foreign rights

Frankfurt Book Fair 2015

www.thegernertco.com

JOHN GRISHAM

#1 New York Times bestseller Published in 40 languages 300+ million books in print

ROGUE LAWYER by John Grisham Doubleday – 20 October 2015

His phone number is unlisted. His office is a bulletproof van. He’s on the right side of the law, sort of…

Sebastian Rudd is not your typical street lawyer. He works out of a customized bulletproof van, complete with Wi-Fi, a bar, a small fridge, fine leather chairs, a hidden gun compartment, and a heavily armed driver. He has no firm, no partners, no associates, and only one employee, his driver, who’s also his bodyguard, law clerk, confidant, and golf caddy. He lives alone in a small but extremely safe penthouse apartment, and his primary piece of furniture is a vintage pool table. He drinks small-batch bourbon and carries a gun.

Sebastian defends people other lawyers won’t go near: a drug-addled, tattooed kid rumored to be in a satanic cult, who is accused of molesting and murdering two little girls; a vicious crime lord on death row; a homeowner arrested for shooting at a SWAT team that mistakenly invaded his house. Why these clients? Because he believes everyone is entitled to a fair trial, even if he, Sebastian, has to cheat to secure one. He hates injustice, doesn’t like insurance companies, banks, or big corporations; he distrusts all levels of government and laughs at the justice system’s notions of ethical behavior.

Sebastian Rudd is one of John Grisham’s most colorful, outrageous, and vividly drawn characters yet. Gritty, witty, and impossible to put down, Rogue Lawyer showcases the master of the legal thriller at his very best.

www.jgrisham.com https://www.facebook.com/JohnGrisham

John Grisham is the author of twenty-seven novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and five novels for young readers. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi.

www.thegernertco.com 2

fiction

Peter Behrens, CARRY ME

A devastating novel of war, love, and escape from the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning author of The Law of Dreams and The O’Briens.

Literary fiction

Publisher: Pantheon (US)/House of Anansi Press (Canada), February 23, 2016 Editor: Deb Garrison Agent: Sarah Burnes Material: Edited manuscript

Irish-German Billy is entranced by Karin, elusive daughter of a German-Jewish industrialist, during childhood summers spent on the sun-struck Isle of Wight before the First World War. In the hungry aftermath of that war, reunited on her father’s Frankfurt estate, Karin and Billy become fascinated with elaborate ‘tribal’ rituals found in the Wild West stories of Karl May, whose Winnetou tales are among the most popular books ever published in Germany.

Coming of age in Frankfurt and wild Weimar-era Berlin, Billy and Karin share passions for speed, jazz, and nightclubs. They also share a fantasy of escape--from Germany, from history--to El Llano Estacado, the high plains of Texas and New Mexico, the vividly re-imagined setting of Karl May’s fiction. Intriguing characters braid an intricate and harrowing story together, transporting the reader from golden Edwardian summer, to London under Zeppelin attack, Ireland on the brink of its War of Independence, and Germany sinking into the Hitler era. As a society loses its civic and moral bearings, a childhood friendship deepens to a love affair with extraordinarily high stakes.

Brilliantly conceived and elegantly written, Carry Me is an epic for grown-ups, an unusual love story, and a lucid meditation on Europe’s violent twentieth century.

Peter Behrens’ first novel THE LAW OF DREAMS won the Governor-General’s Award, Canada’s most prestigious book prize, and has been published in nine languages. His collection of short stories, NIGHT DRIVING was published in 1987 and his second novel THE O'BRIENS was published in 2011. His stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, Brick, Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Essays, and many anthologies. http://www.peterbehrens.org/.

• Sold to: Philippe Rey (France)

www.thegernertco.com 3

Mike Binder, KEEP CALM

When a bombing at 10 Downing Street wounds the Prime Minister and tests Great Britain's resolve, American ex-cop Adam Tatum must confront a conspiracy in the highest halls of power.

Thriller

Publisher: Henry Holt, February 2, 2016 Editor: Michael Signorelli Agent: David Gernert Material: Advance Readers Copy

North American rights sold to Henry Holt in a six-figure pre-empt.

• “Starts with a bang and never slows down--a very superior high-stakes thriller.”--Lee Child

Former Michigan cop Adam Tatum receives an unexpected offer from Heaton Global Investments, a golden opportunity that seems almost too good to be true. He travels to 10 Downing Street to help implement a new pension program for the British Civil Service. The deal goes off without a hitch--and so does a bomb in the conference room. The Prime Minister is gravely wounded and the only attendee with a checkered past is Adam Tatum. Sensing a trap, Tatum flees with his family, desperately fighting for survival in an unfamiliar country. The lives of his children, the future of his marriage, and the fate of a nation depend on Tatum exposing the conspirators who pegged him for a fall.

