Adult Newsletter: September 2023

Up And Coming For Submission

FICTION

One family. Four generations. Lillian has a secret. Ryan has an addiction. But then they have a daughter—and she changes everything. Ryan and Lillian Bright build a life around their young love, fledgling art gallery in Texas, and longed-for baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching her parents’ marriage fracture. Kendi, a boy from their apartment complex, is one of the only people Georgette can count on. When sudden tragedy shocks them all, Georgette distances herself from both Ryan and Kendi. Then, Lillian’s son surfaces, leading adult Georgette toward discoveries about her parents as well as decisions that come to a head when Ryan is diagnosed with cirrhosis. A family as tenderly explosive as a Texas sunset, the Brights wrangle addiction, loss, and the audacity of forgiveness as Georgette learns to reconcile the life she inherited with the love she wants. THE BRIGHT YEARS, by debut novelist Sarah Damoff, is an upmarket fiction for fans of Ann Napolitano, Ann Patchett, and the television series This Is Us.

THE WOMAN WHO WAITED is a gripping page-turning novel that reimagines the intimate story of Camilla Parker Bowles, who overcame relentless obstacles—including the heartache of a constantly philandering first husband she adored—to marry a prince. Called “The Rottweiler” by Princess Diana, as Prince Charles’ not-so-secret mistress, Camilla was once England’s most reviled woman, the victim of constant tabloid barbs. This did not stop a besotted Charles from loving and ultimately marrying this warm, quick-witted woman and. as King, making her his unlikely yet increasingly popular Queen. Now in the skilled hands of internationally best-selling author Sally Koslow, whose Another Side of Paradise recreated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tender love affair with Sheilah Graham, the tumultuous scandals, struggles and triumphs of Queen Camilla are recounted from her point of view. This is fiction inspired by truth about a gutsy woman who ultimately got her man…and the crown.

For four generations, the Chin family have been Brooklynites, starting with Chin Koon Lai, whose frustrations with China’s political upheaval and ambitions for a better life drive him away from his Cantonese village and out of poverty to the streets of 1920s Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he founds the restaurant LIVONIA CHOW MEIN in the predominantly Jewish enclave. His son Richard longs for acceptance from his Jewish peers and his own chance at the American Dream, but while struggling to establish himself, he scapegoats his Black and Puerto Rican neighbors, who are increasingly making up the neighborhood’s demographics. Richard’s son, Jason, throws himself into the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, finding himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification and decamping to Park Slope. And in the 21st century, Jason’s half-white daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist who longs to be perceived as a “person of color” but must confront a troubling family history of anti-Blackness and dig to the bottom of the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the family’s restaurant building burned to the ground. Joining together the present and the past is the activist and artist Letitia Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that deadly fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the neighborhood of Brownsville and the fundamental rights of its residents. Abigail Savitch-Lew’s debut, LIVONIA CHOW MEIN, is an expansive epic of family history and political upheaval that contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia—and asks what it would take for us to truly share the land. It is a story of immigration, gentrification, failed urban policy, and the true nature of community. Intricately woven, it calls to mind the stunning urban tapestry of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong alongside the deeply realized intergenerational family history of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. It is an extraordinary debut from an astonishing new talent. (Please note: this project is represented by Jim McCarthy.)

One fateful summer, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, six lives intersect in the most unexpected ways. Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives—a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless. Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these six strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for. At its core, CAT’S PEOPLE by Tanya Guerrero is about love, found family, community, and the bonds humans form with their cat companions. This feel-good book full of kindness, warmth, humor and a cast full of quirky characters is perfect for fans of Emma Straub, Bonnie Garmus, and Clare Pooley. (Please note: this project is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.)

Celebrated pastry chef Claire Charles thought she could have it all—the devoted husband, the bestselling cookbook and de Lune, the wildly successful bakery that inspires a line around the block each day. Instead, she’s just hit the six-month anniversary of her divorce being finalized, still reeling from her husband’s cheating, a terminal case of writer’s block, and the realization that the only baby in her future is the business that she’s held in her arms for so many years. Her best friend, Zoe, pressures—er, encourages—her to say yes more, especially to re-entering the dating world again. At forty-three, Claire isn’t so sure about navigating the landscape of apps, meet-cutes, and comically disastrous first dates, but she forges a path to her next great love, all while struggling to shake the muscle memory of her marriage and the relentless lure of her ex. Just when she begins to wonder if her life might be best spent on her own, she unexpectedly connects with Zack, the kind-eyed father of six-year-old Hannah. As the three of them plot a course through life after divorce, Claire realizes that “having it all” might look completely different than she ever imagined. CLAIRE CHARLES SAYS YES by Jess Turner is the funny, romantic, moving story of finding oneself in the act of beginning again. (Please note: this project is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.)

Clementine Chase doesn’t do failure. When someone doesn’t like her, she busts out the baked goods. When life seems crappy, she wears rainbow sweaters. And when one of her rich celebrity clients asks her to find them a $30,000 Wassily chair or an antique Italian porcelain vase, this vintage furniture dealer always delivers the goods—with a bright, happy smile on her face. But failure might be an option when Clementine’s most demanding, star client asks her to do the impossible: Get her an ultra-rare makeup vanity. A vanity that just so happens to be owned by the original designer’s not-so-charming, smoldering hot painter grandson, Henry Wolfgang Fischer. But after tattooed-Los-Angeles grumpy meets Southern-belle sunshine, Henry says he’ll only consider selling the vanity through Clementine… if she helps him renovate the haunted family estate it’s sitting in first. As Clementine steps up to skim coat the crumbling Fischer legacy, she learns that Henry’s no-B.S. attitude is his way of forcing her to speak her mind on everything from home renovations to the kind of woman she wants to be—and that by making everyone like her, nobody really knows her. Perfect for fans of Ali Hazelwood’s witty feminism and Rachel Lynn Solomon’s thoughtful approach to mental health, THE VANITY PROJECT by Elle Pond is a debut romance that explores how intergenerational trauma haunts families. (Please note: this project is represented by Ann Leslie Tuttle.)

