Peter McGuigan has a "dirty memoir" from stand-up comic Iris Bahr called Dark Whore, which Bloomsbury is releasing this month. In the book—which has sold in Italy and Brazil—Bahr chronicles her backpacking trip through Asia as, per her Web site, "a 20-year-old pseudo-virgin." From longtime rock groupie Pamela Des Barres is Let's Spend the Night Together, which is due out Stateside in July and has sold in the U.K. McGuigan also has Dandelion, a "sweet, quirky, heartbreaking" memoir by Catherine James that St. Martin's is publishing this summer; and, timed to Van Halen's long-awaited reunion tour this summer, a bio of the band from Ian Christie (Sound of the Beast). Agent Teri Tobias at SJG is pushing Terence P. Moran's Selling Warto America, which she calls the first book to look at how the U.S. has tried to control public opinion to support its wars. From Saveur magazine contributor Katherine Darling is Under The Table, a "knives-out" take on the author's time in cooking school, which Tobias dubs "Kitchen Confidential meets The Nanny Diaries." Then there's Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, about a boy who grows up to be the world's most notorious wizard.
Jenny Meyer Literary Agency
Meyer calls out five titles she's bringing. Janet Bray and Chris Attwood's The Passion Test was originally self-published and is now due out from Hudson Street Press in September. The Attwoods, who are "transformational" leaders, offer tips on how to channel your passions and turn them into realities. Switching Time, a narrative by physician Richard Baer about treating a patient with 17 different personalities, is coming from Crown in October and was recently sold at auction in the U.K. Coming from the Free Press in April is Courtney E. Martin's Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, a "startling exposé" of the lasting social and personal effects of eating disorders among young women. Meyer is also repping, on behalf of Faye Bender Lit, Jennie Nash's debut novel, The Last Beach Bungalow, and, on behalf of Blauner Books Literary, Meredith Hall's literary memoir Without a Map.
LJK Literary
Larry Kirshbaum's agency, now more than a year old, has Edgar winner David Ellis's new thriller, Eye of the Beholder, about a 1989 crime called the Mansbury Massacre,coming from Putnam in July. So far Spanish rights have been sold and German rights are pending. Mark Gimenez's The Abduction is also going with the Kirshbaum crew to London. Due out from Vanguard Books in September, the thriller, by the author of The Color of Law, follows an overprotective family's hunt for their kidnapped daughter. LJK also has the previously published death row legal thriller The Mayor of Lexington Avenue by James Sheehan. Released in 2005 by Yorkville Press and now out from St. Martin's, the title has sold in the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Russia, Poland, Brazil and Greece.
William Morris
While Tracy Fisher, v-p and director of international rights, says WM will have "a lot" of fiction at the fair, at press time she could discuss only three of the agency's big nonfiction titles. In Gang Leader for a Day, Columbia prof Sudhir Venkatesh shares his Ph.D. research on a Southside Chicago housing project he studied to find out what made the community—drug dealers, squatters, cops and others—tick. Penguin Press has bought rights in the U.S. Fisher also has a proposal for Suketu Mehta's (Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found) untitled forthcoming novel about immigrants in New York. And there's Kitty Kelley's biography of Oprah Winfrey, which Crown is publishing Stateside.
Writers House
Literary fiction is the core of what Writers House is bringing to the fair. Four titles the agency has high hopes for: Dan Vyleta's Pavel & I; Todd Hasak-Lowy's Captives; Elisa Albert's untitled debut novel; and Steven Sherrill's The Locktender's House. Agent Simon Lipskarcalls Pavel, bought last fall by Bloomsbury U.S. and U.K., "a John le Carré novel as written by Paul Auster." Hasak-Lowy, who won plaudits for his short story debut, The Task of the Translator, follows up with the dark comedy Captives, the tale of a Hollywood screenwriter who decides to actualize one of his scripts, about a vigilante rubbing out the people he thinks are ruining the country. Harcourt is publishing in spring 2008. Albert's debut is about an underemployed and almost-30 Brooklyn hipster who discovers she has an inoperable brain tumor. Free Press is publishing in March. And The Locktender's House is described by Lipskar as a "terrifying work of Southern gothic literary horror," involving a 19th-century tragedy and a modern-day derelict Pennsylvania house.
