UNCOMPROMISING LOYALTY
It's not often that a major bestselling author stays with the same house for decades in these easy-come, easy-go days, so the fact that Susan Isaacs is about to celebrate more than 20 years at HarperCollins (as it now is known) with a return to some of the characters from her first Harper &Row bestseller, Compromising Positions, is pleasingly nostalgic. It was editorial director Larry Ashmead who discovered the young Long Island housewife/author in 1978 and who has remained her editor through eight successive bestsellers. Now he will edit Compliments of a Friend, which will bring back Judith Singer, feisty heroine of Isaacs's first book, now considerably older but just as savvy. Ashmead told PW the house didn't know what the new book would be about when it was signed, but Isaacs had written a story featuring Singer and decided to bring back some of the old characters, "and we're delighted." According to Isaacs, "I always swore I would never write a sequel, but I found myself missing Judith's company." Her agent, Owen Laster at William Morris, made the deal, for publication in late 2000.

In other Harper news, executive editor David Hirshey has signed the next book by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, which he promises will be a news breaker like his last, The Dark Side of Camelot, published by Little, Brown last year. Hersh's agent, Esther Newberg at ICM, conducted a "best bid" auction for the new title, and LB was the underbidder. Hirshey won, for a substantial six figures, what he will only describe at this stage as "a book that will make use of Hersh's remarkable Washington sources, and that will undoubtedly have an impact on the next election." With that in mind, Hersh will take a year's leave from his New Yorker spot to work full-time on getting the book out by September 2000.

INSIDER
Someone in a big literary and talent agency who writes a first novel is certainly well placed to get it, well, placed, and such was the case with Sean Desmond, who is assistant to Kris Dahl at ICM in New York (in fact, when PW called her to talk about the deal, it was Desmond who picked up the phone). Desmond's story is called Toys of Desperation, and is described as a psychological thriller about a murderous ghost haunting a contemporary Harvard student. The manuscript was sent around Hollywood under a pseudonym by ICM's Alicia Gordon (who didn't know herself that the book was actually by a fellow ICM employee), and it was Gordon who came up with the memorable pitch line: "The Shining g s to Harvard." Meanwhile, Richard Abate, a New York colleague, was sending it to publishers. Almost simultaneously, deals were struck on both coasts (the movie one for more than the book), with Melissa Jacobs at St. Martin's and with Paramount for Lynda Obst Productions. Jacobs, who found it "a terrific spooky read," hopes to publish in summer of 2000, "and if there's a movie by then, that would be perfect." Desmond, who allows that it has all been "very exciting," will publish under his own name now that the cat is out of the bag-and d sn't plan to give up his day job just yet, though a "thrilled" Dahl says that if the book is as successful as they expect, "I may have to look for a new assistant."

HORSES AND WOMEN
Not all those whisperers are men. Mary Midkiff is famous in her native Colorado as a leading expert on women's horsemanship, so can a book be far behind? Denver agent Jody Rein thought not, and brought her author to New York to meet with some publishing folk. She convinced Delacorte's Danielle Perez to come up with what she described as "a healthy six figures" for a book that will be called She Flies Without Wings. The striking title is in fact a quote from the Koran, and heads what Rein calls "a sort of 'Women Who Ride with the Horses' book," described as "part memoir, part myth" about the kinship between women and horses. Rein says large prices have also been secured from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.

DIET DRUGS, GOOD &BAD
Two books just signed will tell very different stories about drugs meant to aid the perennial American obesity problem. Simon &Schuster is rushing out, for late summer publication, The Xenical Advantage, which it is sure will be the first out on the new fat-blocking drug just approved by the FDA. It will be written by a leading researcher in the obesity field, John Foreyt, who is director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. According to senior editor Bob Bender, who bought the book, it will explain how the drug works, and how it can best be used in the context of various popular diet programs. Meanwhile, investigative journalist Alicia Mundy will recount the much less happy story of how the diet drug Redux flooded the market beginning two years ago, even though, according to Mundy, its manufacturer knew about its dangers. Hazardous to Your Health: How a Fatal Diet Drug Made It into the Mouths of Millions was sold by agent Howard Yoon of Washington's Gail Ross agency to Heather Jackson at St. Martin's Press. Mundy, who is Washington bureau chief of Mediaweek, describes it as "the most compelling story I've come across in my years as an investigative reporter," Her exposé will reveal how fiercely the drug industry lobbies for FDA approval, even for drugs with possibly harmful effects.

BEYOND THE GRAVE
Even before her first book under her new deal with Dutton is released, psychic Sylvia Browne has sold a second one to Dutton's Brian Tart for a seven-figure sum, according to agent Bonnie Solow of the Coast's New Media Marketing. The new book, which will follow the August publication of The Other Side and Back (Hot Deals, Nov. 16, 1998) a year later, will be Life on the Other Side, and it will be, said Solow, an account, employing all of Browne's powers, of "what happens when we die." For his money, Tart got world rights except audio.