Szabla Nabs Middle School ‘Heartbreaker’
Liz Szabla at Macmillan’s Feiwel and Friends imprint bought North American rights, at auction, to Alexander Vance’s middle-grade novel, The Heartbreak Messenger. Agent Jennifer Weltz, at Jean V. Naggar Literary, brokered the deal for Vance, and the book is set for a spring 2013 release. The novel follows a seventh-grade boy who gets entrepreneurial in an unexpected way: he starts a business that ends relationships for those looking to avoid the dirty work. Weltz said it’s a book that is “sure to win the hearts of both boys and girls” as it follows the “hilarious mishaps that ensue” with the company’s young clients.

S&S Re-Ups Flynn
Sloan Harris at ICM did a world rights, two-book deal for Vince Flynn with Emily Bestler for her eponymous imprint at Simon & Schuster. Bestler is Flynn’s longtime editor—she acquired his first novel, Term Limits, in 1998—and has continued with him over a career that has spawned 14 novels and, per the house, over 14 million copies sold. Film rights to Flynn’s protagonist, Mitch Rapp, are currently under option with CBS Films, and producers Lorenzo Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler (We Own the Night) are intending to develop an action/thriller franchise around the character.

Kennedy on Charlie Hustle
Sports Illustrated senior editor Kostya Kennedy has signed with Sports Illustrated Books (a division of Time Inc. Sports Group) to do a biography of Pete Rose called Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. The work, which agent Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary sold world rights to, is scheduled for 2014, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Rose being banned from Major League Baseball. Blauner said Kennedy (56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports) will explore “the debate over [Rose’s] Hall of Fame ineligibility as a social phenomenon through the changing context of his life.” Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader, was banned from baseball in 1989 for gambling on games during his years managing, and playing for, the Cincinnati Reds.

Montlake Bringing Back Rogers
Bestselling author Rosemary Rogers closed an eight-book deal with Phillip Patrick at Amazon’s Montlake Romance imprint. Kathleen Ortiz at New Leaf Literary & Media represented Rogers, selling world English rights on behalf of Nancy Coffey at Nancy Coffey Literary. Through the deal Montlake will be re-releasing eight books by the author, timed to the 40th anniversary of the publication of her debut, Sweet Savage Love, which was originally published in 1974. Ortiz said there are more than 60 million copies of Rogers’s books in print.

OR Gets Political with Vidal
Colin Robinson at OR Books bought world rights to a collection of interviews with Gore Vidal by UC Irvine professor Jon Wiener. Wiener did the deal without an agent. The interviews, which he conducted beginning in 1998 and ending in 2008, with the exception of one, have never been published. I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics will be released on November 1, and it will feature four conversations with Vidal, who died on July 31. As the title indicates, the book will focus on Vidal’s political views.

Briefs
Columbia University Press’s Jennifer Crewe bought world rights to Mike Slowik’s After the Silents. Slowik (a cousin of PW president George Slowik Jr.) did not use an agent in the deal; the book, he said, will examine the music used in the early Hollywood sound era, stretching from 1926 to 1934. Slowik noted that while a number of film historians have asserted music was largely absent from major productions during this time, he argues “it played a far more important role than previously realized.” Slowik is an assistant professor of English at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. The book does not yet have a publication date.