THE SUSAN GOLOMB LITERARY AGENCY London 2016 Rights

Transcription

THE SUSAN GOLOMB LITERARY AGENCY
London 2016 Rights Guide
Writers House
21 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10010 USA
Tel: (212) 685-2400
[email protected]
The Susan Golomb Literary Agency 2016 SGLA OVERSEAS REPRESENTATIVE
Baltic States: MICHAEL MELLER AGENCY
Brazil/Spain/Portugal: MB AGENCIA LITERARIA
China/Taiwan: THE GRAYHAWK AGENCY
Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, Czech, Slovakia): MICHAEL MELLER AGENCY
France: MICHELLE LAPAUTRE LITERARY AGENCY
Germany: MICHAEL MELLER AGENCY
Greece: READ N’ RIGHT AGENCY
Hungary: KATAI & BOLZA LITERARY AGENCY
Israel: THE DEBORAH HARRIS AGENCY
Italy: THE ITALIAN LITERARY AGENCY
Japan (nonexclusive): THE ENGLISH AGENCY, LTD.
Japan (nonexclusive): TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC.
Korea: THE ERIC YANG AGENCY
The Netherlands: MARIANNE SCHÖNBACH LITERARY AGENCY
Scandinavia: LICHT & BURR
Thailand (nonexclusive): SILKROAD AGENCY
Turkey: ANATOLIALIT AGENCY
United Kingdom and ANZ: ABNER STEIN LITERARY AGENCY
Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and
Montenegro) PRAVA I PREVODI
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The Susan Golomb Literary Agency 2016 Fiction
Jonathan Franzen
Purity
Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, September 1, 2015 (galleys available May 2015)
Rights —Film/TV/First Serial/Translation/UK: SGLA; Audio: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
JONATHAN FRANZEN’S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FIFTH NOVEL AND LATEST
TOUR-DE-FORCE, PURITY, SHOWS FRANZEN AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME IN HIS
FIRST WORK OF FICTION SINCE 2010’S CRITICALLY CELEBRATED BEST-SELLER, FREEDOM.
Young Pip Tyler doesn’t know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she’s saddled
with $130,000 in student debt, that she’s squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother—her only family—is hazardous. But she doesn’t have a clue who her
father is, why her mother has always concealed her own real name, or how she can ever have a
normal life.
Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with the Sunlight
Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world—including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam
in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn’t understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.
Purity is a dark-hued comedy of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has
created yet another cast of vividly original characters—Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and
leakers—and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as
the war between the sexes. Jonathan Franzen is a major author of our time, and Purity is his edgiest and most searching book yet.
Jonathan Franzen is the author of four other novels, most recently Freedom and The Corrections, and five works of nonfiction and
translation, including The Kraus Project and Farther Away, all published by FSG. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Brazil/Companhia das Letras; Bulgaria/Colibri; Catalan/Raval; China/ThinKingdom; Denmark/Gyldendal; Finland/Siltala; France/
Editions L’Olivier; Germany/Rowohlt; Greece/Psichogios; Hungary/Europa; Israel/Am Oved; Italy/Einaudi; Korea/EunHangNamu; The
Netherlands/Prometheus; Norway/Cappelen Damm; Russia/Corpus; Spain/Salamandra; Sweden/Brombergs; Taiwan/ThinKingdom;
UK/Fourth Estate; Film/Scott Rudin; First Serial/The New Yorker
Foreign publishers of Freedom: Albania/Skanderbeg; Arabic/Al-Ahlia; Bosnia and Herzegovina/Buybook; Brazil/Companhia das
Letras; Bulgaria/Colibri; Canada/HarperCollins; Catalan/Columna; China/ThinKingdom; Croatia/V.B.Z.; Czech/Argo; Denmark/
Gyldendal; Estonia/Hermes; Finland/Siltala; France/Editions de l’Olivier; Germany/Rowohlt; Greece/Oceanida; Hungary/Europa;
Italy/Einaudi; Israel/Am Oved; Japan/Hayakawa; Korea/EunHangNamu; Macedonia/Lamina; The Netherlands/Prometheus; Norway/
Cappelen Damm; Poland/Draga; Portugal/Dom Quixote; Romania/Polirom; Russia/Corpus; Serbia/V.B.Z.; Slovenia/Studentska;
Spain/Salamandra; Sweden/Bromberg; Taiwan/ThinKingdom; Turkey/Sel; Ukraine/Folio; UK/Fourth Estate; Film/Scott Rudin

TV NEWS
James Bond Star Daniel Craig will star in a hot drama series based on Purity. Scott Rudin will produce and three-time Oscar nominated
filmmaker Todd Field is writing the adaptation with Jonathan Franzen.
Praise for PURITY:
“Franzen may well now be the best American novelist. . . Like the great novelists of the past, he convinces us that his vision
unmasks the world in which we actually live . . . A good writer will make an effort to purge his prose of clichés. But it takes
genius to reanimate them in all their original power and meaning.” (Sam Tanenhaus The New Republic)
“Mr. Franzen’s most fleet-footed, least self-conscious and most intimate novel yet . . . The stories of the characters in Purity zip forward aggressively in time, but
open inward, burrowing into their psyches and underscoring what seems like Mr. Franzen’s determination to build on the steps he took in Freedom to create
people capable of change, perhaps even transcendence . . . Mr. Franzen adroitly dovetails these story lines, using large dollops of Dickensian coincidence and
multiple plot twists to construct suspense and to entertain . . . Mr. Franzen has added a new octave to his voice.” (Michiko Kakutani The New York Times)
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Jonathan Franzen
“Franzen’s prose is alive with intelligence . . . the ride is exhilarating.” (Caleb Crain The Atlantic)
“Purity’s plot is a beautiful arabesque . . Subplots are doubled and trebled. But the remarkable thing is that the novel does not seem convoluted when
you’re reading it; to an astonishing degree, the melodramatic swoops of the plot are well orchestrated and thrilling.” (Elaine Blair Harper’s)
“Purity comes five years after Freedom and 14 years after The Corrections. Both earlier novels were called masterpieces of
American fiction; to say the same of Purity might be true but misses the point. Magisterial sweep is now just what Franzen does,
and his new novel appears . . . as a simple, enjoyable reminder of his sharp-eyed presence.” (Radhika Jones Time)
“[Purity is] so funny, so sage and above all so incandescently intelligent, there’s never a moment you wish you were reading something else.
Franzen still seems on every page of this book like America’s most significant working novelist.” (Charles Finch The Chicago Tribune)
“[Purity displays] fierce writing, and it does what fiction is supposed to, forcing us to peel back the surfaces, to see how love can turn
to desolation, how we are betrayed by what we believe. It is the most human of dilemmas, with which we all must come to terms . . . It
remains compelling to read Franzen confront his demons, which are not just his but everyone’s.” (David L. Ulin Los Angeles Times)
“Purity demonstrates Franzen’s ingenious plotting, his ability to steer the chaos of real life toward moments that feel utterly surprising yet
inevitable . . . In Purity Franzen writes with a perfectly balanced fluency . . . From its tossed-off observations . . . to its thoughtful reflections
on the moral compromises of journalism, Purity offers a constantly provocative series of insights.” (Ron Charles The Washington Post)
“Purity is a novel of plenitude and panorama . . . [Its sprawl] can suggest a sort of openness and can have a strange, insistent way of pulling us in,
holding our attention . . . Often brilliantly funny . . . This is a novel of secrets, manipulations and lies.” (Colm Toibin The New York Times Book Review)
“[Franzen] knows exactly what we’ve come to expect from him, yet with Purity, imperfect and impolite
but, yes, ambitious and vital, he proves us all wrong.” (Richard Dorment Esquire)
“As with all of Franzen’s fiction, there is much to admire in Purity, not least what reviewer David Gates once termed ‘microfelicities,’ the expertly
calibrated turns of phrase and pleasingly digressive cultural references and riffs around every corner. Like his last two novels, Purity bends time,
easing in and out of characters’ pasts and presents until, before you know it, the disparate pieces of a life suddenly fit.” (Leigh Haber O Magazine)
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Tracy Barone
Happy Family
Tracy Barone
Lee Boudreaux Books: May 24, 2016 galleys available
Rights British/Translation/Film: SGLA; First serial: Lee Boudreaux Books
“Sometimes it can take half a lifetime to come of age.” Cheri Matzner, at age 40, is a disgruntled academic, frustrated wife trying to get pregnant, the daughter of an overbearing mother, and still feeling the anger
toward her father who’s been dead for several years. But we the reader have seen the many people who
have played a part in who she has become—her birth mother, the boy who saved her from the hospital, the
flawed but well meaning man and woman who would become her adoptive parents.