Georgia Turnbull, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Davina Steel, the lead investigator, each stand to gain from the successful manhunt of Adam Tatum. But, as motives emerge and desires ignite, each must decide what they're really after. Layered plots, crackling dialogue, and propulsive action make Keep Calm a riveting debut thriller.

Mike Binder is an award-winning director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. His latest film is Black or White, starring Kevin Costner. Keep Calm is his first novel.

www.thegernertco.com 4

David Coventry, THE INVISIBLE MILE

An astonishingly assured work of literature about war, memory, family, and sport as metaphor.

Literary fiction

Publisher: Victoria University Press (New Zealand), June 2015 Editor: Fergus Barrowman Agent: Andy Kifer Material: Finished books

#2 bestseller in the author’s native New Zealand • Dutch pre-empt • UK & BC rights to Paul Baggaley of Picador in a two-book deal, at auction

• “A truly extraordinary first novel.” --NZ Listener • “The Invisible Mile is an important and impressive debut.” --Sunday Star Times

The 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. From June through July they faced one of toughest in the race’s history: 5,476 kilometres of unsealed roads on heavy, fixed-wheel bikes. They rode in darkness through mountains with no light and brakes like glass. They weren’t expected to finish, but stadiums filled with Frenchmen eager to call their names.

The Invisible Mile is a powerful re-imagining of the tour from inside the peloton, where the test of endurance, for one young New Zealander, becomes a psychological journey into the chaos of the war a decade earlier. Riding on the alternating highs of cocaine and opium, victory and defeat, the rider’s mind is increasingly fixed on his encounter with his family’s past. As he nears the battlefields of the north and his last, invisible mile, the trauma of exertion and disputed guilt cast strange shadows on his story, and onlookers congregate about him waiting for revelation.

David Coventry was born in 1969. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand with his partner and cat. The Invisible Mile is his first book.

• Sold to: Picador (UK & BC), Atlas Contact (The Netherlands), Yediot (Israel)

www.thegernertco.com 5

Jason Gurley, ELEANOR

A heartrending, fantastical novel about identical twins and the tragedy that threatens to tear their family apart.

Imaginative literary fiction

Publisher: Crown, January 12, 2016 Editor: Hilary Teeman Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Advanced Readers Copy

Strong six-figure pre-empts in both the US and the UK • Lead Title

• "Jason Gurley will be a household name one day." – Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool • ““Eleanor is deep — a really poignant, moving story that will surprise you with how smart it is. The novel turns a traditional tragic narrative on its head with compelling elements of science fiction and fantasy. Read it and weep.” – Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse

Eleanor and Esmerelda are identical twins with a secret language all their own, inseparable until a terrible accident claims Esme’s life. Eleanor’s family is left in tatters: her mother retreats inward, seeking comfort in bottles; her father reluctantly abandons ship. Eleanor is forced to grow up more quickly than a child should, and becomes the target of her mother’s growing rage. Years pass, and Eleanor’s painful reality begins to unravel in strange ways. The first time it happens, she walks through a school doorway, and finds herself in a cornfield, beneath wide blue skies. When she stumbles back into her own world, time has flown by without her. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her world and into other, stranger ones, leaving behind empty rooms and worried loved ones.

One fateful day, Eleanor leaps from a cliff and is torn from her world altogether. She meets a mysterious stranger, Mea, who reveals to Eleanor the weight of her family’s loss. To save her broken parents, and rescue herself, Eleanor must learn how deep the well of her mother’s grief and her father’s heartbreak truly goes. Esmerelda’s death was not the only tragic loss in her family’s fragmented history, and unless Eleanor can master her strange new abilities, it may not be the last.

Jason Gurley is the bestselling author of Eleanor, Greatfall, and The Man Who Ended the World, among other books and short stories. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Synchronic. He lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest.

• Sold to: HarperCollins (UK & BC), Rocco (Brazil), Heyne (Germany)

www.thegernertco.com 6

Garth Risk Hallberg, CITY ON FIRE

A big-hearted, boundary-vaulting novel that heralds a remarkable new talent.

