Lamb Takes Two from ‘DeGrassi’ Scribe

For her eponymous imprint at Penguin Random House, Wendy Lamb took U.S. rights, in a two-book deal, to a middle grade novel by Susin Nielsen titled No Fixed Address. The book, the publisher said, follows a 12-year-old boy who is trying to hide from his friends the fact that he and his mother live in a camper. Nielsen, who’s written five novels and who also wrote for the TV series Degrassi Junior High, was represented by Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative Artists. In a separate deal, Canada’s Tundra Books bought world rights (excluding the U.S.) to both new titles. (Tundra has closed a number of foreign sales with houses in, among other territories, France, Italy, and the U.K.)

Wu Lands at Columbia

Columbia law professor Tim Wu sold a book titled The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age to Columbia Global Reports, an imprint out of Columbia University. The imprint’s head, Nicholas Lemann, bought the book from William Morris Endeavor’s Tina Bennett. Columbia said the book, set for November, makes a call for “tighter antitrust enforcement and an end to corporate bigness” and noted that Wu is credited with coining the term “net neutrality.”

SMP Answer’s Goddess’s “Calling”

In a world rights deal, Monique Patterson at St. Martin’s Press bought a book by Rha Goddess, whom the publisher described as an entrepreneur and “soul coach.” The Calling: Stay True. Get Paid. Do Good., will, SMP said, offer a six-step approach detailing how anyone can “find and follow their true calling and redefine success.” Goddess runs a career-coaching company called Move the Crowd and has, SMP said, worked with a number of bestselling authors and been honored by various organizations; in 2017 she was named one of Essence magazine’s 50 Founders to Watch.

Kaplan Sells ‘Rhapsody’ to Gallery

Mitchell James Kaplan sold world rights to his new novel, Rhapsody, to Gallery Books. Jackie Cantor bought the title directly from the author, whose 2010’s By Fire, by Water was released by Other Press. The new book, which Gallery compared to titles such as Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, is about the long-running affair between George Gershwin and Kay Swift. The publisher said that the “decadelong” relationship was one in which the famous composer found not only a “devoted romantic partner but a gifted and productive musician in her own right.” Rhapsody is set for fall 2019.

Dunne Nabs ‘Lawbreaker’

Thomas Dunne, for his eponymous imprint at St. Martin’s, took North American rights to Ryan Wick’s debut suspense thriller, Lawbreaker. The two-book deal, for a title intended to launch a series, was struck with Eric Myers at Myers Literary Management. Myers said Lawbreaker follows a burglar named Michael Maven who “inadvertently witnesses a murder committed by a relentless female assassin and immediately becomes her next target.” The agent added that the novel is “the point where Max Allan Collins’s Quarry series and Steve Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason meet.”

For more children’s and YA book deals, see our latest Rights Report.