DEAL OF THE WEEK
S&S Enters Jenkins’s ‘Winners’ Circle
Two-time Super Bowl winner Malcolm Jenkins sold North American rights to What Winners Don’t Tell You to Yahdon Israel at Simon & Schuster. Jenkins is a former defensive back who retired in 2022 and is now a philanthropist and successful entrepreneur. S&S said the book offers “an intimate portrayal of life on and off the field, detailed breakdowns of his greatest moments against the game’s premiere players, and poignant reflections about what it means to straddle the narrow line between victory and defeat.” It also features an introduction by quarterback Tom Brady. Jenkins was represented by Byrd Leavell and Meredith Miller at United Talent Agency.
Streisand Tells Her Story with Viking
Viking’s Rick Kot bought world rights to Barbra Streisand’s My Name Is Barbra. The memoir, scheduled for publication November 7, was sold by Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly. Viking said it will expand on the EGOT winner’s six-decade career as a singer, actor, director, screenwriter, author, and songwriter. While numerous books have been written about Streisand, this one, the publisher noted, will finally deliver the subject’s story “in her own words.”
Posthumous Min Novel Goes to Putnam
Putnam’s Sally Kim acquired North American rights to The Fetishist by Katherine Min. Putnam said the second and final novel by the author, who died in 2019, is about “a daughter’s revenge on the man who she believes drove her mother to her death,” though “nothing goes as planned.” Min’s 2006 debut novel, Secondhand World, earned her critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the PEN-Bingham Award. The new book, set for January 2024, was sold by Janklow & Nesbit’s PJ Mark on behalf of Min’s estate. Min’s daughter, writer and editor Kayla Min Andrews, helped edit the novel and intends to help promote it before and after-publication.
Doubleday Re-ups Schaffert
Timothy Schaffert (The Perfume Thief) sold North American rights to The Titanic Survivors Book Club to Cara Reilly at Doubleday. Alice Tasman at the Jean V. Naggar Agency represented the author. The novel, scheduled for spring 2024, is set in Paris circa 1913 and, Doubleday said, “follows the steward for the Titanic’s second-class library who, after narrowly avoiding the ship’s sinking, forms a book society with other ticket holders who didn’t board and who are all haunted by their good fortune.”
Brenner Does Double at Park Row
For Park Row Books, Erika Imranyi took world rights to two books by Jamie Brenner (The Forever Summer). The first work under contract, a currently untitled novel, is slated for spring 2024 and follows “a famous beach read author who is cast out from her shore town after publishing a thinly veiled novel about the people who once welcomed her,” according to the HarperCollins imprint. Adam Chromy at Movable Type Management represented Brenner.
Penguin ‘Ghosts’ Thompson
North American rights to Anyone’s Ghost, the debut novel by August Thompson, were acquired at auction by John Burnham Schwartz at Penguin Press. Thompson, an MFA student at New York University, was represented by Duvall Osteen at Aragi Inc. The book, Penguin said, follows “the transforming love and friendship between two young men that erupts during one unforgettable teenage summer in rural New Hampshire.” It follows the characters into a chance meeting as adults, asking questions about “how to live with oneself and what it means to truly love and trust another person.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article listed the wrong title for Katherine Min's debut novel; it's Secondhand World. Also, Min did not win a Pushcart Prize for that novel, she won the award for one of her short stories.