NON-FICTION

On February 26, 1870, New Yorkers awoke to find that, much to their surprise, their city suddenly had a subway. An eccentric inventor named Alfred Beach had built it—in total secrecy. Beach constructed the subway sub rosa because New York’s notorious political boss, William “Boss” Tweed, had denied him permission to build it licitly. Tweed planned on building an elevated railway, and he wouldn’t countenance a competitor underground. But Beach would not be deterred. He rented the basement of a building at the corner of Broadway and Warren Street and furtively bored a block-long, eight-foot-diameter tunnel 25 feet underneath Broadway, moving the dirt away in horse-drawn wagons under the cover of darkness. A giant fan at one end of the tunnel propelled a single, 18-passenger rail car. Beach dreamed of extending this “pneumatic tunnel” the length of Manhattan, “from the Battery to the Harlem River.” UNDERGROUND GENIUS: HOW ALFRED BEACH BUILT NEW YORK CITY’S FIRST SUBWAY—IN SECRET by award-winning author and journalist Matthew Algeo is the first book about Alfred Beach and his historic subway. It’s a classic story of good versus evil, pitting the bookish genius Beach, a man who literally never took a vacation, against the oafish tyrant Tweed, the exemplar of political corruption. It’s also the story of one of the most astounding feats of engineering in U.S. history: the surreptitious creation of the nation’s first operational subway. 

For Brian Boitano, Olympic figure skating champion and celebrated author, a cocktail is as much a work of art as an intriguing science project.  When he’s mixing, he measures, shakes, tastes, and shares, returning again and again until he—and those he shares with—find his concoctions over-the-top delicious. Brian is an inspiring cook, too, with his roots in Italy, and loves to combine Italian tastes with his imaginative drinks. In BRIAN AND ICE: BRIAN BOITANO’S COCKTAILS AND FOOD, Brian offers cocktails that top the podium at his Boitano's Lounges, as well as favorites he serves to friends and family, along with simple dishes that enhance them. His cocktails and his food come from the heart, and his goal is to inspire everyone, from novice to expert, through easy-to-follow recipes, tips, stories, and a pantry that ensures the best cocktails and dishes are always at hand. Brian’s warm, funny, and engaging persona comes through in the cocktail recipes and food combinations, as well as in the entertaining narrative.

What happens when oil tycoons, Hall of Fame talent, civil rights pioneers, drunks, murderers and football geniuses try to build the NFL’s first franchise in the south? You get A BIG MESS IN TEXAS, the miraculous, disastrous, 1952 Dallas Texans, the worst team, the craziest season and the greatest untold story in NFL history. Bankrolled by the youngest millionaire in America, the Texans’ diverse roster was a groundbreaking, riotous mix of hard-drinkers, loveable misfits, trailblazers and future stars, including George Taliaferro, the first Black player drafted in the NFL, and Hall of Famers Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan (of Miller Lite fame). In the waning, wild west days of the NFL, before television turned the game into a corporation, the Texans dealt with rattlesnakes, grasshoppers (the drink), groupies, and the Ku Klux Klan. After a string of blowout losses, house bombings, bounced checks and carousing that would make Jimmy Johnson’s Cowboys blush, the NFL evacuated the team to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where the ragtag Texans went out in a blaze of glory with a Thanksgiving Day miracle, against George Halas’s famed Chicago Bears, still considered one of the greatest upsets in NFL history. A year later, in a secret twist, the bad news Texans were reborn into NFL royalty as the Baltimore Colts. Now, ESPN’s David Fleming (Breaker Boys, Who’s Your Founding Father?) brings the Dallas Texans, and the most outrageous, influential, and entertaining season in sports history, roaring back to life with A BIG MESS IN TEXAS.

The past century has seen a global expansion of free speech. U.S. courts broadly interpreted the First Amendment. Freedom of expression was enshrined in international human rights law. And a third wave of democratization went hand in hand with freedom of expression and toppled military dictatorships, communism, and white supremacy worldwide. But political, technological, and economic changes have placed this freedom on the brink of collapse. In THE FUTURE OF FREE SPEECH: WHY WE’RE IN A SPEECH RECESSION AND HOW TO REVERSE IT, two of the world’s leading experts on free speech Jeff Kosseff (associate professor at the U.S. Naval Academy) and Jacob Mchangama (research professor at Vanderbilt University and founder and executive director of the Future of Free Speech Project.) examine these global threats. Kosseff and Mchangama explore the global free speech recession and provide a roadmap for policymakers, internet companies, and the public to slow down or reverse the contraction of free speech rights and the underlying cultural commitment to this freedom. While the world faces novel and substantial problems that open the door to censorship and oppression, Kosseff and Mchangama argue that it is possible to address these challenges without backing away from a global commitment to freedom of speech.

