Jean V. Naggar
Literary Agency Inc.
High on JVNLA’s list is Elizabeth Crane’s The History of Great
Things (Harper Perennial, Apr. 2016). The novel tells the
entwined stories of Lois, a daughter of the Depression-era
Midwest who came to New York to become an opera star, and
her daughter, Elizabeth, an aspiring writer who came of age in
the 1970s in the shadow of her often-absent but always larger-than-life mother. A debut collection, In the Land of Armadillos:
Stories (Scribner, Feb. 2016) by Helen Maryles Shankman, a
two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, will also be talked up. The
linked stories are set in a town in German-occupied Poland
where mythic tales of Jewish folklore meet the real-life monsters of the Nazi invasion. Another top fiction pick is international bestselling author C. W. Gortner’s Marlene (Morrow,
June 2016). It is based on the life of Marlene Dietrich’s struggles as an outrageous cabaret doyenne during the Weimar
Republic, her bisexual affairs with Hollywood royalty, and her
defiance during WWII. Switching gears to nonfiction, JVNLA
is touting The Illustrated Book of Sayings (Ten Speed, spring
2017) by Ella Frances Sanders, a follow-up to Lost in
Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words
from Around the World. This new book is an art-driven collection
of 52 aphorisms, idioms, and adages from around the world that
illuminate the whimsical nature of language. Rights have been
sold in France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, and the U.K.
Janklow & Nesbit Associates
Among J&N’s top fiction titles this year is Black Deutschland
(FSG, Feb. 2016) by Darryl Pinckney, author of the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize–winning novel High Cotton. The novel, set in
the 1980s, tells the story of Jed, a young man just out of rehab
who leaves his hometown of Chicago to the city of his fantasies,
Berlin. Wallace Stegner fellow Sari Wilson’s debut novel, Girl
Through Glass (HarperCollins, Jan. 2016), “illuminates the
costs of ambition, and the desire for beauty,” per the agency.
The book was pre-empted by HarperCollins in the U.S. The
agency will be touting another
debut novel— Your Heart Is a
Muscle the Size of a Fist (LB/
Boudreaux, Jan. 2016) by
Sunil Yapa, which is set
during the heated conflict of
Seattle’s 1999 WTO protests.
Rights have sold in the U.K.
and France. On J&N’s hot list
of nonfiction books is Ghetto:
The Invention of a Place, the
History of an Idea (FSG, Mar.
2016), Mitchell Duneier’s
“comprehensive account of the
ghetto, both as a notion and a space.” Then there’s Love, Loss,
and What We Ate (Ecco, Mar. 2016) by Padma Lakshmi. In the
book, the Top Chef host details her path from an “immigrant
childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera.”
Jane Rotrosen Agency
Five fiction heavy hitters top Rotrosen’s list, led by Tess
Gerritsen’s newest, Playing with Fire (Ballantine, Oct.). From
the moment that Boston violinist Julia plays the opening notes
of Incendio, a mysterious waltz that she discovered in an antique
bookshop in Italy, she is in thrall to it. Desperate to uncover its
origins, she returns to Italy and finds a secret that a powerful
political family will do anything to protect. Rights have been
sold in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia,
Turkey, and the U.K. Rotrosen is also jazzed about the novel
Find Her (Dutton, Feb. 2016) by Lisa Gardner, which tells the
story of Flora Dane. After being kidnapped and tormented for
472 days, Dane struggles to reacquaint herself with the rhythms
of normal life. But when Boston Detective D.D. Warren learns
that she has killed four dangerous predators in self-defense since
her return to society, Warren thinks Dane holds the
key to the case of a missing college student.
Rights have been sold in the U.K. and the
Netherlands. Next up is Tami Hoag’s The
Bitter Season (Dutton, Feb. 2016). As the
bitter weather of late fall descends on
Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is
working on an old unsolved case and missing
the adrenaline rush of solving recent murders
with Sam Kovak, her former partner.
But a danger that stalks a local wife and
mother may bring Nikki and Sam back
together and link their murder cases.
Rights were sold to Orion in the U.K.
Another top pick is Her Final Breath
(Thomas & Mercer, Sept.) by Robert
Dugoni, a follow-up to My Sister’s Grave,
which initiated the Tracy Crosswhite
series. Worldwide Chinese, English,
French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Portuguese, and Spanish rights are represented by Amazon Publishing; other languages are handled by
Rotrosen. The agency is equally excited about the bestselling
self-published title The Paper Swan by Leylah Attar, in which
a woman is kidnapped, only to realize that the only way out
means certain death for one of the two men she loves.
Trident Media Group
Trident will be heading to Germany pitching the frontlist and
backlist for Melody Anne, a formerly self-published author
who is now published by Simon & Schuster in the U.S. The Sari Wilson
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