Lonsdale Re-ups at Lake Union
Kerry Lonsdale inked a six-figure, two-book world rights agreement with Lake Union Publishing. The author was represented by Gordon Warnock at Fuse Literary, who brokered the agreement with Lake Union’s Danielle Marshall. The first book in this deal is a standalone novel set for summer 2019, and the second book, Everything We Give, will be the third title in Lonsdale’s Everything series. Lonsdale’s debut, Everything We Keep (which was published in July 2016 as a Kindle First and released in print from Lake Union in August 2016), has, according to the Amazon imprint, reached more than one million readers through a combination of sales and subscription downloads.

Kenyon Does Double at Tor
Bestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon closed a two-book North American rights deal, for the next two titles in her Dark Hunter series, with Linda Quinton at Tor. Quinton brokered the agreement with Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group, and Claire Eddy will be editing the titles. The series, Gottlieb explained, follows “an immortal cadre of warriors who fight to protect mankind from creatures seeking to steal human souls.”

Morrow Nabs Author’s Adult Debut
In a North American rights agreement, Jessica Williams at William Morrow bought The Binding, YA author Bridget Collins’s adult debut. The two-book deal was brokered by Eleanor Jackson at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. According to Morrow, the historical novel is “set within a magical world where bookbinders remove unwanted memories and trap them within books.” Collins is British and often writes her children’s books under the name B.R. Collins. The Binding, which was acquired in the author’s native country by Borough Press after an eight-way auction, will be published simultaneously in the U.K.

Watkins’s Message Heard by Atria
Editor-at-large for Salon D. Watkins sold world rights to a nonfiction book called The Message. Todd Hunter at Atria bought the book from Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Agency, who described the title as a deep dive into the topic of race and how it’s discussed in this country. Poelle said the book examines “African-American communities in the U.S. to show how conversations around race are often misrepresented” and “offers practical solutions to improve them.”

Pegasus Turns Red with Montefiore
British author Simon Sebag Montefiore (The Romanovs) struck a North American rights agreement with Jessica Case at Pegasus Books for his new novel, Red Sky at Noon. Montefiore was represented in the deal by his U.K. agent, Georgina Capel, who has an eponymous shingle. Case said the novel focuses on “an epic cavalry ride across the grasslands outside Stalingrad during the darkest times” of World War II. A character who figured in two of the author’s previous novels, Benya Golden, is the central figure here, Case explained, appearing “amidst a cast of unforgettable characters” that includes Stalin’s daughter and “a penal battalion of Cossacks and convicts.” The novel is slated for January 2018.

Minotaur Buys Series by Anthropologist-Turned-Author
Debut author Ellison Cooper signed a three-book North American rights deal with Minotaur Books to pen a new crime series. The first book in the series, Caged, follows an FBI neuroscientist named Sayer Altair, who, as Minotaur put it, “hunts for evil in the deepest recesses of the human mind”; she is called upon to head up an investigation into a grisly murder in the nation’s capital. Cooper, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA and a law degree from Georgetown Law School, has done fieldwork and served as a murder investigator in the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.; the publisher said she drew from her “fascinating background” in writing the novel. Minotaur’s Leslie Gelbman won the book at auction from Amy Tannenbaum at the Jane Rotrosen Agency; rights to the book have also sold in, to date, Germany, Italy, and France.

Abbott’s Latest Goes to Katherine Tegen
For HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen Books imprint, Claudia Gabel acquired world rights to a new middle grade novel by Tony Abbott (The Copernicus Legacy) called Denis Ever After. Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic, who did the deal, said the novel, which is scheduled for summer 2018, is “a mystery about twin brothers, with a paranormal twist”; Denis Egan interrupts his “peaceful afterlife” to join his twin brother, Matt, on a road trip in the hopes of solving “the strange circumstances of his death,” while trying not to “jeopardize his chances in an eternity where forgetting is mandatory.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct print publication date for Everything We Keep.