Frances Goldin Literary Agency, Inc. 2013 Frankfurt Listeleri

Frances Goldin Literary Agency, Inc.

2013

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PJ Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their novels, Monkeewrench, Live Bait, Dead Run, Snow Blind, and Shoot to Thrill are national and international bestsellers.  

Rights Sold:

US, Can., Audio: Putnam

UK: Penguin UK

▪ US Publication Summer 2014

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Unedited Manuscript available

FERTILE GROUND

New novel in the international bestselling Monkeewrench series

Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to the recently slain body of a young woman found in a wooded city park. Everything about the scene is all too familiar, harkening back to a year old unsolved murder where an Ace of Spades was found under that victim’s shirt. When they discover a Two of Spades on their current victim, and a Three of Spades on a third, their worst fears are confirmed -- there is a serial killer operating and he plans to finish the deck. 

At the same time, the Monkeewrench Software founders – Grace MacBride, Harley Davidson, Annie Belinsky, and Roadrunner – find themselves at personal and career crossroads. Weary of the darker side of their computer work with the police, they agree to take on a private missing persons case in a small farming community in southwestern Minnesota.

But that respite doesn’t last long -- as Magozzi and Gino frantically try to find their killer while Monkeewrench works through the puzzles of an old farmer’s missing daughter, there is a shocking, seemingly random attempt on Harley Davidson’s life.  A day later, they find Harley’s new romantic interest murdered and dumped in a garbage can on his property. The FBI and the DEA suddenly descend on their investigation, hampering their work to find the unlikely connections that ultimately weave together a farmer’s missing daughter, a dead undercover agent, a serial killer, and a criminal operation in the heart of the city.

Praise for Monkeewrench:

“[A] smart thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A killer read in every way.”—People

“Fast, fresh, funny, and outrageously suspenseful.”—Harlan Coben

Justin Hocking is an avid surfer and skateboarder. He edited Life and Limb: Skateboarders Write from the Deep End, and his work has appeared in the Rumpus, Thrasher, and the Normal School. He is the executive director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center, and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Rights Sold:

World English (Graywolf Press)

▪ US Publication March 2014

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Edited Manuscript available

The Great Floodgates

of the Wonderworld

Surfing in Far Rockaway, romantic obsession, and Moby-Dick converge in this dynamic and compelling memoir

Justin Hocking, like many transplants to the city, doesn’t adapt easily to New York. Far Rockaway is his escape. There he discovers surfing and a colorful circle of friends, both of which prove vital to his sanity, especially in the wake of a traumatic carjacking. But the tides of this memoir pull in more than surfboards. As he ventures further into the dark on his own “night sea journey,” Hocking details his obsessions, from Moby-Dick to Scientology’s naval ties, from environmentalism to the Iraq war, and from twelve-step meetings to Basquiat. The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld is an affecting portrait of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Far Rockaway, Queens, and the swirling tides of big city life.

 “This beautiful memoir is beyond cool. A voyage both erudite and affecting.”

–Junot Díaz

Eula Biss holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her second book, Notes from No Man's Land, received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Her work has also been recognized by a Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library as well as Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships. She teaches at Northwestern University.

Rights Sold:

US & Can. (Graywolf Press)

▪ US Publication September 2014

▪ UK & Translation rights available

▪ Manuscript available

ON IMMUNITY

An Inoculation

The anticipated follow-up to Biss’s NBCC winning Notes from No Man’s Land

A book-length cultural exploration of vaccination, parenthood, public health, and the body as metaphor. Includes narratives about Biss’s son’s acquisition of language through bodily metaphor, the personal politics of vaccination, the history of conscientious objection, vampires and the rise of inoculation in 19^th century England, predatory capitalism, gender and sexism in medicine, body and environmental pollution, blood banking, and many other wide ranging topics woven together with Biss’s fierce intelligence and supple prose. The result is a sprawling but controlled tour de force by one of America’s leading literary nonfiction practitioners. A portion of the book appeared in the January 2013 issue of Harper’s

“Is essayist Eula Biss Joan Didion’s heiress apparent? …. Eula Biss' Notes From No Man's Land is the most accomplished book of essays anyone has written or published so far in the 21st century.”

