Raab Goes Gaga for Harry and Minnie
After a five-way auction, Jamie Raab at Celadon Books won North American rights, for high six figures, to Martha Teichner’s When Harry Met Minnie: A Love Story. The nonfiction book by the longtime CBS Sunday Morning correspondent chronicles the bond she developed with a woman who was dying of cancer. William Clark, who has an eponymous shingle, also sold U.K. and Australia/New Zealand rights to the book in a separate deal to Kate Adams at U.K.-based publisher Octopus. The book, Clark said, is about how a proposal to adopt a dog turned into “a deep and meaningful friendship between two women with interesting lives and a love of bull terriers in common.” The title is slated for fall 2020. Teichner, who started at CBS in 1977, has won multiple Emmys and James Beard Foundation awards.
U.K. Journo’s WWII Book to Little, Brown
Vanessa Mobley at Little, Brown nabbed world English rights, in a joint deal with Juliet Brooke at Sceptre in the U.K., to Simon Parkin’s A Game of Birds and Wolves. Parkin is a regular contributor to the New Yorker’s website and to “The Long Read,” the Guardian’s long-form journalism section. The book, which is slated for December 2019, is, LB said, about the “astonishing untold” story of a group of British women who secretly helped change the course of World War II. It focuses on something called Operation Raspberry, LB explained, which was carried out by a team in Liverpool led by a former British Naval captain and a group of women volunteers, known as the Wrens. The group developed a game that Parkin said helped the British “understand and defeat the [Germans’] clandestine strategies.” The book brings the Wrens, some of whom are still alive today, “out of the shadows and recognizes them for the vital role they played.” Jane Finigan at Lutyens and Rubinstein represented Parkin in the deal.
Chopra’s Latest to Crown
Bestselling author Deepak Chopra sold a new work on meditation, which is currently untitled, to Gary Jansen at Crown. Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group represented Chopra, selling world rights in the agreement. Gottlieb noted that, to date, more than 20 of Chopra’s books have been bestsellers.
Schreier Delves Deeper into Gaming for Harper
Jason Schreier sold a currently untitled follow-up to his 2017 bestseller Blood, Sweat and Pixels to Eric Myers at Harper. Charlie Olsen at Inkwell Management, who represented Schreier, said the new book “looks at how the digital revolution has changed the way people play, make, and spend money on video games, and the direction that games publishers might be headed.” Myers took North American rights to the book, which is slated for a fall release.
AmazonCrossing Nabs First Czech Novel
In a world English rights acquisition, Gabriella Page-Fort at AmazonCrossing bought Katerˇina Tucˇková’s tentatively titled The Expulsion of Gerta Schnirch. The book, which will be translated by Véronique Firkusny, won the 2010 Magnesia Litera Readers’ Award (an annual Czech literary honor) and is about WWII and its aftermath, the publisher said. The novel is also the first that AmazonCrossing has translated from Czech; it is set for an August 2020 release.
For more children’s and YA book deals, see our latest Rights Report.
