Portfolio Re-Ups Undergrad Finance Whiz
Brooke Carey at Portfolio has signed a second book by 22-year-old Zac Bissonnette, buying world rights to a currently untitled work from agent David Kuhn at Kuhn Projects. Bissonnette, a senior at UMass Amherst and a writer/editor for AOL Money & Finance, has been promoting Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents, which Portfolio released this month. In his new book, Bissonnette will address financial problems that often face recent college grads.

Atsma Lands Percy for GCP
Helen Atsma, in her first acquisition at Grand Central as senior editor, bought world rights at auction to Benjamin Percy's new novel, Red Moon. Katherine Fausset at Curtis Brown brokered the deal for Percy, who won the Whiting Award for his short story collection Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007). GCP says the novel, set in the western U.S., is "a timely reinvention of the werewolf myth."

Kolen Closes Two at S&S
Kerri Kolen at Simon & Schuster bought North American rights to two more novels by bestseller Carol Cassella. After publishing Cassella's Oxygen and Healer, Kolen has acquired two untitled family medical dramas from agents David Forrer and Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management. The first book follows an intensive care specialist who gets into hot water when she tries to unlock secrets held by one of her coma patients.

In a second deal, Kolen bought North American rights to a novel by New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer. Mollie Glick, at Foundry, sold the book, Southern Charm, at auction. Foundry will be handling foreign rights to the title in Frankfurt; Glick said it's about a Southern belle who lands in the Big Apple and charms her way into the highest circles of New York society.

Sourcebooks Goes with Murphy's Living Dead... Again
Laurie Fox, at the Linda Chester Agency, sold world English rights to David P. Murphy's third book in his Zombies for Zombies series to Peter Lynch at Sourcebooks. Murphy's Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead was published by Sourcebooks in October 2009, and Zombies for Zombies: The Play and Werk Buk is out this Halloween. Fox said book three will have a "back-to-school theme." Justin Manask at Office for Literary Adaptation is handling film rights to the new book.

Smetanka Gets 'Russian'
Dan Smetanka, in his first acquisition at Counterpoint Press, bought world rights to a debut novel by Susan Sherman called The Little Russian. Sherman, who used to be the chair of the art department at Whittier College and co-created the Disney show That's So Raven, did not use an agent in the deal. The book, which is historical fiction that Smetanka said recalls Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or Amy Bloom's Away, follows a young mother struggling for survival during WWI and after, during a period in which Russia and Ukraine were ravaged by civil wars. Counterpoint is planning on a September 2011 publication.