DEAL OF THE WEEK
Hanover Invests in Taylor’s Story
In a mid-six-figure deal, Hanover Square Press’s John Glynn bought a currently untitled memoir by Goldie Taylor, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. Eve Attermann at William Morris Endeavor brokered the North American rights agreement. Taylor was five years old when her father was murdered in St. Louis, and the book, the publisher said, will reveal how the author survived a childhood “marred by sexual violence and physical abuse” to go on and create “hope where none existed.” The memoir is slated for winter 2022.
FROM THE U.S.
McCarthy Details Brat Days for GCP
Andrew McCarthy sold his memoir Brat: An ’80s Story to Grand Central Publishing’s Suzanne O’Neill in a North American rights deal brokered by David Kuhn at Aevitas Creative Management. McCarthy is an actor whose films include St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty in Pink, and a bestselling author who published a 2012 travel memoir with Free Press and a 2017 YA novel with Algonquin Young Readers. He is best known as a member of a 1980s cadre of young Hollywood actors dubbed the Brat Pack. In Brat, GCP said, McCarthy details his “coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity.” The book is set for spring 2021.
S&S Picks Up Norris’s Race Card
Washington Post columnist and former NPR host Michele Norris closed a two-book, world English rights agreement with Simon & Schuster for an adult title and a children’s title based on her Race Card Project. Norris launched the project in 2010, asking people to submit postcards with six words summarizing their thoughts on the word race. The books, S&S explained, will chronicle Norris’s experience collecting responses—she’s received more than 500,000—that distill “how Americans see themselves and their place in a fractured world.” The adult title was acquired by Dawn Davis for her 37 Ink imprint. Kendra Levin at S&S Books for Young Readers bought the children’s title. Gail Ross at the Ross Yoon Agency represented Norris, and both books are scheduled for 2022.
Morrow Nabs Nagamatsu’s Debut Novel
With a six-figure preempt, Jessica Williams at William Morrow signed Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel, How High We Go in the Dark. Annie Hwang at Ayesha Pande Literary represented the author in the two-book, North American rights deal. Morrow likened the speculative literary work to titles such as Station Eleven and Cloud Atlas, saying it “explores humanity’s struggle to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague.” Nagamatsu, who is the managing editor of Psychopomp magazine, published his short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone in 2016.
MCD Signs Crosley’s ‘Cult’
Sloane Crosley (The Clasp) sold Cult Classic to Sean McDonald at MCD, his Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprint. MCD described the book as a “twisted comedy cum mystery” and said it follows a woman “whose love life becomes the target of her former mentor’s cultlike psychological experiment.” Jay Mandel at William Morris Endeavor represented Crosley in the North American rights deal, and MCD said it plans to publish Cult Classic in early 2022.
Hill Calls for ‘Equality’ at Viking
Viking’s Wendy Wolf acquired world rights to Anita Hill’s A More Perfect Equality at auction. The book, subtitled A 30 Year Journey to End Gender Violence, was sold by Wes Neff at Leighco Inc. The publisher said it is Hill’s “personal account of sexual harassment and assault” and draws “from her own experiences and a wide range of others’ testimony, to show gender violence as a pervasive social malady, with a call to action based on her decades of advocacy.”
Gray’s Austen-Christie Mashup Goes to Vintage
After what Vintage described as a “competitive auction,” Anna Kaufman won two books in a new mystery series by Claudia Gray, the first of which is titled The Murder of Mr. Wickham, for six figures. Diana Fox at Fox Literary brokered the world rights agreement. The publisher described the novel as “a Jane Austen sequel and crossover with an Agatha Christie twist, in which the Darcys, Knightleys, and all of Austen’s other beloved couples unite for a house party that takes a dark turn when the notorious Mr. Wickham makes an unwelcome, and soon fatal, appearance.”
Portland Activist Lands at Oregon State
Black activist Richard Brown sold a memoir, This Is Not for You: An Activist’s Journey of Resistance and Resilience, to Kim Hogeland at Oregon State University Press. David Forrer at InkWell Management brokered the deal and said that the author chronicles his “struggles with racism and policing in present-day Portland while recalling his 1940s Harlem childhood... and his decades of activism in one of America’s whitest big cities.” The book, which Portland writer Brian Benson collaborated on, is set for March 2021. Both InkWell and Benson, Forrer noted, plan to contribute their share of the proceeds to “Black-led organizations fighting for racial justice.”
O’Leary Moves to Berkley
Beth O’Leary (The Flatshare) has left Flatiron for Berkley, selling her third novel, The Road Trip, to Cindy Hwang. The book, Berkley said, follows exes who reunite after two years by “reluctantly road-tripping to a friend’s wedding—and confronting the choices that tore them apart.” Hwang took North American rights from Tanera Simons at the Darley Anderson Agency, and The Road Trip is set for 2021.
