S&S Nabs Nagorski WWII Book

Former Newsweek foreign correspondent Andrew Nagorski (Hitlerland) sold North American rights to a new book about Germany during World War II, The Year Germany Lost the War: 1941. Trident Media Group’s Robert Gottlieb brokered the sale with Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster. The book chronicles the titular year during the war; as Gottlieb explained, the author makes the case that “a few key blunders laid the foundation for Germany’s subsequent defeat.”

Tor to Relaunch Martin’s Wild Cards

In a North American rights deal, Kay McCauley at Aurous sold four new books and five relicensed backlist titles in the Wild Cards anthology series edited by George R.R. Martin to Tor. Diana M. Pho acquired the books for six figures. The series was launched at Bantam Books in 1987; it is set in an alternate history in which an alien virus infiltrated Earth after World War II.

Caine Re-ups Library Line at Berkley

Anne Sowards at Berkley nabbed two more books in Rachel Caine’s Great Library series. Lucienne Diver at the Knight Agency represented Caine (Morganville Vampires series) in the six-figure deal for North American rights. The series is set in a world in which, as Berkley explained, “privately owning books is a crime.” The hero of the series, Jess Brightwell, comes from a long line of “black-market book smugglers.”

Sourcebooks Buys Block Novel

Sandra Block (Little Black Lies), a finalist for the International Thriller Awards, closed a world English rights deal with Sourcebooks’ Shana Drehs for her new novel, What Happened That Night. Rachel Ekstrom at the Irene Goodman Agency represented Block. The publisher said the book is about a woman who was sexually assaulted but has no memory of the attack. When a video of the assault surfaces, “she teams up with a computer-savvy coworker with his own reasons for settling old scores, and the two begin to exact cold, unvarnished revenge.” The book is slated for 2018.

Bard Prof Brings Wartime Memoir to Morrow

In a world English rights deal, Justus Rosenberg sold How to Become a Guerrilla to Henry Ferris at William Morrow. The book is subtitled Coming of Age with Varian Fry and the Underground in Wartime France, and it chronicles the author’s time in the French Resistance, describing how, in 1937, he escaped the Nazis. Rosenberg, who is 96 and a professor emeritus at Bard, worked with the American journalist Varian Fry during World War II. As part of Fry’s underground network, Rosenberg helped save thousands of people from the Nazis, including notable artists such Marc Chagall and Max Ernst. The book, which Eric Myers at Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret sold, is scheduled for fall 2018.

Briefs

Anna Quinn’s debut novel Split was acquired in a world rights deal by Addi Black at Blackstone. Quinn, who owns the Port Townsend, Wash.–based bookstore the Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Bookstore, was represented by Gordon Warnock at Fuse Literary. Warnock said the novel follows a teacher whose long-dormant dissociative identity disorder emerges when she sets out to save her daughter from “an unknown terror set to strike on Valentine’s Day.”

University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Martin Seligman sold The Hope Circuit to Ben Adams at PublicAffairs in a deal brokered by Inkwell Management’s Richard Pine. The book, set for spring 2018, will, the publisher said, chronicle “the transformation of modern psychology from a focus on a crippling past to concentrating on what is positive in life.”

Betsy Teter, at the nonprofit South Carolina–based Hub City Press, nabbed North American rights to Leesa Cross-Smith’s Whiskey & Ribbons. Kerry D’Agostino at Curtis Brown Ltd., who represented the author, said the literary debut, which is set over the course of single weekend in Louisville, Ky., “follows a fallen police officer’s widow and his best friend as they’re forced to confront the feelings they have for each other after his death.” Whiskey & Ribbons is slated for spring 2018.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Anna Quinn's bookstore, the Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Bookstore.