Dutton Kids Signs Brewer to Five
Michael Bourret at Dystel and Goderich has inked a five-book deal for Heather Brewer with Dutton Children's Books for a spinoff to her YA vampire series, the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. The new series, the Slayer Journals, starts the summer before Eighth Grade Bites (book 1 in the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod) and follows the character Joss, one of Vlad's friends. Joss watched his sister get killed by vampires and decides to become a vampire slayer. Dutton bought North American, Philippines and open market rights, and the first book in the series will be published in September 2011.
Holt Nabs Zombie Novel
Marjorie Braman at Holt has acquired North American and audio rights to the sophomore effort from Joshua Gaylord, a literary zombie novel called The Reapers Are the Angels. Gaylord's first novel, Hummingbirds, will be published by HarperCollins in October, and Reapers will be written by Gaylord under a pseudonym. According to Josh Getzler at Writers House, who brokered the deal, Reapers is a cross between The Road and As I Lay Dying. Speaking to the two-house publishing approach and the pseudonym, Getzler said that it allows Gaylord to “carve out a distinct persona with Reapers.”
Vintage Buys Online Serial
In a deal for an online, serial novel, Zack Wagman at Vintage acquired world rights (excluding New Zealand and Australia) to Max Barry's Machine Man. The novel is currently unfolding at the rate of one page per day—readers can view the text online or have the new page e-mailed to them—and is a sci-fi tale about a scientist on a quest for bodily perfection. Luke Janklow, of Janklow & Nesbit, brokered the deal and Vintage plans to publish as a paperback original; the story can be found at www.maxbarry.com/machineman.
Janis, in the 'Key' of Life
Renowned concert pianist Byron Janis has sold his memoir to John Wiley; Hana Lane acquired world English rights from Doug Grad of the Doug Grad Literary Agency. Janis had numerous career highlights—including, in the late 1960s, unearthing two undiscovered works by Chopin in France—and, in the book, charts his early days as a child prodigy through to his battle with arthritis late in his career. Janis is co-writing with his wife, Maria Cooper Janis (daughter of actor Gary Cooper), and will also detail experiences he's had with the paranormal. The book is slated to pub in 2010, to coincide with the bicentennial of Chopin's birth.
Wall Street 'Hell'
Laura Stickney and Ann Godoff at The Penguin Press preempted North American rights to Michael A. Perino's The Hellhound of Wall Street: Ferdinand Pecora and the Ten Days that Changed Wall Street Forever. Perino, an attorney who specializes in securities law, follows Pecora, the Senate lawyer who took on the titans who ruled the financial markets and, in 1929, caused the stock market crash. Victoria Sanders of the Victoria Sanders Agency did the deal; she called the book “an archetypal David and Goliath story.”
Roberts on Napoleon
Viking's Joy de Menil acquired U.S. and open market rights to a new biography of Napoleon by historian Andrew Roberts. Roberts (Masters and Commanders), a British scholar who has written a number of biographies, will cull from various sources for the book, including, according to Viking, “a cache of secret letters... no historian has ever seen.” Napoleon is slated for fall 2014, to be in stores ahead of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo in June 2015. Georgina Capel of Capel and Land brokered the deal.
