Ace Nabs Hunter’s Debut
At auction, Ace Books’s Jessica Wade acquired Sylvia Izzo Hunter’s debut, The Midnight Queen, in a three-book deal. Agent Eddie Schneider at Jabberwocky Literary represented Hunter, an editorial manager who works for the University of Toronto Press, and said the auction went on for three weeks. Wade took North American rights in the sale, and the trilogy, which is set in the Regency period, will be called Midnight’s Daughters. In The Midnight Queen, the first book in the series, a disgraced student from Oxford’s Merlin College must foil a plot hatched by his former tutor to unseat the British monarch. The trilogy is set to launch in fall 2014.
Ephron’s Rabin to Norton
Dan Ephron, who writes for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, sold Killing a King: How a Jewish Zealot Assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and Remade Israel to John Glusman at Norton. Ephron is a Jerusalem-based journalist who covered the trial of Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir. Glusman bought world rights to the book from agent Gail Ross at the Ross, Yoon Agency. Killing a King, scheduled for November 2015 (to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s death), will offer, as Ephron explained, “the parallel stories of Rabin’s drive for peace with the Arabs and Amir’s mission to stop him.”
Gotham Goes to the Doctor
Poet and 2011 NEA Fellowship recipient Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz sold a book about a man considered one of the fathers of modern medicine, Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, to Charlie Conrad at Gotham. Foundry Literary + Media’s Yfat Reiss Gendell sold world rights to the book, called Curiosity, at auction. Mütter, who died in 1859, was a renowned surgeon and lecturer, and his vast collection of medical specimens, which he donated to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (CPP) in 1856, today makes up Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum of medical oddities. Aptowicz, whose previous books include 2008’s Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press), wrote a screenplay about Mütter that, in 2004, earned her a Sloan Foundation Fellowship from the Hampton International Film Festival. (The screenplay remains unproduced.) The Mütter Museum, Foundry noted, is the country’s most popular science museum among those between the ages of 25–35.
Miller in Kindle Serials Deal
In an unorthodox deal, debut author Jessie Humphries sold world English rights to two books, including her novel Killing Ruby Rose, to Tim Ditlow at Amazon Publishing and Courtney Miller at Kindle Serials. Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency represented Humphries, a lawyer, and the unique structure of the deal calls for the book to publish initially as episodes in Amazon’s Kindle Serials program. The episodes will begin appearing in the summer, with the print edition to follow in the early fall. The book was pitched as “Dexter meets Heist Society” and follows a girl who, unwillingly, becomes a serial killer targeting infamous villains.
Jericho Gets ‘Damaged’
Wendy Grisham, v-p and publisher of Hachette’s faith-based imprint Jericho Books, bought world rights to Dianna E. Anderson’s Damaged Goods: Christian and Feminist in the War on Women. The author, a feminist blogger, was represented by Hannah Bowman at Liza Dawson Associates; Bowman said the book, set for spring 2015, will offer an insider critique of “the anti-sex ‘purity culture’ prevalent within the evangelical church.”
Correction
An item last week about the sale of Christina Lee’s debut, All of You, incorrectly cited the book as originally self-published. NAL acquired the book, which has never been released in any format.