-Salon

Colin Asher’s writing and reporting have appeared in over two dozen publications, including The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Globe, and The American Prospect. In 2007 he was the recipient of the Cushing Niles Dolbeare Award for magazine reporting for his feature in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Rights Sold:

US & Canada: W.W. Norton

▪ UK & Translation available

▪ Proposal available

▪ Publication 2016

never a lovely so real

Examining the work and life of a master of American naturalism--with cameos by Bellow, Wright, Hemingway, de Beauvoir—Colin Asher reclaims Nelson Algren as a literary treasure

Expanded from his article in The Believer, Colin Asher reclaims the life and work of a forgotten master of American naturalism. Remembered as the lover of Simone de Beauvoir chronicled in The Mandarins and the first winner of the National Book Award for The Man With the Golden Arm, Algren was a writer whose eye for the quotidian injustices, cruelties, and heartbreak of America’s scorned and forgotten produced some of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. In his depictions of Chicago slums, replete with bookies, tough guys, whores, and junkies, Algren--along with contemporaries Agee, Trumbo, Bellow, Wright, and Hemingway--came to define the American aesthetic in the postwar period.

In Never a Lovely So Real, Asher grafts the life and work of Nelson Algren onto the larger canvas of the American century, from the Depression to McCarthyism to the numbing apathy that emerged post ‘68. Most importantly however, Asher presents a critical reinterpretation of Algren’s work and champions the late Algren as an unsung innovator of literary nonfiction. To all his tasks Asher brings an incisive intelligence and the gifts of a keen observer. In Never a Lovely So Real Asher offers a portrait of Algren that is also a portrait of America; a chronicle of the depths of one writer’s commitment to his craft and his conscience.

Brooks Haxton has published six collections of poems with Knopf. His poems and prose have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review. In 2013 the Fellowship of Southern Writers presented him with the Hanes Award, recognizing a distinguished body of work by a poet in mid-career.

Rights Sold:

World English (Counterpoint); Audio (Audible)

▪ US Publication May 2014

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Edited Manuscript available

FADING HEARTS ON THE RIVER

An Improbable Story of Texas Hold ‘EM

A nonfiction rollercoaster about games of chance and the game of life

Beginning and ending with a nationally televised poker tournament where millions of dollars are at stake, Fading Hearts on the River offers a story of odds—the odds of a newborn surviving severe jaundice, the odds of Congress passing a law that devastates an online gambling career, the odds of drawing the right card on the turn or the river. In this tale of fatherhood and worldly success, Haxton follows his son Isaac as he drops out of Brown University and sets out to be a pro poker player, the nervous parents sitting on the sidelines with their fingers crossed or staring at a video monitor while Isaac wins more in one hand of play than his father has earned from all his books of poetry combined.

In this deftly crafted memoir Haxton explores the propensity for inventive logic, abstraction, and memory which poets and poker players share, all the while taking readers on a rollicking tour of complex, intertwined topics, ranging from game theory and financial strategy to medical mysteries and lost love, with a gamer’s perspective on chess, Magic cards, Texas Hold ‘em, and a lifetime of choices. Guided by the through-line of a father’s love and admiration for his talented son, Fading Hearts delivers a unique perspective on professional gambling and one family’s experience playing the odds.

“I loved this book - gave a sad groan when I saw I was out of pages - hugely compelling, kind, witty – an utterly charming & frank voice.”

–George Saunders

“I was knocked out by the narrative power and polymath brilliance, the elliptical beauty and elegance of thought inside a story with great momentum. It's a book about child rearing, money in absentia and in abundance, poker, the nature of chance, the psychology of deception....I can see this being a cult hit ala Elif Batuman's Possessed.”

