Donald Maass Literary Agency

Congratulations to James J. Butcher! DEAD MAN’S HAND debuts as a USA Today bestseller at #107.

Publishers Weekly: Empathy convincingly overcomes anxiety in this thoughtful, inventive, and impressively understated space opera from Divya, [who] filters the immensity of outer space through the lens of close personal relationships, crafting compassionate and responsible characters (whatever their physical forms may be) that will surely win over readers.

Alison Romig at Delacorte has bought, in a preempt, debut author Matthew Hubbard’s Last Boyfriends, a YA coming of age novel pitched as Heartstopper meets The First Wives Club, featuring three queer teenage boys in small-town Alabama who set out to get revenge on their ex-boyfriends and end up fighting their school’s anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives, and a second untitled book. Publication is slated for summer 2024; Katie Shea Boutillier brokered the deal for world English rights.

Library Journal: With their collection of 23 stories, previously published across the genre fiction landscape and one original to this volume, Khaw (Nothing but Blackened Teeth) presents a book that is a terrifying joy to read. Many of the entries invoke fairy tales and/or mythologies from all over the world. They are lyrical, brutal, and intensely unsettling and mostly center women—quite often as the monsters. While not long, the stories are immersive, with lush and detailed settings, intriguing characters, and […]

Finnish rights to Nebula and Hugo Award winner Martha Wells’ ALL SYSTEMS RED and ARTIFICIAL CONDITION, the first and second installments in the New York Times bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, to Hertta Kustannus Oy, by Michael Curry for Jennifer Jackson. French rights to Nnedi Okorafor’s NOOR, to ActuSF, by Megan Husain at Anna Jarota Agency, on behalf of Katie Shea Boutillier for Donald Maass. German rights to Lara Elena Donnelly’s ARMISTICE and AMNESTY, to Cross Cult in a two-book deal, […]

Publishers Weekly: Butcher, the son of bestseller Jim Butcher, puts a fun twist on hard-boiled urban fantasy thrills in his debut. Hero Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby is a failure who was scrubbed from the Auditor program of the Department of Unorthodox Affairs and now uses his meager magical talents to entertain children at Mighty Magic Donald’s Food Kingdom. Despite his paltry skill set, Grimsby is implicated in the murder of powerful Auditor Samantha Mansgraf, who, in her last moments, used her […]

Kirkus: A thoughtful meditation on some weighty questions wrapped in a well-drawn romance.

New York Times: For more high-intensity drama in contemporary romance, you can’t go wrong with a restaurant setting. Food, feelings, knives and fire! Which is to say: Kitchen-centered romances are great at exploring more than one kind of appetite, and Ruby Barrett’s THE ROMANCE RECIPE (Carina Press, 282 pp., paperback, $15.99) stands alongside favorites like Alexis Hall’s “Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake” and Solace Ames’s erotic romance gem “The Submission Gift.” Sophie Brunet is fresh off a cooking competition show […]

Kirkus: A snappy valentine to a bygone era . . . [with] a raft of twists and complications.  

Publishers Weekly: Readers will fall in love with this one.