Will Cheri ever see them outside their roles as parents? Would she, for example, still resent them if
she knew what led them to adopt her? Would she forgive her father’s late life mistakes if she knew
she were complicit in his decision? And will she finally find redemption when she discovers the key to
a surprising revelation—one that will ultimately allow her to have a complete, 360-degree view of the
river that is herself and her family?
Combining the structural elements of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, mother-daughter relationships like those in Amy Tan’s novels, and families as rich and as memorable as Philip Roth’s
American Pastoral, Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins, Elizabeth Strout’s Amy and Isabelle, and
even the Berglunds of Freedom, Tracy Barone tells the intimate, multi-layered, and often funny
story of the Matzner family.
Happy Family was on the Elle Magazine list of highly anticipated books written by women which
will be published in 2016.
“Tracy Barone’s Happy Family introduces a storyteller whose narrative confidence and style both dares
and invites us into a deep exploration of the gap between our expectations and beliefs about our families
and the truth. Filled with intimate poignancy, deft humor and pitch-perfect dialogue this books fulfills
its ambitious scope and leaves an indelible mark.” ―A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven
“Smart, witty and immensely readable, HAPPY FAMILY brilliantly examines the power of family and
the secrets we keep, and leaves us cheering for its heroine, Cheri-funny, fierce, aching for connection
but independent to a fault-whose mid-life coming-of-age is wise, heartfelt, and a pure page-turning
pleasure to read.”―Maria Semple, author of national bestseller Where’d You Go, Bernadette
“In her debut novel, screenwriter, playwright, and film producer Barone uses a wide lens to
capture Cheri Matzner’s life, from a precarious beginning to a confident, peaceful middle age...
Cinematic in its scope, this novel takes readers on a broad, deep, and poignant journey alongside
a tough, admirable woman and the varied characters who populate her life.”―Kirkus
“It’s not often that I stumble across a novel as smart, as tender, and as exquisitely rendered as HAPPY
FAMILY. Tracy Barone treats the subject in a completely refreshing and original way -- and how is
that even possible? This book Blew. Me. Away.”―Elin Hilderbrand, author of THE RUMOR
“Tracy Barone’s debut novel is whip smart and warm hearted. Big and bold, Happy Family pulls
back the tough skin and muscle of family life exposing the blood and secrets beneath. An utterly
engrossing read.”―Jennifer Gilmore, author of Golden Country and Something Red
“Tracy Barone is a storyteller with a deft, effortless style that grabs you, holds you, and at turns, leaves you
breathless. Her characters are so distinctive, so deeply humane and complex, their humor, intelligence and
place in the world is immediately apparent. The novel folds out like one of those hand-painted screens that
separates one room from another, but in this case, there was nothing hidden behind, all secrets were revealed,
as the author took you by the hand through the life of Cheri Matzner. Even her name is exactly right: red hot,
ripe and in her perfection, unreachable.”―Adriani Trigiani, bestselling author All the Stars in the Heavens
page 5
Peter Golden
Wherever There is Light
Peter Golden
Atria, December 2016 (MS available Spring 2015)
Rights – Audio/Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; First Serial/UK: Simon and Schuster
THE FOLLOW-UP TO PETER GOLDEN’S COMEBACK LOVE, WHEREVER THERE
IS LIGHT IS A ROMANTIC SAGA THAT FOLLOWS TWO INTERTWINING FAMILIES
–ONE JEWISH, ONE AFRICAN-AMERICAN—OVER THREE GENERATIONS, SPANNING THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II TO THE SIXTIES.
When Julian Rose, son of a prominent Jewish Berlin intellectual, finds himself on American shores
at fifteen, the last person he expects to fall in love with is Kendall Wakefield – spirited, artistic,
and the grand-daughter of a slave. Nor does he expect his father to accept a position at Lovewood
College, the university founded by Kendall’s family in South Florida. But when the Nazi regime
threatens his parents’ lives, his father, Professor Rose, is given a life-saving opportunity to teach at
the historically African-American university. This post not only reunites Julian with his estranged,
difficult father, but also starts a love affair that lasts a lifetime.
Peter Golden is an award-winning journalist, biographer, and historian. He is author of several
works of nonfiction, including Quiet Diplomat, about U.S. diplomacy with Israel and for which he
interviewed former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush. His first novel, Comeback Love, was
a Pulpwood Queens Reading Group Selection. He lives outside Albany, New York.
Praise for Wherever There is Light:
“Keenly detailed . . .compelling . . . Author Golden proves his stripes as a historian, detailing the
lovers’ brief bliss in prewar Greenwich Village, separating them for their individual battles during the
war, and reuniting them in a skillfully evoked postwar Paris . . . The love story is epic and truly felt. In
Kendall, Golden has created a fascinating, complex, and flawed heroine.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“Illuminating! Wherever There is Light deftly shines light on the heartbreak of prejudice, the unbreakable
ties of family and the enduring power of love. Peter Golden is uniquely qualified to write this sweeping and
historically accurate novel.” (Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wind)
“Like the photographs captured by its heroine, Wherever There is Light is a soul-stirring saga of dualities: joy and
sorrow, darkness and a gleam of something bright, things in reach and things just beyond the frame. This impossible,
yet inevitable love story grasps your heart and doesn’t let go.” (Julie Kibler, bestselling author of Calling Me Home)
“A uniquely American story of two unlikely lovers on disparate paths who struggle against mid-twentieth
century racial and religious intolerance. Meticulously researched and beautifully written.” (Amy Hill Hearth,
New York Times Bestselling Author of Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society)
“What color is love? These words break our heart as Julian and Kendall spend decades attempting
to reach across chasms of bigotry. Weaving histories of race and slavery in America, the Holocaust in
Germany, and Paris after World War II, we hope against all odds for an ending of which we can be proud.
Peter Golden has given us a gift of a book.” (Randy Susan Meyers, author of Accidents of Marriage)
page 6
Noah Hawley
Before the Fall
Noah Hawley
Grand Central, May 31, 2016
Rights –Film/Translation/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Grand Central

*Film Rights Bought Outright by Sony Pictures*
Before the Fall begins on a foggy summer night, when ten people—nine privileged, one a down-onhis-luck painter—board a private jet in Martha’s Vineyard. The plane never reaches its destination,
and the only survivors are Scott Burroughs—the painter—and a six-year-old boy, the last remaining member of a very wealthy media mogul’s family. In chapters that weave together the gripping
survival story and its aftermath for Scott and his young companion, with the lives of the passengers
and crew members before they board the plane, a mystery starts to emerge surrounding the crash.
As the crimes and intrigues of the passengers begin to unravel, odd coincidences and suggestions
of conspiracy arise. Could it be chance that so many influential people died in one plane? Was
it mechanical or human error, or could it be that there was something more nefarious at work?
And what to make of the fact that Scott had spent the years before the crash painting pictures of
disasters?
Though quick-paced and suspenseful, at the heart of Before the Fall are the fundamental questions of fate and human nature. How we are pattern-seeking animals seeing faces in clouds. The
book is ultimately about the relationship of Scott, invited at the last minute to join a party boarding an ill-fated flight, and the young boy. As the possibilities for the crash swirl around them, their
fragile relationship glows at the heart of the novel, illuminating not only how we are all inextricably
linked, family and stranger alike, but also how we seek to find meaning in even the most incomprehensible of tragedies.
Noah Hawley is the Emmy-Award winning writer of the FX mini-series Fargo. He is the author of
four previous novels, most recently 2012’s The Good Father, chosen as Publishers Weekly’s top 10
literary novels for that Winter/Spring and was a Richard and Judy pick in the UK.