–Mary Karr

Monica Byrne studied fiction with Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link and Geoff Ryman at the Clarion Workshop.  She has published fiction in Gargoyle, Shimmer, Fantasy Magazine and Electric Velocipede, and nonfiction in Wellesley Magazine and HowlRound: The Journal of New American Plays.  She holds degrees in biochemistry from Wellesley College and MIT. 

Rights Sold:

US & Canada (Crown); Germany (Heyne); UK (Little Brown)

▪ US Publication May 2014

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Edited Manuscript available

THE GIRL IN THE ROAD

A Novel

A thrilling first novel -- literary speculative fiction, with elements of feminist sci-fi.

The Girl in the Road is set at two different times in the near future, with alternating narrative threads. In 2068, India has become the dominant political power in the world.  New energy technologies have been developed, but it's too late to prevent the seas from rising and changing the planet’s coastal geography. Meena, a young Indian woman who is wounded and fleeing from a traumatic event she can't remember, decides to escape by walking the Trail, a floating energy-harvesting pontoon bridge that spans the entire Arabian Sea from Mumbai to Djibouti on the east coast of Africa.  It’s forbidden to walk on the Trail, but a shadowy underground subculture has emerged, the Walkers. 

Forty years earlier, in 2026, a slave girl named Mariama flees her home in Mauritania after witnessing the rape of her mother. She finds refuge in a truck caravan headed across the Sahara, which is carrying a mysterious cargo. Mariama addresses her story to the person she calls Yemaya, a young woman who joins the caravan in Dakar and takes Mariama under her wing. Increasingly Mariama becomes obsessed with Yemaya, seeing her as a goddess, as they journey across Africa towards Ethiopia.  But when they finally arrive in Addis Ababa, Yemaya disappears. Mariama never recovers from this abandonment, but keeps Yemaya in her, even as she grows up, goes to university, takes part in growing anti-Indian protests, and falls in love with a young Indian doctor.

The two stories alternate, with Meena travelling west, and Mariama travelling east.  But it is only at the end, in a stunning climax, that we understand how closely the two stories parallel each other, and how Meena and Mariama are linked.

An astonishing literary debut.

Mary Miller’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including McSweeney's, Oxford American, Tin House, and The Rumpus. Her short story collection Big World was published in 2009 by Short Flight and will soon go into its third printing. She is currently a James A. Michener Fellow in Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin, where she serves as editor-in-chief of Bat City Review.

Rights Sold:

World English (W.W. Norton); Germany (Metrolit)

▪ US publication February 2014

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Edited Manuscript available

THE LAST DAYS OF CALIFORNIA

A Novel

A compelling, humorous, and utterly engaging debut novel

When most families take a road trip to California it ends in a visit to Disneyland or to far-away relatives. When Jess's family takes a road trip to California, it ends in the Rapture.

At least that's the plan when they leave their hometown of Montgomery, Alabama equipped with matching t-shirts announcing, “King Jesus Returns!” and bundles of educational tracts to hand out to non-believers.

At 14 years old, Jess isn't quite sure what to make of all this. Unlike her beautiful and rebellious older sister Elise, who scorns everything about them, Jess has always accepted her parents' evangelical beliefs. This pilgrimage is different. Before they left, Jess discovered that not only had her father just lost his job; Elise is also pregnant. Over the next four days Jess questions her faith in God, her parents, and herself as she struggles to keep Elise's secret and wonders whether her family will survive even if the Rapture doesn't come.

Miller's voice is both fierce and compassionate. Her cutting, deadpan sense of humor belies sympathy for characters whose delusions are a necessary protection against circumstances they feel powerless to change.

"Miller's great at turning the mundane inside out and letting the world see its guts."
– Metro Times 

Susan Bordo, Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at University of Kentucky, is the author of Unbearable Weight and The Male Body.