Fact: Every stadium is haunted. There is something out there in stadiums for sure, but who’s to say what? It isn’t cute and chummy, like Field of Dreams, nor is it necessarily terrifying either. Like any place in history, a stadium tells the tales of many souls, some in the present, and some from the past. From players, fans, and employees, there are a million tales of life and death and triumph and defeat. Did you know the deaths of twelve people in a baseball stadium transformed the construction industry and moved us into the era of steel and concrete?  Or how a stadium became both a killing field and ground zero for an important chapter in the cold war?  Nor is western civilization understood without knowing how gladiators fighting to the death for the amusement of their spectators changed the trajectory of history.  STADIUM GHOSTS THAT CHANGED OUR WORLD by Matthew Kastel, the stadium manager for the iconic Oriole Park and a past president of the Stadium Manager’s Association, takes readers behind the scenes of stadiums that forever impacted the world we live in.

Inflation rages. Crime is rising. China poses an existential threat. Four planes are hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in a coordinated action. Abortion rights take center stage at the Supreme Court. Black lives are under attack. Capitol bombers are on trial. Mass arrests are ordered as protesters take to the streets.  A scheming, paranoid president seeking reelection battles the press and attempts to subvert not just the political order but the rule of law itself. History has come full circle. This was the SUMMER OF ’71: FIVE MONTHS THAT CHANGED AMERICA, the last summer of Richard Nixon’s presidency before Watergate. Award-winning author and investigative journalist John A. Jenkins uses newly available documents and oral histories to vividly recreate, day by day, the chaos of the time, and the last clear chance that politicians and policy makers had to set America on a different course. The summer of 1971 was a scene-setter; issues and controversies that beset America came front and center.  A new president grappled with them, and, in that moment, solutions seemed possible, but would soon slip away amid historic scandals. Now, historians continue to reconsider the Nixon presidency and the opportunities he seized or lost, but no author has ever closely examined the events of this time, an operatic season of hope and despair. Jenkins digs deep. 

In its final report, the January 6 Committee presented Donald Trump’s willingness to spread “multiple conspiracy theories” as evidence of his involvement in a real conspiracy to overturn the result of the 2020 election. Conspiracy theories are increasingly seen as a major threat to democracy, yet they remain an elusive phenomenon. “Conspiracy theories are like pornography,” writes Nicolas Guilhot: “we know one when we see one, but they are frustratingly difficult to define.” In his path-breaking book A STORY ONE TELLS: CONSPIRACY THEORIES, LIBERALISM, AND THE END OF HISTORY, Guilhot offers a sweeping history of the idea of “conspiracy theory” from its little-known origins in Cold War liberalism to our era of “fake news” and QAnon drops. In a series of vivid portraits including revolutionaries, New York intellectuals, spies, philosophers and other colorful characters, he shows how this idea was associated with much of what liberals feared: totalitarian fantasies, messianic politics, “populism,” religious superstitions, and even psychopathologies. Guilhot argues that by retreating from its earlier commitment to progress, liberalism has paved the way for conspiracy theories. Provocative and sure to be controversial, the book will be a must-read.

Erin Wade is a bestselling author, award-winning restaurateur, and the world’s leading expert on macaroni and cheese.  Her work on business culture has been published in The Washington Post, and covered in Forbes and The New York Times, and she was named one of thirty-five “World Changing Women” by Conscious Company magazine. WORK: A LOVE STORY is Wade’s uniquely individual book about her quest to fall in love with her work, and how she did so by leaving a cushy job as a lawyer to create a wildly successful restaurant dedicated to her favorite comfort food, and build a unique, feminist work culture there that helped transform the restaurant industry.  Using funny, approachable anecdotes, the book includes tools and take-aways for women to build careers filled with greater connection, meaning, and financial success.  Wade shares the business lessons that helped her sell millions of dollars in cheesy carbs.  More importantly, she digs into what was wrong with the workplaces that she and so many others, have toiled in—namely, that they are built on outdated, masculine values. She discovers that the secret to building something better is to embrace her own feminine values and leadership to form a one-of-a-kind work culture. WORK: A LOVE STORY has the approachable voice of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed and business lessons similar to those featured in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.  It makes the exploration of how to build a great career and company as warm and enjoyable as a bowl of macaroni and cheese. (Please note: this project is represented by Stacey Glick)

Jane Austen—long imagined as literature’s most polite grand dame—has kept her stature as the greatest of novelists, while gradually shedding a reputation for being profoundly prim. Today’s Austen is just as likely to be imagined as wild as she is mild. As recently as a decade ago, some shock value was attached to seeing her name paired with zombie attacks, gin advertisements, and racy erotica. No longer. A turn away from yoking Austen so firmly to propriety may say more about us than about her. But is there any solid evidence for this shift in her reputation? The answer is a qualified yes. Jane once comically quipped in private letter to her sister Cassandra, “If I am a wild Beast, I cannot help it. It is not my own fault.” What exactly did she mean by calling herself a “wild beast”? And what ought to count as “wild” for Austen, then or now?  In this lively book, Austen scholar, Guggenheim Fellow, NEH Public Scholar, and author Devoney Looser walks with us on the wild side of the author’s life, writings, and family, before turning to those who’ve gone wild over her, in disdain and admiration, from Charlotte Brontë and Mark Twain to Winston Churchill and Toni Morrison. WILD FOR AUSTEN takes its readers on zany and unexpected adventures, uncovering delightful new proof of Austen’s prodigious powers at the 250th anniversary of her birth: December 16, 2025. (Please note: this project is represented by Stacey Glick.)

