Berkley Breaks ‘Hearts’ With Elefteriades
Dr. John Elefteriades struck a high-five-figure, two-book deal with Natalee Rosenstein at Berkley Books. Rosenstein took world rights to Extraordinary Hearts: A Journey of Cardiac Medicine and the Human Spirit (set for April 2014) and Transplant (set for September 2014). Agent Karen Gantz, who has an eponymous shingle, represented Elefteriades, who is a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Yale School of Medicine, and who practices at Yale–New Haven hospital. In the first book, Extraordinary Hearts, Elefteriades shares stories of his most memorable patients and cases—he’s had over 10,000—in a work that Gantz said will feature “specific yet accessible medical narratives” to “encapsulate the beauty, complexity, and majesty of the human heart.” Transplant is a medical thriller about a kidnapped heart surgeon.
Tor Seeks ‘Truth’ from Dennard, Gets ‘Unnoticed’ by Brockway
Whitney Ross at Tor preempted North American rights, in a six-figure, four-book deal, to an epic YA fantasy series by Susan Dennard. The first book is called Truthwitch. Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media represented Dennard, and Tor said the agent pitched the series as “Garth Nix meets Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The series is set in a world where three empires rule and every member of the population is born with a magical skill set, known as a “witchery.” Tor elaborated: “Now, as the Twenty Year Truce in a centuries-long war is about to end, the balance of power will fall on the shoulders of two young women, who must accept their fate, and themselves, to survive.” The first book is set for fall 2015, with Tor U.K.—which acquired U.K. and Commonwealth rights—coordinating on an international launch.
In a second deal coming out of Tor this week, Paul Stevens bought Robert Brockway’s The Unnoticeables, at auction, in a three-book, six-figure deal. Brockway, who is a senior editor and columnist for Cracked.com, was represented by Sam Morgan at Jabberwocky Literary. The other two books acquired will be sequels to The Unnoticeables, and are currently untitled. Tor said the books are “hilarious urban fantasy novels” set in a world that pulls from New York’s punk scene in the 1970s as well as the modern-day Los Angeles entertainment industry. The Unnoticeables is tentatively scheduled for July 2015.
Munson Starts ‘War’ at Saga
Sam Munson sold his second novel, The War Against the Assholes, to Joe Monti at Simon & Schuster’s new science fiction imprint, Saga Press. Stephen Barbara at Foundry Literary + Media handled the North American–rights deal for Munson, selling the book at auction. The novel, which Barbara said has a “fantasy bent” and was sold as an adult/crossover work, is set in a Manhattan “shrouded in mystery” and follows a 17-year-old Catholic high school student who begins to acquire supernatural powers after being introduced to a book called The Calendar of Sleights by a strange classmate. The protagonist is then pulled into a long-running war among rival factions of magicians. Munson’s debut, The November Criminals (Doubleday, 2010), is currently being developed into a feature film, with Chloe Moretz (Carrie) attached to star. The War Against the Assholes is set for a summer 2015 release.
Briefs
At NAL, Chloe Neill struck a six-figure, three-book deal for a new paranormal romance/urban fantasy series set in New Orleans. Neill is the author behind the bestselling Chicagoland Vampire series (also published by NAL), and is represented by agent Lucienne Diver at the Knight Agency. This series, which is set to launch in summer 2015, takes place, per Diver, in a “reimagined” version of NOLA which has just survived an attack by supernatural beings. The invaders have been “forced into a walled Community known as the District,” and into this comes heroine Claire Connolly, who, Diver explained, “risks everything when she uses her secret magic to protect a friend.”
Trish Daly, assistant editor at William Morrow, took world rights, in a pre-empt, to Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures from Mackenzie Brady at Charlotte Sheedy Literary. The book, Morrow said, delivers the “untold true story” of the female African-American mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Civil Rights Movement. The publisher added that the book will tell their story through the personal accounts of four specific women that then-NASA staffers referred to as “the colored computers.” Shetterly, whose father was one of the first African-American engineers employed by NASA, is a journalist.
