True Nonbelievers
Radio host Michael Krasny's Spiritual Envy: A Meditation on Agnosticism was nabbed by Georgia Hughes at New World Library last week. Amy Rennert struck the deal, for world rights, and NWL plans to pub in fall 2010. Krasny, who hosts the news and politics show Forum on KQED in San Francisco, will explore questions of faith and faithlessness in the book. According to Rennert, Envy will be “for seekers and for those who, like Krasny, have wrestled with some of the most vexing philosophical questions of our civilization's history.”
Klein Gets Sensory
Lauren McKenna at Pocket acquired world English rights to a second book by author (and rabbi) Zoe Klein, whose debut, Drawing in the Dust, bowed this summer. PW dubbed Dust, which McKenna also edited, a “Jewish Da Vinci Code”—in the book an archeologist explores the ruins under an Arab couple's home on the suspicion that the site is haunted. The new novel is, according to Foundry Media's Mollie Glick who struck the deal, a “sensual thriller” about a love affair between a synesthete (someone whose senses, like vision and smell, criss-cross each other) and a painter. Pocket plans to pub in fall 2011; Glick retains film, audio and translation rights. Stephanie Abou, also at Foundry, is handling the translation rights.
Holt Nabs Israeli Novel
Jennifer Joel at ICM sold North American rights to Noam Shpancer's The Good Psychologist. Helen Atsma at Holt acquired the book, which the publisher called an “In Treatment novel” (referring to HBO's shrink drama, itself based on an Israeli TV show). Shpancer, a psychologist who lives in the U.S. but grew up and was trained in Israel, originally wrote the book in Hebrew—it was published by Yedioth Aharonot Books, in his native country, in March. The novel follows a psychologist who, while teaching a class in psychotherapy at a local college, is forced to revisit his own repressed past. The book was translated by Shpancer.
Remote with a View
Stephen Power at Wiley took North American rights to Maj. Ed Dames's memoir, Matrix Intelligence: Remote Viewing Cases from the World's Premier Psychic Spy. Dames, a military man and former member of the Psychic Espionage Unit (which was jointly overseen by the NSA and the army), is an expert and proponent of the controversial practice called remote viewing. (Remote reviewing, a popular information-gathering method used by the military in the '90s and since discontinued, relied on the use of ESP to deliver details about an event or object.) The book, which Alan Nevins at Renaissance sold, will delve into Dames's most unusual cases as well as his own, at points traumatic, past. Former Los Angeles Herald Examiner reporter Joel Harry Newman will co-write.
Dutton Looks to 'Rebirth'
Richard Pine at Inkwell and agent Tracy Brown sold North American rights to Dr. Robin Stern and Courtney E. Martin's Rebirth: Insights on Grit and Recovery from 9/11. Amy Hertz at Dutton acquired the book, scheduled for fall 2011, which focuses on nine of the 10 people followed in the documentary component of Project Rebirth, a multi-tiered media and educational project about the aftermath of 9/11. According to Inkwell, the book, like the documentary—which is ultimately slated to be archived in the Library of Congress—will examine “how the human psyche can recover and transform itself” in the face of severe trauma and loss. Stern, a psychologist and professor at Columbia, and Martin are both involved in Project Rebirth itself.
