Deals: S&S Wins Wall Street Tale

S&S senior editor Colin Fox bested four other houses in an auction for Duff McDonald’s untitled book on Jamie Dimon; David Kuhn sold world rights. Derived from a cover piece McDonald wrote for New York magazine last month, the book will look at the career of the JP-MorganChase CEO—from protégé, then castoff, of Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, to Wall Street legend at age 52—to tell the tumultuous story of Wall Street’s boom and bust over the past 20 years. McDonald is also a contributing editor at Condé Nast’s Portfolio; S&S pub date is September 2009.

Cindy Spiegel preempted U.S. rights for her Spiegel & Grau imprint to Philipp Meyer’s debut novel, American Rust, via Esther Newberg at ICM. Told from several alternating perspectives, the book is a tale of redemption and survival in smalltown America, in which a murder changes many lives. Meyer, who has been a James Michener Fellow in Fiction, is a former hedge fund trader turned construction worker.

Jennifer Hunt and Julie Scheina at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers won an auction for the first two books in the Caster Chronicles, a paranormal romance set against the gothic backdrop of an isolated Southern town, by debut authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Peterson. Sarah Burnes at the Gernert Company sold North American rights. In the first book, a girl from a cursed family of extraordinary supernaturals moves from a boy’s dreams into his hometown, but he is unable to save her. Pub date is late 2009 or early 2010.

And in the adult division, Judy Clain preempted Elizabeth Bard’s Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes via Wendy Sherman, who sold North American rights. Sherman pitched the book, about falling in love over food in Paris, as Julie and Julia (also edited by Clain) meets Le Divorce (without the divorce). Pub date is spring 2010.

St. Martin’s executive editor Jennifer Enderlin bought two more novels by Emily Giffin via Theresa Park, who sold North American rights. Giffin’s first three novels, all published by SMP, were New York Times bestsellers; her fourth book, Love the One You’re With, goes on sale next month.

Diana Gill at HarperCollins’s Eos imprint won North American rights to the first three books in a supernatural series by Richard Kadrey in an auction conducted by Ginger Clark at Curtis Brown; Clark made the sale on the strength of 100 pages and a synopsis. The first book is called Sandman Slim, and the main character is a wizard who returns from 11 years in hell to find out who betrayed him and murdered his girlfriend. Kadrey rose to fame 20 years ago as one of the first major writers of cyberpunk; his first novel, Metrophage, is considered one of the classics of this subgenre. Eos will publish in fall 2009.

Pocket senior editor Jennifer Heddle won an auction for three books in a new series by former Penguin Putnam editor Laura Anne Gilman; Jennifer Jackson at Donald Maass sold world English rights. In these fantasy books, magic is the domain of vineyard owners, spells are based on different varietals of wine, and a young apprentice winemaker must save the world; first book is tentatively scheduled for fall 2009. Gilman has previously published an urban fantasy series with Harlequin Luna.

Correction: S&S is the publisher of Robert Crais’s forthcoming Chasing Darkness, not Putnam, as this column reported last week.