Godoff Nabs Debut Novel
Ann Godoff at Penguin Press has acquired North American rights to Ingrid Betancourt’s debut novel, provisionally titled The Blue Line. Betancourt is a Colombian politician who wrote Even Silence Has an End, a bestselling memoir about her six-and-a-half years of captivity in the Amazonian jungle after she was kidnapped by FARC in 2002. The novel, already a bestseller in France (published by Éditions Gallimard), tells the story of Julia, who has the “gift of second sight and uncovers a terrible secret.” Susanna Lea, of Susanna Lea Associates, negotiated the deal on behalf of the author. Penguin will release the book in summer or fall 2015.

Palmer Re-ups at Putnam
Matthew Palmer, author of The American Mission, sold world rights to his next two international political thrillers, again to Nita Taublib at Putnam. Palmer, the son of the late author Michael Palmer, is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, and he currently works at the American embassy in Belgrade. Meg Ruley at the Jane Rotrosen Agency handled the deal. The two new books are scheduled to go on sale in summer 2016 and summer 2017, respectively.

De Spoelberch Reps Three
Jacques de Spoelberch, from J. de S. Associates, sold three new projects. Bloomsbury’s Rob Galloway, in his first acquisition, picked up world rights to Michael Witwer’s Empire of Imagination: The Legend of Gary Gygax, a biography of the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Bloomsbury plans to publish the book in summer 2015.
De Spoelberch also represented Michael Stanley (the pseudonym for the writing team of Stanley Trollip and Michael Sears), who sold North American rights to the next two novels in the Detective Kubu series to Marcia Markland of St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne. Death in the Family, the first of the two novels, is slated for summer 2015.
Mike Greenberg sold world rights to his new novel, My Father’s Wives, again to editor Kate Nintzel at William Morrow, in a deal brokered by de Spoelberch. Greenberg is the cohost of ESPN’s Mike and Mike and author of the novel All You Could Ask For (2013). My Father’s Wives, set for release in January 2015, is narrated by a man who is “impelled by a sudden shock to his own life to go on a search to understand his marriage, his father, and himself.”