Scottoline Sells Four to Grand Central
Grand Central president and publisher Ben Sevier has acquired North American rights to four books from bestseller Lisa Scottoline. Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group negotiated the deal. Executive editor Lyssa Keusch will edit. Grand Central said the first book in the deal, The Unraveling of Julia, will be published in July 2025 and is “a modern gothic tale set in Tuscany that combines psychological suspense, love story, and family drama.”
Crown Lands Historical True Crime Account
Paul Whitlatch at Crown has acquired North American rights to Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco by Gary Krist, author of the bestsellers Empire of Sin and The Mirage Factory. Eric Simonoff at WME brokered the deal. Crown said the book tells the story of Laura Fair, “who killed her married lover A.P. Crittenden with a single pistol shot in broad daylight in 1870,” and “the ensuing sensational trial, which captivated the nation amid the backdrop of a rapidly transforming San Francisco.” A March 2025 publication is planned.
Gee’s ‘Human Empire’ Goes to St. Martin’s
Nature senior editor Henry Gee has sold North American rights to The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire to George Witte at St. Martin’s Press. Jill Grinberg at Jill Grinberg Literary Management negotiated the deal. Like Gee’s A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth (which won the Royal Society’s 2022 Science Book of the Year Award), Decline will, according to Grinberg, be a “brief, lively, and provocative account of humanity’s beginnings, near-collapse, expansion, and total conquest of the planet,” but with “alternate scenarios for its soon or distant-future decline and extinction.” Publication is planned for March 2025.
Graywolf Picks Up Debut Poetry Collection
Graywolf press director and publisher Carmen Giménez has acquired world rights to Party Line, the debut poetry
collection by Kyle Carrero Lopez, cofounder of Legacy, a Black queer artist collective in Brooklyn. Graywolf said the collection “draws inspiration from Lopez’s Afro-Cuban heritage” and “questions the way power travels within and beyond the arbitrary lines we draw, and whether we can feel at home outside of homogeneity.” Carrero Lopez is represented by Ashley Lopez at Waxman Literary. Party Line is slated to be published in spring 2026.
Flatiron Scoops Up Journo’s Novel
Former editor-in-chief of Ebony, Honey, and Teen People Amy DuBois Barnett has sold North American rights to Sugar to Caroline Bleeke at Flatiron Books. Mia Vitale and Sarah Passick at Park & Fine handled the two-book deal. Flatiron said the novel is a “peek into the glamorous and cutthroat world of music and magazines during the most dynamic era in pop culture history,” adding that it follows “a young editor navigating life in late 1990s New York City” who is fighting “to save a floundering urban magazine while staving off music industry bad boys, vindictive and racist colleagues, and her very powerful former boss and ex-lover.” Sugar is tentatively set for a fall 2025 publication.
Riverhead Takes Stanley’s U.S. Debut
In a preempt, Riverhead Books editor-in-chief Sarah McGrath has bought U.S. rights to Consider Yourself Kissed by London-based Australian novelist Jessica Stanley. Lizzy Kremer of David Higham Associates brokered the deal. Riverhead said the novel is “a grown-up romantic comedy” told through “10 years in the life of one woman as she moves across the world, looks for romance, finds the perfect partner, builds a longed-for family and career, and then works desperately to be all things to all people without losing herself.” Consider Yourself Kissed, which is Stanley’s U.S. debut, is set for a June 2025 publication.