“BEFORE THE FALL is a ravishing and riveting beauty of a thriller. It’s also a deep exploration of desire, betrayal,
creation, family, fate, mortality, and rebirth. It’s one part Dennis Lehane, one part Dostoevsky. I was spellbound from
first page to last; I haven’t fully recovered yet.”―Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours
“I started and finished BEFORE THE FALL in one day. That begins to tell you what kind
of smart, compellingly dramatic read it is. So read it.”―James Patterson
“A masterly blend of mystery, suspense, tragedy, and shameful media hype...a gritty tale of a man overwhelmed by
unwelcome notoriety, with a stunning, thoroughly satisfying conclusion.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Like the successful screenwriter that he is, Hawley piles on enough intrigues
and plot complications to keep you hooked.”―Kirkus Reviews
“BEFORE THE FALL is an astonishing, character-driven tour-de-force. The story is a multi-layered,
immersive examination of truth, relationships, and our unquenchable thirst for the media’s immediate
explanation of unfathomable tragedy.”―Karin Slaughter, #1 internationally bestselling author
“This isn’t just a good novel; it’s a great one. I trusted no one in these pages, yet somehow cared
about them all. BEFORE THE FALL brings a serrated edge to every character, every insight, and
every wicked twist.”―Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The President’s Shadow
Brazil/Intrinseca; Bulgaria/Soft Press; China/Zito;Czech Republic/Euromedia; Denmark/
Jentas; France/Gallimard; Germany/Goldmann; Italy/Stile Libero; Japan/Hayakawa; Korea/
Munhakdongne; The Netherlands/ Meulenhoff Boekerij; Norway/Gyldendal; Poland/Sonia Draga;
Portugal/Jacaranda; Romania/Namira; Russia/Neoclassic; Serbia/Vulkan; Slovakia/Ikar; Spain/
Reservoir (Penguin Random House); Sweden/Massolit; Taiwan/Crown; Turkey/Pegasus; UK/
Hodder and Stougton; Film/Sony Pictures
page 7
Lindsey Lee Johnson
The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Lindsey Lee Johnson
Random House, TBD (MS available May 2015)
Rights—Audio/Film/First Serial/Translation/TV: SGLA; UK: Random House
The Most Dangerous Place on Earth opens in the heart of innocence, with a boy named Tristan Bloch’s
school report on his hometown. Mill Valley, California, is consistently ranked among the best places in
America to raise kids. But for the eighth-grade outcast Tristan it’s unbearable—especially after his ardent
love note to classmate Cally Broderick is exposed on Facebook. After weeks of relentless cyber bullying, a
desperate Tristan bikes to the Golden Gate Bridge and jumps off. Three years later, Tristan’s tormenters are
high school juniors forming their own identities—or striving to escape them. Yet the suicide continues to
impact these privileged teens in subtle and significant ways.
In a series of interlocking stories, we follow Cally and the other brilliantly realized characters as
they struggle to find truth and meaning amid an apparent suburban paradise of redwoods, BMWs,
and organic grocery stores. “They could never forget how this world had been created for them,”
Lindsey Lee Johnson writes, “how they had been born into this perfect nest and still they had insisted on unhappiness.” With a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, both spoken and texted, and an
unerring eye for detail, Johnson reveals the secret lives of contemporary teens as they navigate a
physical and digital world in which every action may become public—postable, shareable, indelible. Bringing to vivid life a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with the
sorrow, passion, and beauty of human life in any time, and at any age, The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth investigates the perils of youth with urgency, humor, and an adult literary sensibility.
Lindsey Lee Johnson holds an MFA from the University of Southern California and a BA in English
from the University of California at Davis. She developed this novel at the 2012 Tin House Writers’
Workshop and received the Stearns Scholarship for the 2013 Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
Her previous work has appeared in Telling, Eleven Eleven, Seele, Earthwords, and Life. In 2006, her
nonfiction book The Art Of Decanting: Bringing Wine To Life was published by Chronicle Books. She
has taught writing at UCSC, Clark College, and Portland State.
“In her superb first novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Lindsey Lee Johnson deftly illuminates
a certain strain of privileged American adolescence and the existential minefield these kids are
forced to navigate. Elegantly constructed and beautifully written, it reads like Jane Austen for this
anxious era.” —SETH GREENLAND, author of I Regret Everything and The Angry Buddhist
“The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is a deftly composed mosaic of adolescence in the modern age,
frightening and compelling in its honesty. . . . A terrific debut, and one that I didn’t want to put down.”
—JULIA PIERPONT, New York Times bestselling author of Among the Ten Thousand Things
Brazil/Intrinseca; Israel/Armchair; Italy/Bompiani; France/Lattés; Germany/dtv; The Netherlands/De Arbeiderspers;
Turkey/Epsilon
page 8
Liz Kay
Monsters: A Love Story
Liz Kay
Putnam, Summer 2016 (MS available July 2015)
Rights—Film/Translation/TV/ UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Penguin Random House
After the death of her husband, Stacey is left alone to raise her two young children. Grieving, her life has
come to an impasse: she’s a poet who can’t write and a mother who can’t live up to the demands of parenthood. She’s struggling to fit in in Omaha, Nebraska—her late husband’s hometown—and has a feeble
support network to depend on. As she gropes around, desperate to feel out the contours of her new life, she
gets an unexpected phone call. An A-list Hollywood actor wants to option her novel-in-verse, a modern feminist reimagining of Frankenstein.
Despite her rather cloudy disposition, she accepts the offer and jets off to Hollywood to meet her
collaborator, Tommy, a funny, well-read, James Franco-like superstar. Tommy guides Stacey through
the whirlwind of The Biz—finicky writers, hotshot producers, hard-to-impress directors, fancy
award shows, and more—and soon they grow closer than anyone had expected. As they get involved in a tempestuous relationship with one another, their true colors start to show. Stacey can
be, at turns sardonic then sweet, while Tommy is charming, yet a bit controlling, with a complete
lack of regard for boundaries, and they act out their complicated emotions in strange ways. In
short, they’re made for each other. The problem is, they’re not so sure they see it that way, and are
at risk of becoming victims of their own obstinacy.
Tackling many complicated issues of desire, conformity, grief, parenthood, and, of course, sexual
politics and gender, Liz Kay’s Monsters gives us the memorable Stacey who is reminiscent of Maria
Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, and Tommy DeMarco who very much lives in the world of
HBO’s Entourage.
Liz Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska where she was the recipient of an Academy
of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in such journals as The New York Quarterly,
Nimrod, RHINO, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Her work has been nominated for both the Pushcart and Best New Poets anthologies.
Praise for Monsters: A Love Story “Witty and so nimbly-worded, Liz Kay’s Monsters: A Love Story had me at
hello. From the near-madcap improbability of the novel’s premise, to the
punchy repartee and ping-pong banter between Stacey and Tommy, it’s
impossible to resist the book’s charms. But don’t be fooled. This is more
than a feelgood read. Because the truth is, it’s love that is a monster story,
no? A tale of unknown creatures and dark circumstances. Like widowhood.
Or single parenthood. Or the act of making art or love. Or simple loneliness.
Or complicated loneliness. Liz Kay has written a heroine who resists easy
explication but who demands our absolute attention. Poets, meet your new
patron saint.” – Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times bestselling author
of Hausfrau
“Monsters is an addictive read: a page-turner that is at once dark and
uplifting, shocking and hopeful. Liz Kay’s book takes a sharp spin on the
notion of fairy tale romance, arguing that love comes not through our
best sides, but our worst. It’s all about confronting the demons within.” —
Janelle Brown, bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
“Stacey, the narrator of Monsters: A Love Story, is a feminist poet
in Hollywood—you got to love her for that alone. But you also
love her because she’s sharp, tough, and honest. The novel’s wry
insights into messy relationships put me in mind of The Love Affairs
of Nathaniel P. and Emma Straub’s The Vacationers.” —Timothy
Schaffert, critically acclaimed author of The Swan Gondola
“At the beginning of the novel Stacey is in darkness. But it’s a
sad reality that turns magically around. Inspiring for women
everywhere.” —Lucy Sykes, author of The Knockoff
“Monsters: A Love Story spins several tales at once—the numbing navigation
of grief, the ambivalences of motherhood, and the seduction of a world
that thrives on fantasy. Kay’s beautiful, spare prose lands us right in the
heart of this complicated, wounded cast. But ultimately, this is a love story,
how the meeting of kindred spirits is often as punishing as it is beguiling.
When monsters fall in love, it is impossible not to watch, impossible to put
the book down.”—Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel
“Monsters: A Love Story is a deeply felt and modern day spin on the
fairy tale notion of happily-ever-after. When a young widow discovers
that Prince Charming is just as damaged as she is, she’s forced to
confront her own monsters and learn to love them. This is smart, fun,
sexy writing.” —Mark Haskell Smith, author of Raw: A Love Story
“Monsters is smart, witty, hilarious, raunchy, irresistible, and full of crackling
dialogue. At its heart, though, the story of an improbable love affair between
a Nebraska poet and the hot movie star who optioned her book is a classic,
heart-warming, romantic fantasy.” —Catherine Texier, author of Victorine
“Monsters: A Love Story reads like a seduction. I couldn’t stop reading,
even through Stacey’s self-destructive snark and Tommy’s caddish cruelty.
Somehow, I couldn’t help rooting for them. Monsters they may be, but
vulnerable monsters with hearts full of yearning—familiar creatures,
after all, despite their glamorous, outsized lives. Liz Kay has created a
book full of beautiful monsters, just like Stacey’s; and now they’re mine,
too, and I’m glad.” —Amy Hassinger, author of The Priest’s Madonna
page 9
Rachel Kushner
Sammy and the Others
Rachel Kushner
Scribner, TBD (MS available TBD)
Rights — Film/First Serial/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio: Scribner
AN EXCITING NEW BOOK FROM RACHEL KUSHNER, ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE FLAMETHROWERS
ALREADY SOLD IN THE UK TO HARVILL SECKER.
