Hyperion's New Talkie
Hyperion editor-in-chief Will Balliett has acquired North American rights to a currently untitled book by progressive radio talk show host Ed Schultz. Agent Connie Westhandled the deal. Schultz, whose The Ed Schultz Show is carried by over 100 radio stations—Hyperion says he has an audience of more than three million—recently took his act to TV and now appears on MSNBC in The Ed Show. His book, which Hyperion plans to publish in 2010, will focus on middle-class concerns during the recession.
Scenes from a Marriage
In a deal coagented by Ed Victor, William Clark, of William Clark Associates, sold a memoir by George Gurley to Sarah Sper at Simon Spotlight. George and Hilly: The Anatomy of a Relationship is based on Gurley's long-running New York Observer column about his relationship with his fiancée; in the columns, which were lighthearted with an air of seriousness, Gurley chronicled, among other things, time spent in couples therapy. There's also talk that NBC might be developing a George and Hilly TV show. Sper bought U.S. and Canadian rights.
Two for McCafferty
Megan McCafferty (the Jessica Darling series) has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. Alessandra Balzer of HC's Balzer & Bray acquired world English rights from Heather Schroeder at ICM. The first book, Bumped, is a dystopian novel set in a world where teen girls, the only fertile people around, are paid by adults to bear their children. (McCafferty also penned Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, the two novels Kaavya Viswanathan infamously plagiarized in her now-pulped book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.)
Loving Frank
Shaye Areheart, at Harmony, has acquired a new book about Frank Sinatra by the star's last wife, Barbara Sinatra. (Barbara was married to the Rat Packer from 1976 until his death, in 1998.) The tentatively titled Life with Frank was sold by Alan Nevins of Renaissance Literary & Talent. Frank will be co-written with Wendy Holden and is scheduled for a 2010 delivery date; according to Nevins, it will be less tell-all than honest account, giving a “good, bad but always loving” portrait of life with ol' blue eyes.
Go 'West,' Young Man
Chuck Adams at Algonquin has acquired world English rights to Jonathan Evison's buzzed-about second novel, West of Here. Evison's strongly reviewed debut, All About Lulu (published by Soft Skull last summer), drew comparisons to Catcher in the Rye; here he writes about the history of an American town. Mollie Glick, who brokered the deal, compared the book to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, saying it touches on “themes of regeneration, the trappings of history and the elusive nature of perception.” Movie scouts are also eager to get their hands on West, which Glick said has not officially gone out for film; Lulu was optioned by Crossroads Films last year.
Global Warming 3.0
Thomas Dunne's Peter Joseph acquired, at auction, Curt Stager's post—global warming tome, Our Future Earth: Climate Whiplash and the Next 100,000 Years of Global Cooling from Sandra Dijkstra. Stager—a professor of paleoclimatology (i.e., the study of ancient climates) at Paul Smith's College in upstate New York, who's written for both science journals and consumer publications (like National Geographic)—draws on the work of various climatologists to offer the first hypothesis of what the next 100,000 years on Earth will look like, after the effects of global warming have taken hold. Thomas Dunne has world rights, excluding world English, and foreign rights have already been sold in Canada and Australia.