As nations around the world grapple with the future of art restitution, POSSESSION, from award-winning biographer Margot Kahn, mixes memoir, legal drama, and art history to tell the story of Camille Pissarro, the Jewish painter, and his 1898 masterpiece that saved the lives of a Jewish family during World War II. The story begins with Lilly Cassirer, who sold a Pissarro painting to the Nazis in exchange for visas to leave Germany in 1939. Lilly fled to Cleveland, Ohio, where she became friends with Kahn’s family of Polish Jews. The painting was just one of two million the Nazis looted, but for Lilly—and for Kahn’s family who, like so many immigrants, escaped with nothing but their lives—the Pissarro’s theft was about something much larger than a single possession. In 2000, when Lilly’s grandson discovered the painting hanging in a museum in Spain, he turned to Kahn’s uncle for legal advice before embarking on a 20-year battle that would take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In luminous prose, Kahn winds the story of the painting’s post-war disappearance and the fight for its return around the story of her own artistic family’s escape from Europe and Pissarro’s life and work, illustrating the ways in which injustice is unburdened by community, possession is power, and beauty binds us to the world. Margot Kahn holds an MFA from Columbia University and is co-editor of two anthologies, most recently the ABA Indie Paperback national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire. (Please note: this project is represented by Jessica Papin.)

From the moment in her high school chemistry lab when her titration turned from clear to pink, Dr. Debbie Gale Mitchell fell in love with the science of color and light. What began as a curiosity about the chemistry of color became a career in spectroscopy—the subfield of physical chemistry that studies the interaction of light and matter. The beauty of pigments, color, gemstones, nature, and art can be understood through the lens of spectroscopy. Thanks to spectroscopy, we can (quite literally) shine a light on molecules and collect information about their chemical structure; it allows us to “see” into the otherwise unseeable depths of an atom or molecule often with quite beautiful results.  But as a woman navigating academic science, Mitchell soon discovered that her beloved field is also beautifully traumatic: exploding sample tubes, ill-fitting (and thus accident-causing) PPE, gatekeeping, and casual misogyny. In SPECTRAUMATIZED: HOW LIGHT REVEALS THE CHEMISTRY OF OUR WORLD, Dr. Mitchell combines personal narrative, lively science writing and hand-drawn illustrations to illuminate the singular field of spectroscopy and the all-too- common challenges of being a woman and mother in STEM.  Readers will understand why certain compounds make vibrant pigments, how spectroscopy can be used to identify a suspicious white powder, and how the reassuring hum of lab equipment can lull a baby to sleep.  Dr. Debbie Gale Mitchell, a magnetic resonance spectroscopist and chemistry professor at the University of Denver has written more than twenty peer-review articles. You can find her on Twitter/X at @heydebigale. (Please note: this project is represented by Jessica Papin.)

There's a good chance you unknowingly participated in the largest mass chemical-exposure experiment in human history –one that you’ve probably never heard of.  ELEMENT 82: THE SECRET HISTORY (AND POSSIBLE FUTURE) OF LEAD tells the hidden story behind humankind's disastrous romance with our most widely distributed neurotoxic element. The Flint Water Crisis revealed the depth of our entanglement with toxic lead—it laces our air, water, wildlife, food, and bodies—but we've been exposing ourselves to lead, and suffering the consequences, for millennia. Nevertheless, lead now threatens more people than at any time in human history. In a book that blends cutting-edge research, investigative journalism, and character-driven storytelling, Dr. Aaron Reuben, environmental neuropsychologist and award-winning science writer, uncovers the hidden role that lead has played in human history and lays bare the hundreds of ways lead is harming our health and the health of our planet today. Why is lead believed to have played a role in the fall of the Roman Empire? Is lead the true “criminal element” behind the crime epidemics of the 1980s? Where are the estimated 800 million children exposed to high levels of lead today, and what can we do to better protect them, and ourselves, from this ever-present element? Dr. Reuben is a forthcoming assistant professor of psychology and environmental health at the University of Virginia. His writing has appeared at Mother Jones, VICE, the Atlantic, and Scientific American. He holds the Richard Merritt Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence in Science Journalism and is a recent recipient of the Cozzarelli Prize of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Please note: this project is represented by Jessica Papin.)

In 1978, ten-year-old Vigil Chime relocated from Lagos, Nigeria, to Houston with her mother and four brothers. Vigil’s mother was the victim of severe domestic violence at the hands of her alcoholic and abusive father, a prominent Nigerian architect, and Vigil had long prayed to get out of the country by any means necessary. But while Vigil’s family settled in a predominantly Black neighborhood, she and her siblings could not understand why they were so despised and maltreated by the other children, just because they were from Africa. The harrowing experience would cement on her impressionable mind a dislike of African Americans that lasted until she became a middle school teacher in Harlem in the mid-1990s. Through teaching and nurturing her students, she learned to forgive the wounds of the past and heal herself. A graduate of Columbia University’s Film Program and the winner of the 2017 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for her screenplay “Bring Back Girl,” Vigil Chime’s I KNOW WHY: A MEMOIR recounts in blistering prose—sometimes heart-rending, sometimes humorous, and always insightful—how her family’s American Dream turned into a nightmare, and how Vigil took the long road back to redemption. It will appeal to readers of assimilation stories and memoirs by Reyna Grande, Firoozeh Dumas and Gary Shteyngart (Please note: this project is represented by John Rudolph.)

“Victories in sport do more to cement the nation than a hundred political slogans.” This was the pep talk Russian athletes heard from their new president, Vladimir Putin, when they set off to the 2000 Summer Olympics. And so for more than two decades, Putin has used sports like his Soviet predecessors to stoke nationalism at home, boost prestige abroad, and cement his position as leader. THE MOSCOW PLAYBOOK: HOW RUSSIA USED, ABUSED, AND TRANSFORMED SPORTS IN THE HUNT FOR GOLD is the first book to fully examine the intersection of Russian sports and power, from the dominant Soviet teams of past Olympics to recent doping scandals and international sanctions. With new research from Olympic archives, records of the Soviet bloc and current Russian media, historian Bruce Berglund shows how Moscow’s leaders have defied the rules of the game for decades as the world’s governing bodies turned a blind eye. Featuring oligarchs, sportocrats, and famous athletes from Olga Korbut to Alex Ovechkin, THE MOSCOW PLAYBOOK is a timely investigation into the gears of power, nationalism, and money that drive the Russian sports machine. A three-time Fulbright scholar, Berglund has written about world sports for the Washington Post and CNN Opinion, and he has been interviewed by NPR, The Athletic, and national media in Canada, Europe, and Australia. (Please note: this project is represented by John Rudolph.)