Praise for The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner’s second novel, The Flamethrowers is scintillatingly alive … it manifests itself as a pure explosion of now: it catches
us in its mobile, flashing present, which is the living reality it conjures on the page at the moment we are reading ... It succeeds
because it is so full of vibrantly different stories and histories, all of them particular, all of them brilliantly alive.”
– James Wood, The New Yorker
“Life, gazed at with exemplary intensity over hundreds of pages and thousands of sentences precision-etched with detail—
that’s what The Flamethrowers feels like. That’s what it is. And it could scarcely be better. A political novel, a feminist novel,
a sexy novel, and a kind of thriller…uncommonly eloquent…utterly persuasive.”–Tom Bissell, Harpers

“ [A] brilliant lightning bolt of a novel…The Flamethrowers is an entire world, intimately and convincingly observed, filled with
characters whose desires feel true. It is also an uncannily perceptive portrait of our culture — psychologically and philosophically
astute, candid about class, art, sex and the position of women — with a deadly accuracy that recalls the young Joan Didion, and
that, despite the precisely rendered historical backdrop, gives the story a timeless urgency.”– Maud Newton, NPR
Film and TV News
Film rights to Flamethrowers are optioned by Jane Campion
Telex from Cuba optioned by Anonymous Content (True Detective) and Phyllis Nagy (Carol) is set to adapt as TV series.
The Strange Case of Rachel K.
Rachel Kushner
New Directions, March 24, 2015
Rights: —Audio/Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; First Serial: New Directions
THREE EARLY STORIES ABOUT MYTH, POWER, AND SEX BY THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR
OF THE FLAMETHROWERS.
“Her prose has a poise and wariness and moral graininess that puts you in mind of weary-souled visionaries
like Robert Stone and Joan Didion.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
An explorer’s unknown whereabouts keep a queen in anticipation; a faith healer’s illegal radio broadcasts give
hope to an oppressed people; a president’s offer of ice cream surprises a prostitute expecting to turn a trick—the
three short fictions gathered in The Strange Case Of Rachel K. build into a vision that is black-humored, brutal,
and beautiful. Written prior to the publication of Kushner’s acclaimed debut novel Telex from Cuba, these stories,
like Roberto Bolano’s Antwerp, burst forth with the genesis of her fictional universe. From the mythical “Great
Exception,” to the ominous “Debouchment”—originally published in her too-short-lived journal Soft Targets—to
the sexy and noirish title story, Kushner saddles up for a journey into the wilds of modern fiction.
Rachel Kushner’s second novel, The Flamethrowers was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, was
one of The New York Times Top Ten books of 2013, and was named Time’s Most Popular Book among Critics.
Kushner’s New York Times best-selling debut novel, Telex From Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National
Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the California Book Award, and a New York
Times Notable Book. Kushner is the only writer ever nominated for a National Book Award for both a first and second
novel. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, The Paris Review,
and Artforum. She is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Foreign publishers of The Flamethrowers: Brazil/Intrensica; China/Shanghai 99; Croatia/Profil; Denmark/Gyldendal; France/
Cherche-Midi; Germany/Rowohlt; Greece/Ikaros; Israel/Matar; Italy/Ponte alle Grazie; The Netherlands/Atlas-Contact; Norway/
Gyldendal Norsk; Portugal/Relogio D’Agua; Spain/Galaxia; Sweden/Bonniers; Turkey/Can; UK/Harvill Secker; Film/Scott Rudin
Productions
page 10
Krys Lee
How I Became a North Korean
Krys Lee
Viking, TBD, ms. available
Rights --- Translation/Film/TV: SGLA; First Serial/Audio: Viking; UK/Faber
KRYS LEE’S EAGERLY AWAITED DEBUT NOVEL TELLS THE STORY OF THREE
LOST SOULS WHO CONGREGATE IN A CHINESE TOWN ON THE NORTH
KOREAN BORDER. OUT OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL TRAGEDIES, NEW CONNECTIONS AND ADOPTED FAMILIES ARE FORMED, AND TRACKS THEIR EPIC
JOURNEYS TO SAFETY AND LOVE.
Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea’s most prominent families--his father
holds a senior government position, and his mother is a famous singer. Jangmi, on the other hand,
has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border.
Danny is a Chinese-American teenager of Korean descent whose parents left China for California
when he was nine; his quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast
among his peers, and he yearns for the China of his youth.
These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders
North Korea--Danny to visit his mother, who is working as a missionary there, after a humiliating incident keeps him out of school; Yongju to escape persecution after his father is killed at the
hands of the Dear Leader himself; and Jangmi to protect her unborn child. As they struggle to
survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, in the form of government informants, husbands, thieves, abductors, and even missionaries, they come to form a kind of adopted
family. But will Yongju, Jangmi and Danny find their way to the better lives they risked everything
for? Transporting the reader to one of the most complex and threatening environments in the
world, and exploring how humanity persists even in the most dire of circumstances, How I Became
a North Korean is a brilliant and essential first novel by one of our most promising writers.
Advance praise for How I Became a North Korean
“With How I Became a North Korean, Krys Lee takes us into urgent and emotional
novelistic terrain...with heart and passion, Lee forges a world no other writer could create,
one where the only response to longing and loss is learning to trust and hope again.”—
Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prizer winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son
“This is one of the best books I’ve read in a good long while. While North Korea is at the
center of the novel, the themes of love, family and our debt to our fellow human beings
will resonate universally.” –Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story
“How I Became A North Korean proves that in literature, no story is too small, nobody is forgotten.
With empathy and insight and a deep sense of place, Krys Lee brings us to one of the most hopeless
corners of the world yet gives us hope and beauty. What a brave and moving novel.”—Yiyun Li,
MacArthur Fellow and PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers “I was entranced by How I Became a North Korean, and read it with increasing admiration. It’s such
a penetrating work, an education, really, powered by a determination to salute the stories that have
hitherto passed us by.” —Sunjeev Sahota, Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Runaways “Terrifying, poetic and precise, How I Became a North Korean captures the crushing human cost of
fleeing a dictatorship.” —Blaine Harden, New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Camp 14
page 11
Clancy Martin
Bad Sex
Clancy Martin
Tyrant Books: September 2015
Rights World English/Translation/First Serial/Second Serial: Tyrant; Film/TV/Audio: SGLA
“I drink, I hurt myself and the people around me, and then I write.” Brett is in Central America, away from
her husband, when she begins a love affair with his friend, Eduard. Tragedy and comedy are properly joined
at the hip in this book about infidelity, drinking, and the postponing of repercussions under the sun. Though
coming undone is something we all try to avoid, Martin reminds us that going off the rails is sometimes a
part of the ride.
“A great book of bad behavior.” —Publishers Weekly
“BAD SEX is like a diamond, cut clean, dangerously sharp, brutally hard and yet paradoxically beautiful,
ruthlessly honing in on the plight of a woman caught in the throes of alcoholism, desire, marriage and
adultery. Like Camus in The Stranger, Martin digs into the philosophical through precise narrative, exposing
the big questions for the reader to answer.” —David Means, author of Assorted Fire Events and The Spot
“A flushed and riveting account of some desperately, deliciously bad choices.”
—Daniel Handler, author of the national bestseller, We Are Pirates
“[Clancy Martin] wants to question our assumptions, and his own, about what love means, how it
operates, the demands of living for other people and living for ourselves.”—David L. Ulin, LA Times
Clancy Martin is a Canadian philosopher, novelist, essayist and translator. His debut novel How to Sell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was a Times Literary Supplement “Best Book of 2009”, and a “Best Book of
2009” for The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, The Kansas City Star. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas
City, and is Professor of Business Ethics at the Bloch School of Management (UMKC). His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, The Atlantic,
The Times Literary Supplement, Ethics, The Journal of the History of Philosophy, GQ, Esquire, Details,
Bookforum, Vice, Men’s Journal, and many other newspapers, magazines and journals, and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He has also won DAAD Fellowships and the Pushcart Prize. He just
published a book of essays with FSG called Love and Lies. He has three daughters, Zelly, Margaret and
Portia. He is married to the writer Amie Barrodale.
page 12
Imbolo Mbue
Behold the Dreamers
Imbolo Mbue
Random House, April 2016 (MS available)
Rights —Film/TV/Translation/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Random House
In the fall of 2007, Jende Jonga, a West African immigrant living in Harlem, almost to his own disbelief, lands
a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Jende hopes the new job,
and the approval of his pending asylum application, will enable him, and the wife he adores, Neni, to enroll
in pharmacy school and to finally live a better life in America. As he drives Clark from place to place, their
relationship deepens and Jende becomes privy to Clark’s marital infidelities. Inadvertently, Jende’s wife,
Neni, stumbles upon Cindy in a drug-induced stupor. Hoping to protect their livelihood, the Jongas guard the
secrets of the Edwardses, and the Jongas turn a blind eye to the cracks in the American Dream they so desperately aspire to. But in the fall of 2008, all four lives will be changed forever. Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy, ushering in not only the Great Recession but also a wind of populist anger against Wall Street,
which leads to the exposure of the secret lives of many Wall Street executives, including Clark’s.
