White Re-Ups at Harper

In a major acquisition, Erica Sussman at HarperTeen bought four new books by Kiersten White. Agent Michelle Wolfson at Wolfson Literary brokered the world rights deal for White, whose third book in her current bestselling YA series at HarperTeen, Paranormalcy, will come out next summer. Wolfson called the first book in the deal, Mind Games, a “dark thriller”; it follows two teenagers, with special powers, operating in a world where corporations rely on psychics and mind-readers. The deal also includes two standalone books, as well as a sequel to Mind Games. One of the standalones, Flood and Stone, is about the progeny of an Egyptian god who’s trying to escape the drama within her family. HarperTeen plans to publish two books per year starting in winter 2013.

SMP Gets Grisly in Vermont

Keith Kahla at St. Martin’s Press took North American rights to Joseph Olshan’s Cloudland. Mitchell Waters at Curtis Brown brokered the deal and said the book is “in the vein of some of the wintry Swedish and Norwegian thrillers” dominating the bestseller lists of late. Cloudland, scheduled for winter 2012, follows a semiretired journalist in Vermont who gets an itch to return to her investigative roots when she stumbles upon the body of a victim of a serial killer. Olshan has written nine novels, including 1985’s Clara’s Heart.

S&S Kids Gets ‘Golden’

Leigh Feldman at Writers House sold world rights to a YA novel, tentatively titled Golden, by Jessi Kirby, to Kirby’s editor, Alexandra Cooper at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Kirby’s debut, Moonglass, bowed from S&S in May and her next book, In Honor, is scheduled for May 2012. In Golden, a reserved high schooler finds the journal of a local girl who died a decade earlier and starts looking into the mystery behind her demise.

Unbridled Loses Schaffert to Riverhead

Following the strong reviews Timothy Schaffert garnered for his April-published novel from Unbridled, The Coffins of Little Hope (which earned a star from PW), Sarah Stein at Riverhead bought world rights to the author’s latest work, which is currently untitled. Alice Tasman at the Jean V. Naggar agency sold the novel, comparing it to titles like Water for Elephants and The Night Circus. Set at the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair, the book, Tasman said, “depicts a tragic love story set amid the fanciful inventions, gothic amusements, spiritualists, flimflam men, and other crooked characters” at the event.

Walker Nabs Two by Sims

Sanford J. Greenburger agent Heide Lange closed a two-book deal for The Story of Charlotte’s Web author Michael Sims with Walker & Company’s George Gibson. Gibson took U.S. and U.K. rights—Walker’s parent company, Bloomsbury, will publish in England—to Thoreau’s Flute and The Phantom Coach. In Thoreau’s Flute Sims examines what led the titular author to Walden Pond, where he wrote his masterpiece, Walden. The Phantom Coach is the third edition in Sims’s anthology series of golden age ghost stories, the Connoisseur Collection.

Thomas Dunne Goes Anglophile with Ackroyd

Thomas Dunne, for his eponymous Macmillan imprint, bought North American rights to Peter Ackroyd’s six-volume examination of Great Britain, The History of England. Harriet Sanders, rights director at Pan Macmillan, which is publishing the book in the U.K., brokered the deal with Dunne. The work, which examines the period stretching from Neolithic times to the close of the 20th century, will be published in installments with the first volume, Foundation, set for fall 2012.