Quill Tree Takes Tremblay’s MG Debut
Rosemary Brosnan at Quill Tree Books has bought North American rights to Another, the first novel for middle grade readers from bestselling horror novelist Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World). Stephen Barbara at InkWell Management negotiated the deal. Barbara said the book follows 12 year-old Casey, “who is dealing with the fallout from being cyberbullied by a classmate” when, at the start of spring break, “a strange new playmate” named Morel shows up at his home. “Morel is made of a clay-like substance, with the eerie, featureless appearance of a mannequin. As Morel stays in Casey’s house, his influence over the entire family grows in sinister ways.” Publication is slated for July 2025.
St. Martin’s Likes Taylor Swift’s Early Stuff
After an auction, Washington Post entertainment reporter Emily Yahr has sold world rights to Taylor Swift: The Debut Years to Eileen Rothschild and Brigitte Dale at St. Martin’s Press. The deal was handled by Rick Richter at Aevitas Creative Management. The publisher said the book chronicles “Swift’s first 10 years in Nashville as she skyrocketed from aspiring teen singer-songwriter to the pop icon we know today, with a deeply reported and comprehensive look at how she changed country music and how country music changed her.” A summer 2026 publication is planned.
Viking Falls for Meyer’s “Anti-romance”
Author, translator, and Atlantic contributor Lily Meyer (Short War) has sold North American rights to The End of Romance to Nidhi Pugalia at Viking. Viking described the book as an “anti-romance romance novel” that follows a philosophy grad student who, “after a bruising relationship, theorizes that the next phase of feminism for straight women is the end of romance.” Sarah Burnes at the Gernert Company struck the deal after an auction. No pub date has been set.
Legacy Lit Believes in Haynes’s ‘Ghosts’
In an exclusive submission, Krishan Trotman at Hachette’s Legacy Lit has taken world rights to Clarence Haynes’s The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery, her first fiction acquisition for the imprint. Trotman said the novel is “Tia Williams meets Ghostbusters” in a “provocative work of urban fantasy” about “an Afro-Latinx New York City publicist at the top of her game who must confront her secret mystical past after a series of disturbing, bizarre events.” Haynes, a book editor and coauthor of Omar Epps’s Afro-
futurism YA series Nubia, was unagented. The book is scheduled for a summer 2025 release.
Colleran Brings ‘Family’ History to S&S
In a preempt, Simon & Schuster executive editor Stephen Morrow has acquired North American rights to People Like Us: The Origin and Evolution of the Human Family by Heidi Colleran, an evolutionary anthropologist and researcher at the Max Planck Institute. Will Francis at Janklow & Nesbit brokered the deal. S&S said the book is “an audacious, evidence-driven, radical rethinking” of “in-groups and out-groups, of bigotry and empathy, of what ultimately makes us good and bad,” adding that it offers “a profound new vision of how cultural families drive the evolution of human behavior—as well as the shape of our genomes.” People Like Us is due out in spring 2027.
Thesis, Schulman Strike ‘Solidarity’ Deal
Social critic Sarah Schulman has sold world rights to a currently untitled book on “the fantasy and necessity of solidarity” to Niki Papadopoulos at Thesis, Portfolio’s new nonfiction imprint. Michael Bourret at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret negotiated the deal. Thesis said the book is “framed by the global rise of solidarity with Palestine” and will show how solidarity is “by nature flawed because it is rooted in inequality” and thus “dismantles the sense of heroism and impossibility that obstruct it.” Publication is set for 2025.
A version of this article appeared in the 04/08/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Book Deals
