Short Takes
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2001
Agent Richard Pine has moved former football star turned thriller writer Ace Atkins from St. Martin's to Morrow in a six-figure world English deal for his next two books. They'll both be about Nick Travers, former football star turned university expert on soul music, and the first, Dark End of the Street, will be about his investigation into the supposed death of a blues star. Carolyn Marino was the buyer.... Matt Bialer at Trident Media Group sold a first fantasy saga plus two sequels to Del Rey's Shelly Shapiro for a six-figure sum he said was the biggest for a first fantasy he'd seen; it's The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb, and Shapiro got world rights.... A book about the aphrodisiac qualities of food, by a Boston twosome known on local radio as the Cooking Couple—Ellen and Michael Albertson—has been sold at auction for six figures to Simon & Schuster's Doris Cooper. She beat contenders from Morrow, Warner and Crown/Three Rivers in the auction conducted by agent Brian DeFiore for North American rights in The Joy of Aphrodisiacs: The Cooking Couple's Gourmet Guide to the Foods of Love. It's part a history of aphrodisiacs, part a collection of spicy recipes (yes, that sort of spicy).
