Deals

Kitchen Confidential by Jason Anthony — The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander – Film option — Did a 14-year-old boy witness the gruesome slaying of the Russian royal family by the Bolsheviks? That’s just one of many mysteries explored in The Kitchen Boy (Viking, 2003), Robert Alexander’s New York Times bestseller about the bloody July 1918 evening that ended the Romanov dynasty and ushered in seven decades of Communist hegemony. Glenn Williamson, who counts Hollywoodland and The Omen among his credits, has optioned Kitchen Boy for his four-year-old Back Lot Pictures. Alexander got the idea for the novel from a tantalizing actual entry in Empress Alexandra’s diary penned hours before the family’s execution. Alexandra writes that the revolutionaries have abruptly whisked their kitchen boy, Leonid Sednyov, to safety without explanation. In the author’s imagination, Sednyov, now a frail immigrant living in Chicago, holds the answer to two real-life puzzles surrounding the Romanov murders. Judi Farkas of Judi Farkas Management negotiated the film deal for lit agent Marly Rusoff.

THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS by Meg Waite Clayton —Meg Waite Clayton’s THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS a novel of five young wives who meet in a neighborhood park and form a bond over love, children, marriage, infidelity, illness, books and writing, and who support each other through the best and worst of times, all set against the tumultuous and exciting backdrop of the 1960s, to editor Robin Rolewicz for Ballantine in a good deal by agent Marly Rusoff. (NA)

CONFESSOR’S NIGHT by Tomas Halik — CONFESSOR’S NIGHT, a first book in English translation by Czech philosopher and Catholic priest Tomas Halik, who is compared to Thomas Merton and C.S. Lewis and considered one of this century’s most original theologians, in which he offers philosophical observations on what it is like to view the events of the daily news through the eyes of a confessor, to Doubleday’s Bill Barry and Trace Murphy in a very nice two book deal by agent Marly Rusoff. (World English)

Danish and Catalan rights to THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL by Elif Shafak — Rights to THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL Elif Shafak’s novel which tells the tale of two families, an exiled Armenian family living in San Francisco and the Kazancis of Istanbul, whose contemporary stories conjoin through a family secret that began with the 1915 massacre of Armenians to Tom Ahlberg at Underskoven in Denmark and to Ernest Folch at Ara Llibres in Catalania by Michael Radulescu for Marly Rusoff Agency.

Spanish rights to NO: Why Kids Of All Ages Need To Hear It And Ways Parents Can Say It by David Walsh, PhD to Medici Publishers by Michael Radulescu for Marly Rusoff Agency

KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL by Deborah Rodriguez German rights to Deborah Rodriguez’s KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL, a remarkable portrait of cultures encountering each other as American hairdresser Rodriquez brings readers an intimate look into the lives of the women of Afghanistan, using unforgettable stories taken from her experiences as founder of a beauty school she established to help Afghan women learn a trade to Marion Kohler at Blessings by Jacqueline LeDonne for Marly Rusoff Agency.

Korean rights to Elif Shafak’s THE FLEA PALACE to Random House Korea by Vince Baek of Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Marly Rusoff Agency

Korean rights to Peter Temes’ THE POWER OF PURPOSE to Korea Economic Daily and Business Publication by Vince Baek of Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Marly Rusoff Agency

Korean rights to Roland Merullo’s GOLFING WITH GOD to Korea Economic Daily and Business Publication, Hankyung imprint by Vince Baek of Eric Yang Agency on behalf of Marly Rusoff Agency

Dutch rights to Judy Merrill Larsen’s ALL THE NUMBERS to Steven Maat at A. W. Bruna in The Nethelands by Jacqueline LeDonne for Marly Rusoff Agency.