Forensic psychologist Samantha Stein, PsyD, is a real-life Mindhunter, tasked with evaluating serious sex offenders under California’s Sexually Violent Predator law. Stein’s literary true crime narrative, EVIL AT OUR TABLE: EVALUATING THE MONSTERS WHO LIVE AMONG US, is the only first-person account by a treatment provider and evaluator of these felons. Having served out their sentences, they believe they’ll be released like other criminals, often unaware, before Stein faces them—alone in a prison interview room—that she could recommend they be committed indefinitely to a state mental hospital if she believes they might commit another crime upon release. In riveting, immediate prose, EVIL takes readers inside grim penitentiaries with Dr. Stein to sit across a table from the offenders, and takes us inside her own mind, showing how she distinguishes a pathological sadist who needs to be locked up from a person unlikely to offend again. For viewers of Law & Order: SVU, the longest-running live-action prime-time series, readers of John Douglas’s Mindhunter and Alex Maarzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body, Stein’s Evil is a behind-the-scenes view of how the law works and the gripping story of a strong and vulnerable female, spouse, and parent of three facing danger and human darkness. A columnist for PsychologyToday.com, Dr. Stein has had more than 2.2 million reads of her work, gains 30K reads per quarter, and speaks frequently at conferences and on podcasts. Her story in The Guardian garnered 300,000 reads. (Please note: this project is represented by Leslie Meredith.)

WHEN IT’S DARK ENOUGH YOU CAN SEE THE STARS is a beautifully braided narrative by author and PBS documentarian Robert Perkins about his five-week solo canoe journey in the Arctic north of Yellowknife. A haunting story of life and loss, grief and joy, WHEN IT’S DARK ENOUGH YOU CAN SEE THE STARS is a pilgrimage into the interior of self as much as a travelogue through a fascinating remote landscape, a vision quest reminiscent of the classics The Snow Leopard and First You Have to Row a Little Boat. This journey, the most recent of 16 previous trips on the same river, forms the narrative’s main strand. A second strand weaves in vivid childhood memories, including his incarceration on the locked ward of a mental hospital at age nineteen. The final strand is the story of losing his first wife to cancer, and nineteen years later, his second wife and her daughter in a plane crash in Kenya. With grace and power, Perkins writes about his journey through the Arctic tundra, reveling in the mysteries of the natural world. Along with his gear, pared to essentials for the wilderness, he carries the kind of urgent personal conflict that besets reader and explorer alike. Riven with grief, Perkins creates a moving meditation on being human and becoming whole again. Anyone who has lost someone will find resonance in his adversity. The grace is in the prose, the power in the story. (Please note: this project is represented by Leslie Meredith.)

Writing in the signature format of her acclaimed Conversations with Birds, naturalist and filmmaker Priyanka Kumar blends stirring personal narratives with immersive journeys and robust natural history in her new book, THE LIGHT BETWEEN APPLE TREES. A lyrical microhistory of apples, which are closely connected to the history of humankind, LIGHT recounts the joys of exploring an array of apples and orchards in gorgeously descriptive language that has been compared to that of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold. Over half of the sixteen thousand apple varieties once found in the U.S. have disappeared, along with their forest-like orchards, supplanted by monoculture, a profound cultural and ecological loss. The blighted fate of apples and trees mirrors our own natural illiteracy; we no longer read the land like a storybook and miss the essential wisdom the land once gave us. Painting a singular map of our apple past and future, of wild apple trees, old-growth forests, and diverse historic orchards, Kumar shines a light on how we can reenter forgotten landscapes, read the land, and restore our broken relationship with nature. Kumar takes readers on expeditions from her home in the American Southwest, to the Pacific Northwest and around the country, and to the very birthplace of apples in Kazakhstan, meeting farmers, scientists, and searchers and rescuers of lost apples. A call to action, LIGHT stretches the hearts and minds of readers toward deeper ways of engaging with nature and the land. (Please note: this project is represented by Leslie Meredith.)

THE EMPTY PATH: FINDING FULFILLMENT THROUGH THE RADICAL ART OF LESSENING offers a practical roadmap for applying the core Buddhist teaching of emptiness to your daily life. With a Marie Kondo-like decluttering treatment for the mind, and a fresh approach to meditation and personal renewal, Zen teacher and well-being entrepreneur Billy Wynne reveals how to find fulfillment in work, play, and love through the radical art of lessening. Living in an era of collective addiction to more-ness, we tend to put faith into accruing success, relationships, and wealth to find gratification. By unabashedly focusing on the typically neglected Buddhist teaching of emptiness, Wynne disrupts this trend and provides readers with an alternate path that leads them to embrace their inherent wholeness and sufficiency. Unlike other self-help programs, THE EMPTY PATH doesn’t ask readers to do or be more than they are to find joy and peace. Drawing from his long practice of Zen and his entrepreneurial success, as well as from his family’s near disintegration and personal recovery, THE EMPTY PATH provides mindfulness practices and clear instruction, guided personal reflections and an unveiling of the pitfalls and passages that Wynne himself met along this path. Certified under Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, Wynne teaches at the Zen Center of Denver. Throughout his career in health and well-being, Wynne built a network of thousands of leader-influencers and international recognition through launching one of the only alcohol-free bars in the world, Awake. (Please note: this project is represented by Leslie Meredith.)