The result is a tragedy for the Edwardses and a time of reckoning for the Jongas, who, unable to
financially depend on a shattered Edwards family and embroiled in a lengthy immigration battle for
Jende’s asylum, must decide whether to continue fighting to stay in a recession-ravaged America or
give up on their quest for the American Dream and return home. The yearnings of the Jongas reflects back on those of their wealthy counterparts – each family struggling to eke out their futures,
fulfill their dreams and navigate the complicated heart of their marriages and their failures. Imbolo Mbue moved to the US from Limbe, Cameroon in 1998. She holds a B.S. from Rutgers
and an M.A. from Columbia. Mbue has been published in Threepenny Review. She lives with her
American husband and two children in Manhattan.
Film rights in Behold the Dreamers were sold to Sony’s TriStar with George Clooney set to
produce
“Dazzling, fast-paced, and exquisitely written, Behold the Dreamers is one of those rare
novels that will change the way you see the world. Imbolo Moue is a breathtaking talent.” –
Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train
“It’s rare that a book is so fascinating, so emotionally compelling and so beautiful that I literally
can’t put it down. I picked Behold the Dreamers up one evening before bed. I turned the last page
at dawn. It ruined the next day for me--I wasn’t much good for anything but a nap--but it was worth
every lost hour.” – Ayelet Waldman, New York Times bestselling author of Love and Treasure
“Who is this Imbolo Mbue and where has she been hiding? Her writing is startlingly beautiful,
thoughtful and both timely and timeless. She’s taking on everything from family to the Great Recession
to immigration while deftly reminding us what it means to truly believe in ‘the American Dream’.”
– Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming
“A beautiful book about one African couple starting a new life in a new land. Behold the Dreamers will teach you as
much about the promise and pitfalls of life in the United States as about the immigrants who come here in search
of the so-called American dream.” –Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“Impeccably written, socially informed, in development by Sony Pictures, and an exemplar
of the tremendous writing emerging from Africa.”– Library Journal, pre-pub alert
Brazil/Globo; Czech Republic/ Kniha Zlín; Denmark/Hr. Ferdinand; France/Belfond; Germany/Kiepenheuer &
Witsch; Israel/Kinneret; Italy/Garzanti; The Netherlands/Hollands Diep; Poland/Sonia Draga; Serbia/Vulkan; Turkey/
Pegasus; UK/Fourth Estate
page 13
Matthew McIntosh
TheMystery.doc
Matthew McIntosh
Grove, Spring 2016 (MS available
Rights —Film/TV/Translation/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Grove
THEMYSTERY.DOC IS A 1700 PAGE NOVEL DEALING WITH THE ISSUES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN IN
AN INCREASINGLY INHUMAN WORLD.
Set in post-911 west coast America, the story primarily focuses on the adventures of the writer in the last 11 years as he strives to write
the Big Book.
Through an intricate interweaving of plot and character, time and place break. Tragedy and comedy fuse. Fiction and nonfiction cross.
Pop-up ads, internet search results, spam, a stranger on a television news report, snippets of conversation, a few frames of a classic
films as if we are clicking through TV—everyday life is re-contextualized, synthesized into a symphony of voices and experiences. A
little girl recounts a scary dream she had, an old man reminisces about being young and walking with his love in the snow. The narrative flows from one source to another to show the interconnectedness of character, history, of humanity across time.
Vast and expansive yet funny and razor sharp, it ultimately reveals that the disparate voices of our world, pulled out of the noise
and confusion can, under the direction of an assured hand, be made to sing as a choir. What does it mean to be human? What
does it mean to remember, what does it mean to forget, and how are we to live with the knowledge that the end is written into our
DNA, and that all we know and love is biologically preprogrammed to be taken from us? Is there anything else? Is there something
beyond? Something eternal? Is there something that lasts, something which we are, even now, somehow a part of?
This is TheMystery.
Matthew McIntosh was born in 1976; raised in Washington State, California, England; he went to college in Seattle. His first novel,
Well, was published with Grove Press in 2003. He currently lives in California.
Previous publishers of WELL: France/Seuil; Germany/Kiepenheuer & Witsch; Italy/Mondadori; The Netherlands/Vassallucci; Spain/Random House Mondadori;
Sweden/Forum; UK/Faber & Faber
page 14
Anna Mitchael and Michelle Sassa
Copygirl
Anna Mitchael and Michelle Sassa
Berkley, October 2015 (MS available May 2015)
Rights — Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Berkley
Modern day “Mad Men” may work in Tribeca instead of on Madison Avenue and wear sneakers and hoodies
in place of carefully tailored suits, but Kay Carlson discovers that it is still tough for an twenty-something
woman writing copy at a hot advertising agency.
Kay is the first one in and last one out, and the clients notice her pitches, but she can’t earn the
respect of the boys (definitely not men) who work alongside her in the copy department. In the
meantime her art partner—school friend, temporary roommate, and longtime crush Ben—has no
trouble fitting in. Although she seems to “have made it it in the big city,” Kay never feels fashionable
enough, cool enough, or successful enough—especially not compared to her brothers in finance and
law with their stunning girlfriends and six-figure salaries.
Her world is already shaky when the partners throw down the gauntlet: make an ad campaign to win
their biggest client ever (the kind that will broadcast during the Super Bowl and maybe win Kay recognition at last), or find a new job. As she navigates the treacheries of career, love, and her mother’s phone
calls, Kay learns who she can rely on—and when she should count on herself. It’s only when Kay lets her
quirks and inner thoughts through instead of trying so hard to fit in, she finds that originality and creativity (along with a little help from a fairy godmother at Barney’s) go a long way in getting the guy and
the big break she was looking for.
This uproarious, very modern romp was inspired by the insanity Anna Mitchael and Michelle
Sassa witnessed during their time together clawing their way through the creative department
of Manhattan’s Berlin Cameron & Partners, AdAge Magazine’s US Ad Agency Of The Year for
2004. After more than a combined three decades writing scripts and telling stories for worldwide
brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, and Reebok, these award-winning copywriters branched out. Anna wrote the memoir Just Don’t Call Me Ma’am, a memoir published by Seal
Press in 2010, and Michelle has built a following as a humor columnist writing about family life for
AOL’s Patch.
“Wickedly funny and smartly sweet . . . Mitchael’s and Sassa’s collaborative narrative is seamless, and
their story is a high-octane, electric look at Madison Avenue craziness.”—Publishers Weekly
Israel/GetBooks; Spain/Urano
page 15
Dexter Palmer
Version Control
Dexter Palmer
Pantheon, February 2016
Rights — Audio/Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; First Serial: Pantheon
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The Washington Post: Best Science Fiction & Fantasy for February
iO9: SF & Fantasy “Books you absolutely must not miss in February”
BookRiot: 5 Books to Watch for in February
Buzzfeed: 5 Novels to Read in March
Google Play: Best Books of Spring
APW Pick for Week of 2/22
IF A TIME MACHINE ALLOWED YOU TO ALTER THE PAST, HOW WOULD YOU
KNOW THAT IT WORKED? WHAT IF YOU’D ALTERED PAST HISTORY AND YOU
DIDN’T KNOW IT?
Rebecca Wright is the wife of an experimental physicist, Philip Steiner, whose passion for his scientific research is threatening to ruin their marriage. For decades, Philip has been trying, and failing,
to build a machine that he calls a “causality violation device”; when other physicists want to make
fun of him, they smirk and say he’s working on a time machine. It looks like his research is at a dead
end, and most scientists would have moved on to something else long ago, but Philip is continuing
with it nonetheless—in fact, the more fruitless it seems, the more infatuated he becomes with it.
As Philip’s obsession grows and he and his wife become increasingly distant, he comes across a discovery that will change not just Rebecca’s entire life, but also the nature of reality itself. Because
“causality violation,” as Philip calls it, doesn’t work the way you might think it works—not the
way that it has in every story about time travel that goes back to H.G. Wells. In those stories, a
time traveler who changes the past in order to change his present always knows that he’s altered
events, because he can always remember the older version of the present in order to compare it to
the newer one that exists after he’s shifted the path of history. But if you alter the past successfully,
then that first version of the present, the one you’re trying to erase, would never have happened.
