Karr Signs with Fourth Estate

Memoirist Mary Karr, another bestselling award winner, has signed with Fourth Estate's new editorial director, Courtney Hodell, for Tropic of Squalor, the third volume of the trilogy that began with The Liars' Club and continued with Cherry. In the new book, Karr will describe the various escape routes she tried to get away from her horrendous early life, chronicled in the first two books, including alcohol, therapy, drugs, temporary incarceration in an asylum, and love of friends and a child. Hodell, whose first acquisition this was for Fourth Estate, bought world rights from agent Amanda Urban at ICM. Karr was previously published at Viking.