Robyn Shumer was eight years old the first time she stepped on a scale and silently prayed that she wouldn’t be “fat.” It was summer 1982 and she had already begun secretly dieting and exercising. While her friends played Barbies, Robyn was at war with herself, her body, and food. The next year, the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, would be front page news after Karen Carpenter died from it. Soon, Robyn, too, would be fighting for her life, one of the youngest girls to be diagnosed with anorexia in the U.S. Now, two-time New York Times bestselling author Natasha Stoynoff collaborates with Shumer in BONES: MY LIFE OF LOATHING, HEALING, FOOD & LOVE, the tragicomic, roller-coaster story of her lifelong battle with—and triumph over—the crippling disorder and her journey to female-body empowerment. Written with drama and humor, BONES is an honest, first-person account that takes us inside the emotional, mental, physical, and social world of an anorexic, from childhood to adulthood, through forty years while the message to girls and women stays stubbornly the same: thinner is the winner. With crucial information from experts, BONES engages and informs, helping those who suffer from eating disorders and the people who love them. For the last two decades Shumer has worked in mental and physical health including a role as the Global Director of Johnson & Johnson's "Mental Health Diplomats" and National Ambassador for the non-profit eating disorder group, "Project HEAL."  (Please note: this project is represented by Leslie Meredith.)

What does it mean to build a life when the only reflection you see is in things that hate you? In UNCANNY VALLEY GIRLS, a memoir in essays by Zefyr Lisowski, horror movies are used to understand not just a life filled with violence but the necessity of love and care as well. In these wide-ranging essays, Lisowski incorporates nuanced critiques of movies spanning from The Ring to The Wolf-Man. Examining moments of stillness and love in otherwise intense movies to understand similar moments of care in a trauma-filled life, UNCANNY VALLEY GIRLS uses these extreme movies to emphasize the importance of building community even when further hurt is guaranteed. Overflowing with moments of queer joy, disability justice, and trans kinship, and spanning a life from a trans childhood in the depths of the Great Dismal Swamp to an adult stay in a locked psychiatric unit in New York City, Lisowski argues that scary movies—a genre where she first felt seen as a disabled trans woman—can be a way to express love too. Affirming without being anodyne, UNCANNY VALLEY GIRLS is written for horror fans, queers finding themselves, and spooky girls everywhere. Lisowski is a Hunter College MFA graduate, a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop Alumnus, a 2022 Queer|Art Fellow, and serves as poetry co-editor for the Whiting Award-winning Apogee Journal. (Please note: this project is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.)

One might guess that Vietnamese refugee Thao Ha represents the model minority ethos.  She holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and is a college professor, published author on Vietnamese in the South, filmmaker, philanthropist, and community leader. But during her youth in the 1990s, she was a member of the North Chink Posse, a notorious Houston Vietnamese gang. After being shot during a pool hall brawl, she left gang life, but she never forgot those she left behind—including her first love, Vu Tran, who was sentenced to life in a Texas state prison in 1997. LOVE LETTERS TO THE DIRTY SOUTH is an epistolary memoir written to Vu, examining what it means to love, long for and lose someone incarcerated, as Ha processes her grief after losing Vu to cancer in 2020.  It explores the broader social structures of refugee trauma, mass incarceration, and prison injustice through a very human lens and Ha’s own search for identity and love. In this moving, tender memoir, Ha details what it feels like to be just another statistic of the prison industrial complex and how unconditional love attempts to navigate, resist and thwart a dehumanizing system. (Please note: this project is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.)

On the picturesque island of Jamaica in 1981, two pregnant women said tearful goodbyes to their lovers who weren’t allowed in the maternity ward and waddled into Percy Junor Hospital. If not for the meeting, the women’s lives would have remained as far apart as a saint is from a sinner, but the two women bonded and each gave birth respectively to a boy, Ontonio, and a girl, Kadine, two days later. The mothers’ relationship evolved into annual summer visits before Kadine’s parents left her with family for work in America. A human trafficker hired by her parents eventually brought 10-year-old Kadine and her siblings to the U.S. But, in the tumultuous years that followed, Kadine experienced physical and mental abuse from the people she most trusted and a system unable to help her. The letters Kadine and Ontonio exchanged became a bright spot as secrets and a feeling of shame threatened to destroy her. In 2005, Kadine Christie finally married Ontonio and her journey of healing began. Her essay, “How I Met My Husband in the Maternity Ward,” was one of the most popular essays run in The New York Times’ Modern Love column. TWO WEEKS AND FOREVER: A STORY OF MIGRATING TO A NEW COUNTRY, FINDING LOVE, AND HEALING AFTER ABANDONMENT AND ABUSE will resonate with readers who appreciated Tembi Locke’s From Scratch and Javier Zamora’s Solito. (Please note: this project is represented by Ann Leslie Tuttle.)

Rights Round Up

Audio rights for HARRY TRUMAN’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE by Matthew Algeo, FROM WHISPERS TO SHOUTS by Elaine Schattner, and GOING TOO FAR, SMOKESHOW, and FIREBALL by Abbi Glines went to Dreamscape. FEARLESS ENOUGH, CHERISHED ENOUGH and BRAVE ENOUGH by Kelly Elliott and WHENEVER by Victoria Laurie went to Tantor Media. TOO LATE, VERITY, HEART BONES, and HOPELESS by Colleen Hoover and PRETEND by RL Mathewson went to Audible. JADE SHARDS by Fonda Lee went to Recorded Books.

