Sanders to Thomas Dunne
For Thomas Dunne Books, Brendan Deneen took world rights, in a two-book deal, to a new series by Ben Sanders; the first installment will be titled American Blood, and is set for fall 2015. Sanders, a 24-year-old New Zealander, published his first novel, The Fallen, at 20; that title went on to become a bestseller in his native country, as did his two follow-ups, By Any Means and Only the Dead. (All three books were released by HarperCollins NZ.) American Blood will be Sanders’s American debut, and it launches a new crime/thriller series about Marshall Grade, an NYPD officer turned mob informant, who, while living in the witness protection program in New Mexico, is pulled into a dangerous investigation. Deneen will be shopping the film and TV rights for the book on behalf of Macmillan Entertainment. Sanders, who splits his time between Auckland and New Mexico, was represented by Daniel Myers at Word|Link Literary Agency.

Flatiron Goes Drilling with Mealer
Flatiron Books’ Colin Dickerman preempted world rights to Bryan Mealer’s memoir, Kings of Big Spring, about his family’s various (and largely unsuccessful) forays into the Texas oil industry. Heather Schroder, at the newly created Compass Talent Agency, represented the author, and the deal marks her first at the new shingle. Mealer’s tale begins with his grandfather’s migration to the oil-rich fields of West Texas in the 1920s, and Dickerman said the book is “part sweeping history, part funny and moving portrait of what happens to a family and a town during a dramatic boom-bust economy.”

Walsh Drops ‘Clutter’ for Rodale
Bestselling author/organizational expert Peter Walsh sold world rights to The Clutter Connection to Rodale senior editor Nancy Fitzgerald. Walsh did not use an agent in the deal, and the book is subtitled The 30-Day Plan to Lose Your Weight, Worries, and Stuff... and Find the Real You Underneath. Rodale said the book will help readers unclog “their homes, their minds, and their bodies.” Walsh has appeared on TLC’s Clean Sweep, and two of his previous titles—It’s All Too Much (2006) and Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? (2008), both published by Free Press—have sold, per Rodale, over 400,000 copies combined in all formats. The Clutter Connection is set for a spring 2015 publication.

Hamid Revolts at SMP
George Witte at St. Martin’s Press nabbed world rights to Shadi Hamid’s How to Lose a Revolution from agent Bridget Matzie at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. Hamid, an Egyptian-American, is a Brookings Institute scholar and correspondent for the Atlantic who travels regularly to the Middle East. The book (his second, after The Temptations of Power, which OUP will release in April) is, Witte said, “the first account to reveal what went wrong in the Arab world, from the promise of democracy in Tahrir Square reverting back to where it was decades ago—in the grip of personality cults, bearded fundamentalists, military coups, and brutal demagogues.”

Briefs
Verso Books’ Audrea Lim bought world rights (excluding France) to Daniel Burwen and Mike de Seve’s Ajax: Lies, Terror and the Secret Coup that Remade the Middle East. The graphic novel is about the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran, known as Operation Ajax, which ousted the democratically elected Mossadageh and reinstated the Shah. The book is based on an interactive iPad app called Operation Ajax (created by Burwen’s multimedia company, Cognito Comics), and Verso has a spring 2015 publication planned. The authors did not use an agent in the deal.