Houghton Strikes Twice
It was a busy week at Houghton Mifflin, as two novelists were ushered into its fold, via auction and preempt. First, at auction and on the strength of a partial manuscript, Jane Rosenman acquired North American rights to a yet-untitled, George Eliot—inspired novel by Deborah Weisgall from Jill Kneerim at Kneerim & Williams. Weisgall's novel offers an account of Eliot's 1880 Venice honeymoon, the start of a disastrously miscalculated marriage she made in the last year of her life, juxtaposing it with the story, also set in Venice, of a crumbling American marriage 100 years later. Weisgall, a frequent contributor on the arts for the New York Times, is the author of Still Point (Crown, 1990) as well as a more recent memoir about her composer father, A Joyful Noise (Grove, 1999).
Joe Veltre at Artists' Literary Group accepted a preemptive offer for North American rights from Webster Younce for Taylor Antrim's first novel, The Headmaster Ritual, which focuses on the political machinations inside a prep school as experienced by a first-year history teacher. Antrim, 31, has an MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Poe/Faulkner fellow, and is a contributor to Vogue and the Times. A tentative spring 2007 publication has been set.
Two Sisters, One Survivor
Janine Latus escaped from her own abusive marriage, but her sister's murder at the hands of an abusive boyfriend kept the tragedy of domestic violence close to home. In If I Am Missing or Dead, Latus recounts her experiences as well as the story of her sister, whose note beginning "If I am missing or dead..." pointing to the culprit, her boyfriend, was discovered after she went missing. In a two-day auction, Marysue Rucci at Simon & Schuster acquired world rights (except U.K., which Random UK bought last week) in a six-figure deal with Katherine Boyle at Veritas Literary Agency.
This is Latus's first book, and springs from an essay she wrote in October's O, the Oprah Magazine. Publication is planned for spring 2007.
Strange Fruits
In a "significant preempt," Sarah McGrath at Scribner has acquired U.S. rights to journalist Adam Gollner's first book, titled The Fruit Hunters: Inside the Fruit Underworld, from agent Michelle Tessler. The book will combine travel, horticulture and business in its look at a variety of people passionate about fruit, not only genetically modified supermarket fruit, but small, unique types one has to travel far afield to get, cultivated by often-fanatic naturalists eager to preserve endangered varieties and invent new ones.
The Briefing
Colin Dickerman at Bloomsbury bought North American rights to egullet.org founder Steven Shaw's The Fat Guy's Manifatso, a collection of essays, anecdotes and facts about the joys, trials and tribulations of being fat, from Michael Psaltis at the Culinary Cooperative, a division of Regal Literary; Dickerman also bought North American rights at auction to stand-up comedian Iris Bahr's comic memoir, titled Dork Whore, from Sanford Greenburger's Peter McGuigan. Bahr will have a recurring role in this season's Curb Your Enthusiasm.... George Shaffner's The Widows of Eden, the final novel in his trilogy about the fictional Midwestern town of Ebb, was acquired by Antonia Fusco at Algonquin in a world rights deal from agent Jane Dystel.... Dystel also sold North American rights to David Wann'sEncounters with Affluenza to Michael Flamini at St. Martin's; Wann, one of the trio of authors who collaborated on Affluenza, based on the PBS series, will provide a more personal look at this cultural disease.
