Deals

Bart Schneider’s fourth novel, MINNESOTA ROSE, a contemporary thriller set in Minneapolis and St. Paul, involving Augie Boyer, a cello playing detective, his estranged wife Nina, a psychotherapist, and their rock star daughter, Rose, to Shaye Areheart for her eponymous imprint at the Crown Publishing Group, in a very nice deal by agent Marly Rusoff (World English)
(Title changed to THE MAN IN THE BLIZZARD)

German rights to Debra Dean’s first novel THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD, in which the siege of Leningrad during World War II is echoed by the destructive siege against the memory of an elderly Russian woman, once a young docent at the Hermitage, but who now lives with family in Seattle and suffers from Alzheimer’s, to Doris Janhsen and Annette Weber at Droemer Knaur, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, by Jacqueline LeDonne on behalf of Marly Rusoff & Associates.

Film rights to Ron Rash’s SAINTS AT THE RIVER, in which the drowning of a young girl in a wilderness river ignites a fierce struggle between local environmentalists who oppose damming the river and the girls family who want to do whatever it takes to bring her body home, to McGee Street Productions for Hallmark Hall of Fame, in a good deal, by Lynn Pleshette for Marly Rusoff & Associates.

Debra Dean’s first novel THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD, in which the siege of Leningrad during World War II is echoed by the destructive siege against the mind and memory of an elderly Russian woman who was once a young docent at the Hermitage but who now lives in Seattle and suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, to Claire Wachtel at Morrow, in a good deal, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world, excl. German).

Matthew Sanford’s inspirational autobiography WAKING: A Passage Into Body, by a Yoga teacher, who, after a near fatal accident at age thirteen was paralyzed from the chest down and placed in a wheelchair for life, offering keen insights into the relationship between mind and body and the power of story to transform our consciousness, to Leigh Haber at Rodale, in a nice deal, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world).

Film rights to THE LAST ONE IN a novel by Nicholas Kulish, in which a New York tabloid newspaper’s war correspondent is hit by a delivery truck and sent to the hospital just as he is about to be embedded with the Marines in Iraq so the paper’s editor decides to send its gossip columnist off in his place, to Columbia Pictures with Mike DeLuca producing with Wilkinson & Rivele (ALI) adapting the screenplay, in a significant deal, by Shari Smiley at CAA for Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates.

The Washington Cycle, by Adam Langer, which takes the characters he introduced in his critically acclaimed first novel Crossing California forward in time into the 1980’s, and beyond the boundaries of West Rogers Park, Chicago, to Riverhead Publisher Cindy Spiegel, in a good deal, by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world English)

THE GIFT OF VALOR by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips who was embedded with a Marine unit in Iraq presents a grunt’s-eye view of combat, courage and fear in telling the story of Corporal Jason Dunham, a small-town kid and young Marine who sacrificed his life for his comrades and became the first American nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Iraq War, to Charlie Conrad Executive Editor Broadway Books, scheduled for publication in spring 2005, by agent Marly Rusoff, World English.

LIVES OF THE ARTISTS, a new novel by Robert Clark, winner of both a PNBA Book Award for Fiction and Edgar Award, in which three young Americans, two of whom are aspiring young writers and the other a painter, leave Seattle for Florence at the end of the last century hoping to live the lives of artists and to find in Italy the happiness they could not find at home sold to Iris Tupholme, EIC of Harper Canada, Canadian Rights by agent Marly Rusoff.

A new and as yet untitled collection of stories by poet, novelist, and recent O’Henry Award-winning short story writer Ron Rash sold to Josh Kendall for Picador by agent Marly Rusoff World Rights as a part of two-book deal including a new novel acquired by Holt’s EIC Jennifer Barth.
Winner of an NEA poetry fellowship, Ron Rash holds the John Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University.