Literary fiction

Publisher: Knopf (US), October 13, 2015 / Jonathan Cape (UK), October 22, 2015 Editor: Diana Tejerina Miller Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Finished copies

North American rights sold to Knopf for seven figures after a heated auction • Dramatic rights optioned by Scott Rudin in a six-figure pre-empt • Sales in 17 foreign territories • Appearance on Sunday Times, Entertainment Weekly, and The Guardian’s most anticipated books for 2015

• “A remarkably assured, multivalent tale…At times the novel feels like a metafictional tribute to America’s finest doorstop manufacturers, circa 1970 to the present: Price (street-wise cops), Wolfe (top-tier wealth), Franzen (busted families), Wallace (the seductions of drugs and pop culture), and DeLillo (the unseen forces behind everything).” — Kirkus (starred review) • “The kind of exuberant, zeitgeisty New York novel, like Bonfire of the Vanities or The Goldfinch, that you’ll either love, hate, or pretend to have read.” —Vogue • “A soaring debut. … [a] magisterial epic.” —Vanity Fair • “Garth Risk Hallberg has written the kind of debut novel that only comes around once every 20 years or so—one that everyone who’s read it roots for. … An edge-of-your-seat epic, which is as tightly told as it is ambitious.” —Elle magazine

Set in 1970s New York, CITY ON FIRE is a story outsized in its generosity, warmth, and ambition, its deep feeling for its characters, and its exuberant imagination.

Garth Risk Hallberg was born in Louisiana and grew up in North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Best New American Voices 2008, and, most frequently, The Millions; a novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family, was published in 2007. He lives in New York with his wife and children.

• Sold to: Jonathan Cape (UK & BC), S. Fischer Verlag (Germany), Mondadori (Italy), Feux Croises (France), Literatura Random House (World Spanish), Atlas Contact (Netherlands), Lindhardt & Ringhof (Denmark), Cappelen Damm (Norway), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Modan (Israel), Dom Quixote (Portugal), Kedros (Greece), Nakladatelstvi Prah (Czech Republic), Brombergs Bokforlag (Sweden), Europa Kiado (Hungary), Pegasus Yayinlari (Turkey), Znak (Poland)

www.thegernertco.com 7

Elsa Hart, JADE DRAGON MOUNTAIN

This spellbinding debut weaves an intricate web of imperial politics and personal greed set against the art, science, magic and religion of eighteenth-century China.

Historical mystery

Publisher: Minotaur, September 1, 2015 Editor: Kelley Ragland Agent: Stephanie Cabot Material: Finished books

The first novel in a strong two-book deal for six figures • Indie Next Pick

• "This debut historical mystery deftly combines ingenious plotting and suspense with a subtle understanding of China, its culture, and its people." —Donna Leon, New York Times bestselling author of Falling in Love • “Elegantly written, tightly controlled, and sweeping, Jade Dragon Mountain will leave its readers thinking as much about the nature of storytelling and memory as the vivid recreation of a poignant period in the history of China.” —Matthew Pearl, New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club • " Jade Dragon Mountain is an amazing book - truly wonderful. Stunning in its atmosphere, setting, the gift of language and great writing.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of the Beast • "Political and religious intrigue drives Hart’s compelling debut…Hart’s sure command of historical complexities, conflicts between cultures, and plot twists leads to a satisfying ending.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review • "Think Agatha Christie writing Shogun—Hart's captivating debut has solid cross-genre appeal." —Kirkus

Li Du was an imperial librarian. Now he is an exile. Three years of wandering have brought him to Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border. He expects a quiet outpost barely conscious of its place within the empire, but Dayan is teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. The crowds have been drawn by the promise of an unmatched spectacle: an eclipse of the sun, commanded by the Emperor himself. Amid the frenzied preparations, Li Du befriends an elderly Jesuit astronomer. Hours later, the man is murdered in the home of the local magistrate. Blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits, but Li Du suspects this was no random killing.

Elsa Hart spent the last three years living in the city once called Dayan, in the Tibetan borderlands of China, where she researched and wrote Jade Dragon Mountain. www.elsahart.com.

www.thegernertco.com 8

Deborah Lawrenson, 300 DAYS OF SUN

This mesmerizing and atmospheric novel transports readers to a sunny Portuguese town with a shadowy past—where two women, decades apart, are drawn into a dark game of truth and lies that still haunts the shifting sea marshes.

Historical suspense

Publisher: HarperPerennial, April 12, 2016 Editor: Jennifer Barth Agent: Stephanie Cabot Material: Edited manuscript

• "With its lush settings, high-stakes suspense, and novel-within-a-novel, 300 DAYS OF SUN is a feast for fiction lovers. Lawrenson delivers a labyrinth of complex relationships the reader is both breathless to solve and eager to return to upon completion. Haunting.” —Erika Robuck, bestselling author of Hemingway’s Girl and The House of Hawthorne.

