Short Takes

Dial's Susan Kamil won a five-publisher auction for a first novel by a young Columbia MFA grad, Lauren Grodstein, that centers on a young man who, while waiting for the results of a pregnancy test on his girlfriend, thinks thoughts of love, life and parenthood. It's called Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love, and Kamil paid a "healthy" six figures to Julie Barer at Sanford Greenburger for North American rights.... Rob Weisbach was also an auction winner, for a collection of stories by a young Russian, Irina Denezhkin, 20, that has already made several foreign sales. It's called Give Me (Songs for Lovers), and agent Sally Wofford Girand sold U.S. rights.... Warner assistant editor Sandra Bark discovered a New Zealand writer, William Brandt, while on vacation there, inquired about his availability and signed a U.S. rights deal with Dan Mandel at Sanford Greenburger, representing Caroline Dawnay at Peters Fraser and Dunlop in the U.K. Brandt's book is a wry novel called The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life.... A young Vietnamese graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Aimee Phan, signed a two-book deal with SMP's Alicia Brooks, involving a novel and a book of interconnected stories, both centering on the lives of Vietnamese orphans in the States. The agent was Dorian Karchmar at Lowenstein Associates.... Holt's George Hodgman bought a major study of the eccentric James family that produced Henry, William and Alice, called House of Wits by English professor Paul Fisher; he won it in an auction run by Brettne Bloom at Kneerim & Williams.... A former PW reviewer, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, made her own deal with editor Margaret Marbury at Harlequin's Red Dress Ink for two books, the first, The Thin Pink Line, about a girl who pretends to be pregnant to gain attention; it will be out in July as the imprint's first hardcover.... Elizabeth Sheinkman will be selling only U.K., not all foreign, rights to Darcy Cosper's novel (Deals, Feb. 3).

Deals will not appear next week due to the author's absence in London.