Frankfurt Deals Report: The British Leading the Charge

By Rachel Deahl & Liz Thomson -- Publishers Weekly, 10/15/2008 5:22:00 AM

It's the British who are grabbing the spotlight at Frankfurt right now. Although the rights tent has yet to buzz about the book of the fair, two major deals are currently underway for novels by U.K. authors. The first buzz-worthy deal is for a book called Heresy by S.J. Parriss that is currently on auction in the U.K. with two high six figures offers on the table. Rep'd by Curtis Brown, the novel, which is set in the late 1500's in England and is the first in a planned series, follows a "renegade monk" who stumbles on a series of murders at the University of Oxford while working undercover there (in the Queen's service) to foil Catholic assassination schemes being hatched against the monarch. Parriss is a pseudonym for Stephanie Merritt, who's written two novels published by Faber as well as the memoir The Devil Within.

CB is pitching the novel as a work "in the mold of C.J. Samson with hints of The Name of the Rose." According to an agent from CB, the book has turned out to be a "little surprise" for the agency; it came in, as a partial manuscript, only last Friday. Although the U.K. deal will likely close before the Fair, the U.S. deal is expected to close afterwards. (Jonny Geller is handling the book in the U.K. and Jennifer Joel, at ICM, is handling U.S. rights.)

The other big U.K. deal, from Janklow & Nesbit, is for a novel called Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni. Tina Bennett, working from New York, has sold the book for a large (but still undisclosed) sum, to the Random House U.K. imprint Chatto. Lucie Whitehouse, who's handling translation rights, said she's been getting inundated with requests on the manuscript. More details to come on the book and the U.K. deal.

In another deal involving Chatto, Chatto and Knopf acted in concert to acquire “a perfect new novel by the incomparable Anne Tyler”. Noah's Compass concerns a year in the life of 61-year-old a man “let go” from his school teaching job, who downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on the first night wakes up in hospital. It's about memory and loss of memory, about incidents, family relationships and a late flowering love. Chatto’s Alison Samuel describes Noah’s Compass as “enchanting, heartbreaking and full of surprises.” The agent is Tim Seldes at Russell & Volkening.

Nicholas Pearson of Fourth Estate has acquired U.K. rights to Michael Cunningham’s new novel, buying British/Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Bill Hamilton at A M Heath. Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in the U.S., where Cunningham is agented by Gail Hochman.

Michael Flamini of St. Martin’s Press, has pre-empted The Boy from Baby House 10 by Alan Philps and John Lahutsky in a major deal for world rights from Annabel Merullo at PFD in London. It is John Lahutsky’s inspiring true story, written by Philps, the former foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph, of being born premature in Russia, consigned to an almost certain death amid the deplorable conditions of the Russian orphanage system and rescued by a single mother in the U.S. who gave him a home and helped him to grow into a successful American high school student.

Joel Rickett, former deputy editor of the Bookseller, has made his first acquisitions for Viking U.K. Binge Trading by Seth Freedman is an insider account of City greed, corruption and excess. Freedman is a stockbroker-turned -writer who is now a frequent contributor to the Guardian and his book describes the addictive experience of risking millions every day, and the after-hours bingeing that inevitably follows. UK/Commonwealth rights were bought from Mal Peachey at Essential Works. Rickett has also bought The Greatest Trade Ever by Gregory Zuckerman, a Wall Street Journal columnist. It centers on John Paulson who made $15 billion by betting against the housing bubble. A gripping story of the current crisis from an American point of view, it features a cast of characters who risk billions on the markets. The agent was Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein – Viking has UK/Commonwealth rights. “Obviously every publisher is now scrambling for finance and business books,” said Rickett. “Both Binge Trading and The Greatest Trade Ever are powerful, personalized stories by well-placed writers.”

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