Flatiron Lands Snow White Update
In a world rights preempt, Sarah Barley at Flatiron Books acquired Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass. The YA novel, which the publisher called a “feminist reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale,” follows both of the central female characters from the original story: the young princess and her stepmother. The book, which weaves between the past and present, Flatiron said, “traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start.” Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at DeFiore and Company represented the author, and the book is set for fall 2017.
Ostrom Sells Debut to Feiwel and Friends
Melissa Ostrom’s historical YA novel, Genesee, was preempted in a world English rights deal by Liz Szabla at Feiwel and Friends. About a 16-year-old girl who leaves her family homestead disguised as a boy, the book, the publisher said, is “a vivid, sharply funny, and surprising story of adventure and love.” Genesee, slated for spring 2018, is Ostrom’s first novel; her writing has appeared in publications like Juked and Lunch Ticket. Rebecca Stead at the Book Group brokered the agreement with Szabla.
Berkley Takes Debut for Six Figures
In a six-figure preempt, Danielle Perez at Berkley Publishing Group acquired Tom Hunt’s novel, Killer Choice, in a two-book deal. Laney Katz Becker at Lippincott, Massie, McQuilkin represented the debut author. Killer Choice follows a couple, Gary and Beth, under tremendous financial strain from a medical emergency. With pregnant Beth in need of expensive, life-saving surgery, Gary is offered funds to cover the operation by an anonymous stranger with one thorny request: Gary has to murder someone. Perez called the novel, set for early 2018, a “clever” and “fast-paced” thriller that explores the dilemma of how far a person “would, or should, go to save someone they love.”
Hollywood Eye Doc Takes Science Book to NWL
Brian Boxer Wachler, a Beverly Hills, Calif., ophthalmologist known as America’s TV eye doctor, sold a pop-science book to Georgia Hughes at New World Library. The currently untitled debut is about “perceptual intelligence,” according to Fuse Literary’s Gordon Warnock, who represented Wachler. Warnock said the book will explore “hot-button topics involving sensation and perception, including the connection between perception and decision-making.” Warnock sold world English rights in the deal.
Keller Shows ‘Luster’ at Putnam
Sophie Chen Keller sold world rights (excluding Germany) to her debut novel, The Luster of Lost Things, to Putnam’s Tara Singh Carlson. The novel, which was acquired in a preempt by German publisher Ullstein, was represented by Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management. (Molly Jaffa at Folio handled the Ullstein deal.) Luster follows a 12-year-old boy who, with his chubby golden retriever in tow, journeys into a fantastical version of New York City’s underbelly. The boy, who has a knack for finding lost items, sets out, Putnam said, “to save his mother’s magical bakery—the only place he’s ever called home.” Keller, a Harvard grad who was born in China and raised in the U.S., has published her fiction in journals like Glimmer Train and Pedestal.
Briefs
Jason Gardner at New World Library nabbed world rights to Mary DeMocker’s Once Upon a Time, We Saved the World. The book, which agent Jennifer Unter sold, is subtitled 100 Empowering Ways Parents Can Reclaim the Future; Unter, who has an eponymous shingle, called it a “creative and effective how-to on the environment and what action we can all take to engender change.” The book is set for winter 2018.
For Entangled Teen, Stacy Cantor Abrams took world rights to Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s Zombie Abbey. The publisher said the book was pitched as a mashup of The Walking Dead and Downton Abbey. Baratz-Logsted did not use an agent in the deal. The book is scheduled for winter 2018.
Soho Teen’s Daniel Ehrenhaft took world English rights to Samira Ahmed’s debut novel, Swimming Lessons. The book, which Eric Smith at PS Literary sold, follows a Muslim teenager in a small town who is, Soho said, struggling with “parental expectations and forbidden romance” when she suddenly finds herself the victim of a hate crime after a terrorist attack “ignites an outbreak of Islamophobia.”
Correction: A headline in an earlier version of this story said Putnam acquired Tom Hunt's novel, Killer Choice. Berkley acquired the book. Additionally, Stacey Cantor Abrams' name and Lauren Baratz-Logsted's were initially misspelled. And Baratz-Logsted's book is Zombie Abbey, not Zombie Alley.
