Katherine Tegen Welcomes Cole’s ‘Daughter’
In a two-book North American rights deal, Benjamin Rosenthal at HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen Books bought The Whitecoat’s Daughter, a YA novel by Olivia Cole, at auction. Agent Regina Brooks, who has an eponymous shingle, brokered the agreement for Cole, who won a contest Brooks sponsors at her agency (during National Novel Writing Month) granting representation to an author who submitted the best opening excerpt from an unpublished manuscript. The Whitecoat’s Daughter, Brooks said, is a science fiction/fantasy work set on a planet called Faloiv, where a small community lives despite the fact that the place was never intended to support human life. When the heroine discovers “her unique ability to communicate with the planet’s strange creatures,” she realizes that this gift “may expose the dangerous conflict brewing between the leaders of her compound and the planet’s indigenous peoples,” which sets in motion “a chain of events that could lead to humanity’s destruction.” The second book in the deal is planned to be a sequel. The Whitecoat’s Daughter is set for winter 2018.
Book About Hamilton’s Wife to Gallery
Tilar Mazzeo sold world English rights to a narrative nonfiction book about Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Eliza J. Hamilton, to Gallery Books. Karen Kosztolnyik acquired the title from Stacey Glick at Dystel & Goderich, and the book is currently slated for a fall 2018 release. Gallery said the work, which is piggybacking on the success of the runaway Broadway hit Hamilton, is something that “fans of the show and readers of historical nonfiction will relish.” The publisher noted that Eliza Hamilton lived 50 years longer than her husband and that Mazzeo’s book will stand as “the first major biography of [this] founding mother.”
LB Kids Nabs Follow-Up to ‘What the Dinosaurs Did’
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers’ Mary-Kate Gaudet bought world rights to Refe and Susan Tuma’s What the Dinosaurs Did at School, a follow-up to their 2014 picture book (also published by LBYR) What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night. The new book, like the original, employs photographs of toy dinosaurs as it illustrates, and chronicles, the publisher explained, “the disasters that ensue when [the dinosaurs] escape a backpack.” ICM Partners’ Liz Farrell and Kristyn Keene represented the authors.
Brooks’s New Series Goes to Disney for Six Figures
In a mid-six-figure deal, Disney-Hyperion acquired Sanity & Tallulah, Molly Brooks’s middle grade graphic novel series. Disney’s Rotem Moscovich bought three books, in a multihouse auction, from agent Heather Alexander at Pippin Properties. Alexander said the series marks the first solo project from Brooks (the author/illustrator who illustrated the forthcoming First Second book Flying Machines, which is due out May 2017). The series, Alexander explained, follows “two science-minded girls living on Wilnick, a dilapidated space station at the edge of the solar system.”
Klam Offers Her ‘Sisters’ to Riverhead
Bestselling author Julie Klam sold a historical memoir called The Morris Sisters to Jake Morrissey at Riverhead Books. The book, which ICM Partners’ Esther Newberg sold North American rights to, is about the author’s great-aunts. The stories of these four sisters, Riverhead explained, “reflect both the immigrants’ struggles to assimilate in 20th-century America and the rise of independent women who learn to survive, even thrive, in a male-dominated world.”
Briefs
The Hallmark Channel has optioned TV rights to The Apple Orchard (Mira), bestseller Susan Wiggs’s 2013 novel. Lucy Stille at APA and Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency brokered the agreement for the book, which, Ruley said, follows two sisters raised separately “who meet for the first time during a crisis at the family’s Sonoma wine-country estate.”
Plum Street Publishers’ Liz Russell Smith took world rights to The Feisty Little Flea, Margaret Read MacDonald’s picture book. MacDonald is writing the title with contributions from Jen and Nat Whitman, and it is based on a French version of the Cinderella story. Diane Greenseid is illustrating the book, which is slated for spring 2018. The authors and illustrator did not use an agent in the deal.
Correction: Due to publisher error, an earlier version of this story stated that Gallery Books bought world rights to Tilar Mazzeo's book about Eliza J. Hamilton; the S&S imprint bought world English rights.