Traveling to Faro, Portugal, journalist Joanna Millard hopes to escape an unsatisfying relationship and a stalled career. Faro is an enchanting town, and the seaside views are enhanced by the company of Nathan Emberlin, a charismatic younger man. But behind the crumbling facades of Moorish buildings, Joanna soon realizes, Faro has a seedy underbelly, its economy compromised by corruption and wartime spoils. And Nathan has an ulterior motive for seeking her company: he is determined to discover the truth involving a child’s kidnapping that may have taken place on this dramatic coastline over two decades ago.

Joanna’s subsequent search leads her to Ian Rylands, an English expat who cryptically insists she will find answers in The Alliance, a novel written by American Esta Hartford. The book recounts an American couple’s experience in Portugal during World War II, and their entanglements both personal and professional with their German enemies. Only Rylands insists the book isn’t fiction, and as Joanna reads deeper into The Alliance, she begins to suspect that Esta Hartford’s story and Nathan Emberlin’s may indeed converge in Faro—where the past not only casts a long shadow but still exerts a very present danger.

Deborah Lawrenson studied English at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist in London. She and her family spend as much time as possible at a crumbling hamlet in Provence, France, the setting for her novel The Lantern and inspiration for her novel The Sea Garden.

www.thegernertco.com 9

Ann Leckie, ANCILLARY MERCY: Book 3 in the Imperial Radch Series

The stunning conclusion to the trilogy that began with the award-winning Ancillary Justice.

Science Fiction

Publisher: Orbit (World English rights), October 6, 2015 Editor: Tim Holman Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Awaiting edited manuscript

ANCILLARY JUSTICE – Book 1 in the series – was the first Science Fiction and Fantasy novel to sweep the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards in a single year • More than 300,000 copies of the series in print • 18 foreign deals for the series.

For a moment, things seem to be under control for the soldier known as Breq. Then a search of Atheok Station's slums turns up someone who shouldn't exist - someone who might be an ancillary from a ship that's been hiding beyond the empire's reach for three thousand years. Meanwhile, a messenger from the alien and mysterious Presger empire arrives, as does Breq's enemy, the divided and quite possibly insane Anaander Mianaai - ruler of an empire at war with itself. Anaander is heavily armed and extremely unhappy with Breq. She could take her ship and crew and flee, but that would leave everyone at Athoek in terrible danger. Breq has a desperate plan. The odds aren't good, but that's never stopped her before.

Ann Leckie is the author of ANCILLARY JUSTICE and ANCILLARY SWORD in the Imperial Radch Series. ANCILLARY JUSTICE was the first Science and Fantasy novel to win the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards. She lives in St. Louis.

• Sold to: Orbit (UK&BC), Heyne (Germany), Editions J'ai Lu (France), Fanucci (Italy), Muza (Poland), Ediciones B (Spain), Luitingh Sijthoff (Netherlands), SiAl (Israel), Gabo (Hungary), Tokyo Sogensha (Japan), Art Grup (Romania), Fantastika (Russia), Bard (Bulgaria), Ithaki Yayinlari (Turkey), Albatros Media (Czech), Editora Aleph (Brazil), Varrak (Estonia), Muza (Poland), Books in Batumi (Georgia)

www.thegernertco.com 10

Liz Moore, THE UNSEEN WORLD

A heartbreaking and moving story about a daughter’s quest to discover the truth about her father’s hidden past, from the acclaimed author of Heft.

Literary fiction

Publisher: Norton, June 6, 2016 Editor: Jill Bialosky Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Edited manuscript

A six-figure deal for North American rights only • Lead title for Norton in June 2016 • Liz Moore is the Rome-Prize winning author of Heft, which received fantastic review coverage

Praise for Liz Moore’s HEFT: • "Moore's characters are lovingly drawn . . . A truly original voice." —The New Yorker • "Heft is a work that radiantly combines compassion and a clear eyed vision. This is a novel of rare originality and sophistication." —Mary Gordon • "A suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices." —Colum McCann • "Beautiful . . . Stunningly sad and heroically hopeful." —O, The Oprah Magazine

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, a single father and head of a computer science lab in Boston. Home- schooled, she accompanies her loving father—brilliant, eccentric, socially inept—to work every day. By twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same moment that David’s mind begins to falter and his mysterious past comes into question. When her father moves into a nursing home, Ada is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. She embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood.

Eventually Ada pioneers a type of software that enables her to make contact with her past, and to reconcile the man she thought she knew with the truth. Praised for her ability to create quirky and unforgettable characters, Liz Moore has written a piercing story of a daughter’s quest to restore the legacy of the father she desperately loves.

Liz Moore is the author the acclaimed novel, Heft. A winner of the 2014 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia.

