Scribner Nabs Gilmore
Continuing her relationship with Scribner, Jennifer Gilmore sold North American rights to her new novel, The Mothers, to her editor there, Alexis Gargagliano. Jennifer Joel at ICM brokered the deal for Gilmore, a former Harcourt publicist whose first two novels, Golden Country (2006) and Something Red (2010), were both New York Times Notable Books. The Mothers follows a couple going through an open adoption, a process in which birth mothers select the parents of their unborn children, and there is an acknowledgment that the adoptive parents and birth mother will remain in each others’ lives. Joel elaborated: “As the wife in particular struggles with the expectations and demands of the process, and its uncertainty and frustrations, the novel explores the question of who and, ultimately, what it means to be a mother.”
Whitney Moves to Bloomsbury for ‘Starry Nights’
Michelle Nagler and Caroline Abbey at Bloomsbury Children’s Books took world English rights to Daisy Whitney’s fantasy YA novel, Starry Nights. Agent Michelle Wolfson, of Wolfson Literary, said the book was pitched as “Night at the Museum meets The Da Vinci Code, with a feminist twist.” Set in modern-day Paris, the book follows a teenage boy and tour guide at Musée d’Orsay who falls for a girl that is, as Wolfson put it, “trapped inside a painting.” Whitney’s debut, the YA boarding school novel Mockingbirds, was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2010 and received a starred review from PW; the second title in the Mockingbirds series, The Rivals, will be published by LBYR in February. Wolfson said Whitney will remain at LBYR for her contemporary YA titles, and that the publisher has her on a two-books-per-year schedule starting in spring 2013.
Aisha Tyler Opens Old ‘Wounds’ for HarperCollins
Aisha Tyler, actress-comedienne and current cohost of The Talk on CBS, sold a humorous essay collection to Carrie Thornton at HarperCollins’s It Books. Trident Media’s CEO Dan Strone handled the sale for world rights. The book was inspired by a segment called “Self-Inflicted Wounds” on Tyler’s popular comedy podcast, “Girl on Guy” (named Best New Comedy Podcast for 2011 by iTunes); in the segment, listeners volunteer embarrassing stories from childhood. Tyler’s book will feature her own embarrassing tales, which HC said will be both “outrageous” and “humiliating.” The book is set for a summer 2013 release.
Self-Pub’d Francophile Blogger Lands at S&S
Jennifer L. Scott, the blogger behind The Daily Connoisseur, sold her self-published lifestyle book, Lessons from Madame Chic: The Top 20 Things I Learned While Living in Paris, to Trish Todd at Simon & Schuster. Erica Silverman, at Trident Media Group, handled the deal for Scott, who began the book on her blog and caught the attention of publishing executives and agents after the work nearly broke into Amazon’s top 100, hitting #112. The sales position earned Scott press in the New York Times and CNN, among other outlets. In the book, Scott pulls from her study abroad experience, where she lived with a fashionable Parisian who took her to task for her laid-back California style. As S&S explained: “Lessons from Madame Chic reveals the secrets and lifestyle traits that allow Parisians to live such beautiful and passionate lives and provides tips and musings on how to translate the lessons to your own life.”
Zondervan Has a ‘Revelation’
Mike Vander Klipp at Zondervan took North American rights to a graphic novel called The Book of Revelation by Father Mark Arey, Philemon Sevstiades, illustrator Chris Koelle, screenwriter Matt Dorff and actor Chris Diamantopoulos. Arey is a priest in the in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and provided, with Sevstiades, an original translation of the religious text. Diamantopoulos, who is playing Moe in the forthcoming Three Stooges film, served as a producer of sorts on the project, while Dorff was the artistic director, helping to balance the text and imagery. Kirby Kim and Margaret Riley at William Morris Endeavor brokered the deal, and the book features over 600 original illustrations by Koelle. Kim said: “With a narrative that skews closer to Tolkien or Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth than the traditional reading of the Book of Revelation, the story reads like a 21st-century epic fantasy while still hewing closely to its scriptural roots.”
Briefs
Lauren McKenna at Gallery Books took North American rights to Marci Nault’s The Lake House. The novel, slated for a 2013 publication, explores the lives of two women, decades apart in age, who are brought together by their outsider status in a small lakeside community. Yfat Reiss Gendell at Foundry Literary + Media did the deal for Nault.
Nicole Caccavo Kear’s memoir, Blindsided, was bought by Sara Goodman at St. Martin’s Press. Agent Michael Bourret, at Dystel & Goderich, represented Kear, a mother of two who tried to hide that she was blind so she could be a “normal” parent to her two children. The book is on track for winter 2014; SMP has North American rights.
In another SMP buy, Nichole Argyres took North American rights at auction to Nathan Filer’s debut, Where the Moon Isn’t. The novel is about a boy coping with the death of his older brother. Agent Sophie Lambert at Tibor Jones Associates represented Filer.
