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Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck by Amy Alkon

Jun 032014
 

Cover for Amy Alkon's Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say Fuck. Plain white cover with black and red text above a silverware setting of a knife, spoon, and fork. The fork's middle tine is longer than the rest, so it's flipping the bird.“Miss Manners with Fangs.” —LA Weekly 

We live in a world that’s very different from the one in which Emily Post came of age. Many of us who are nice (but who also sometimes say “f*ck”) are frequently at a loss for guidelines about how to be a good person who deals effectively with the increasing onslaught of rudeness we all encounter. 

To lead us out of the miasma of modern mannerlessness, science-based and bitingly funny syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon rips the doily off the manners genre and gives us a new set of rules for our twenty-first century lives. 

With wit, style, and a dash of snark, Alkon explains that we now live in societies too big for our brains, lacking the constraints on bad behavior that we had in the small bands we evolved in. Alkon shows us how we can reimpose those constraints, how we can avoid being one of the rude, and how to stand up to those who are. 

The River of Souls by Robert McCammon

May 312014
 

cover for The River of Souls by Robert McCammon. A green cover with a oval frame in the center, containing an image of two men rowing on a moonlit river, their backs to us, one wearing a tri-corner hat. Around the frame are a bloody knife and a noose.The year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. . Matthew Corbett, professional “problem solver,” has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball.

What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation. A sixteen-year-old girl has been stabbed to death on the grounds of a local plantation. The suspected killer is a slave who has escaped, with two family members, into the dubious protection of a nearby swamp. Troubled by certain discrepancies and determined to see some sort of justice done, Matthew joins the hunt for the runaway slaves. He embarks on a treacherous journey up the Solstice River, also known as the River of Souls. He discovers that something born of the swamp has joined the hunt… and is stalking the hunters with more than murder in mind.

What follows is a shattering ordeal encompassing snakes, alligators, exiled savages, mythical beasts, and ordinary human treachery. The journey up the River of Souls will test the limits of Matthew’s endurance, and lead him through a nightmarish passage to a confrontation with his past, and a moment that will alter his life forever.

May Translation Deals

May 312014
 

earthGerman rights to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s CONFLICT OF HONORS, AGENT OF CHANGE and CARPE DIEM, to Atlantis Verlag in a three-book deal, by Kathrin Nehm at Thomas Schueck Agency in association with Jennifer Jackson.

German ebook rights to Robert Sheckley’s DIMENSION OF MIRACLES, to Heyne, by Kathrin Nehm at Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Cameron McClure.

German rights to Brent Weeks’s novella PERFECT SHADOW, to Urban Hofstetter at Blanvalet, by Kathrin Nehm at Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Cameron McClure.

German ebook rights to Robert Sheckley’s IMMORTALITY, INC., THE STATUS CIVILIZATION, MINDSWAP and OPTIONS, to Heyne, by Kathrin Nehm at Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Cameron McClure.

Spanish rights to Chuck Wendig’s BLACKBIRDS, to Hidra, by Isabel Monteagudo at International Editors’, in association with Cameron McClure on behalf of Stacia Decker.

May Subsidiary Rights Deals

May 312014
 

a pair of black ear budsThe 1955 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel ANDERSONVILLE by MacKinlay Kantor, to Steve Feldberg at Audible, by Cameron McClure.

Shirley Jackson Award Nominees 2013

May 132014
 

Cover for American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett. A photo of a "typical" American, two-story house, with a drive way, and trees in the background, with a bolt of lightning striking from above. The whole thing is in photo negative, though, so the lightning is black and the rest is very pale, colored from top to bottom in a gradient of blue to pink.Congratulations to Robert Jackson Bennett on the nomination of American Elsewhere for a 2013 Shirley Jackson Award!

Some places are too good to be true.

Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. 

In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother’s home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother’s past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different…

Prix Imaginales 2014 nominee

May 122014
 

French cover for Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death (Qui a peur de la mort?). A stark black and white illustrated cover where birds, crocodiles, and camels outline a skull, with two people's profiles as the skull's eyes, a tree and a woman wearing a buzzard hat for the nose, and 7 silhouettes journeying across a stark desert makes the teeth.Congratulations to Nnedi Okorafor on the nomination of Who Fears Death for the Prix Imaginales 2014!

In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means “Who Fears Death?” in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny-to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself.

April Subsidiary Rights Deals

Apr 302014
 

a pair of black ear budsWinner of the Writers of the Future Award, Randy Henderson’s FINN FANCY NECROMANCY, plus the next two books in the series, to Adrienne Lombardo at Brilliance, in a three-book deal, by Cameron McClure.

Deal: MacKinlay Kantor

Apr 222014
 

Photo of author MacKinlay KantorMacKinlay Kantor’s ANDERSONVILLE, the 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning story of the Andersonville Fortress and its use as a concentration camp-like prison by the South during the Civil War, to Phil Budnick at Plume, for republication in Winter 2015, to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the book’s original publication, by Cameron McClure.

2014 Writers of the Future Award

Apr 182014
 

Photo of author Randy HendersonDMLA congratulates Randy Henderson, author of the upcoming Finn Fancy Necromancy, on winning the 2014 Writers of the Future award for his story “Memories Bleed Beneath the Mask!”

Review: River of Souls by Robert McCammon

Mar 112014
 

mccammon-theriverofsoulsPublishers Weekly: Macabre surprises abound in McCammon’s entertaining fifth Matthew Corbett historical (after 2012’s Providence Rider). In the summer of 1703, while on a visit to Charles Town in the Carolina colony, “problem-solver” Matthew and Magnus Muldoon, his “big as a mountain” new friend, join a manhunt for three escaped slaves, one of whom has been accused of murdering a plantation owner’s daughter (though Matthew has uncovered evidence that implicates one of the hunters). Continue reading »

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