Deals

Kimberly McCreight’s RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA, in which a career-focused, single mother refuses to accept that her perfect daughter’s plunge from the roof of her elite Brooklyn private school was suicide and searches through e-mails, texts and Facebook posts to prove otherwise; it’s the story of a secret first love, an all-girls club steeped in mean girl tradition and how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn’t save, to Claire Wachtel at Harper, in a major deal, for two books, at auction, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).

From Robin Oliveira, New York Times bestselling author of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER and winner of the Michael Shaara Prize for Civil War Fiction, an UNTITLED novel set in the nineteenth-century art world of Paris about the extraordinary and passionate 40-year relationship between the American painter Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas to Kathryn Court at Viking in a significant deal by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates. (NA)

Frank O’Connor 2010 Award winner Ron Rash’s UNTITLED story collection to Lee Boudreaux at Ecco/Harper Collins by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates. (NA)

Janis Owens’ AMERICAN GHOST set in contemporary Florida and inspired by a historic local lynching, in which a the daughter of a preacher from a family distrustful of outsiders meets and falls in love with a crusading Jewish grad student in anthropology from Miami who arrives to do an ethnic study of the region and unwittingly sets in motion troubles that reach far back in time, exposing long buried secrets that ultimately need to be set right to Whitney Frick at Scribner by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates.(NA)

Margaret Wurtele’s THE GOLDEN HOUR, set in war torn Italy, and following the German army’s invasion of her village, a young Italian woman risks her life to defy the injustice surrounding her, in this novel of forbidden love to Claire Zion at NAL/Penguin by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates. (World English)

Author of THE LOST SUMMER OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Kelly O’Connor McNees’s IN NEED OF A GOOD WIFE, the story of three women in a group of mail-order brides who travel from New York City to Nebraska in 1867 — a combative Civil War widow in financial ruin, an introspective Bavarian laundress, and the barmaid-turned-matchmaker who launches the venture to thwart her grief after the death of her baby, to Claire Zion at Berkley, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA)

Mary Lou Kirwin’s THE KILLER LIBRARIAN, in which a small-town Midwestern librarian gets dumped by her boyfriend moments before their long-awaited trip to England but she goes anyway and finds not only books galore, but a dead botanist, and just maybe the love of her life, to Kathy Sagan at Gallery Books, in a two-book deal, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (World English).

Margaret Wrinkle’s TRUE FOR SURE, set in 1823 on the Tennessee frontier, is the story of a young black man named Wash who is forced to work as a stud in the breeding of slaves by his owner, troubled Revolutionary War veteran Richardson, whose debt and isolation lead him into an uneasy intimacy with both Wash and an enslaved healer named Pallas as she inspires Wash to transcend his harsh reality by forging an understanding of his shamanic African inheritance, all told through a delicate love story unfolding against this historically harrowing period to Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove Atlantic in a very nice deal by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates. (world English)

Mary Curran Hackett’s PROOF OF HEAVEN, in which a single mother struggles to keep her son alive in the face of a rare heart disease that causes him to die seven times before his seventh birthday, while the mother searches for answers in the divine, her son’s doctor searches for a cure, but the boy wishes to meet his long-lost father, a journey that will test their faith and courage as they face the ultimate question of proof of heaven, to Lucia Macro at William Morrow, in a nice deal, by Marly Rusoff of Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).

Caroline Stoessinger’s ALICE’S WORLD, in which the life of 107-year old Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor and concert pianist, is used as a lens not only to show the power of music, but how her refusal to hate brings goodness into the world, to Cindy Spiegel of Spiegel & Grau, in a good deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in early 2013, by Marly Rusoff of Marly Rusoff & Associates (World).