Sterling Lord Literistic
Agent Marcy Posner is particularly excited about two titles: A Journal for Jordanby Dana Canedy and Holding Hands in the Dark by Barbara Demick. Canedy, the wife of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq, originally wrote about her husband's 200-page diary in a front-page NYT article. Now her extension of that article, which is filled with his advice to the couple's one-year-old son, is being shopped by Posner as a "reported memoir." Crown is publishing in January 2008. Demick's Holding Hands, due out from Spiegel & Grau in fall 2008, is, according to Posner, the first English-language title to take a penetrating look at the hearts and minds of everyday North Koreans.
Donadio & Olsen
Agent Ira Silverberg is touting five books he's bringing to London. Two of them, both forthcoming from Riverhead, It Is Your Fault and Biblical Superheroes, are by contributors to the New York Times Magazine Funny Pages and ThisAmerican Life. Fault, by Starlee Kine, is, as Silverberg puts it, "a funny, irreverent and painfully honest account of a young woman's experiences as a self-help guinea pig," while Jonathan Goldstein's Biblical Superheroes is a "postmodern retelling of biblical stories." Silverberg also has a untitled second novel from Fae Myenne Ng (Bone), which Hyperion will be publishing Stateside; set in San Francisco's Chinatown, it's an "intergenerational tale of loyalty, revenge and forgiveness." And recalling the other meaning of the term gangbanger is Chuck Palahniuk's forthcoming Snuff (Doubleday), in which two male porn stars trying to make a film about a Guinness-worthy orgy discover they have a shared past. Silverberg also has Marc Acito's Attack of the Theater People, about an aspiring actor/con artist who gets kicked out of Julliard; Doubleday is pubbing here.
ICM
The big agency has a hefty number of titles it'll be hawking; highlights include the new novel from John Burnham Schwartz (Reservation Road); and Yiyun Li's debut novel, The Commoner, about the life of the crown princess of Japan. The agency also has a collection of Arthur Miller short stories, Presence, that Viking is releasing in May; Pete Hamill's (A Drinking Life) 1930s'-set North River, coming from Little, Brown in June; Armistead Maupin's Michael Tolliver Lives, which HarperCollins is releasing in June, in which the author revisits a character who first appeared in his iconic Tales of the City; Bel Canto author Ann Patchett's family novel, Run, which HC is releasing in September; Walter Isaacson's bio Einstein, coming from S&S in April; Elyn Saks's account of her battle with mental illness, The Center Cannot Hold, coming in August from Hyperion; and World War IV, Craig Unger's follow-up to House of Bush, House of Saud, which Scribner is pubbing in October.
Trident Media
Agent Robert Gottlieb, who has a long list of titles he's pushing at the fair, highlights four big-name books he's particularly excited about: Linda Ellison's The Spiral Jetty; Janet Evanovich and Stephen Cannell's No Chance; Jennifer Grant's Good Stuff; and Cesar Millan's Be the Pack Leader. Ellison's memoir, forthcoming from Riverhead, recounts her unusual life path, from her childhood as a Mormon fundamentalist through her graduation from Harvard on to her career as an abortion clinic chaplain. Two bestselling authors team up for No Chance, a thriller set in Orange County coming from Warner. Good Stuff is a biography/ scrapbook about Cary Grant by the star's daughter. And Millan's book, co-written with Melissa Jo Peltier, a follow-up to his bestselling Cesar's Way, promises to show canine owners how to "become the solid pack leader your dog needs to live a balanced life."
Ed Victor
Four books Ed Victor will be talking up are Danny Scheinmann's Random Acts of Heroic Love; Charles Maclean's Home Before Dark; Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles; and Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express. Sheinmann's debut—"cinematic and brimming with raw emotions," per the rep—is coming out from Doubleday UK in August, went for six figures in Germany, is still on submission in the U.S. and has sold in the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and Poland. In Maclean's psychological thriller, for which only U.K. rights have sold, a father hunts for his daughter's murderer throughout Europe. Brown's much-hyped Diana bio—it poses the question "Was she 'the people's princess' or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy?"—has sold in the U.S. and the U.K., with translation rights gone in Germany, Italy and Portugal. Nigella Express, Lawson's take on eating well under time constraints, is coming from Hyperion in October; rights have sold in the U.K.
Sanford J. Greenburger
