Short Takes

Contemporary romance author Carly Phillips is the latest client of Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group to have her work divided by the agent between two publishers. Gottlieb made a new deal with Harlequin's Brenda Chin for three new Phillips books, for a sum close to seven figures, although the author still has a book to come, Heartbreaker, from Warner, her regular publisher.... Joe Blades at Ballantine paid seven figures for four new Victorian mystery novels by bestseller Anne Perry, two each starring her series heroes Thomas Pitt and William Monk. The North American rights deal was made with Donald Maass, acting on behalf of Perry's London agent, Meg Davis at MBA.... An unusually large deal for a YA author was signed by Kristin Marino at Delacorte; her offer came within 24 hours of receiving four chapters of Girls for Breakfast, a comic coming-of-age story by David Yoo about a young Korean-American boy trying to get used to life and the opposite sex in a scrubbed American suburb; it was signed with Steven Malk at Writers House.... Agnes Krup, a specialist in foreign rights sales, who has been away from the scene for a year, is returning to work in a new spot, at the Barney Karpfinger agency, where she will handle U.K. and translation rights.... Holt's Vanessa Mobley won a hotly contested auction for an untitled book by neuropsychiatrist Gregory Berns on how the brain registers satisfaction—and in which he posits that the so-called "simple pleasures" do not measure up to those of the complicated life. Mobley got world rights from Susan Arellano at the Susan Rabiner agency, and will publish in fall 2005.... NAL's Doug Grad got a book called Keep Going Till You Get There, Then Keep Going by retired black California National Guard Gen. Ezell Ware Jr., about how he bonded with a racist white officer when they both survived being shot down in Vietnam, and how it shaped his later life. The book, co-written with Joel Engel II, was a North American buy from agent John Talbot.... Award-winning novelist and short story writer Mary Robison signed up again with Dawn Seferian at Counterpoint for a new novel called One D.O.A.: One on the Way, set on the seamier side of New Orleans. Seferian got North American rights from the Wylie Agency and will publish in fall 2004.