Short Takes
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 10/1/2001
Aimee Taub at Putnam preempted U.S. rights in a British novel, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain by Jeffrey Moore, a first novel she describes as a mix of romantic comedy and "gleeful satire" about an English professor who gets lost in literature; she bought it from U.K. agent Laura Susijn, who has also sold it in Germany and Holland; Weidenfeld will be doing it in London.... McGraw-Hill's Contemporary Books will be doing Model Mommy by model Vendela, a guide to recovery after childbirth; it was bought, world rights, by senior editor Judith McCarthy from Mel Berger at William Morris....Dan Smetanka at Ballantine bought A Floating World, a first novel about the blending of art and sex in the nightlife of Tokyo, on an exclusive offer by Frances Kuffel, making her first sale as an agent at Maria Carvainis. The book by Cynthia Gralla was a world rights buy, and Ballantine is offering it at Frankfurt.... Little Permanent Press has a rights winner in its novel Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, about painter Mary Cassatt, by Harriet Scott Chessman; the press's Martin Shepard sold paperback rights at auction to Trena Keating at Plume for $55,000 and has also just sold Australian rights.... Agent Georges Borchardt reports strong foreign sales for two books much in the news as a result of recent events: Five Days in London: May 1940 by John Lukacs and The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington.... Senior editor Tim Duggan at Harper beat out six other publishers in an auction for two books by up-and-coming Ken Kalfus.The first is The Commissariat of Enlightenment, about a young man in Russia involved in revolutionary times who becomes an agent for Stalin. Duggan bought North American rights for the Ecco imprint from Christy Fletcher at Carlisle & Company
