DEAL OF THE WEEK
Harper Goes ‘Wild’ for McKeegan
In a six-figure preempt, Harper’s Sarah Stein bought Colleen McKeegan’s debut novel, The Wild One. The North American rights agreement was brokered by Michelle Brower at Aevitas Creative Management. The author was most recently a senior features editor at Marie Claire magazine and is a National Magazine Award nominee. The book, a work of psychological suspense, centers on a summer that three friends spent at sleepaway camp, Harper explained, and is about “the danger of keeping secrets buried for too long.” Calling the novel “a story of friendship and of mean girls,” the publisher said it “turns the familiar summer camp setting on its head, dipping into the dark edges of the forest to craft a narrative about childhood trauma and the scars that shape us.” The Wild One is slated for summer 2022.
FROM THE U.S.
Atria Takes Ford’s ‘Dorothy’
At auction, Atria acquired two new books by Jamie Ford. The deal, rumored to be worth seven figures, is for the novel Tomorrow, Dorothy, set for 2021, and a second, untitled book. Lindsay Sagnette took U.S., Canadian and open market rights in the agreement, which was brokered by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency. Atria said Tomorrow, Dorothy follows five generations of women in one family and shows how trauma runs through the generations “until one mother dares to break the pattern of this dangerous inheritance.” Ford’s 2009 bestseller Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Ballantine) has sold, Atria noted, nearly two million copies in the U.S. alone.
Winsberg Gets ‘Thumbs’ Up from Doubleday
For six figures, Doubleday’s Yaniv Soha nabbed Mimi Winsberg’s Speaking in Thumbs: A Psychiatrist Decodes Relationship Texts So You Don’t Have To at auction. The self-help title, slated for 2022, is, the publisher said, a guide for “decoding relationship texts that draws from psychological research and real-life online dating interactions, including the author’s own.” Winsberg is the cofounder of the telehealth company Brightside and is the resident psychiatrist at Facebook. She was represented by Howard Yoon at the Ross Yoon Agency.
Femia Swaps Stage for Page at FSG
Playwright Gina Femia sold the tentatively titled YA novel Allond(r)a to Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers in an exclusive submission. The world rights agreement was brokered between Joe Veltre at the Gersh Agency and FSG’s Trisha de Guzman. The agency said the coming-of-age story is about “a girl and her friends who wrestle their way through the summer, sometimes on the playgrounds of Coney Island, sometimes with their feelings.” The novel, which is based on Femia’s play of the same name, is set for winter 2022.
Manguso Sells Debut Novel to Hogarth
Sarah Manguso sold her debut novel, Very Cold People, in a two-book, North American rights deal to Hogarth. She is the author of four previous nonfiction titles and was represented by PJ Mark at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Hogarth said Very Cold People is a coming-of-age tale about “inheritance and violence set in small-town Massachusetts.” The second book in the deal is a novel that will examine, per Hogarth, “white anxiety and identity in a Jewish-Italian family in 1940s New England.”
Balzer Reads Ramée’s ‘Map’
For HarperCollins’s Balzer + Bray imprint, Alessandra Balzer nabbed world English rights in a two-book deal to Lisa Moore Ramée’s middle grade fantasy Mapmaker. Brenda Bowen at the Book Group represented the author, saying it follows a mapmaker who “must pit his own powers against another, malevolent mapmaker who has the power to destroy any world–including our own.” The book is set for spring 2022.
