier’s The Education of a Value Investor to Laurie Harting at Palgrave Macmillan. Spier, who lives in Zurich, is CEO of the Acquamarine Fund, an investment firm. Clark said the book explores the downside of having an elite education as an investor. Spier has degrees from a number of haughty institutions (among them Oxford and Harvard) but, according to Clark, argues in the book that “the greatest investors succeed by doing what they love—and what their heart tells them to do.”