Suri Re-Ups at Norton

In a high six-figure deal, brokered by agent Nicole Aragi, Norton executive editor and v-p Jill Bialosky took North American rights to Manil Suri’s novel, The City of Devi. Suri’s last two books, The Death of Vishnu (2001) and The Age of Shiva (2008), were both published by Norton, and the house described City of Devi, set in India and about a 30-year-old mathematician looking for her missing husband, as “darkly comedic” and “multilayered.” Suri, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics, was born in Mumbai and lives in Maryland; The Death of Vishnu, a bestseller, has been translated into more than 20 languages.

Allen Goes to SMP

Jennifer Enderlin, v-p and associate publisher at St. Martin’s Press, bought three novels, at auction, by bestseller Sarah Addison Allen. Andrea Cirillo, at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, represented Allen in the North American rights deal; the first book in the acquisition, tentatively titled Lost Lake, is scheduled for 2013. Allen, who was born in Asheville, N.C., published her last novel, The Peach Keeper (Mar.), with Bantam.

Margolin Goes Historical for HC

Phillip Margolin, who we reported signed a two-book, seven-figure deal with Harper’s Jonathan Burnham in March, has sold another book to yet another editor at HarperCollins. Claire Wachtel took North American rights to the thriller author’s first historical entry in the genre, Judge Knot. The novel, set in Oregon during 1860 (against the backdrop of Lincoln’s presidential campaign), follows a lawyer in the newly settled city of Portland representing a controversial client: a former slave. Jean Naggar, at Jean V. Naggar Literary, handled the sale.

Plath Unbound

Deb Garrison at Knopf bought world rights to a biography of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. Clark teaches Irish studies at NYU and has written about Plath before—Oxford University Press published The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in February. In the new work, Sylvia Plath, Her Life in Art, Clark will draw on new archival sources, and, according to agent Jacques de Spoelberch of J de S Associates Inc., who did the sale, will use these sources, which include the papers of Plath’s onetime husband, Ted Hughes, “to recover the ambitious poet and novelist.”

J.R. Martinez Goes on Record for Hyperion

J.R. Martinez, the U.S. Army veteran, soap opera actor, and recent Dancing with the Stars winner, sold a memoir to Christine Pride at Hyperion. Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic closed the deal for Martinez, and the book is scheduled for fall 2012. Martinez, who joined the Army at 19 and suffered serious burns after his Humvee hit a land mine in Iraq, went on the media circuit once he had recovered, sharing his story on shows like Oprah and 60 Minutes. Those media spots led to a role on the daytime soap All My Children (as an Iraq war veteran) and, this year, as a contender on the reality show, Dancing with the Stars. Hyperion said the book will be about “triumphing over extraordinary obstacles through pure resilience.”

Screenwriters Stentz and Miller Go YA

Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, the screenwriting team behind the blockbusters Thor and X-Men: First Class, sold their first YA novel to Razorbill. Eric Simonoff at William Morris Endeavor closed the deal with Razorbill president and publisher Ben Schrank, selling North American rights to Colin Fischer and a second untitled work. Colin Fischer, which Razorbill called “a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes,” is about a 14-year-old with severe Asperger’s who takes on the role of detective when a gun goes off in his high school cafeteria; Gillian Levinson is editing, and the novel is scheduled for fall 2012. (Miller and Stentz were also recently tapped to pen the adaptation, for FOX Television, of Lev Grossman’s fantasy novel, The Magicians.)

Kensington Nabs Lawman Douglas

Michaela Hamilton at Kensington closed a two-book, world rights deal with former FBI agent John Douglas and author Mark Olshaker. Douglas, who was the model for the character Jack Crawford (Clarice Starling’s boss) in The Silence of the Lambs, has written several books with Olshaker (and other coauthors), both fiction and nonfiction; according to Kensington, the books Douglas and Olshaker co-wrote have sold more than two million copies combined. The new deal, for two nonfiction titles, was handled by Jake Elwell at Harold Ober Associates. The first book, Law and Disorder, explains how the criminal justice system works and looks at cases in which, as the publisher put it, “justice was not served”; it’s slated for spring 2013. Douglas’s last book, which he co-wrote with another author, was 2007’s Inside the Mind of BTK (Jossey-Boss).

Briefs

Katie McHugh at Da Capo bought world rights to Jeremy Dean’s Habit by Habit: The New Science of Routine. Agent Danielle Svetcov, at Levine Greenberg, brokered the deal for Dean, a psychologist who founded the popular PsyBlog (www.psyblog.co.uk), which Da Capo said draws roughly 700,000 readers per month. The book, according to Da Capo, will “unravel the mysteries of our ingrained ways, to help us use the automatic mind to our advantage.”