THE LADY UPSTAIRS by Halley Sutton was optioned by Fabel.

THE COST OF FREE LAND by Rebecca Clarren went to Footnote Press for UK & Commonwealth rights. NEGATIVE GIRL by Libby Cudmore went to Datura Books for World English rights. SUCH GOOD BOYS by Tina Dirmann went to JK Publishing for Polish rights. MANATEE SUMMER by Evan Griffith went to Holp Shuppan Publications for Japanese rights. EVERYBODY SEES THE ANTS by A.S. King went to WanRong Book Co. for Simplified Chinese rights. INTERSTELLAR by Avi Loeb went to Mondadori for Italian rights and Fritanke for Swedish rights. THE ROSEWOOD HUNT by Mackenzie Reed went to CBJ for German rights. THRIVING WITH ANXIETY by David H. Rosmarin went to Jarir for Arabic rights and to Cheers Publishing Company for Simplified Chinese rights. THE BEAUTY MYTH by Naomi Wolf went to Ginko Book Co. for Simplified Chinese rights. ALL THAT’S LEFT IN THE WORLD by Erik J. Brown went to Rizzoli for Italian rights. MIDDLETIDE by Sarah Crouch went to Enthusiast/Alto for Bulgarian rights and dtv for German rights,. THE JADE SETTER OF JANLOON and JADE SHARDS by Fonda Lee went to MAG for Polish rights. FILTHY BEAUTIFUL LIES and FILTHY BEAUTIFUL LOVE by Kendall Ryan went to LYX/Bastei Lubbe for German rights. A TASTE FOR POISON by Neal Bradbury went to Ark Culture for Traditional Chinese rights. TOM’S RIVER by Dan Fagin went to Shanghai Translation Publishing House for Simplified Chinese rights. MY SWEET ANGEL by John Glatt went to Filia for Polish rights and TANGLED VINES went to John Blake for UK and Commonwealth rights. CHRONIC PAIN RESET by Afton L. Hassett went to Quercus for UK & Commonwealth rights. 13 THINGS MENTALLY STRONG PEOPLE DON’T DO by Amy Morin went to Sextante for Brazilian Portuguese rights and 13 THINGS MENTALLY STRONG PEOPLE DON’T DO: WORKBOOK went to Arete for Serbian rights. THE DISORDERED COSMOS by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein went to Capitan Swing for Spanish rights. LOVE AND OTHER FLIGHT DELAYS by Denise Williams went to HarperCollins Germany for German rights. THE FAVORITES by Layne Fargo went to Paralela/Companhia das Letras for Brazilian Portuguese rights, Limes/Blanvalet for German rights, Psichogios for Greek rights, Mondadori for Italian rights, Bookzone for Romanian rights, PRH Grupo Editorial for Spanish rights, and Enthusiast/Alto Communications for Bulgarian rights. I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST by Mason Deaver went to GloboAlt for Brazilian Portuguese rights and Macmillan Children’s for UK & Commonwealth rights. HERE WITH ME by Samantha Young went to Fokus for Croatian rights, and Euromedia for Czech rights. BE WITH ME and ONLY YOU went to Uclia for Slovene rights. ALWAYS YOU, BE WITH ME, and ONLY YOU went to HarperCollins Germany for German rights. INTO THE DEEP, OUT OF THE SHALLOWS, THE IMPOSSIBLE VASTNESS OF US, PLAY ON, THE FRAGILE ORDINARY, AS DUST DANCES, THINGS WE NEVER SAID, THE TRUEST THING, BLACK TANGLED HEART, HERE WITH ME, THERE WITH YOU, and ALWAYS YOU went to Purple Book/Dressler for Polish rights. OUTMATCHED by Samantha Young and Kristen Callihan went to Purple Book/Dressler for Polish rights. THE RED PALACE by June Hur went to PT Gramedia for Indonesian rights. FIRST BLOOD by David Morrell went to Spark for Arabic rights. WATER MOON by Samantha Sotto Yambao went to Blanvalet for German rights, Bragelonne for French rights, Alma Books for Hebrew rights, Hayakawa for Japanese rights, Clayhouse Inc for Korean rights, LeYa for Portugal, Juno Kitap/Diyojen Yayincilik for Turkish rights, Agave for Hungarian rights, and Nord for Italian rights. ALL RHODES LEAD HERE and FROM LUKOV WITH LOVE by Mariana Zapata went to April Books for Dutch rights. FROM LUKOV WITH LOVE went to Blanvalet for German rights and Konyvmolykepzo for Hungarian rights. WHEN GRACIE MET THE GRUMP and WAIT FOR IT went to Niezwykle for Polish rights. LUNA AND THE LIE went to Niezwykle for Polish rights. KULTI went to Newton Compton for Italian rights. THE INDIGO SPELL by Richelle Mead went to Slovart for Slovak rights. THE ONES WE BURN by Rebecca Mix went to Monogatari Editorial for Spanish rights. THREADS THAT BIND by Kika Hatzopoulou went to Konyvmolykepzo for Hungarian rights and Giunti for Italian rights. THREADS THAT BIND and its sequel went to Nocturna for Spanish rights. REMINDERS OF HIM and HEART BONES by Colleen Hoover went to Lizzie for French rights. VERITY and REMINDERS OF HIM went to Futami Shobo for Japanese rights. TOO LATE went to Epica for Romanian rights, Planeta for Spanish rights, Kinneret for Hebrew rights, Dioptra for Greek rights, and DTV for German hardcover rights. LAYLA went to 1980Books for Vietnamese rights. SAINT and THE DRESS went to DTV for German rights. REMINDERS OF HIM went to Mirae Jihyang for Korean rights. MAYBE NOW went to Topseller for Portugal and to Al Rewaq for Arabic rights. HOPELESS and HEART BONES went to Grandbook for Mongolian rights. HOPELESS went to Epica for Romanian rights. HEART BONES went to Ucila for Slovene rights. NEVER NEVER by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher went to Living Publishing for Albanian rights, Bokabeitan for Icelandic rights, Topseller for Portugal,, and Epica for Romanian rights. CORRUPT and HIDEAWAY by Penelope Douglas went to Pandora for Slovak rights. CREDENCE went to Ciela Norma for Bulgarian rights. TRYST SIX VENOM went to Newton Compton for Italian rights. THE OPPORTUNIST, DIRTY RED, and THIEF by Tarryn Fisher went to Bookzone for Romanian rights. GOOD AS GONE by Amy Gentry went to Rocco for Brazilian Portuguese rights and Saga for Danish rights. 

