Hutchinson Has ‘Enough’ at S&S
Cassidy Hutchinson, former special assistant to both Donald Trump and his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows, sold a memoir to Stephanie Frerich at Simon & Schuster. Frerich took world rights to Enough from Robert Barnett at Williams & Connolly. Hutchinson delivered damning testimony about her former bosses in the January 6 investigations, and the September-slated memoir, S&S said, provides an account of “her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national crisis.” The publisher added that the author delivers a “portrait of how the courage of one person can change the course of history.”
Franklin’s ‘Alien’ Lands at LB
Life Hacks for a Little Alien, the debut novel by Alice Franklin, was preempted by Little, Brown’s Helen O’Hare. Clare Alexander at the British literary agency Aitken Alexander brokered the North American rights agreement. Franklin is a copywriter in London, and LB said the novel is about “a little girl who must find her voice as she grows up ‘different’ and searches for where she fits in the universe.” The girl has “help from her growing obsession with the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval codex written in an unknown script that has yet to be deciphered.” The publisher compared the novel, which is set for 2025, to works by Emma Donoghue and Mark Haddon.
Katz Casts ‘Shadow’ over Viking
Grace Katz (Daughters of Yalta) sold a deep dive into the Hindenburg disaster to Emily Wunderlich at Viking. Wunderlich won North American rights to Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War, at auction, from Amelia Atlas and Amanda Urban at Creative Artists Agency. Viking said the book is the “definitive account of the Hindenburg disaster and its role as a turning point in history.” It tells the stories of the passengers aboard the doomed aircraft, as well as the journalists covering the crash and its aftermath, delivering “captivating stories” that “anchor a character-driven narrative.”
Twelve Bags Capehart
Sean Desmond at Twelve bought North American rights to Jonathan Capehart’s currently untitled memoir from Gail Ross at the Ross & Yoon Agency. The publisher said Capehart discusses his childhood—he was raised by his widowed mother and Jehovah’s Witness grandmother—and his rise to success as a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist. Capehart, who has been an opinion writer for the Washington Post since 2007, also hosts an MSNBC show, The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart, and anchors the Washington Post Live show First Look. In the memoir, Capehart also details his experiences as a gay Black man. “He will reveal the extraordinary circumstances that forced him to leave his prestigious perch on the Washington Post editorial board,” Twelve explained, “and will recount powerful stories from his life... sharing lessons from the unlikely, no-road-map career he created.” The book is set for 2025.
Amistad Entertains B Michael’s ‘Muse’
Elizabeth Mitchell at Amistad took world rights to Muse: Cicely Tyson and Me, a Relationship Forged in Fashion by couture designer B Michael. The four-color title, sold by Jan Miller at Dupree Miller and set for January 2024, will feature candid photographs and shots of garments worn by Tyson. Michael, who’s worked under designers like Oscar de la Renta and launched his own couture line in 1999, started a decades-long friendship with Tyson after dressing her for an event. (When he dressed her for the Academy Awards in 2019, he became the first Black luxury fashion designer to dress an Oscar winner.) In the book, Amistad said, Michael will detail how the pair “shocked the fashionistas, pushing out inane rules of what a woman of a certain age should wear,” and “threw themselves into changing the world for the better through philanthropic efforts.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Stephanie Frerich's surname.
