McFadden, Sourcebooks Ink Major Deal
In an exclusive submission, thriller writer Freida McFadden (the Housemaid series) has signed a major world English rights deal with Jenna Jankowski at Sourcebooks. The deal includes three new psychological thrillers, four backlist titles, and three novellas. Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency represented the author. Sourcebooks said the first book in the deal, Dead Debbie, “features her most chilling protagonist since The Housemaid’s Millie Calloway: Debbie Mullens, an advice columnist whose pastimes include tending a poison garden, tracking cheating husbands, and revenge.” Dead Debbie is set for a January 2026 publication.
Awad’s ‘Bunny’ Follow-Up Goes to Rucci
Marysue Rucci at S&S imprint Marysue Rucci Books has acquired U.S. rights to We Love You, Bunny, the follow-up to the viral sensation Bunny by Mona Awad. Bill Clegg at the Clegg Agency negotiated the international deal, in which Chris White of Scribner U.K. took U.K. and Commonwealth rights and Canadian rights were acquired by Awad’s long-standing editor, Nicole Winstanley, who is now president and publisher of S&S Canada. S&S described the book as “a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete standalone novel.” Publication is slated for September 2025.
Pantheon Makes ‘Trouble’ Its Business
In an exclusive submission, Edward Kastenmeier at Pantheon Books has picked up a graphic novel adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, by screenwriter and graphic novelist Arvind Ethan David. Both the author and the Chandler estate were represented by Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White. The publisher said David and artists Ilias Kyriazis and Cris Peter “capture Chandler’s iconic hardboiled voice while adapting the story in a way that highlights how current many of its themes are.” The book will be published in May 2025.
Celadon Takes Irish Writer’s U.S. Debut
Deb Futter at Celadon has taken North American rights to Saoirse, a new novel
by Dublin author Charleen Hurtubise (The Polite Act of Drowning). Gráinne Fox at UTA brokered the deal. Fox said the novel, Hurtubise’s first to be sold into the U.S. market, is about “a Donegal artist living an outwardly idyllic life who unexpectedly wins a prestigious award that invites a swarm of publicity, threatening to expose decades’ worth of buried memories and stolen identities.” A publication date has not been announced.
Canary Street Signs Nine by Indie Author
John Jacobson at Harlequin has landed two series by indie romance author Amy Daws—comprising nine books in total—for Canary Street Press. Nicole Rescinti and Lesley Sabga at the
Seymour Agency brokered the deals for world English rights, including for Daws’s Mountain Men Matchmakers and Wait with Me series. The publisher said the Mountain Men series will feature “small town romantic comedies with themes of family.” The first three books will be released in 2025, including the only previously self-published book in the series, Nine Month Contract. The Wait with Me series is “a set of standalone spicy contemporary rom-coms based on waiting room meet-cutes,” including Last on the List, which will be published in print for the first time in September 2025, with the rest of the series set to publish in 2026.
Grove Atlantic Picks Up Strongmen History
In her first acquisition for Grove Atlantic, Bridget Flannery-McCoy has taken North American rights to Ozymandias by University of Cambridge professor of international relations Ayse Zarakol, which the publisher said is “a global history of strongmen.” Eric Henney at Brockman Inc. negotiated the deal, following an auction. Grove Atlantic said the book begins with “the dictators of the ancient world” and shows how “the spread of world religion and later democratic revolutions served to counter their power, and what this history teaches us as we confront another wave of autocrats.” A publication date has not been announced.
