Gary Groth at Fantagraphics picked up world rights to Visiting America: 19 Days in an I.C.E. Facility by Welsh comics artist R.E. Burke (pictured l.) from Brenda Bowen at the Book Group. Burke was taken into custody and held in an ICE detention center for nearly three weeks in early 2025, when she was in the U.S. on a tourist visa for a cross-country solo backpacking trip. The graphic memoir will recount both her incarceration and the stories of the people she was incarcerated with. Publication is planned for 2027.

(photo: Courtesy of the author)

Emily Burns at Spiegel & Grau took U.S. rights to Tom Froh’s Hog from Samantha Haywood and Eva Oakes at Transatlantic Agency. The novel follows “a 250-pound feral hog named Rochester, who thinks and speaks in the manner of an 18th-century gentleman, as he embarks on a self-styled ‘grand tour’ of contemporary Boston,” per the publisher. A summer 2027 release is scheduled.

Caitlin McKenna at Random House won North American rights to Naomi Kanakia’s The Payoff from Alia Hanna Habib at the Gernert Company. The story collection, which expands on Kanakia’s self-published novella Money Matters, explores “money and what you do when you don’t have enough of it,” with characters who “steal, gamble, inherit, and wed,” per the publisher. Release is slated for fall 2027.

Lexy Cassola at Celadon bought North American rights, at auction, to Rose Himber Howse’s Tricks of the Light from Duvall Osteen at UTA, in a two-book deal. The debut novel follows a queer poet who, amid marital heartbreak, is “invited to a remote island estate in the dead of winter to complete a mysterious project for a great sum of money” by a scheming benefactor, per the publisher. A winter 2028 publication is set.

Shana Drehs at Sourcebooks Landmark preempted North American rights to The Summer She Stayed by Laura Lombardi, aka HarperCollins associate director of publicity Laura Gianino. Alyssa Reuben at WME brokered the two-book deal. The debut novel sees a young woman “confront how class and privilege muddy the waters of truth, justice, and complicity” against the backdrop of a high-profile wedding in a historic New Jersey shore town, per the publisher. Release is set for April 2027.

Laura Perciasepe at Summit preempted world English rights to literary agent Elizabeth Bewley’s Family Money from Sarah Landis at Sterling Lord Literistic. The debut novel follows a young actor vacationing in the French Alps, where she meets a glamorous couple—a psychiatrist and an heiress—and is drawn into the world of “rich people behaving badly,” per the publisher. A summer 2027 publication is set.

In Brief

  • Michael Reynolds at Europa preempted world English language rights, excluding Australia and New Zealand, to Night of a Thousand Hells by Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha, translated by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao, about a devastating act of violence that forces three sisters to confront their shared past, from Kelly Falconer at Asia Literary Agency, for publication in October.

  • Allison Lorentzen at Viking secured North American rights, at auction, to Emanuele Lugli’s debut, On Love at First Sight, exploring the phenomenon through science and culture, from Alia Hanna Habib at the Gernert Company. No pub date has been announced.

  • Stuart Roberts at Simon & Schuster acquired world English rights to Daddy Issues, a memoir by Call Her Daddy cocreator Sofia Franklyn, from Emma Kapson and Rebecca Shaevitz at Verve Talent & Literary Agency, for publication in November.

  • Evan Hansen-Bundy at Bloomsbury picked up North American rights to Why We Hear What We Hear, by cognitive scientist and Music Lab director Samuel Mehr, on the neuroscientific connections between music and human behavior, from Eric Simonoff at WME, for release in 2028.

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