Dylan to Play for Callaway

Nicholas Callaway, founder and publisher of Callaway Arts & Entertainment, acquired world print, e-book, and audio rights to Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine. The 608-page book by Mark Davidson, curator and director of the Bob Dylan Archive, and archivist Parker Fishel, is being published in cooperation with the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Okla., where the archive is housed. Callaway has the rights to use a portion of the center’s archival materials. He said the “richly illustrated” book is the “first panoramic look at the Bob Dylan Archive, featuring nearly 1,000 images, most of which have never been seen before by the public, along with original essays from leading writers and artists.” Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is set for release in October.

Blackstone Wins New Wroblewski

David Wroblewski sold U.S. rights to Familiaris, his follow-up to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, to Vikki Warner at Blackstone Publishing. Released in 2008, Sawtelle was an Oprah Book Club selection and sold more than one million hardcover copies, according to Blackstone. Eleanor Jackson at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner brokered the deal for Familiaris, which is set to be released in June 2024.

‘Lenny’ Is Marked for St. Martin’s

St. Martin’s Press’s Sarah Grill acquired North American and U.K. rights to Kerryn Mayne’s Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder. The six-figure deal, negotiated by Elaine Spencer at the Knight Agency, includes Mayne’s next two books, for which SMP bought translation, North American, and U.K. rights. The novel, Spencer said, was pitched as “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine meets The Maid, and focuses on a sympathetic and introverted schoolteacher who has promised to finally try to ‘get a life,’ all while desperately running from one which she’s hidden deep in her past.” Mayne is a police officer in Melbourne, Australia, and Lenny Marks was published there by PRH Australia.

‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ Heads to Liveright

In a preempt, John U. Bacon sold North American rights to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to Liveright editor-in-chief Pete Simon. The work will feature new interviews with surviving witnesses of the 1975 shipwreck in Lake Superior, as well as with colleagues, friends, and family members of the 29 crewmen who died in the disaster. The cargo ship was memorialized by the late Gordon Lightfoot in a 1976 hit song. Jay Mandel at William Morris Endeavor brokered the deal, and publication is planned for fall 2025.


Soho Dives into ‘Deepest Lake’

Andromeda Romano-Lax sold world English rights to The Deepest Lake to Alexa Wejko at Soho Crime. Romano-Lax has written a dozen nonfiction books, but this is her first suspense novel. The publisher said it follows a mother investigating the death of her daughter at a writing retreat in Guatemala run by a charismatic memoirist. Michelle Brower of Trellis Literary Management represented Romano-Lax in the agreement. Publication is planned for May 2024.


‘Paris’ Memoir to Amistad

Abby West at Amistad acquired North American and French-language rights to Robin Allison Davis’s Surviving Paris: A Memoir of Illness and Healing in the City of Light. After leaving her job at NBC News, Davis moved to Paris, but shortly after landing her dream job was diagnosed with breast cancer. William Clark at WM Clark Associates, who represented Davis, said in the memoir she details “the good, the bad, and the ugly of expatriating, dating with cancer, and her unexpected and often hilarious journey through the French medical system.”