Dexter Palmer holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University and is the author of
The Dream of Perpetual Motion, which was chosen as a Kirkus Best Debut Fiction title for 2010 and
an Indie Next Pick.
Dream of Perpetual Motion was published in France/Passage Du Nord-Ouest
Praise for Version Control
“Dexter Palmer’s Version Control explores the complexities of narrative. . . . With time travel as a
fascinating backdrop, Palmer delicately examines the layers of stories we create when trying to
differentiate ‘the information from the truth.” —Nancy Hightower, The Washington Post
“A knowing, frequently funny and often very sad novel that explores love, marriage and loss in the age
of social media and perpetual online metrics. . . . Heartfelt and harrowing. . . . Rather than presenting
a setting ravaged by climate change, zombies or a deadly virus, Palmer does something more subtle,
presenting a version of the modern world amplified by only a few degrees of futurity and made all
the more engrossing and strange for its nearness.” —Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle
“A thoughtful, powerful overhaul of the age-old time travel tale, one that doesn’t radically deconstruct the
genre so much as explore it more broadly and deeply. . . . Palmer is a novelist with an abundance of things
to say—about life, about time, and about the essence of the universe. Luckily, with Version Control, he also
has the chops and eloquence to make those things sing… It’s exhilarating. It’s exhausting. And the ending
is a virtuoso performance that yanks the brain as it disorients the heart.”—Jason Heller, NPR Books
“You know those books that have not only an amazing plot but such a smart view of the world and pop culture
that you want to read every sentence aloud to someone, even if there’s no one there? This is one of those
page 16
Dexter Palmer
books. . . . If you enjoyed books that challenge the classic narrative structure like Fates & Furies or books with
satirical near-future settings like Oryx & Crake, you must get [Version Control] immediately.”—BookRiot “A fascinating journey that deserves to be savored with time to think, ponder, and process. . . . If you want
a book that pulls you into a world that’s just different enough to be fascinating and thought-provoking,
then pick this one up. Savor it . . . and enjoy where this one takes you.”—GraphicPolicy.com
“It’s February, and I’m certain this will be one of my favorite books of the year. . . . Wise, immersive, and
brilliant. . . . A mind-bending tour of the science and ramifications of the causality violation device that
reminded me of how I felt after I first saw the movie The Matrix.”—Nelson Appell, The Missourian
“Mind-bending. . . . A compelling, thought-provoking view of time and reality.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Far more than a standard-model time travel saga. . . . Palmer’s lengthy, complex, highly challenging second novel
is more brilliant than his debut, The Dream of Perpetual Motion. . . . Palmer earned his doctorate from Princeton
with a thesis on the works of James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, and William Gaddis. This book stands with the
masterpieces of those authors.” —Publishers Weekly, A PW Picks Book of the Week (starred, boxed review)
“A Mobius strip of a novel in which time is more a loop than a path and various possibilities seem to exist
simultaneously. Science fiction provides a literary launching pad for this audacious sophomore novel by Palmer. It offers
some of the same pleasures as one of those state-of-the-union (domestic and national) epics by Jonathan Franzen,
yet its speculative nature becomes increasingly apparent. . . . A novel brimming with ideas, ambition, imagination, and
possibility yet one in which the characters remain richly engaging for the reader.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Dexter Palmer’s Version Control is a gripping page-turner, an insightful and wise look into the lives
of scientists, a moving time-distortion story, and a clever satire about our current information age. I
enjoyed the heck out of it.”—Jeff VanderMeer, bestselling author of The Southern Reach Trilogy
“Is it a time machine? You be the judge. I’ll just say it’s a wise, sweet, and deeply unsettling
story—a brilliant dystopian vision of some possible futures awaiting us, the children of the
Information Age.” —James Gleick, author of The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
“Funny, poignant, and powerful—this novel is a multiverse, bursting with complexity and richness.
Every time I thought it was done revealing layers of reality, it surprised me with yet another of its
many worlds. And in each of those worlds, Dexter Palmer explores so many big things: race, science,
philosophy, marriage, and personal histories growing together and apart and together again. It’s a
moving story about love and loss, and the lifelong tangle of the possible with the inevitable.” —Charles
Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Sorry Please Thank You
“It’s easily one of the smartest, most unusual time-travel stories you’ll ever read—and one you don’t need
a PhD. to understand, because it’s focused entirely on some very fascinating and flawed characters. .
. . Like J.K. Rowling, Palmer understands that when your subject is utterly fantastic, you need to cloak
it in everyday language. . . . A hymn to science as it should be done.” —Chris Taylor, Mashable
“Deftly exploring a huge range of subjects from relationships to technology to race and much more, Version
Control is brilliant and richly satisfying: a novel that is utterly true to the complicated and science fictional
world we live in today. . . . [Palmer delivers] tricky, subtle surprises.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, BuzzFeed Books
“Expansive in scope. . . . But [Palmer] deftly keeps the many components in harmony. The result is an
intellectual novel that feels surprisingly intimate and accessible. Weighty yet emotionally rewarding,
Version Control will appeal to all curious readers.” —Stephenie Harrison, BookPage
“Palmer presents a fresh twist on the time-travel trope. . . . The characters are complex and
flawed but thoroughly worthy of attention. Fans of Palmer’s previous book, time travel, near-future
technologies, and sf will find great enjoyment here.” —Library Journal (starred review)
page 17
Yvonne Georgina Puig
A Wife of Noble Character
Yvonne Georgina Puig
Holt, Summer 2016 (MS available September 2015)
Rights — Audio/Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; First Serial: Holt
A WIFE OF NOBLE CHARACTER IS A MODERN AND WARM REIMAGINING
OF THE HOUSE OF MIRTH BY EDITH WHARTON, SET IN THE CONSERVATIVE,
OIL-MONEY ENCLAVES OF HOUSTON, TEXAS.
Thirty-year-old Vivienne Cally is only wealthy in name. After her parents died when she was still
a child, she lost any inheritance she might have received from the once mighty Cally Petroleum
fortune. Raised by an aunt—a woman with a hardened heart who blames Vivienne’s mother for
her descent into the upper middle class—Vivienne was taught to rely on beauty and tradition. She
has come to believe that marrying a wealthy man—a guy like her boyfriend Bucky Lawler, handsome gun-toting heir to a grocery store chain—will give her the safety and security she lacked
growing up. Then she can pursue her interest in Texas art from a protected, cushy position. For
now, she works the floor at an upscale bridal boutique, is back living with her aunt to save on rent,
and struggles to keep up with the extravagant lifestyle of her carefree married friends.
But there is another Vivienne, one who knows better. She knows money isn’t everything, she
knows that marrying Bucky Lawler and having 2.3 children isn’t everything. This Vivienne is tired of
wearing high heels, tired of big fancy weddings, and tired of straightening her hair. But Vivienne
doubts this part of herself, and snuffs it out. We meet Vivienne through the eyes of her former classmate, Preston Duffin, on a warm May afternoon in Houston, on the Rice University campus, when the two run into each other. Preston is a
graduate student in architecture, only a few days away from finishing his degree. He is friendly with
Vivienne’s crowd, but because he didn’t grow up wealthy, he has an outsider’s perspective. He sees
the Vivienne that she ignores, and he is both captivated by and skeptical of this curious, complicated woman. Their chance encounter stirs something in Vivienne which she can scarcely recognize at
this point. This is the beginning of her turbulent journey into life.
Yvonne Georgina Puig’s fiction and essays have appeared in Salon, Variety, Los Angeles Magazine,
and The Texas Observer, among others. In 2011, she received her MPW (Master of Professional
Writing) from USC, where she studied with T. C. Boyle, Janet Fitch, and Mark Richard.
Praise for A Wife of Noble Character
“A fresh, funny look at what it means to be an adult in the 21st century and a juicy Texan comedy of manners, at its
heart, A Wife of Noble Character is a good old fashioned love story.” —Sarah Bird, author of Above the East China Sea “A Wife of Noble Character is a wildly unique creation: A social novel that is simultaneously classic
and utterly modern. I found it sharply insightful, lyrically written, and often laugh-out-loud funny; and
could barely put it down until the last page. Puig is a talented satirist and a breathtakingly astute
observer of character.”—Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything “In this vivid, socially acute novel of manners set in oil-money Houston society, Yvonne
Puig charms us with prose and braces us with insight--a masterful, sharp-eyed and
eloquent debut.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black
page 18
Rebecca Scherm
Beta
Rebecca Scherm
Viking, 2018 (manuscript available TBD)
Rights —Film/Translation/TV/UK/First serial: SGLA; Audio: Viking
2025: With the advent of sensors and omnipotent communications technology, there are no boundaries between public and private, hypothetical and real. People can hardly remember life without them. But Alex and Meg Welch-Peters aren’t like everybody else, are they? They’re not like
Alex’s sister Caroline, who’s so terrified of being without her sensor that she won’t travel outside a ten-minute repair radius, or like Meg’s distrustful brother Anthony, who lives with his family in an off-the-grid community that looks like a post-apocalyptic battle fortress. No, the Welch-Peterses
are reasonable people, trying their best to negotiate marriage, parenthood, and even personhood in a world without any room for private error.
