Tin House Eats Hartnett’s ‘Cake’
Tin House Books’s Masie Cochran took North American rights to Annie Hartnett’s debut novel, Rabbit Cake. Cochran described the book as a “darkly comic coming-of-age-novel” and said it was pitched as being “in the vein of Karen Russell and Aimee Bender.” The book follows 12-year-old Elvis Babbitt who, along with her family, is reeling from the loss of her mother, who drowned in a sleepwalking episode. Katie Grimm at Don Congdon Associates represented Hartnett in the deal.
Graham Gets Seven Figures at Harlequin
Bestselling author Heather Graham signed a seven-figure multibook world-rights deal with Mira Books. The deal covers five mass market paperbacks in Krewe of Hunters, Graham's ongoing suspense series. Aaron Priest and Lucy Childs Baker at the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency negotiated the agreement with Harlequin’s v-p of women’s fiction, Margaret Marbury; executive editor, Paula Eykelhof, will be editing the books. According to Harlequin, there are more than 20 million copies of Graham’s books in print.
Zigmond, Wright Get Zen About Dieting
Dan Zigmond and Tara Wright sold Buddha’s Diet, in a world English-rights deal, to Jennifer Kasius at Running Press. The authors—Zigmond is a Zen priest, and Wright manages Stanford University Business School’s website—were represented by Laura Dail, who has an eponymous agency. Dail said the book, which is subtitled The Ancient Art of Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind, offers a new approach to the subject. According to Dail, the book relies on a mix of Buddhist teachings and science, and “has more to do with when you eat than what you eat.” Buddha’s Diet is currently scheduled for spring 2016. (The authors in this deal retained their translation rights.)
Gaines Takes ‘First’ to Delphinium
Steven Gaines (Philistines at the Hedgerow) sold North American rights to a memoir called One of These Things First to Delphinum Books. Joseph Olshan took North American rights from Gaines, who did not use an agent in the deal. In the book Gaines, a former New York magazine contributing editor, recounts the stint he did in a well-heeled Manhattan psychiatric facility after a botched suicide attempt (brought on by the realization that he was gay). Olshan described the book as “a hybrid of Running with Scissors and Girl, Interrupted.”
Gray Spins in the ‘Wind’ at Pegasus
Pegasus Books editorial assistant Katie McGuire bought world English rights to Ed Gray’s debut novel, Left in the Wind: A Novel of the Colony; the Roanoke Island Journal of Emme Merrimoth. Gray, one of the founding editors of Gray’s Sporting Journal (a literary publication started in 1975), wrote the book as a fictional diary of one of the actual Roanoke colonists; McGuire said the narrator “recounts every moment of the Lost Colony, from its early planning in England to its dramatic, and still mysterious, end.” Gray was represented by Jennifer Unter at the Unter Agency; Pegasus has the book set for May 2016.
