GCP Re-ups Baldacci for Six
In a major new deal at Grand Central Publishing, David Baldacci has signed to write six more novels for his current house. Executive editor Mitch Hoffman took North American rights from Aaron Priest, who has an eponymous shingle, in the deal. The first book in the agreement, set for spring 2015, will mark Baldacci’s 30th adult novel. GCP, which has published all of Baldacci’s adult titles, will release two of his titles per year—one in spring and another in the fall. According to GCP, there are 110 million copies of Baldacci’s books in print, and his work has been translated in over 45 languages. His next book, The Escape, is coming from GCP in November 2014.
Atria Lands Hot German Thriller
After an intense auction—which went through 12 rounds and lasted for a week—Atria Books’ Peter Borland won U.S. rights to Sasch Arango’s The Truth and Other Lies. Borland brokered the deal with Inkwell Management’s Kim Witherspoon, who was acting on behalf of Australia’s Text Publishing, which had acquired world rights to the book from Random House Germany’s C. Bertelsmann imprint. The novel, which Atria called “darkly humorous,” is about a famous and charming writer who also happens to be a psychopath. The S&S imprint said the antihero is forced to go down “a path of increasingly criminal behavior” after he attempts (and fails) to kill his mistress. Arango is an established TV writer in Germany, and the book has, to date, sold in 14 countries. Additionally, simultaneous to the U.S. deal, Inkwell sold Canadian rights to Adrienne Karr at Penguin Canada, and London agent Sarah Luytens closed a U.K. rights deal with Simon & Schuster U.K.
Papademetriou Creates ‘Magic’ for HC
Kristen Pettit at HarperCollins took North American rights, in a six-figure, three-book deal, to Lisa Papademetriou’s middle-grade novel, A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic. The novel, a fable set in a realistic world, follows an American girl and a Pakistani girl who separately discover a magic book that, when they write in it, connects them to the story of the book’s creation. Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio represented Papademetriou (author of the Confectionately Yours series) and the book is scheduled for a 2015 release.
Klingele Gets ‘Marked’ at HC
In another deal coming out of HarperCollins, Jessica MacLeish, at the publisher’s children’s division, took world English rights, in a three-book deal, to Lindsey Klingele’s debut YA novel, The Marked Girl. Klingele, who was represented by Reiko Davis at the Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency, is a writers’ assistant on the ABC Family show Twisted. Davis said the book is about a group of royal teens who are ousted from their “Game of Thrones-esque” world and dropped in modern-day Los Angeles. There, they befriend a street-smart girl who is torn about helping them find their way home, since she’s fallen for the charming bad-boy prince of the group.
