An author named Cassandra King, who has just signed a two-book deal with Hyperion for a new novel and a paperback reprint of an older one, is actually the wife of bestselling author Pat Conroy, whom she met when she asked him to blurb her first book. Hyperion publisher Ellen Archer bought King's The Sunday Wife for world English and audio rights from agent Marly Rusoff (who in her publicist days used to talk up Conroy's books; sometimes publishing's a small world). Archer said the book is a "wonderful read" about a preacher's wife in a small Florida Panhandle town who runs into problems because of her friendship with a wealthy, troubled local woman. Leslie Wells will be its in-house editor, and the plan is to publish next October. The other half of the deal is reprint rights for Making Waves in Zion, another book of smalltown intrigue, originally done by Alabama's Black Belt Press six years ago.