Baum's Yellow Brick Road

Deanne Urmy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bested four other bidders for Evan I. Schwartz's Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story; Lane Zachary and Todd Shuster at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth negotiated the six-figure North American rights deal, which was made before HMH's acquisitions freeze. Schwartz's nonfiction narrative will describe the personal drama and spiritual transformation that fueled Baum's parable of the American Dream, revealing how the people, places and events in his life gave birth to The Wizard of Oz. Publication is set for 2009.

Junger to Twelve

Sebastian Junger will move to Twelve for a new book, currently untitled, on men at war; Jonathan Karp bought U.S. rights from Stuart Krichevsky. It will draw in part on Junger's recent war reporting from Afghanistan for Vanity Fair and ABC News Nightline, which will also be the basis of a documentary project by Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington. The book will follow one platoon's entire deployment as it fights an invisible enemy in one of the most rugged places in the world. Twelve will publish in 2010; all of Junger's previous books were published in hardcover by Norton.

Random Wins Memoir

Random editor Laura Ford beat eight other bidders in an auction for Wallace Stegner Fellow Justin St. Germain's first book, Son of a Gun;Julie Barer sold North American rights. St. Germain will tell the story of growing up in Tombstone, Ariz., and of his mother's murder at the hands of her fifth husband, a cop. The memoir will follow St. Germain's struggle to make sense of his mother's life and death, and describe his efforts to be the kind of man she always wanted him to be. No pub date yet.

Two for Wolff

Rick Wolff, publisher of Grand Central's Business Plus imprint, has acquired a new book by Robert Sutton tentatively titled Boss. Picking up where his previous book, the bestselling The No Asshole Rule, left off, Sutton will focus on what distinguishes great bosses from just the good or mediocre. Christy Fletcher sold world English rights, and the book is tentatively scheduled for March 2010.

Wolff also acquired world rights to Samuel Culbert's tentatively titled Get Rid of Performance Appraisals: Why They Destroy Morale, Kill Teamwork and Hurt Your Bottom Line. The book will be based on a feature Culbert recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal; Culbert, a professor of management at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, will offer a plan to revolutionize performance reviews for all employees. The deal was unagented.

Adiga's Next

Free Press senior editor Amber Qureshi has signed up Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga's second book, titled Between the Assassinations; David Godwin sold North American rights. Written as a prelude to the prize-winning The White Tiger, these interconnected stories are organized around a six-day walking tour of Kittur, India, and dramatize events that occur between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The book will be published in June 2009.

Struck by Lightning

Sarah Knight at Shaye Areheart Books preempted a debut novel by Michele Young-Stone titled The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors via Michelle Brower at Wendy Sherman Associates, who sold North American rights. The book follows two lost souls separated by time and place whose paths eventually cross after one of them writes a fan letter to the author of the titular handbook. Young-Stone was inspired to write the novel after surviving her own brush with lightning.

The War on Terror

Times Books editorial director Paul Golob bought world rights to a new book by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker titled Counterstrike;Bonnie Nadell made the sale. The authors, national security correspondents for the New York Times, will describe how, over the past few years, top-secret analysts within the Pentagon have devised and implemented a new strategy to fight terrorism. Schmitt and Shanker will explain the strategy and its origins and profile the masterminds who conceived it and continue to carry it out, revealing that America's position in the war on terror is actually more encouraging and hopeful than many Americans perceive it to be. The book is scheduled for publication in late 2010 or early 2011.

Coupland to Scribner

Scribner senior editor Brant Rumble acquired U.S. rights to Douglas Coupland's latest novel, Generation A, via Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit. The book imagines a future in which the world's bee population has mysteriously disappeared; then, without warning, five different individuals in five different parts of the globe are stung by bees. In separate deals, Canadian rights went to Random House Canada and U.K. rights to Heinemann. No pub dates yet; in the U.S., Coupland's most recent novel, The Gum Thief, was published by Bloomsbury.