Spanish rights to Nalo Hopkinson’s Locus Award-winning BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, to Apache Libros, by Maru de Montserrat at International Editors in association with Katie Shea Boutillier and Michael Curry.
French rights to USA Today bestselling author Kaira Rouda’s forthcoming BEST DAY EVER, to Charleston Noir, a new imprint of Leduc, at auction, by Victoria Villemur at Anna Jarota Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier.
German renewal rights to New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s CURSOR’S FURY and CAPTAIN’S FURY, the 3rd and 4th books in the Codex Alera series, to Blanvalet, by Bastian Schlück at the Thomas Schlück Agency in association with Jennifer Jackson.
German rights to NYT bestselling author Annika Martin’s “The Ski Mask,” to Lyx, by Julia Aumüller at Thomas Schlück Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier and Michael Curry.
Publishers Weekly: Horror author Khaw (Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef) brilliantly combines the self-aware, on-point tone of her gumshoe narrator with the invasive rhythm of the language of pulsing terrors. The drearily everyday is infused with Lovecraftian dread in a marvelously horrifying, tightly built novella that spins a satisfying tale while doing honor to both of its core sources. London PI John Persons, whose “stubbornly human” form disguises his horrifying true nature, reluctantly takes a job for 11-year-old Abel—killing the boy’s abusive stepfather—after hearing Abel’s rationale for choosing him: “You’re a monster too.” Persons’s name is apt: he is desperate to hold on to his humanity and his compassion, and he refuses to give in entirely to his inner urges, which want to “rip tear bite cut” in response to his target’s testosterone-fueled insults. His struggle hooks the reader, cutting deeply without losing the characteristic emotional distance of the noir style.