A BOUQUET OF FIRSTS

A deal just made by Elaine Koster, fairly newly fledged as an agent after a long publishing career at Penguin, rings several new bells. It is the first significant buy by Holt senior editor Jennifer Barth since she moved over from Hyperion, it is a first novel and it was plucked from the slush by keen-eyed Koster. "I was so excited when I read the author's letter and two sample chapters that I did something I've never done, and called an author from my home in the evening." The lucky author is Gwendolen Gross, who is one of publishing's own, having worked as an editor at Harcourt in San Diego and Addison Wesley before turning to writing. She has had a few short stories and p ms published, and was mentored in a West Coast writing program by Harriet D rr and Mona Simpson, but Field Guide is her first novel. It is, according to Koster, a literary psychological novel about a young American graduate student who g s to Australia to study fruit bats with her professor, only to find he has mysteriously disappeared. First North American rights were purchased for what Koster will only describe as "a nice sum."

SHREVETIDE

Everything is currently flowing the way of Anita Shreve, who has not only been enjoying long-running bestseller status with The Pilot's Wife as an Oprah pick, but has just signed a new multimillion-dollar deal with Sarah Crichton at Little, Brown for her next two novels, according to Alex Swenson, sub rights director at the Virginia Barber agency. Swenson had plenty more to report about the flourishing Shreve: The Pilot's Wife was also bought by Lion's Gate-Mandalay in a five-way auction for movie rights; it has sold to a baker's dozen of foreign countries; and Random has bought the audio rights. Meanwhile, Sean Penn has signed to star in a previous Shreve opus, The Weight of Water, to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow, with shooting to begin soon, and her next, Fortune's Rocks, due in December, has been made a main selection of BOMC.

AUCTION ACTION

It sometimes seems that auctions ain't what they used to be, but two in the week before Labor Day (and we're only just catching up with them) showed the bidding instinct is still alive and well. The first was run by Lane Zachary of Boston's Zachary & Shuster agency, just before she decamped for the glamorous Maui Writers Conference in Hawaii, and involved An American Life, a memoir by Sargent Shriver. Zachary held two days of meetings with publishers at the Kennedy Foundation in New York City (some of which were enlivened by the appearance of Sen. Edward Kennedy), and Trena Keating of HarperCollins was the eventual winner, for a solid six figures. Shriver told stories of his early days in the Peace Corps as well as his reminiscences of JFK. His co-author will be Scott Stossel.

Meanwhile, Penguin's Wendy Wolf took the prize in a four-way auction conducted by Katinka Matson of the John Brockman Agency for a book based on a recent cover story about dogs in Atlantic Monthly. The author is Mark Budiansky, and his book is to be called The Truth About Dogs. Its approach can perhaps be guessed from the title of the magazine story, which was "Why Your Dog Pretends to Like You." In the book Budiansky, a science journalist who has also written a book about horse behavior, will examine what Wolf calls the "sociobiology of dogs," examining not so much ways in which they seem like humans, but the many ways in which they are not. The price was "a healthy six figures," and the book is scheduled for next fall.

SHORT TAKES

One of the bigger recent paperback deals (remember them?) was the sale of Michael Lewis's hotly anticipated October title from Norton, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, to Penguin, for a lofty six-figure sum that could escalate to seven if certain bonuses come into play. The deal was concluded between Norton publishing director Jeannie Luciano and Penguin associate publisher Jane von Mehren.... In a move that is becoming increasingly common, Harper senior editor Laureen Roland is joining the David Black agency as an agent, starting next month.