Rights Sold:

US & Can (Houghton Harcourt); UK (Oneworld); Audio (Audible)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication April 2013

The Creation of Anne Boleyn

A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.

Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto “mean girl,” feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies.

“A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike….”

-Kirkus

“The young queen has been the source of fascination for nearly half a millennium, and her legacy continues; this engaging portrait culminates with an intriguing exploration of Boleyn’s recent reemergence in pop culture”

-PW

Bruce Grierson is a Canadian science journalist, whose work has been published in Psychology Today, the New York Times Magazine, Discover and Scientific American among many others.  His first book was U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life? (Bloomsbury, 2008). 

Rights Sold:

World English (Holt); Canada (Random House)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Copyedited ms.  available

▪ Publication April 2014

what Makes olga run?

The Mystery of the Ninety-Something Track Star who is Outpacing Time; and What She Can Teach Us About How to Live Longer and Happier Lives

When Olga Kotelko first stepped onto the running track at age 77, she wasn’t expecting much.  She’d retired at 65 from a career as a teacher in Vancouver; she’d played a little recreational softball, but she’d never been an athlete.   No one knew she was about to break every record in the book.

But that’s what she did.  In the 100 meter, 200 meter, 400 meter, 4 x 100 relay, hammer throw, javelin, shot put, discus, long jump, high jump, and triple jump, Olga (who is now 94) has gone on to set 23 new world records for her age category.

Now Canadian journalist Bruce Grierson has set out to learn what makes Olga tick.  Following her to Masters Circuit track events, and tagging along as she allows herself to become the subject of scientific scrutiny, Grierson explores not only the secret to Olga’s astonishing abilities, but what practical lessons we can learn ourselves, about how to stay healthy as we age.

A warm and inspiring story about achieving our full potential.

Thomas Satterlee is the recipient of the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize, a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. He has published two collections of Danish poetry in translation and a collection of original poetry.  Burning Wyclif was a 2007 American Library Association Notable book and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award.

Rights Sold:

Denmark (Rosenkilde & Bahnhof)

▪ US, UK & Translation rights available

▪ Ms. available

▪ Publication May 2013

SØren’s Desk

A Novel

Set in Copenhagen, Denmark, just months before the bicentennial birthday of melancholy native son Søren Kierkegaard, SOREN’S DESK is part literary mystery, part philosophical exploration, and part witty takedown of academic and social pretentions. 

When Søren Kierkegaard’s writing desk spills a manuscript of poems just months before his 200th birthday, many conclude that it must be a lost work by the famous philosopher—but Head of Fraudulent Affairs, Rolf Poulsen, isn’t so sure. 

Mette Rasmussen, Director of the Søren Kierkegaard Institute, must persuade two feuding scholars to set aside their differences and cooperate in the international celebration she is planning.  Everything starts to go wrong, however, when the philosopher’s writing desk is moved to the site of the main display and gets caught up in a possible bomb threat that shuts down the city and brings in the Danish Bomb Squad.  No explosives are found, but the desk contains a previously unknown manuscript of poems supposedly written by Kierkegaard—and one of the feuding scholars has apparently hanged himself. 

The job of authenticating the manuscript and assuring its safety goes to Inspector Rolf Poulsen, Head of Fraudulent Affairs at Danish National Police.  As Inspector Poulsen begins his investigation, he discovers links to an earlier case of his, one that involved infamous con artist Stein Blicher, Denmark’s own version of Bernard Madoff.  The Inspector follows clues that become personal threats on his own life and finds himself making compromising deals with the city’s Mayor and its Chief of Police.  Before the case is closed, he’s learned more than he thought he ever wanted to about his illustrious, esoteric kinsman—not to mention himself.

Edited by: Frances Goldin (yes, our Frances Goldin!), Michael Steven Smith, Debby Smith, Steven Wishnia

Rights Sold:

World English (HarperCollins)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Ms. available

▪ Publication January 2014

IMAGINE:

Living in a Socialist USA

The word "socialism" is one of the most misunderstood terms in the US, more potent, as the recent presidential campaign proved, as a term of derision than as a meaningful system of ideas to draw upon. Nothing could be more un-American.

