Talking End of Life Care at B’bury
Bloomsbury’s Nancy Miller nabbed world English rights to physician/researcher Angelo Volandes’s The Conversation: Straight Talk About End-of-Life Care (And How It Alone Will Save America’s Medical System from Itself). According to Bloomsbury, Volandes, who teaches at Harvard Medical School and Mass General, examines how the reigning practice of sparing no expense to keep patients alive is the “unspoken dark side of American medicine.” Agent Will Lippincott at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin represented Volandes.

Razorbill Hits Garbage Patch for London
Debut novelist Matt London sold his middle-grade series, the 8th Continent, to Gillian Levinson at Razorbill. Agent Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger handled the three-book, world-rights deal for the author. Razorbill said the humorous series was pitched as “Despicable Me meets Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?”; it follows a brother and sister trying to turn the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into “a utopic eighth continent.” The first book in the series is set for September 2014.

Morrow Uninvites Winters
Lucia Macro at HarperCollins’s William Morrow imprint acquired world English rights to Cat Winters’s novel, The Uninvited. The book, which Morrow compares to The Night Circus and The Thirteenth Tale, is a paranormal work set during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Winters, who was represented by Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency, was a finalist for the YALSA’s 2014 Morris Award for her novel In the Shadow of Blackbirds.

Norton Carries Kluger’s ‘Torch’
Norton’s John Glusman bought North American rights to Richard Kluger’s Liberty’s Torch from agent Georges Borchardt, who has an eponymous shingle. Kluger, a former journalist, won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 book, Ashes to Ashes (Knopf), a history of cigarettes and how they became such a popular consumer product, in spite of their public health risks. In Liberty’s Torch Kluger recreates a trial that took place in 1735 New York. Glusman said the landmark case, which established freedom of the press in America, was brought by the Crown against a printer of a weekly journal.

Peterson Speaks in Tongues for Penguin
For Penguin Press, Elda Rotor took world rights to David Peterson’s How to Invent a Language. Peterson has created languages for shows like HBO’s Game of Thrones and Syfy’s Defiance, and the book will be a guide for anyone looking to craft a new tongue. Agent Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media represented Peterson.

Macmillan Goes ‘Psycho’ for Bloch
Macmillan Entertainment’s Brendan Deneen (acquiring for Thomas Dunne Books), took North American rights to Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Sanitarium. Deneen negotiated the deal with Rich Henshaw, who represents the estate of Robert Bloch. (Bloch, who died in 1994, was a prolific genre author and wrote the original Psycho—the 1959 novel that Alfred Hitchcock used as the basis of his same-titled film.) Bloch wrote three Psycho novels in total and Sanitarium, set for fall 2015, will pick up on a storyline that unwound between the first two books in the series, when Norman Bates is incarcerated in a sanitarium. Deneen is currently looking for a writer for the project.

Briefs
Agent William Clark at William Clark Associates sold North American rights to The Annotated Big Sleep, edited by Owen Hill (author of The Chandler Apartments), Anthony Rizzuto (a bookseller/professor), and Pamela Jackson (co-editor of The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick). Edward Kastenmeier at Vintage acquired the book, which is an annotated, illustrated edition of Raymond Chandler’s celebrated noir novel. Clark said the book will draw on “the wealth of archival, biographical, social, and literary” background material available on Chandler’s classic, in order to “bring new life” to it.
At the Library for America, publisher Max Rudin took world rights to a collection of sportswriting by W.C. Heinz. Agent Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary struck the deal on behalf of Gayl Heinz, the author’s daughter. Bill Littlefield, host of NPR’s Only a Game, will edit the collection. Heinz, once considered one of the country’s best sportswriters, died in 2008; the book is set for 2015, to coincide with the centenary of his birth.