Free Press Keeps Gilmore
Free Press editor-in-chief Dominick Anfuso has acquired North American rights to Mikal Gilmore's The Albums: The Story of a Life Lived With and Without a Music Collection in a deal with Richard Pine at InkWell. In the book—which Gilmore considers to be a “partner” to his National Book Critics Circle Award—winning memoir, Shot in the Heart, about his brother, the first man to be executed in Utah after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the death penalty—he will continue to pursue questions about loss, redemption and reconstructing a life devastated by grief and pain. The albums of the title describe the rock critic's lifetime collection of recorded music that takes on both metaphorical and metaphysical dimensions as the story unfolds. Gilmore's most recent book, Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents, was also published by Free Press.
Elsewhere at Free Press, senior editor Emily Loose preempted world rights to a new business novel by Jeff Cox, coauthor of Eliyahu Goldratt's 1984 bestseller The Goal; Cathy Hemming made the sale, her first in her new affiliation with McCormick & Williams. In the tradition of The Goal, Velocity is about how to combine the techniques of Lean Thinking, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints into a more powerful continuous improvement process. Cox is writing with two principals of the Goldratt Institute, both leading implementers of the Velocity approach. Planned pub date is January 2010.
Bailout History
Crown senior editor Sean Desmond has acquired a history of the congressional bailout of the financial markets by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd with Lary Bloom. Titled Thirteen Days: How the Financial Crisis Changed the Politics of Washington, the book will provide an intimate look at how, over the course of 13 days last September, a financial crisis led to panic and meltdown. Dodd, the chair of the Senate banking committee, will also describe how he and others acted swiftly to try to save the American economy. Crown has world rights via Esther Newberg and will publish this June.
Touchstone Gets Grier
Sulay Hernandez at Touchstone Fireside bought world English rights to comedian David Alan Grier's Barack Like Me: My Life According to the Chocolate Theory; Kirby Kim at Endeavor made the sale. In the book, Grier, the executive producer, writer and host of Comedy Central's The Chocolate News, will share his views on the melting pot of American culture and postracial, postgender politics. Touchstone will publish this October.
A Woman in Cartoons
Ursula Cary at Chronicle won world English rights to Liza Donnelly's new visual humor book in an auction conducted by David Kuhn. The book, , still untitled, is organized by the decades of a woman's life—childhood, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond—and will highlight the trials, tribulations and delights of growing up and living in the world as a woman. Through single-panel cartoons, graphs, pie charts and personal narratives, Donnelly will show how a woman's thoughts and experiences evolve over the course of her lifetime. She recently published Cartoon Marriage: Adventures in Love and Matrimony by the New Yorker's Cartooning Couple (Random House) with her husband, Michael Maslin.
The Briefing
Plume editor Signe Pike has signed up two new novels by Me & Mr. Darcy author Alexandra Potter via Stephanie Cabot at the Gernert Company, who sold North American rights. The first, The Lives of Miss Charlotte Merryweather, is set for 2010, with the second novel to pub in 2011. Me & Mr. Darcy was published by Ballantine.