With essays by 32 leading thinkers and writers, Imagine reclaims the word by reimagining our society:

Capitalism: The Real Enemy by Paul Street; The Future Will Be Ecosocialist by Joel Kovell; A Democratically Run Economy Can Replace the Oligarchy by Ron Reosti; The Shape of a Post-Capitalist Future by Rick Wolff; Law in a Socialist USA by Michael Steven Smith; Alternatives to the Present System of Capitalist Injustice by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Angela Davis; Socialism Is the Highest Expression of Human Rights by Ajamu Baraka; Personal, Emotional, and Sexual Life Without Capitalism by Harriet Fraad and Tess Fraad Wolff ; A Woman’s Workday in a Socialist U.S.A. by Renate Bridenthal; Dignity, Respect, Equality, Love by Blanche Wiesen Cook; How Queer Life Might Be Different in a Socialist U.S.A. by Leslie Cagan and Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz; Drugs in a Society Where People Care About Each Other by Steven Wishnia; Immigration: Immigrant Workers Point the Way to a Better World by Juan Gonzalez; Welfare in a New Society: An End to Intentional Impoverishment and Degradation by Frances Fox Piven; Food for All: Creating a Socially Sustainable Food System by Arun Gupta; The Right to Housing by Tom Angotti; Socialized Medicine Means Everyone Gets Care, Regardless of Whether They Have Money by Dave Lindorff; Teach Freedom! by William Ayers; Imagining Art After Capitalism by Mat Callahan; Prometheus Completely Unbound: What Science and Technology Could Accomplish in a Socialist America by Clifford D. Conner; First-Class News: The Media in a Socialist U.S.A. by Fred Jerome; Religion, Spirituality, and Socialism by Joel Kovel; Imagine the Angels of Bread by Martin Espada; We Be Reading Marx Where We From: Socialism and the Black Freedom Struggle by Kazembe Balagun; You Are the Light of the World: Speech Via Mic Check at Occupy Wall Street by Joel Kovel; The Working-Class Majority by Michael Zweig; Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here? A Proposal by Michael Moore; How to Achieve Economic Democracy in the United States by Clifford D. Conner; The Capitalist Road: From Chinese Sweatshops to Detroit’s Decay by Dianne Feeley; Thanksgiving 2077: A Short Story by Terry Bisson

Helene Wecker currently lives near San Francisco.  She has an MFA from Columbia.  The Golem & the Jinni is her first novel.

Rights Sold:

US&Can/Audio. (HarperCollins); UK (Blue Door); Israel (Miskal); Germany (Hoffman&Campe); Italy (NeriPozza); Norway (Juritzen); Poland (Fabryka); Holland (Dutch Media); France (Laffont); Russia (Azbooka); Czech Rep. (Beta); Taiwan (Marco Polo); Indonesia (PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama); Spain (Tusquets); Turkey (Dogan)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication April 2013

THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI

A Novel

The Golem and the Djinni, an immigrant saga that combines elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology, is the story of two magical creatures who arrive separately in New York in 1899.  The Golem is a woman created by an aged dabbler in the dark kabbalistic arts to be the wife of a man who then dies at sea, leaving her unmoored and adrift as the ship comes into New York harbor; the Djinni is a man, trapped by a wizard in a copper flask and released accidentally by a Syrian tinsmith in lower Manhattan.

The narrative traces their respective journeys, as they explore the strange human city.  The Golem is besieged by human desires and wishes, which she can feel tugging at her; the Djinni is aggravated by human dullness.  But they both work to make at least a temporary place for themselves in this new world, and develop tentative relationships.  The two of them meet about a third of the way into the novel; it is not exactly a romance, and at first they are hostile and suspicious, but they end up forming a strong bond, since only they can recognize each other for what they truly are.

