Hayes Buys ‘Cut and Run’
Agent Leigh Feldman, of Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman, sold a new YA novel by Sarah Dessen to Viking Children’s Books. Regina Hayes bought world rights to Cut and Run, about a high school senior who, after her parents’ divorce, has taken up the practice of assuming a new identity in each of the four towns she’s lived in. Dessen, according to Penguin, has sold more than four million copies of her nine previous titles, which include the New York Times bestsellers Along for the Ride and Lock & Key. Cut and Run is scheduled for May 2011.

Garwood Inks Three-fer
Julie Garwood has signed a three-book deal with Dutton to do stand-alone novels set to pub, respectively, in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Andrea Cirillo at Jane Rotrosen Agency brokered the deal, for world rights, with Brian Tart (Leslie Gelbman will edit). Garwood, who largely writes historical and contemporary women’s fiction, has 26 novels, and there are over 36 million copies of her books in print.

McCall Smith Re-Ups at Pantheon
Robin Straus at the Robin Straus Agency closed a deal for a number of titles by Alexander McCall Smith with Edward Kastenmeier, his editor at Pantheon. Kastenmeier took U.S. rights to two books in a new series called Corduroy Mansions, plus two new volumes—seven and eight—in the author’s ongoing Edinburgh-set Isabel Dalhousie series. The deal also includes volume six in McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series.

Freelancers, Unite!
Savannah Ashour at Workman acquired world rights to a freelancers’ guide by the founder of the Freelancers Union, Sara Horowitz. Heather Schroder at ICM handled the deal for Horowitz, a one-time labor lawyer who started the organization, which helps freelance workers get insurance as well as establish retirement funds, in 1995. (Originally called Working Today, the group claims over 120,000 members.) In The Freelancers Bible, Horowitz, who will be writing with Toni Sciarra Poynter, will touch on how freelancers should handle everything from their taxes to self-promotion. Workman is aiming for a spring 2012 publication.

Culinary Lone Star Loneliness
Hyperion’s Elisabeth Dyssegaard pre-empted North American rights to The Homesick Texan Cookbook, based on the popular blog of the same name, by Lisa Fain. Brettne Bloom at Kneerim & Williams closed the deal for Fain, a Texas transplant in New York, who, in 2005, started blogging about her attempts to make the food she missed from her home state. The blog, which Hyperion says draws 175,000 unique visitors a month, won this year’s Best Regional Food Blog from Saveur magazine. Hyperion is planning a September 2011 release.

Briefs
Gráinne Fox at Fletcher & Company sold North American rights to Rosie Alison’s The Very Thought of You to Sarah Branham at Atria. Fox brokered the deal on behalf of British agent Anna Weber at United Agents. The debut novel, which was shortlisted for Britain’s Orange Prize after a quiet release in the U.K., was called by the Telegraph (in a review that ran post-nomination) “a pleasant, competent book.”