Short Takes

A new book about those colorful Victorian-era explorers Stanley and Livingstone by Martin Dugard was won at auction by senior editor Jason Kaufman at Doubleday. He beat Viking to take the book with a strong six-figure bid to Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit.... The Celtic Riddle, one title in a series of archeological mysteries by Lyn Hamilton, was optioned for film and TV rights by SUSA in a deal put together by Hamilton's agent, Bella Pomer, and L.A. lawyer Jerry Kalajian; the books are published by Berkley Prime Crime.... Vermont's Steerforth Press sold paperback reprint rights to Suzanne Glass's well-received first novel The Interpreter to Alison Dickens at Ballantine, in a deal that will include the book in that publisher's Reader's Circle program.... Doug Pepper at Crown paid six figures for Ordinary Joes, the story of a group of U.S. Navy submariners who were among the first prisoners of war taken by Japan after Pearl Harbor, about their sufferings in prison camp and their long recovery after the war. It's by Larry Colton, author of Counting Coup, and the world English rights deal was made with Richard Pine at Arthur Pine Associates....A book on America's most-haunted hotels and inns, called "inncounters," and written by Frances Kermeen, the owner of one of them, was auctioned last week by West Coast agent Jodie Rhodes, with Warner's John Aherne prevailing over Bantam to take world rights. He hopes to publish by Halloween.