This is a marvelous and absorbing work of fiction, a combination of historical novel and magical fable.  With threads from Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, it belongs in a tradition of contemporary Jewish writing that draws on folk and pop cultural materials, like Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and other works of magical realism.

"….This impressive first novel manages to combine the narrative magic of “The Arabian Nights” with the kind of emotional depth, philosophical seriousness and good, old-fashioned storytelling found in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer."

-The New York Times

"Wecker's storytelling skills dazzle...[an]intoxicating fusion of fantasy and historical fiction."-Entertainment Weekly

Rutu Modan first graphic novel, Exit Wounds, won the prestigious Eisner Award for best graphic novel in 2008.  She has done comic strips for the Israeli newspapers Yedioth Aharonot and Ma’ariv and illustrations for The New Yorker, Le Monde, The New York Times and many other publications. Modan currently lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Rights Sold:

US & Can. (Drawn & Quarterly); UK (Cape); France (Actes Sud); Spain (Sins Entido); Italy (Lizard); Poland (Kultura Gniewu); Holland (Oog & Bilk); Germany (Carlsen)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ US publication May 2013

THE PROPERTY

A hilarious, poignant story of family squabbling, confused identity, and combative romance

85-year-old Regina travels back to Warsaw from Israel for the first time since 1939, to reclaim the family apartment, lost during the war.  Travelling with her is her 30-year-old granddaughter Mica. Once in Warsaw, Regina begins to act strangely, pouting and sending Mica on wild goose chases.  Secretly Regina is less interested in the family apartment than in the man who occupies it: Roman, her Polish sweetheart, with whom she tried to run away when she was young.  After her parents packed her off to Palestine, alone and pregnant, she had never seen Roman again.  Now she is summoning her courage to meet him once more. Meanwhile Mica dreams of the money a Warsaw apartment might bring.  She takes up with a young Polish artist who makes his living guiding Jewish groups to Holocaust sites, and they begin a light-hearted romance while they try to figure out where the apartment is, and who rightfully owns it. At the end, everyone meets in a cemetery on the Day of the Dead, the Polish holiday when people gather at the graves of their families.  In this beautiful candlelit scene, secrets are revealed, and romances are rekindled.

Recent backlist:

  

Aaron Bobrow-Strain is associate professor of politics at Whitman College in Washington. He writes and teaches on the politics of the global food system. He is the author of Intimate Enemies: Landowners, Power, and Violence in Chiapas.

Rights Sold:

US & Can. (Beacon); South Korea (Viz&Biz); Audio (Audible)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication January 2013

WHITE BREAD

A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf

The story of how white bread became white trash, this social history shows how our relationship with the most beloved and reviled food staple reflects our country's changing values.

How did white bread, once an icon of American progress, become “white trash”? In this lively history of bakers, dietary crusaders, and social reformers, Aaron Bobrow-Strain shows us that what we think about the humble, puffy loaf says a lot about who we are and what we want our society to look like.
 
White Bread teaches us that when people debate what one should eat, they are also wrestling with larger questions of race, class, immigration, and gender. As Bobrow-Strain traces the story of bread, from the first factory loaf to the latest gourmet pain au levain, he shows how efforts to champion “good food” reflect dreams of a better society—even as they reinforce stark social hierarchies.

Given that open disdain for “unhealthy” eaters and discrimination on the basis of eating habits grow increasingly acceptable, White Bread is a timely and important examination of what we really talk about when we talk about food.

“This terrific book does for the humble loaf what Mark Kurlansky does for cod.”

