Kelley Ragland at St. Martin's took on thriller author Kyle Mills, previously published at Harper and Putnam, in a two-book deal, with high hopes for the first of them, Fade, about a dying retired CIA assassin who is resisting attempts to bring him back to active status. Agent Simon Lipskar at Writers House made the sizable deal with SMP and also with Hodder Headline in the U.K.; Bob Bookman at CAA has movie rights.... Two pop music bios made recent sales: Storm: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Mac by Carol Ann Harris, who is the companion of the group's guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham, was bought by Penny Phillips at Piatkus in the U.K. from London agent Peter Cox at Litopia; and Da Capo's Alex Van Buren bought a book about the late singer and songwriter Elliott Smith, an apparent suicide last October, to be released on the anniversary of his death. It's by former Time entertainment reporter Benjamin Nugent, and the agent in the world rights sale was Amy Williams at Collins McCormick.... A new Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's book, by Anne MacDonald, daughter of Betty MacDonald, who launched the series nearly 60 years ago, has been announced by Alix Reid, editorial director at HarperCollins Children's Books, for publication in winter 2006. It will have six new stories, added to an unpublished one by Betty.... A new novel by Akhil Sharma, whose An Obedient Father won the PEN/ Hemingway Award three years ago, was won at auction by Norton's Jill Bialosky. It's called Mother & Son, and is an outgrowth of a story that first appeared in the New Yorker about the impact on a newly arrived family of Indian immigrants in the U.S. of an incapacitating accident to their oldest son. The North American rights deal was made with Bill Clegg at Burnes & Clegg.