World Fantasy Award nominee Yoon Ha Lee’s story collection, to include the current short fiction from the Hexarachate setting of NINEFOX GAMBIT along with new previously unpublished stories, to be published in 2018, sold to Jonathan Oliver at Solaris via Jennifer Jackson.
Joy Peskin at Farrar, Straus Children’s has acquired award-winning playwright Mariah MacCarthy’s Squad, about a cheerleader who suddenly becomes alienated by her best friend and cheer squad and is set out to discover who she is without the things that always defined her. It’s planned to publish in Fall 2018; Katie Shea Boutillier of Donald Maass Literary Agency brokered the deal for world rights.
Simon Pulse has pre-empted, with Liesa Abrams to edit, world English rights to Feral Youth, a novel with 10 authors edited by Shaun David Hutchinson, in the same vein as his previous Violent Ends. The book is a modern YA retelling of The Canterbury Tales, set during the last three days at a survival camp for “troubled youth” with 10 teens trying to win $100 by telling the best story, with stories from Brandy Colbert, Tim Floreen, Ellen Hopkins, Justina Ireland, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Stephanie Kuehn, E.C. Myers, Marieke Nijkamp, and Robin Talley. Fall 2017 is the projected pub date.
Hugo Award-winning editor and writer for Pitchfork, NPR, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker Jason Heller’s STRANGE STARS, about the massive influence that science fiction has had on popular music, particularly during the 1970s boom of both, to Ryan Harrington at Melville House, by Jennifer Jackson.
Eliza Maxwell’s self-published first novel, THE GRAVE TENDER, a hauntingly beautiful story set in a claustrophobic small town in Texas about a broken family where no one is who they seem, and one woman willing to go to any lengths to set things right, and her next novel, THE UNREMEMBERED GIRL, a twisted love story set in the brutal woods of east Texas about a gentle soul who falls for a mysterious abandoned feral girl, until the strength of their love turns against them in dangerous ways, to Miriam Juskowicz at Lake Union Publishing, in a two-book deal, by Katie Shea Boutillier.
Brent Weeks returns to his Night Angel series (Way of Shadows, Shadows Edge, Beyond the Shadows) in a new volume to be delivered in 2019, to Tim Holman at Orbit/Hachette via Donald Maass.
An annotated edition of the iconic DC comics series Watchmen (1986-87), written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons, to be created by master annotator Leslie S. Klinger (The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft), sold to DC Comics by Donald Maass.
Leena Likitalo’s debut THE FIVE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON and a sequel, magically re-imagining the fall of the Romanov dynasty from the perspective of five sisters in mortal peril, to Claire Eddy at Tor.com Publishing, in a two-book deal, for publication in summer 2017, by Cameron McClure.
Molly Tanzer’s CREATURES OF WILL AND TEMPER, a Victorian-era urban fantasy pitched as inspired by THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, in which an epee-fencing enthusiast and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only her skill with a blade standing between them and certain death, to John Joseph Adams Books, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2017, by Cameron McClure.
UK/Commonwealth rights to 10 books in Emily Brightwell’s ongoing Mrs. Jeffries Mysteries series (#14-23) to Constable & Robinson, by Meg Davis at Ki Agency, on behalf of Donald Maass.