 —Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved

“This is entertaining history and an example of food studies in action”

—Marion Nestle

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of seven works of fiction, including The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. In 2000, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, the US’s highest honor for service through the arts and in 2010 she won the Orange Prize for The Lacuna. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Rights Sold:

US&Can/Audio. (HarperCollins); UK (Faber); Holland (Atlas- Contact); France (Rivages) Norway (Juritzen); Poland (Proszynski); Italy (Neripozza); Turkey (Pegasus); Israel (Keter); Spain (Planeta); Germany (C. Bertelsman)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication November 2012

FLIGHT BEHAVIOR*

A Novel

From the Orange Prize-winning author of The Lacuna comes a suspenseful and brilliant new novel about catastrophe and denial

Discontented with her life of poverty on a failing farm in the Eastern United States, Dellarobia, a young mother, impulsively seeks out a love affair. Instead, on the Appalachian mountains above her farm, she discovers something much more profoundly life-changing – a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature. As the world around her is suddenly transformed by a seeming miracle, can the old certainties they have lived by for centuries remain unchallenged?

Flight Behavior is a captivating, topical and deeply human novel touching on class, poverty and climate change. It is Barbara Kingsolver’s most accessible novel yet, and explores the truths we live by, and the complexities that lie behind them.

“With her powerful new novel, Kingsolver (The Lacuna) delivers literary fiction that conveys an urgent social message”--PW (Starred Review)

“Orange Prize winner Kingsolver (The Lacuna) performs literary magic, generously illuminating both sides of the culture wars, from the global-warming debate to public education in America”—Library Journal (Starred Review)

*Shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize (formerly The Orange Prize)

Previous publishers:

UK (Faber); France (Rivages); Italy (Mondadori); Turkey (Pegasus); Spain (Lumen);

Israel (Modan);  Brazil (Versus); Hungary (Kelly); Norway (Juritzen Forlag); Serbia (Laguna); Romania (Corint); Russia (Corpus); Greece (Melani); China Simple & Complex (Thinkingdom); Portugal (Club do Autor); Czech (Jota); Denmark (Verve); Poland (Wydawnictwo Abatroz); Croatia (Algoritam); Holland (Atlas-Contact)

 

Janisse Ray is author of four books of literary nonfiction and a collection of nature poetry. She is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and in 2007 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Unity College in Maine.

Rights Sold:

World English (Chelsea Green); Turkey (Moda Ofset)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication April 2013

THE SEED UNDERGROUND

A Growing Revolution to Save Food

In this enchanting narrative—part memoir, part botany primer, part political manifesto—Ray, author of the acclaimed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, and lately returning to her childhood obsession with farming, has a mission: to inspire us with her own life to “understand food at its most elemental... the most hopeful thing in the world. It is a seed. In the era of dying, it is all life.” Ray is inspired by the eccentric, impassioned, generous characters she visits and interviews, gardeners and farmers who populate the quietly radical world of seed savers, from Vermonter Sylvia Davatz, self-proclaimed ‘“Imelda Marcos of seeds,”’ to the more phlegmatic Bill Keener of Rabin Gap, Ga., who gives Ray two 20-inch cobs of Keener corn, grown by his family for generations, as well as Greasy Back beans and some rotten Box Car Willy tomatoes to save for seed. Despite the book’s occasional tendency toward polemic, avid gardeners will relish recognizing their idiosyncratic, revolutionary sides in its pages, and it’s likely to strike a spark in gardening novices. Even couch potatoes will be enthralled by Ray’s intimate, poetically conversational stories of her encounters with the “lovely, whimsical, and soulful things [that] happen in a garden, leaving a gardener giddy.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“If I get to feeling a little blue about our prospects, I’m liable to reach down one of Janisse Ray’s books just so I can hear her calm, wise, strong voice. This one’s my new favorite; a world with her in it is going to do the right thing, I think.”—BILL MCKIBBEN , founder of 350.org

“What a dream of a book—my favorite poet writing about my favorite topic (seeds)....If books can move you to love, this one does.”
—GARY PAUL NABHAN, editor of Renewing America’s Food Tradition

Gretchen Reynolds pens the Phys Ed column for the The New York Times, which appears on the “Well” blog online and in the Science Times print section. An award-winning journalist, her byline has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, AARP Magazine, Popular Science, and Outside, among others. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Rights Sold:

World English (Hudson St.); Complex Chinese (Sun Color); Turkey (Moda Ofset); South Korea (Content Cave); Finland (Atena)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication April 2012

THE FIRST TWENTY MINUTES

Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer

A cutting-edge prescription for exercise by the New York Times Phys Ed columnist

At one point or another, nearly every person who works out wonders: am I doing this right? Which class is best? Do I work out enough?

