Glusman Explores WWII with Brinkley

John Glusman, editor-in-chief at Norton, bought North American rights to Alan Brinkley’s How We Fought: Americans in World War II. Glusman won the book at auction, in a deal brokered by agent Peter Matson at Sterling Lord. The book, scheduled for spring 2016, examines Americans who were in the fighting, as well as those on the home front. Glusman said it looks at how the war created a new vision of democracy that continued well after the fighting ended and “helped shape the world we now know.” Brinkley, who teaches history at Columbia University, was a National Book Award winner in 1983 and finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for The Publisher.

Clarke Gets Arty with Hattemer

In a world rights acquisition, Erin Clarke at Knopf Children’s Books nabbed Kate Hattemer’s YA novel, The Contracantos. Uwe Stender at TriadaUS Literary Agency represented Hattemer, and the book is slated for a 2014 publication. The novel follows a group of students affected by the filming of a TV show, called For Art’s Sake, at their high school. Stender said the coming-of-age story is about “art, life, and the knotting intersection between the two.”

Gorga Talks Marriage for SMP

Melissa Gorga, a current cast member of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, sold Love, Italian Style: The Secrets of My Hot and Spicy Marriage to St. Martin’s Press. Kathy Huck took all languages world rights in the deal from Alex Glass and Jessica Stark at Trident Media Group, working with Mehran Farhat at the MF Stark Group. Melissa has been married for eight years to real estate developer Joe Gorga, who also appears on the Bravo reality show, and has three children. The book, in which Melissa says she will “share the story of [her] life,” among other things, with her husband, is scheduled for a fall 2013 release. Novelist/memoirist Val Frankel (This Is the New Happy) is writing the book with Melissa.

JournalStone Grabs New Ochse Thriller

Christopher C. Payne, president of the indie science fiction press JournalStone Publishing, bought world rights to Weston Ochse’s new novel, Halfway House. Robert Fleck, who has an eponymous agency, negotiated the sale with Payne, and the book is tentatively set for summer 2014. Ochse won the Bram Stoker Award for his 2005 debut novel, Scarecrow Gods (Delirium Books), and his latest, Seal Team 666, was published by St. Martin’s Press in November. The new book, a supernatural thriller/urban fantasy, follows a Memphis orphan who believes he may be the son of Elvis, as he arrives in Los Angeles and gets embroiled in a local turf war. Payne described the work as “sun and surf meets spirits, brujas, and L.A. street gangs.”