Cast Settles in for New Series at SMP
In a three-book world rights deal, St. Martin’s Press publisher Sally Richardson acquired a new fantasy series by P.C. Cast called Tales of a New World. Monique Patterson will be editing the books, the first of which, Earth Walker, is scheduled for fall 2016. Cast is known for writing romance and fantasy titles (including the bestselling House of Night series); Patterson described Tales of a New World as “sweeping, exciting, and big.” Meredith Bernstein of the Meredith Bernstein Literary represented Cast.
Mallery Re-Ups for Big Money at Harlequin
Bestselling romance author Susan Mallery inked a seven-figure multibook deal with her longtime publisher, Harlequin. Through the deal Mallery will be publishing under both the HQN Books and Mira Books imprints. She will launch a new mass market series called Happily, Inc., in spring 2017, and, in August 2016, release her hardcover fiction debut, Daughters of the Bride. Happily, Inc., Harlequin said, will be a spin-off of Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series (also published by Harlequin), which is set in a fictional California town. HQN’s Susan Swinwood brokered the agreement with Annelise Roby at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
ISIS Survivor Speaks
Atria Books acquired a memoir by Farida Abbas, who made headlines last year after being captured by ISIS and later escaping. Sarah Cantin took U.S. rights to The Girl Who Beat ISIS: Farida’s Story, which Abbas is writing with journalist Andrea-Claudia Hoffmann. Abbas was abducted by the Islamic fundamentalist group when she was 18, during a raid on her Iraqi village. She escaped months later, along with six other girls. Abbas met Hoffmann, who writes for the German political magazine Focus, at a refugee camp. In the book, Abbas will open up about being a rape victim, and about being ostracized in her community as a result. She also continues to speak out about her experience and will testify against ISIS at the International Criminal Court at The Hague (the date for her appearance there has not yet been set.) Atria is comparing the book to I Am Malala (Little, Brown, 2013), the memoir by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager whose campaign to improve education for young women in her country led the Taliban to shoot her. (Yousafzai, who survived the shooting, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.) Barbara Zitwer, who has an eponymous shingle, and Christine Proske at Ariadne Buch, represented the authors.
Nonfiction Picture Book Fetches Six Figures
For HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen Books imprint, Jill Davis took world rights (excluding Canada) to a picture book called Bloom, written by Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Julie Morstad. The six-figure deal covers two books. Bloom is about the influential 20th-century Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiapparelli, who was the main rival of Coco Chanel. (Schiapparelli is likely not a household name due to business failings; her couture house closed in the 1950s.) Maclear and Morstad collaborated on the 2014 picture book Julia, Child, which was inspired by the childhood of the culinary personality. (Julia, Child was published by Penguin Random House Canada imprint Tundra, which also acquired Canadian rights to Bloom.) Morstad was represented by Emily Van Beek at Folio Jr., and Maclear was represented by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists. Bloom is set for winter 2018.
