RH Children’s Re-Ups Stone
In a six-figure acquisition, Random House Books for Young Readers acquired world rights to the trilogy Out of the Ashes by Jeff Stone, author of the house’s popular Five Ancestors series. Senior editor Schuyler Hooke brokered the deal with Andrea Brown agent Laura Rennert; the first book in the series, Phoenix, is slated for fall 2012. The title character in the novel is a descendant of the orphan monks from Five Ancestors, who, here, teams up with a Chinese girl to solve a mystery; Rennert said the action adventure is rife with “high stakes mountain biking and kick ass kung fu.” According to Rennert, the seven books that make up the Five Ancestors series have sold more than 500,000 copies.

Crown Gets Coen
John Glusman at Crown took North American rights to a poetry collection called The Day the World Ends by screenwriter/director Ethan Coen. Coen, who with brother Joel has co-directed, co-produced, and co-written over 15 films, including the Oscar-winners Fargo and No Country for Old Men, had Tony Gardner of Gardner Literary handle the deal for him. The book is Coen’s fourth, including Almost an Evening (Crown/ Three Rivers Press, 2009) and the 1998 short story collection Gates of Eden (William Morrow). The Day the World Ends, which will be a paperback original, is scheduled for spring 2012.

SMP Takes Schiff’s ‘Blueprint’
George Witte, editor-in-chief of St. Martin’s Press, bought North American rights to financial adviser Peter Schiff’s The Real Crash: A Blueprint to Rebuild a Bankrupt America. Schiff, a former campaign adviser to Ron Paul and author of 2007’s Crash-Proof (Wiley)—which SMP said sold just under 200,000 copies—looks at how the still-weak American economy will undergo another major crash that will reshape our society. According to SMP, Schiff will offer a rebuilding strategy as well as advice to individuals on how they can “protect and grow their assets before and during this period of change.” Lynn Sonberg at Lynn Sonberg Associates brokered the deal; the book is scheduled for spring 2012.

Zondervan Taps Chilean Miner
In a deal brokered through its Spanish-language imprint, Editorial Vida, Zondervan acquired world rights to Jose Henríquez’s Miracle in the Mine. Henríquez, one of the Chilean men trapped for 69 days in a mine 23,000 feet below the Earth’s surface, was affectionately known as the pastor of the group; in the title, which Editorial Vida will release in Spanish and Zondervan will release in English (in the States and Canada), he will discuss how his faith helped him through the ordeal. The book is scheduled for October 12, and Zondervan is planning a total first printing of 250,000. (Henríquez did not have an agent.)

Tonga Takes PEN Finalist
Europa Editions’ newly launched imprint overseen by Alice Sebold, Tonga Books, pre-empted world rights to the debut novel by Thad Ziolkowski, Wichita. Karin Wessel did the deal with agent Ryan Fischer-Harbage. In the novel, a recent Columbia grad goes back to his Kansas home where he has to contend with his polyamorous mother, her boyfriend, and his meth lab–running younger brother. Ziolkowski, who directs the writing program at Pratt Institute, was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for his 2002 memoir On a Wave (Grove Press). Wichita, which will be a paperback original, is scheduled for summer 2012.

Putnam Puts a Ring on It
Marysue Rucci at Putnam bought world rights to Rebecca Traister’s tentatively titled All the Single Ladies at auction. Linda Lowenthal, at Black Inc., represented Traister, a journalist whose debut title, about the 2008 election, Big Girls Don’t Cry (Free Press), was named a New York Times Notable Book. In Single Ladies she looks at the shift in the importance of singledom for women; Putnam says Traister argues that this period has become “pivotal to their career advancement, social lives, and societal acceptance” and this, in turn, is affecting the culture at large. The title is scheduled for 2013.

Gomez Goes Apocalyptic
Katherine Boyle at Veritas Literary Agency sold world English rights, in a pre-empt, to debut author Demitria Lunetta’s YA trilogy In the After. Maria Gomez at HarperTeen bought the postapocalyptic series by Lunetta, who quit her secretarial job promptly after the sale closed. The books are set in a future in which Earth has been ravaged by predatory creatures, and a 17-year-old girl, along with a toddler she’s rescued, finds a survivors’ colony that is not what it appears. Book one, In the After, is scheduled for 2012.

Briefs
Christine Pride at Voice bought a currently untitled memoir by Stephanie Nielson based on her popular blog, the NieNie Dialogues (nieniedialogues.blogspot.com). Nielson, who chronicled her charmed life as a wife and mother of four on the site she launched in 2004, was in a plane crash in 2008 and shocked her readers with the news—her husband was burned over 40% of his body in the accident and she over 80%. As she shared her fight for survival, her fans kept reading, and the blog, according to Hyperion, now averages four million visitors per month; Stephanie and her husband have also appeared on Oprah and will be the subject of an upcoming 20/20 special. Hyperion says the memoir will be in the vein of titles like The Middle Place and Here If You Need Me. Nielson’s husband acted as her agent.

Judith Gurewich at Other Press bought U.S. rights to Strangers in Town: The Story of the Existentialists by Sarah Bakewell. Melanie Jackson brokered the deal on behalf of Zoe Waldie at Rogers, Coleridge and White. The book, scheduled for 2014, chronicles some of the major minds of the 20th century, or, as the publisher put it, the “intellectual rebels who were haunted by their estrangement from traditional certainties, and who set themselves the task of exploring the strangeness of life itself.” Bakewell teaches narrative nonfiction at City University in London.

Kara Cesare at Gallery Books took North American rights, from Inkwell Management’s Alexis Hurley, to Mia March’s The Meryl Streep Movie Club, in which three estranged friends, each dealing with relationship woes, rekindle old bonds through discussions of Streep’s oeuvre.