RECENT SALES 

THE BODY IS A DOORWAY by Sophie Strand went to Running Press in a World rights deal by Leslie Meredith.

WHERE THE PELICANS ROOST by Sharon Wishnow went to Lake Union in a World rights deal by Ann Leslie Tuttle.

TWICE GONE by Laurie L. Dove went to Berkley in a World rights deal by Sharon Pelletier.

BEYOND BLUE AND WHITE by Genevieve Wheeler Brown went to Pegasus in a World English rights deal by Ann Leslie Tuttle.

WRITING ON EMPTY: REMEMBERING WHAT MATTERS by Natalie Goldberg went to St. Martin’s Essentials in a World English rights deal by Leslie Meredith.

THE PSYCHONAUTS OF LA CHORRERA by John O’Connor went to Sourcebooks in a North American rights deal.

DEAR PATSY by Laura Barrow went to Lake Union in a World rights deal by Ann Leslie Tuttle.

THE FAVORITES and UNTITLED by Layne Fargo went to Random House in a World English rights deal by Sharon Pelletier.

THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein went to Pantheon in a World rights deal by Jessica Papin.

THE BALLAD OF AUGUST LANE by Regina Black went to Grand Central in a North American rights deal by Sharon Pelletier.

UNTITLED ILLUSTRATED COMPENDIUM OF PACIFIC NORTHWEST MUSHROOMS by Ashley Rodriguez went to Sasquatch in a World rights deal by Stacey Glick.

PLASTIC, INC: BIG OIL’S BIG BET by Beth Gardiner went to Tarcher Perigee in a World rights deal by Jessica Papin.

FORGET THE CAT, SAVE YOURSELF by Kate McKean went to Atria in a World rights deal by Michael Bourret.

MY MOTHER IN HAVANA BY Rebe Huntman went to Monkfish in a World English rights deal by Leslie Meredith.

10 WAYS TOWARD ALLYSHIP by Tanya Boteju went to Orca in a World rights deal by Jim McCarthy.

A CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO THE OPIOID POISONING EPIDEMIC by Peter Canning went to John Hopkins University Press in a World English rights deal.

UNTITLE YOUNG READERS NONFICTION ON OPERATION BODYGUARD by Rebecca Barone went to Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in a World rights deal by Michael Bourret.

PRICE OF FORTUNE by Lisa Tirreno went to Athenuem in a World rights deal by Jim McCarthy.

A ROUGH WOOING by Kat Mackenzie went to Avon in a World English rights deal.

COOPER’S HILL by Veeda Bybee went to Shadow Mountain in a World English rights deal by Ann Leslie Tuttle.

FIVE BROTHERS by Penelope Douglas went to Berkley in a World rights deal.

ADORATION and UNTITLED BOOK 2 by June Hur went to Feiwel & Friends in a North American rights deal by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.

GREEN GOLD: THE STORY OF THE AVOCADO’S RISE TO FAME by Sarah Allaback and Monique Parsons went to Counterpoint in a North American rights deal by Stacey Glick.

THE EVERYDAY NATURALIST by Rebecca Lexa went to Ten Speed in a World rights deal.

FERTILITY NOIR by Reniqua Allen-Lamphere went to Ballantine in a North American rights deal by Jessica Papin.

THE INN by Rochelle Weinstein went to Lake Union in a World rights deal.

THE PSYCHOPOMP by Maria Dong went to Dark Matter Ink in a North American rights deal by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.

EVERYTHING IS POISON by Joy McCullough went to Dutton Children’s in a World English rights deal by Jim McCarthy.

MARY ANN PATTEN AND THE RACE TO THE END OF THE WORLD by Tilar J. Mazzeo went to St. Martin’s Press in a North American rights deal by Stacey Glick.

UNTITLED MONSTERIOUS BOOK 5 by Matt McMann went to Putnam Young Readers in a World rights deal by Michael Bourret.

HAPPY HEALTHY ADHD GIRLS by Lisa Dee went to Harmony in a World rights deal by Amy Bishop-Wycisk.

THE GHOST IN CABIN 13 and UNTITLED BOOK 2 by J.C. Phillips went to Penguin Workshop in a World rights deal by Michael Bourret.

UNTITLED SEQUEL TO ALL THAT’S LEFT IN THE WORLD and UNTITLED YA by Erik Brown went to Balzer + Bray in a North American rights deal by Michael Bourret.

THE POISON TREE by Del Sandeen went to Berkley in a World rights deal by Jim McCarthy.