Harper's Terry Karten made a two-book buy from an award-winning Croatian author, Josip Novakovich, for what she calls a Candide-like novel of a man struggling with the absurdities of life, The Life and Times of Ivan Dolinar, and a story collection. It was a world rights (except Spain) buy from agent Anne Edelstein. The author, a Whiting Award winner, had previously published with Graywolf.... An illustrated short story by Philip Pullman, author of the hugely successful children's trilogy His Dark Materials, will be done here by Knopf Books for Young Readers. It's a spinoff from the trilogy about one of its characters, called Lyra's Oxford, and Random children's publisher Chip Gibson made the buy from David Fickling, who has his own kids' imprint at Random U.K. It was originally sold by U.K. agency A.P. Watt, and will be published here in October.... Broadway's Ann Campbell signed another two-book deal with hit British "chick lit" author Jane Moore, whose Fourplay did well here, and whose The Ex Files is still to appear. First of the new pair is Dot.Homme, about online dating, and was bought, North American rights, from Deborah Schneider, acting for Curtis Brown London.... Adrian Zackheim of Penguin's Portfolio imprint preempted a timely book called Right Turn: The Inside Story of Fox, CNN and the Cable Battle for News by Scott Collins, TV editor for the Hollywood Reporter. It was a world rights deal with Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit, and Zackheim hopes to publish as soon as possible, while the talk about the TV coverage of the Iraq war is still current.... In agency news, ICM is opening a London office, with foreign rights director Margaret Holton, foreign rights manager Betsy Robbins, Tricia Davey for movies and Kate Jones, formerly of Penguin U.K.; and the agencies run by Joe Regal and GordonKato are merging, with Kato becoming a partner in Regal Literary.... Senior editor Greer Hendricks at Atria pursued the authors of the admired Broadway play The Exonerated, about people on death row across the U.S. who had ultimately been cleared and released, to see if they wanted to write a book, and found they did. So she signed the theatrical couple, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, and got world rights from John Buzzetti at the Gersh Agency to a book discussing the authors' cross-country journeys to talk to dozens of formerly condemned inmates and the impact their play has had since its premiere here last year.