Watching their children become increasingly opaque from their view and allergic to the natural world, Alex and Meg want something different for
their family. When Aaron Saroyan, the entrepreneur behind the world’s first private space station, approaches Alex, the family sees an opportunity to avoid their problems entirely and they head to Parallaxis I, also known as Beta, to be the fearless adventurers they had always meant to
be. There, they hope to save their children from lives of push-button mediocrity and data-mining, and they will be heroes—both to others and to
themselves. But the relationships in this family are troubled by complex secrets, by dashed expectations, and by an interminable sense of isolation that they start to realize going into space may not fix a thing.
Rebecca Scherm’s daring and brilliant second novel, Beta, is about a quintessentially American family facing their fear of the future, desperate
and struggling to depend on each other in a world where people are more inclined to rely on networks of millions rather than to lean on a close
few.
Unbecoming
Rebecca Scherm
Viking, January 27, 2015
Rights — Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Viking
Nominated for Best First Novel for the 2016 Edgar Awards
Growing up lonely in a neglectful household in tiny Garland, Tennessee, Grace early on learned to perform her way
into the embrace of others. As a child she ingratiates herself into the picture-perfect Graham family, and as the years
pass she and Riley Graham become sweethearts and then at the age of 18 secretly marry. But when the couple find
themselves penniless and Grace cut off from the Graham family she so dearly loves, a spiral of desperate actions
and unconscious revenge begins. Before too long she is planning a robbery of a local historical museum with Riley
and his two friends Greg and Alls (who she guiltily lusts after). Leaving the trio behind to take the fall, Grace escapes
to Europe, newly blonde and answering to the name of Julie. For the next three years she works at a no-questionsasked antique restoration shop, and waits for the day the boys will be released from prison—terrified that someone
from her past might track her down and make her pay for her share in the heist turned sour. Intricately plotted, with
her self-justifying and distinctly unreliable perspective, Grace becomes someone new for everyone. But as her story
illuminates the intersections of forgery in love, life, and art, all Grace really wants is to be seen for who she really is.
Rebecca Scherm is a graduate of New York University and the Michigan MFA program in fiction. She has been the recipient of a Zell Postgraduate Fellowship, and her work has appeared in Subtropics, The Hairpin, Hobart, and Fiction
Writers Review, where she is now an editor. She teaches English at the University of Michigan.
Brazil/Rocco; France/Stock; The Netherlands/Querido
“Startlingly inventive.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Scherm’s debut has a plot that twists and turns, but it is the enigma of
who Grace really is that will keep readers hooked until the very end. A
bleak tone, deeply flawed protagonist, and dysfunctional relationships
will draw well-deserved comparisons to Gillian Flynn.”—Library Journal
“Scherm mixes a character study with caper novel full of doublecrosses, lies, and betrayals.”—Publishers Weekly
“This lively debut combines a knotty coming-of-age tale and a high-society
caper. . . . Scherm is at her best when she is parsing the fumblings of a
young woman trying to devise a persona in the world.”—The New Yorker
“Scherm’s voice is gutsy. . . . She shows she has the chops to
produce something delightfully wicked.”—Chicago Tribune
“A suspenseful and terrific debut . . . recounted with convincing
psychological insight and in rich detail. Unbecoming is a sorrowful
coming-of-age story that blossoms into a cautionary tale—and then
into something all its unsettling own.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Scherm has elevated the heist novel beyond entertainment. Like
a painting that becomes more intriguing the longer you study it,
Unbecoming is a genuine work of art.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Scherm’s pulse-quickening debut follows crafty Grace as she flees a
love triangle and a heist gone awry, leaving her husband and a friend—a
man she secretly loves—to take the rap.”—O, the Oprah Magazine
page 19
Mary Waters-Sayer
The Blue Bath
Mary Waters-Sayer
St. Martins Press, Spring 2016 (MS available June 2015)
Rights —Film/TV/Translation/UK/First Serial: SGLA; Audio: St. Martins Press
Kat Lind, an American expatriate returning to London following the death of her mother, attends an opening
at a prestigious Mayfair art gallery and is astonished to find her own face on the walls. She discovers that
the artist, Daniel Blake, has continued to paint her throughout the twenty years since their passionate affair
conducted in a dusty Paris studio. Unmoored by her grief and with her husband and young son away, Kat is
seduced by her erstwhile reflection and is drawn back into the sins and solace of her past.
When the portraits catch the attention of the public, threatening to reveal not only her identity, but all that
lies beyond the edges of the canvases, Kat comes face to face with the true price paid for their beauty and
with all that she now stands to lose. For alt-hough Kat, a young student in Paris at the time, chose to run
from Daniel those twenty years prior, his presence comes rushing back into her life, threatening to upend
her happiness – or perhaps, to create it anew. With keen sensitivity and insight, Mary Wa-ters-Sayer explores
the shifting landscape between love and betrayal; nostalgia and regret; the desire to keep secrets, and the
longing to be seen.
Suspenseful and sexy yet told in elegant and artistic prose, debut novelist Mary Waters-Sayer draws the
reader to question – who owns a life? Does the image belong to the model, the artist – or to everyone
else? Is the private decision made by one young woman to have a different life, put her into debt forever
with someone else, for a life that never could be? Daniel and Kat’s lives, brought together anew, spin out of
control, leading to a tragic conclusion that is anything but inevitable.
Mary Waters-Sayer is a graduate of Binghamton University and studied writing at Stanford University. She
worked in investor and corporate communications for ten years. A native of New York, she has lived in
California and spent twelve years as an ex-patriate in London. She currently lives outside of Boston. The
Blue Bath is her first book.
“An elegant debut. With keen sensitivity and insight, Mary Waters-Sayer explores the shifting landscape
between love and betrayal; nostalgia and regret; the desire to keep secrets, and the longing to be
seen.”—Jennifer duBois, Whiting Award-winning author of Cartwheel and A Partial History of Loss
page 20
Nell Zink
Mislaid
Nell Zink
Ecco, May 19, 2015 (MS available)
Rights — Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Ecco
At Stillwater College, in Stillwater, Virginia circa 1966, a gay man and a gay woman get married, resulting in
first one and then a second baby. After turning a blind eye to his infidelities with men, Peggy drives Lee’s car
into a lake when she catches him with her old roommate, a woman. He threatens to have her committed,
so she grabs their three-year-old daughter, and steals a birth certificate, and pale, blonde-haired, blue-eyed
Mireille Fleming becomes Karen Brown: the black daughter of two black parents. And from an abandoned
shack in a swamp Peggy raises Karen as black, without anyone at her public school batting an eyelash.
With an arch sense of humor and wonderfully witty satirical eye, Zink lays bare all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire. [As Zink asks, Is everyone involved in this story
out of his or her mind, or is it the South that was and is insane? (Hint: It’s the South.)]
As all four stand behind identities—gay, black, rich, poor—none really contain them. Mother and
daughter, father and son all struggle toward a feeling of belonging, not knowing where to find their
true family, until a minority scholarship catapults Karen to UVA and sets off a series of misunderstandings and a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare, where all eventually falls into place.
France/Seuil; Germany/Rowohlt; UK/Fourth Estate
“Zink’s capacity for inventions is immense… [Mislaid] zips along with a giddy, lunatic momentum. It’s
perverse wackiness is irresistible; unlike just about everything engineered to make you laugh out loud,
Zink’s novel actually does, over and over again… She knows how to let her freak flag fly.” – Bookforum
“Zink’s energy pulses in narration. [She] is original, unsentimental, erudite, and something of a naturalist.
Her vocabulary is tremendous [and] her sentences are penetrating and agile.” – Harper’s Magazine
“The bracing disconnect between sly, low-affect prose and Gothic strangeness recalls Flannery O’Connor and
Jean Stafford--mid-century women you could imagine crossing paths with Peggy and shuddering.” – Vulture
“A high comedy of racial identity...Zink is a comic writer par excellence...Both that voice and
the stories Zink tells are so startling, so seemingly without antecedent, that she would seem
like an outsider artist, if she did not betray so much casual erudition.” – New Yorker
“Mislaid is a sprawling multi-generational saga of a Southern family that is as
absurd and hilarious as it is tragic and seeing.” – VanityFair.com
“There’s nothing derivative about Nell Zink’s hip, hilarious and unexpectedly moving
novel Mislaid… Zink has a genius for making the bizarre seem natural… makes for one
of the most satisfying happy endings in recent fiction.” – Wall Street Journal
“Ms. Zink is a wonderfully talented writer….The thrilling early sections of Mislaid find Ms. Zink writing on a higher
plane. Her prose is richer, earthier, more emotionally complex.” – Dwight Garner, the New York Times
“Zink’s deadpan wit is matched by an ethical deadpan… [She] isn’t a moralist. She creates fictional
worlds beyond the bounds of the going taboos, then pushes those bounds to the logical extremes.
