Basic Books has just bought a pair of books, both with "fire" in the title, and both featuring authors with a strong family involvement in their tales. The first is In the Line of Fire, in which journalist Eyal Press writes of an anti-abortion struggle that engulfed Buffalo, N.Y., in the 1980s and '90s, ending in the murder of one of its only two practicing abortion doctors; the other was his father, Dr. Shalom Press. The author will talk of the impact on his family, and also report on the trial of the slayer of Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was captured two years later in France. Editor Vanessa Mobley bought the proposal from Susan Reed at IMG.
Basic's editorial director, Liz Maguire, paid a low six figures to agent John Wright for a book on the recently anointed New York Fire Department. It's called That Others Might Live: A History of the New York Fire Department, and the author is Terry Golway, whose father, father-in-law and uncles were all New York firemen, and who has grown up with the mystique. He says his will be the first history of the department in 60 years, and he will trace how it grew along with the city to the moment when it was decimated in the events of September 11. The plan is to publish next fall. For both books, Basic secured world rights.