• Option publishers: Windmill (UK & BC), Neri Pozza (Italy), Buchet Chastel (France) and Moonye (Korea).

www.thegernertco.com 11

Sylvain Neuvel, SLEEPING GIANTS

An inventive debut in the tradition of World War Z and The Martian, Sleeping Giants is a sophisticated thriller fueled by a quest for truth—and by a struggle for control of earthshaking power.

SciFi thriller

Publisher: Del Rey (US), April 26, 2016 / Michael Joseph (UK), April 2016 Editor: Mark Tavani Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Advanced Readers Copy

North American Rights sold at auction in a strong six-figure deal • Del Rey printed 8,000 ARCs and are making it a major launch • Film Rights sold to Sony Pictures with David Koepp (Spider-Man) attached to write the screenplay • UK rights to Michael Joseph at auction; 8 foreign deals

• “This stellar debut novel . . . masterfully blends together elements of sci-fi, political thriller and apocalyptic fiction. . . . A page-turner of the highest order.”—Kirkus Reviews

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand. Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—the object’s origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected. But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top-secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the relic they seek. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and finally figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

Sylvain Neuvel is a linguist and translator based in Montreal. He is at work on an R2-D2 replica and his next novel.

• Sold to: Michael Joseph (UK & BC), Heyne (Germany), Le Livre de Poche (France), LIKE Publishing (Finland), Tokyo Sogensha (Japan), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Beijing Huaxia (China), Editorial Presenca (Portugal)

www.thegernertco.com 12

Stewart O’Nan, CITY OF SECRETS

From master storyteller Stewart O'Nan, a timely moral thriller of the Jewish underground resistance in Jerusalem after the Second World War.

Literary fiction

Publisher: Viking, April 26, 2016 Editor: Paul Slovak Agent: David Gernert Material: Advance Readers Copy

In 1945, with no homes to return to, Jewish refugees by the tens of thousands set out for Palestine. Those who made it were hunted as illegals by the British mandatory authorities there and relied on the underground to shelter them; taking fake names, they blended with the population, joining the wildly different factions fighting for the independence of Israel.

City of Secrets follows one survivor, Brand, as he tries to regain himself after losing everyone he's ever loved. Now driving a taxi provided—like his new identity—by the underground, he navigates the twisting streets of Jerusalem as well as the overlapping, sometimes deadly loyalties of the resistance. Alone, haunted by memories, he tries to become again the man he was before the war—honest, strong, capable of moral choice. He falls in love with Eva, a fellow survivor and member of his cell, reclaims his faith, and commits himself to the revolution, accepting secret missions that grow more and more dangerous even as he begins to suspect he's being used by their cell's dashing leader, Asher. By the time Brand understands the truth, it's too late, and the tragedy that ensues changes history.

A noirish, deeply felt novel of intrigue and identity written in O'Nan's trademark lucent style, City of Secrets asks how both despair and faith can lead us astray, and what happens when, with the noblest intentions, we join movements beyond our control.

Stewart O'Nan is the author of fifteen previous novels, including West of Sunset, The Odds, Emily Alone, Songs for the Missing, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family.

• Sold to: Rowohlt (Germany)

www.thegernertco.com 13

Chris Pavone, THE TRAVELERS

A pulse-racing international thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Expats and The Accident.

International thriller

Publisher: Crown (US), March 8, 2016 / Faber & Faber (UK), March 2016 Editor: Lindsay Sagnette Agent: David Gernert Material: Final manuscript

The new thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Expats and The Accident, with more than 700,000 copies sold worldwide • Lead title for Crown for March 2016 • Chris Pavone is a winner of Edgar and Anthony awards for Best First Novel

It’s 3:00am. Do you know where your husband is?

Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Soon Will’s bad choices—and dark secrets—take him across Europe, from a chateau in Bordeaux to a midnight raid on a Paris mansion, from a dive bar in Dublin to a mega-yacht in the Mediterranean and an isolated cabin perched on the rugged cliffs of Iceland. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications—and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.

It’s 3:00am. Your husband has just become a spy.

Chris Pavone is the New York Times bestselling author of The Expats and The Accident. He is the winner of the Edgar and Anthony awards for best first novel. He was a book editor for nearly two decades and lives in New York City with his family.

• Sold to: Faber & Faber (UK & BC) • Option publishers: Piper (Germany), Fleuve Noir (France), Piemme (Italy), Karakter (Netherlands), Sextante (Brazil), Obsidian (Bulgaria), Algoritam (Croatia), Euromedia (Czech Republic), Sela (Israel), Muza (Poland)

www.thegernertco.com 14

Alexandra Potter, LOVE FROM PARIS

A magical romantic comedy from the internationally bestselling author of Me and Mr. Darcy.

