Einhorn's First

In her first acquisition for her new imprint at Putnam, Amy Einhorn preempted world rights to a memoir by actor Jim Beaver, Life's That Way, via Laney Katz Becker at Folio. Beaver will write about the year following his wife's diagnosis of cancer and his only daughter's of autism; the book germinated as a series of nightly missives to friends and family, gaining a readership of 4,000 people around the world. Beaver starred on the HBO series Deadwood and appears in Supernatural as well as Big Love and John from Cincinnati. Pub date is looking like early 2009.

Sarah Crichton bought two legal thrillers by a Toronto criminal defense attorney and debut author, Robert Rotenberg, for her imprint at FSG; Victoria Skurnick at Levine Greenberg sold North American rights for six figures. The first of the two, titled Old City Hall, is set in Toronto and concerns the murder of the young second wife of a leading radio personality. This is the third sale by former Book-of-the-Month Club editor-in-chief Skurnick since she joined Levine Greenberg in April. Crichton plans a spring 2009 pub date.

Nobel Prize–winner Imre Kertesz (Fatelessness) has sold two novellas to Dennis Loy Johnson at Melville House; the first, The Pathseeker, will launch the imprint's forthcoming the Art of the Contemporary Novella series in spring 2008. In The Pathseeker, a government detective in a mysterious Central European country comes to suspect he's under investigation, though he does not know by whom or for what. The Union Jack, which will appear in the series in fall 2008, depicts the collision of chaos and hope during the Hungarian Revolution. Tim Wilkinson is the translator, and Melville House holds world English rights via Kristina Krombholz at the German publisher Rowohlt Verlag. Other authors to appear in the series include Gilbert Adair, Steve Stern, Shahriar Mandanipour and Benoit Duteurtre.

Howard Bahr will move to MacAdam/Cage for his first non–Civil War novel, Pelican Road, which tells the story of an isolated stretch of railroad between Meridian, Miss., and New Orleans, and the men who risk their lives to keep the trains running. Dave Adams bought world rights from agent Wendy Sherman. Bahr is the author of three previous novels, most recently The Judas Field, all published by Holt. Pub date for Pelican Road is spring 2008.

Ben Schafer at Da Capo bought North American rights to The Selected Interviews of Hunter S. Thompson via Jeff Posternak at the Wylie Agency. Culled from the pages of Playboy, Paris Review, High Times, Rolling Stone and other publications, this is a collection of the late author's most incisive and outrageous interviews, selected and introduced by Anita Thompson, his widow. Pub date is fall 2008.

In another deal with Posternak, Schafer also bought world English rights to Lou Reed's Pass thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics. This gathering of Reed's lyrics, beginning with the Velvet Underground and through his solo career, will be published in spring 2008.

George Gibson at Walker bought North American rights to Forrest Church's In God We Trust via agent Wendy Strothman. Church, longtime minister of All Souls Church in Manhattan, will trace the faith—or religious political agenda—of the nation's most influential presidents and the shifting line of separation between church and state. Pub date is 2010.