Meier Goes ‘Missing’ at FSG
New York Times reporter Barry Meier sold North American rights to A Missing Man, about present-day U.S. spy Robert Levinson, to Eric Chinski at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Meier was represented by agent Andrew Wylie and the book delves into the mysterious case surrounding Levinson, a former DEA and FBI agent who disappeared in the Persian Gulf in 2007; it was discovered last year that Levinson was a spy working for the CIA in an unauthorized capacity. Meier has been covering the case since 2007. In January, Levinson’s family went on CNN and asked that the government acknowledge the still-missing Levinson was working for the CIA. The book, FSG said, will be “a real-life thriller” that will uncover “the possibility of a CIA cover-up.” Meier has been a Pulitzer finalist and is also the author of Pain Killer (Rodale, 2003); Man is set for 2015.

NAL Taps Caine for New Series
Rachel Caine, who’s behind the bestselling Morganville Vampires series, signed a mid-six-figure deal with NAL for a young adult fantasy trilogy called the Great Library that is set in an alternate reality. Anne Sowards took North American rights from Lucienne Diver at the Knight Agency. In the trilogy, the Library of Alexandria (which housed one of the most significant manuscript collections of the ancient world and famously burned down) still exists. The library has become all-powerful, and, while there is unfettered access to information digitally, it is a crime to keep print books in any personal collection. Into this setup, Diver said, comes “a boy from a family of black market book smugglers and a girl who watched her city die.” Diver described the series as “The Book Thief with Fahrenheit 451 by way of Harry Potter.” The first book in the Great Library series is planned for summer 2015.

Riverhead to Translate Enrigue
Mexican author Álavaro Enrigue, winner of the 2013 Heralde Prize and recipient of the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center Fellowship, is getting his first shot at English-speaking readers. Enrigue’s novel Sudden Death was acquired by Laura Perciasepe at Riverhead. Perciasepe took North American rights to the work from Ria Julien at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, and the book will be the first of the author’s works to be translated into English. (Rights to the novel have also sold in the U.K., Germany, and France, among other countries.) The novel follows a high-stakes game of tennis between the great Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo; Julien said the work was pitched as “Roberto Bolaño meets Hilary Mantel.”

Stoob Goes from Twitter to Book to Hollywood
For his new production company, RatPac Entertainment, director Brett Ratner acquired film rights to The Secret Diary of Alan Stoob, Nazi Hunter. The book, which was acquired in the U.K. in October by Coronet (there, the title is Secret Diary of a Nazi Hunter, Age 75 3/4), is a comic work by Stoob, a fictional character created by a currently unnamed person. (On “his” Web site, Stoob dubs himself “Britain’s Premier Nazi Hunter.”) The fictional memoir is based on Stoob’s popular Twitter account, @nazihunteralan, where he chronicles his inept attempts to track down aging members of the Third Reich. Steve Fisher at Agency for the Performing Arts handled the film rights deal, and said the book is about a retired British policeman who is “called upon by Simon Wiesenthal to go after Nazis still alive in the U.K., which he calls ‘the new Paraguay.’ ” Print rights for the book have not yet sold in the U.S., and Oli Munson at A.M. Heath (whom Fisher brokered the film deal on behalf of) will be submitting the work in the States soon.