Romantic comedy

Publisher: Hodder (UK), September 24, 2015 Editor: Francesca Main Agent: Stephanie Cabot Material: Edited manuscript

How far would you go for love?

When new boyfriend Jack stands her up at the airport, Ruby Miller dries her tears, jumps on the Eurostar and heads to Paris to visit an old friend... but the City of Love has other ideas.

A locked apartment where time has stood still, a bundle of long-lost love letters, and a flirtatious French lawyer sweep Ruby into a mystery that spans over seventy years. Who is the author of the letters? Why did the owner of the apartment close up the shutters and flee Paris before the war, never to return? And what secret did she desperately want to share? As the mystery deepens, Ruby turns love detective but it's not long before the ghosts of the past throw her own love affair into jeopardy.

From the bestselling author of Me and Mr Darcy, this magical romantic comedy is for every girl who has ever dreamed of the glittering lights of Paris and a love that lasts a lifetime...

Alexandra Potter has worked for Elle, Company, Red and Australian Vogue, she now writes full time and lives in Notting Hill, London. She is the author of nine internationally bestselling novels of romantic fiction with a magical twist, including Don't You Forget About Me and Me and Mr Darcy, which won the Best New Fiction Award at the Jane Austen Regency World Awards in 2008.

• Sold to: Hodder (UK & BC), Goldmann (Germany)

www.thegernertco.com 15

Mark Tompkins, THE LAST DAYS OF MAGIC

An epic novel of magic and mysticism, Celts and faeries, mad kings and Druids, stalwart warriors and the goddess struggling to reign over magic’s last outpost on the Earth.

Literary fiction / Fantasy

Publisher: Viking, March 1, 2016 Editor: Carole Desanti Agent: Stephanie Cabot Material: Awaiting Final Pages

Sold for significant six-figures in a World English deal

• "Simultaneously sweeping and intricate, reaching all the way back to the Dead Sea Scrolls and all the way forward to now, Tompkins¹ amazing debut novel conjures an epic battle for the soul of Ireland. Filled with Papal machination, royal intrigue, magic, and mayhem, faeries, Vikings, Legates, Kings and Queens, Angels and Goddesses, this is one wild and breathless ride." —Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club • “Plundering the treasure chest of human myths, from mysterious biblical giants to ferocious Celtic faeries, Tompkins has created a fantasy adventure with the shifting perspectives of dreamscape. A novel rich and strange.” —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer-prize winning author of March

Aisling is a goddess in a human form, born to rule medieval Ireland and reunite the earthly realm with the Middle Kingdom—home to powerful faeries. With her counselor, Liam, and her lover, Conor, she stands between warring clans of Celts, Vikings, and darkly magical otherworldly beings. Meanwhile, even greater forces muster beyond Ireland’s enchanted shores.

Jordan, a Vatican commander and clandestine student of forbidden magic, is already torn between duty and desire when he meets Najia, his captive, and a slave. Beneath the chains and spells that bind her, she is an enchantress who draws him closer to what he loves. But the Vatican and England have given Jordan a crucial role in a war they are determined to win—the battle to drive magic from Ireland, and all lands, forever. As kings prepare and exorcists gather in Rome, Aisling, Jordan, and Najia must come to terms with powers given and withheld—and a world that can foster magic hangs in the balance.

Mark Tompkins divides his time between entrepreneurship and the arts. The founder of the Aspen Writers' Network, he serves on the board of the Aspen Writers' Foundation, a program of the Aspen Institute. He is a published poet and photographer whose work is held in the permanent collections of museums in the United States and abroad. Born in Texas of Irish ancestry, Tompkins lives in Boston, Houston, and Aspen.

www.thegernertco.com 16

Tom Toner, THE PROMISE OF THE CHILD

An epic SciFi debut set in the 147th Century heralding an exciting new voice.

Science fiction

Publisher: Night Shade (US), September 22, 2015 / Gollancz (UK), November 19, 2015 Editor: Jeremy Lassen & Cory Allyn (US) / Simon Spanton (UK) Agent: Andy Kifer Material: Final Pages

3-book deals in the US and UK. The UK publisher – Gollancz – (publisher of Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick among many other legendary SciFi authors) describes THE PROMISE OF THE CHILD as: “The most important debut SF novel in five years - the arrival of an astonishing young talent.”

