DEAL OF THE WEEK

Rosenthal Cooks for S&S

Justin Schwartz, v-p and executive editor at Simon & Schuster, has bought North American rights to a cookbook by Phil Rosenthal, creator of the Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil. S&S said the book, Somebody Feed Phil: The People, Stories, and Recipes, will serve as a companion to the show, which is now in its fourth season. According to Schwartz, it “will tell never-heard-before stories and include behind-the-scenes photos” from the series as well as “feature recipes for all the most delicious dishes.” Rosenthal was also the creator, writer, and executive producer of the long-running TV series Everybody Loves Raymond. Schwartz acquired the title from Brandi Bowles of United Talent Agency, and publication is planned for sometime in 2022.

FROM THE U.S.

Holt Wins Rickman’s Diaries

Henry Holt’s Sarah Crichton acquired North American rights to The Diaries of Alan Rickman at auction from Natalie Galustian at DHH Literary. Simon Thorogood at U.K. publisher Canongate had previously bought world English rights. Rickman, the English actor, director, and political activist, began keeping a diary in the early 1990s and had written 27 volumes by the time of his death in 2016. The diaries, which Alan Taylor, editor of the Scottish Review of Books, will edit into a single volume, will “offer a rare insight into the mind of the man and the artistic, social, and political worlds he inhabited,” Holt said.

Biden Book Goes to Twelve

Ben Schreckinger’s The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty Years of Tragedy, Scandal, and Triumph was acquired by Sean Desmond at Hachette Book Group’s Twelve Books. Schreckinger, a political correspondent for Politico, was represented by Matt Latimer at Javelin, who sold world rights.

Little A Takes a ‘Break’

Carmen Johnson at Amazon Publishing’s Little A imprint has acquired world rights to a third novel from Katie Sise (Open House). The Break, Amazon said, “is about a young mother named Rowan who is pushed to the edge after delivering her baby in a traumatic birth.” She later accuses her babysitter of trying to harm her child, and when the sitter disappears, she becomes a suspect. Publication is slated for fall 2022. Dan Mandel at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates brokered the deal.

Recorded Books Buys ‘To Tell the Truth’

Laura Dail of the Laura Dail Literary Agency sold world English audio rights to Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s To Tell the Truth. Recorded Books’ Laura Gachko bought the audiobook original. Dunbar is a National Book Award finalist and the Charles and Mary Beard Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. Dail said To Tell the Truth is “a collection of three powerful narratives written by formerly enslaved women”: Susie King Taylor, Ida B. Wells, and Harriet Jacobs. Their stories will be augmented by introductions and afterwords written by Dunbar, which, Dail added, “connect each of these women to contemporary issues and the global social justice movement that focuses on Black and brown life.”

Atomic Tale Heads to Diversion

Keith Wallman, editor-in-chief of Diversion Books, acquired world rights to the tentatively titled Ashes of Death: The Tragic Tale of the Marshall Islanders That America’s Atomic Age Erased by Walter Pincus, a longtime national security reporter for the Washington Post. Wallman said the book details the extensive amount of nuclear testing that occurred on those South Pacific islands between 1946 and 1958, and the consequences for the Marshall Islands’ people. Matt Carlini and Keith Urbahn at Javelin represented Pincus.