Answering those questions and more, The First Twenty Minutes helps both weekend warriors dedicated to their performance and readers who simply want to get and stay fit gain the most from any workout. With the latest findings about the mental and physical benefits of exercise, personal stories from scientists and laypeople alike, as well as research-based prescriptions for readers, Gretchen Reynolds shows what kind of exercise—and how much—is necessary to stay healthy, get fit, and attain a smaller jeans size.

Inspired by Reynolds’s wildly popular Phys Ed column for The New York Times, this book explains how exercise affects the body in distinct ways and provides the tools readers need to achieve their fitness goals, whether that’s a faster 5K or staying trim.

“Gretchen Reynolds writes the Phys Ed column in the New York Times, and her book is an informative and entertaining review of current science about exercise and fitness, with good, commonsense recommendations that cut through confusing, often conflicting research on the subject…. Armed with the information in this book, readers will be inspired and motivated to reassess their habitual exercise programs and make positive changes” --PW

Molly Caldwll Crosby is the author of The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History, and Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of the Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Health, and USA Today.

Rights Sold:

World English (Berkely); Audio (Brilliance)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication December 2012

THE GREAT PEARL HEIST

London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace

The untold story of the theft of a priceless pearl necklace, that would pit a charming, gentleman thief in a cat-and-mouse game against Scotland Yard’s most talented detective.

On July 15, 1913, a Parisian jeweler named Henri Salamons worked in his shop on Rue de Provence, wrapping the most valuable strand of pearls in the world.  The necklace was on loan to him from Max Mayer, a London jeweler who had spent a fortune assembling it.  Most of the pearls had come from Baghdad and Bombay, and the large center pearl had belonged to Portuguese royalty.  Shortly, the necklace would be mailed back to Mayer in London, but it never arrived.  The necklace, valued at the time more than the Hope diamond, had disappeared, stolen by a master thief.

That summer, the hunt for the world’s most valuable pearl necklace would bring together two brilliant minds – Chief Inspector Alfred Ward, one of the first criminologists of the modern Scotland Yard, and Joseph Grizard, a celebrated and dapper jewel thief.  Both men were highly respected and well-known. Both were considered the best in their professions, and in this front-page case, were set against one another in this case that riveted Edwardian London. 

“A winning true crime tale.”-PW

  

John D’Agata is the author of About a Mountain and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Jim Fingal is a software engineer and writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rights Sold:

World English(Norton); Germany (Hanser); French (Zones Sensibles)

▪ Translation rights available

▪ Books available

▪ Publication February 2012

The Lifespan of a Fact

An Essayist and His Fact-Checker Do Battle

In 2003, an essay by John D’Agata was rejected by a major magazine that commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies, artistic liberties which the author never shied away from. The essay was accepted by another magazine, The Believer, but not before they handed it to their own fact-checker, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D’Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction.

  

“Here is the genius of this little book, for as it progresses, D'Agata and Fingal turn everything around on us, until even our most basic assumptions are left unclear …. A vivid and reflective meditation on the nature of nonfiction as literary art.”

- L.A. Times

"…. might be the most improbably entertaining book ever published.” –NPR

“[A] whip-smart, mordantly funny, thought-provoking rumination on journalistic responsibility and literary license.” -Publishers Weekly (starred review)


“... less a book than a knock-down, drag-out fight between two tenacious combatants, over questions of truth, belief, history, myth, memory and forgetting.” - New York Times Book Review (cover)