• “To call The Promise of the Child one of the most accomplished debuts of 2015 so far is to understate its weight—instead, let me moot that it is among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years.”—Tor.com • “Aside from Smith and Delany, the roll call of those who have elevated space opera to new heights includes Roger Zelazny (primarily in This Immortal), M. John Harrison, David Zindell, Paul Park, John Wright, Linda Nagata, Scott Westerfeld and Ann Leckie…. Now, I think, you can safely add the name Tom Toner to that list of space opera revolutionaries. This debut author has gifted us with a space opera of surpassing gracefulness, depth, complexity and, well, all-round weirdness.” —Paul Di Filippo, Locus • “A gorgeously-written, wildly imaginative book. It’s like no space opera I’ve ever read–compelling and addictive.”—Will McIntosh, Hugo-award winning author of Soft Apocalypse and Defenders • “An amazing debut. Intriguing, disorientating. It's told with the heightened vibrancy of a fable, and the melancholic sense of age and decadence so prevalent in Jack Vance’s Emphyrio.”—Gareth Powell, BSFA Award-winning author of Ack-Ack Macaque

It is the 147th century. In the radically advanced post-human worlds of the Amaranthine Firmament, there is a contender to the Immortal throne: Aaron the Long-Life, the Pretender, a man who is not quite a man. In the barbarous hominid kingdoms of the Prism Investiture, where life is short, cheap, and dangerous, an invention is born that will become the Firmament’s most closely kept secret. Lycaste, a lovesick recluse outcast for an unspeakable crime, must journey through the Provinces, braving the grotesques of an ancient, decadent world to find his salvation. Sotiris, grieving the loss of his sister and awaiting the madness of old age, must relive his twelve thousand years of life to stop the man determined to become Emperor. Ghaldezuel, knight of the stars, must plunder the rarest treasure in the Firmament—the object the Pretender will stop at nothing to obtain. From medieval Prague to a lonely Mediterranean cove, and eventually far into the strange vastness of distant worlds, The Promise of the Child is a debut novel of gripping action and astounding ambition unfolding over hundreds of thousands of years, marking the arrival of a brilliant new talent in science fiction.

Tom Toner was born in Somerset, England and graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Loughborough University. The Promise of the Child is his debut novel.

www.thegernertco.com 17

Paul Vidich, AN HONORABLE MAN

A noirish, atmospheric spy novel in the vein of Alan Furst and John le Carré, set during the Cold War in 1950s Washington DC.

Spy thriller

Publisher: Emily Bestler Books/S&S, April 12, 2016 Editor: Emily Bestler Agent: Will Roberts Material: Final Pages

• "A cool, knowing, and quietly devastating thriller that vaults Paul Vidich into the ranks of such thinking-man's spy novelists as Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst.” —Stephen Schiff, writer and executive producer of the hit FX series, The Americans • “Cold War spy fiction in the grand tradition.” —Joseph Kanon, NYT bestselling author of The Good German • “An unputdownable mole hunt written in terse, noirish prose, driving us inexorably forward. The story itself has the comforting feel of a classic of the genre, rediscovered in some dusty attic, a wonderful gift from the past."—Olen Steinhauer, NYT bestselling author of All the Old Knives • “Paul Vidich's immensely assured debut, a requiem to a time, is intensely alive, dark, silken with facts, replete with promise.”—Jayne Anne Phillips, NYT bestselling author of Machine Dreams • “Pick up this book. You’ll love it.”—Michael Harvey, NYT bestselling author of The Chicago Way

Washington, D.C. 1953. The Cold War is heating up: McCarthyism is raging in the nation's capital, and Joseph Stalin's death has left a dangerous power vacuum in the Soviet Union.

The CIA, meanwhile, is reeling from a double agent in their midst. Someone is selling secrets to the Soviets, compromising missions around the globe. Undercover agents have been assassinated, and anti- Communist plots are being cut short in ruthlessly efficient fashion. The CIA director knows any news of the traitor, whose code name is Protocol, would be a national embarrassment and compromise the entire agency. He assembles a team to find Protocol. George Mueller seems to be the perfect man to help the investigation: Yale-educated; extensive experience running missions in Eastern Europe; an operative so dedicated to his job it left his marriage in tatters. The Director trusts him. Mueller, though, has secrets of his own, and as he digs deeper into the case, making contact with a Soviet agent, and becoming involved with a woman whose brother also works for the agency, suspicion begins to fall on him as well. Until Protocol is found, no one can be trusted, and everyone is at risk.

Paul Vidich serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award-winning author of short fiction. An Honorable Man is his first novel.

www.thegernertco.com 18

Django Wexler, THE PRICE OF VALOR (Book 3 in the Shadow Campaigns)

In this epic fantasy of military might, the realm of Vordan faces imminent threats from without and within.