… Mislaid uses southern racism as fuel for devious comic flights.” – New York magazine
page 21
The Susan Golomb Literary Agency 2016 Non-Fiction
Nell Zink
The Wallcreeper
Nell Zink
dorothy: a publishing project, October 2014
Rights — Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Dorothy project
*New York Times Notable Book of 2014*
*Flavorpill’s Debut Novel of the Year*
Nell Zink’s debut novel follows a downwardly mobile secretary from Philadelphia who marries an
ambitious soon-to-be-expat pharmaceutical researcher in hopes that she will never work again.
They end up in Germany, where it turns out that her new husband is tougher, sneakier, more
sincere, more contradictory, and smarter than she is; she’d naturally thought it was impossible. Life
becomes complicated with affairs, birding, and eco-terrorism. Bad things happen, yet they stagger
through, clinging to each other from a safe distance. Eventually our heroine commences building a
life of her own, in imitation of her husband, one soggy brick at a time.
Nell Zink has had careers in the construction, pharmaceutical, and software industries, though she now
works as a translator in Germany. She was born in 1964 in Southern California, grew up in eastern
Virginia, and lived for some time in Richmond, Washington, Philadelphia, Jersey City, and Tel Aviv.
She received a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tubingen, Germany. She currently
resides in Bad Belzig, south of Berlin.
France/Seuil; The Netherlands/Ambo Anthos; Germany/Rowohlt; UK/Fourth Estate
“Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humor, in its philosophical underpinnings and
political agenda…its vitality and purpose are invigorating.” – New York Times Book Review
“Like its namesake, The Wallcreeper is fleet, stealthy, and beautiful. It’s a lifer indeed.” –New York Times
“A brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.” – Kirkus, Starred Review
“Zink’s debut novel is a weird, funny, sad, and sharp story of growing up…this is the
introduction of an exciting new voice.” – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
page 22
Gold ♦ Lehr ♦ Sloan
I Will Be Complete: A Three-Volume Memoir
Glen David Gold
Knopf, TBD
Rights -- Film/Translation/TV/UK: SGLA; Audio/First Serial: Knopf
Glen David Gold, the author of the best-selling novel Carter Beats the Devil and 2009’s Sunnyside, returns with the stunning story of his early
years. Told in three distinct sections, Gold’s memoir provides a wrenching portrait of abandonment set in San Francisco’s free-wheeling Sixties,
through to his adolescent years, when he used imagination and books to survive and thrive, through to his early twenties, when a chance encounter with a woman whose belief that they were soul mates changed his life forever.
This memoir tells a larger story: how he learned to be that oxymoron, an autonomous son.
Glen David Gold’s first novel, Carter Beats the Devil, has been translated into fourteen languages. His short stories and essays have
appeared in McSweeney’s, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Alice Sebold.
Good Job!: And Other Things You Shouldn’t Say or Do (Unless
You Want to Ruin Your Kid’s Life)
Jennifer Lehr
Workman TBD
Rights Film/TV: SGLA; Translation/UK/First Serial/Audio: Workman
This revolutionary book turns thoughtless parent clichés on their head, asking how phrases like “she’s so
cute,” “Can you say…,” or “Good job” can actual be harmful to their children, no matter how well-meaning
these statements are. Lehr helps parents to find words of their own to connect with their children and their
experiences of the world.
My First Symphony
Carolyn Sloan
Workman TBD
Rights— Audio/British/Translation/Film/First Serial: Workman
A novelty book that uses sound chips and Beethoven’s Fifth to introduce the symphony orchestra to young
children.
page 23
Barry Yourgrau
Mess: One Man’s Struggle To Clean Up His House and His Act
Barry Yourgrau
W.W. Norton, August 10, 2015 (galleys available)
Rights —Film/Translation/TV: SGLA; Audio/First serial/UK: W.W.Norton
THE STORY OF ONE MAN’S EFFORTS TO OVERCOME HIS HOARDING AND
SAVE HIS RELATIONSHIP.
A personal journey and a look at look at the historical, cultural, and philosophical nature of hoarding. Acclaimed writer Barry Yourgrau seems to be living the good life. Along with his food writer girlfriend, he jet sets from Istanbul to Hong Kong, sampling kebap, dim sum, and the world-renowned
cuisines of Ferran Adrià and Alain Ducasse along the way. But behind the door of his Queens apartment, Barry Yourgrau’s life is, quite literally, in complete chaos. As he puts it, “indecision met disarray and mated like rabbits.” His bookshelf is overflowing with long-expired calendars and empty
boxes; his chairs are slung with T-shirts that “hang like Spanish moss”; and his closet includes “a
broken old canister model vacuum cleaner (it might be fixable, you never know).” One day, his girlfriend of ten years draws a line. “We can’t go on like this,” she says. “You have to clean up your
apartment and your act.”
Drawing on the help of a professional de-clutterer, a Lacanian shrink, and his girlfriend’s recovered clutterer mother, Yourgrau navigates uncharted territory: clear a shelf, throw out a cracked fruit bowl, and sort through a lifetime of messy relationships. He examines the relationship between hoarding and creativity and explores its origins. While partaking in a variety of medical and psychological treatments, Yourgrau tries to discern the line between everyday clutter and hoarding as analogous to that between a drinking
problem and alcoholism. Mess provides a fresh, intellectual view of what is increasingly being identified as a very common problem.
Formatted like The Happiness Project and The Year of Living Biblically, Mess encompasses, in a bluntly comic voice, an inspirational
story about the place objects hold in our lives, the potential for growth, and the things we do for the people we love.
Barry Yourgrau is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and the author of several collections of short fiction including The
Sadness of Sex and Wearing Dad’s Head. His short stories have appeared in the Paris Review, Story, Bomb, Nerve, Salon, Film
Comment, Poetry, The Iowa Review, and the Columbia Journal, among others.
Praise for Mess
“Hilarious… Throughout the narrative, Yourgrau examines the history of
hoarding and famous hoarders. Along the way, Yourgrau attends a Clutterers
Anonymous meeting and visits various therapists, seeking assistance in his
efforts to de-clutter his life and living space. Eventually, as he explains with
wit and honesty, he begins to deal with the clutter.” – Publishers Weekly
“Mess is Barry Yourgrau’s autobiography by way of neurosis, a
twenty-first century version of the Confessions of Zeno. Sometimes
shocking and frequently self-mocking, it charts the tough negotiation
between shame and fixation, between clinging to the past and moving
forward, between being devoured by one’s demons and facing
them down.” - Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree “A beautifully written examination of the pain of holding
on and the agony and relief of finally letting go.” – David
Adam, author of The Man Who Couldn’t Stop
“If Richard Pryor and Lydia Davis shared a hoarder’s body, this is the
memoir of that wild gorgeous being. A great literary mind gathers the
whole world into his apartment and then, like a Grimm’s witch, tries
to make it disappear.” - Clancy Martin, author of Love and Lies “All of us who live—or have lived—in unmentionable and
unspeakable abodes owe it to ourselves to have our anti-domestic
pathologies turned into something as funny and charming as
Mess.” - Lawrence Osborne, author of The Forgiven
“A funny, smart, and moving memoir about the accumulation
of STUFF: what it means to us, why we keep it, and how we deal
with our personal ‘collections.’ (Great book, btw.)” - Roz Chast,
author of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
“Told in prose as engaging as it is elegant, this tale of one man’s struggle
to come to terms with both his possessions and his past touches our deep
places—it’s compulsively readable.” - Jessie Sholl, author of Dirty Secret:
A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding
“My favorite Bohemian unpacks his life, and his heart. I
will never look at clutter the same way again. I love this
book!” - Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
“Barry Yourgrau is America’s Kafka, if Kafka were hysterically funny, weirdly
relatable, and had just a little bit of a hoarding problem. Mess is a total
Yourgrau feast—I wept with laughter (but then why couldn’t I throw away
my Kleenex?).” - Sandra Tsing Loh, author of The Madwoman in the Volvo
page 24
“Mess is a deeply enjoyable act of literary purification. Yourgrau,
with courage and insight, transforms his most shameful
secret into a gift for the reader. He’s that rarest of things—the
generous hoarder.” - Sean Wilsey, author of More Curious