DEAL OF THE WEEK

Haberman’s Trump Chronicle Goes to Penguin

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman has sold a book on Donald Trump to Penguin Press v-p and publisher Scott Moyers. Haberman has covered Trump for more than 20 years for different New York City newspapers, including the Times for the past five. She has broken numerous stories about the Trump administration and is considered one of the best-informed reporters covering the White House. Penguin said her still-untitled book will be the “definitive chronicle of Donald Trump’s rise, fall, and continual reinvention.” Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn at Javelin represented Haberman. The book is scheduled to be published in early 2022.

 

FROM THE U.S.

Dirty Diana Heads to Dial

In a preempt, Whitney Frick at Penguin Random House’s Dial Press imprint took North American rights to the Dirty Diana trilogy. Based on the popular fiction podcast of the same name—which is expected to soon become a scripted series for Amazon—the three Dirty Diana novels are being written by Jen Besser, a senior v-p and publishing director of Macmillan Children’s, and Shana Feste, the creator of the podcast, who is also a screenwriter and director. The series was pitched, Dial said, as Three Women meets Fifty Shades and is about Diana, “a wife and mother living in suburbia who works a dull job at a male-dominated accounting firm while leading a secret double life in which she runs an erotic website where real women reveal their intimate sexual fantasies.” Anna Worrall and Alia Hanna Habib at the Gernert Company brokered the deal. Foreign rights have already been sold in about 20 territories.

Trotman Signs Grief Title for New Imprint

Peter Steinberg of YRG Partners sold a nonfiction proposal at auction to Krishan Trotman for Legacy Lit, her new imprint at Hachette Book Group. Grief Is Love: Defiantly Living with Loss is by Marisa Renee Lee, a former Obama staffer who is now a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. She began caring for her mother when she was about 15, and when her mother died a decade later, Lee was devastated. In the book, Steinberg says, Lee seeks to “inspire others to be the best version of themselves while never forgetting what they’ve lost.” It is “not a book about death—it’s about what comes after death.” Among her many credits, Lee is a cofounder of Supportal, a platform that helps people support their loved ones through life-changing challenges, and the founder of the Pink Agenda, a breast cancer nonprofit. Trotman bought world English rights.

Sourcebooks Lands Mackintosh Thrillers

Sourcebooks Landmark’s Shana Drehs acquired North American rights to two books by international bestselling author Clare Mackintosh from Little, Brown UK. The first title, Hostage, is set to be published in fall 2021 (LB UK’s Sphere imprint will also release the novel next fall). Sourcebooks said the thriller features a “locked-room mystery” that “plays out over the course of 20 hours on a nonstop flight from London to Sydney” after “a troubled flight attendant receives an anonymous note about a plot to stop the plane from reaching its destination.” Hostage has received advance praise from Lee Child, Lisa Jewell, and Karin Slaughter, among others.


Thomas Stays with Friends

Bestselling YA author Aiden Thomas (Cemetery Boys) has sold three new books, in a mid-six figure deal, to Holly West at Feiwel and Friends. Jennifer March Soloway at Andrea Brown Literary Agency negotiated the deal for world rights. The agreement involves an untitled YA fantasy duology pitched, Soloway said, as “Aztec Percy Jackson meets the Hunger Games, where a transgender demigod must enter the Firerbearer Trials to save his friends from sacrifice.” The third title is another YA, described as a “gay Titanic in space.” The duology titles will be published in fall 2022 and fall 2023; the standalone will follow in fall 2024.