Miracle Movie
In January 2006, Logan and Noah Miller's father, a homeless alcoholic, died in jail. The twins, aspiring filmmakers with no meaningful experience, had for years wanted to make an autobiographical film about their dad, and on the day he died, they vowed to make it happen. In Either You're In or In the Way, the Millers will describe how, without a dime to their name or a single Hollywood contact, they managed to make a movie starring Ed Harris that landed in the San Francisco Film Festival (their story of how they persuaded Harris to appear in the film, Touching Home, has already gotten 475,000 hits on YouTube). Matthew Benjamin at Collins preempted world rights in a significant six-figure deal with Mary Ann Naples at the Creative Culture, and pub date is next summer.
A Gene for Brilliance
Random executive editor Susanna Porter prevailed over three other bidders for Charlotte Gordon's Mary & Mary in an auction conducted by Brettne Bloom at Kneerim & Williams. The book will compare the dramatic lives of Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who together comprise one of the most illustrious mother-daughter teams in literary history. No pub date yet; Gordon is also the author of Mistress Bradstreet, a biography of the poet Anne Bradstreet, published by Little, Brown in 2005.
Elsewhere at Kneerim & Williams, Deborah Grosvenor sold world rights to The People of the Arrow: In Search of the Amazon's Last Hidden Tribes by Scott Wallace to Harmony executive editor John Glusman. National Geographic photojournalist Wallace will describe his expedition into the most remote recesses of the Amazon, the trip featuring a cast of characters driven by a passion to preserve the wild, but also racked by fear, suspicion and the desperate need to survive. Likely pub date is spring 2011.
Love and Tomatoes
Bantam executive editor Kate Miciak teamed up with deputy publisher Nita Taublib to preempt Adam Schell's Tomato Rhapsody: A Tale of Love, Lust and Forbidden Fruit via Laurie Fox at Linda Chester, who sold world rights to two books. This debut novel, set in 16th-century Tuscany with a Romeo-and-Juliet love story at its core, is based on a true story about a Jewish man on Columbus's second voyage who brings the tomato from the New World back to Italy, ultimately making way for religious tolerance as well as the discovery of tomato sauce and pizza. Schell is a Los Angeles—based filmmaker, yoga teacher and former chef with a master's in creative writing; Bantam plans to publish in summer 2009.
Inside Zell
Jeffrey Krames at Portfolio bought world rights to Ben Johnson's Sam I Am: The Inside Story of How Deal-Maven Sam Zell Is Reshaping the World's Two Largest Industries via Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord. The book will track the life of Zell, known as “the Grave Dancer,” from law school to his recent takeover and makeover of the Tribune Company, and analyze his dealmaking and his personal and business philosophies in order to provide a glimpse into the inner world of the mogul. Pub date is fall 2009.
More from Freeman
Jennifer Weis at St. Martin's has acquired U.S. rights to two new John Stride suspense novels by Brian Freeman; Deborah Schneider made the sale on behalf of Ali Gunn in London. The Minnesota-based Freeman is the author of three previous Stride novels, with a fourth, In the Dark, coming from SMP in March 2009. These two new books, the fifth and sixth in the series and as yet untitled, will follow successively in March 2010 and 2011.
