Australian Trilogy Won by Riverhead
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 1/21/2002
A bid for all three books in something called the Otari trilogy clinched a recent auction at Riverhead, where co-editorial director Cindy Spiegel paid in the high six figures for Australian author Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor and two sequels. The saga, about a young boy in medieval Japan and his involvement with feuding warlords, scored the unusual coup of drawing bidders from both children's and adult publishers, and is said to carry echoes of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That being so, it also drew a hefty offer for an outright movie sale from producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. The book sale was made by agent Joseph Regal at Russell & Volkening, acting for Hearn's Australian agent, Jenny Darling. The movie sale was negotiated by Howard Sanders and Richard Green at UTA, and there have also been several foreign sales. Nightingale will be published this fall.