Fantasy / military adventure

Publisher: Roc/Penguin (US), July 7, 2015 / Ebury (UK), July 7, 2015 Editor: Jess Wade Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Finished books

Praise for the Shadow Campaigns:

• “[An] audacious and subversive…mash-up of 17th-century technology and demon-summoning assassins.”—Publishers Weekly • “Django Wexler has delivered a highly entertaining debut that mixes elements of Bernard Cornwall–esque military adventure with an original take on magic and a keen eye for action, dialogue, and character.”—Anthony Ryan, New York Times Bestselling Author of Blood Song

In the wake of the King’s death, war has come to Vordan. The Deputies-General has precarious control of the city, but it is led by a zealot who sees traitors in every shadow. The new queen, Raesinia Orboan, finds herself nearly powerless as the government tightens its grip and assassins threaten her life. Placing her trust with the steadfast soldier Marcus D’Ivoire, she sets out to turn the tide of history.

As the hidden hand of the Sworn Church brings all the powers of the continent to war against Vordan, the enigmatic and brilliant general Janus bet Vhalnich offers a path to victory. Winter Ihernglass, newly promoted to command a regiment, has reunited with her lover and her friends, only to face the prospect of leading them into bloody battle. Dark priests of an ancient order, wielding forbidden magic, have infiltrated Vordan to stop Janus by whatever means necessary…

Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the university in artificial intelligence research.

• Sold to: Ebury (UK & BC), Heyne (Germany), DW Rebis (Poland)

www.thegernertco.com 19

Callan Wink, DOG RUN MOON: Stories

In the tradition of Richard Ford, Larry McMurtry, Philipp Meyer, and Kent Haruf comes a dazzling debut story collection by a young writer from the American West who has been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Best American Short Stories.

Literary / Western fiction

Publisher: The Dial Press, February 2, 2016 Editor: Noah Eaker Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Awaiting 1st pass pages

• "The perils of work and the weight of bequeathal fuel these stories, and each one holds a lasting, unshakeable image. Sometimes grace is bestowed upon the characters in a sidewinding, not altogether fabulous fashion; sometimes it's not bestowed at all. Callan Wink seems to know well the stratagems and delusions of men's hearts. He also seems born and bred to short-story mastery.” --Joy Williams, award- winning author of The Quick and the Dead • "Callan Wink's debut is impressive indeed. Fine, old fashioned, rich and juicy fiction. Weeks later I'm still living with the characters." --Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall

A construction worker on the run from the shady local businessman whose dog he has stolen; a Wild West re-enactor engaged in a long-running affair with the Indian "squaw" who slays him on the battlefield every year; a middle-aged high school janitor caught in a scary dispute over land and cattle with her former step-son - Callan Wink's characters are often confronted with predicaments few of us can imagine. But thanks to the humor, remarkable empathy and layered storytelling of this supremely gifted author, these stories become universally transporting and resonant.

Set mostly in Montana and Wyoming, near the borders of Yellowstone National Park, Wink’s stories combine an unforgettable understanding of the natural world with powerful human concerns. Dog Run Moon announces the arrival of a major new talent writing deep in the American grain.

Callan Wink is a 30 year-old fly fishing guide in Livingston, Montana who will be a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University from 2015-2017. He is at work on a novel.

• Sold to: Granta (UK & BC), Suhrkamp (Germany), Albin Michel (France)

www.thegernertco.com 20 non-fiction

Alex Ferguson with Michael Moritz, LEADING

An inspiring look at leadership from the legendary manager of Manchester United.

Leadership

Publisher: Hodder (UK), September 22, 2015 / Hachette Books (US), October 6, 2015 Editor: Nick Davies Agent: David Gernert & Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Final pages

UK & BC rights deal with Hodder and North American rights to Hachette Books in major deals • Pre-empt in Brazil with Intrinseca • Alex Ferguson’s previous book – MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY – was the fastest selling nonfiction book in UK history with more than 1.7 million copies sold

After an astonishing career, first in Scotland, and then over 27 years with Manchester United Football Club, Sir Alex Ferguson delivers Leading, in which the greatest soccer coach of all time analyzes the pivotal leadership decisions of his 38 years as a manager and, with his friend and collaborator Sir Michael Moritz, draw out lessons anyone can use in business and life to generate long-term transformational success. From hiring practices to firing decisions, from dealing with transition to teamwork, from mastering the boardroom to responding to failure and adversity, Leading is as inspiring as it is practical, and a go-to reference for any leader in business, sports, and life.

Sir Alex Ferguson is a former Scottish player and manager who managed Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. His time at the club has led to Ferguson being regarded as one of the most successful, admired and respected managers in the history of the game. On May 8, 2013, Ferguson announced his retirement as manager of Manchester United. During his 27 years at the club, he won 38 trophies, including 13 Premier Leagues and two UEFA Champions League titles.

Sir Michael Moritz is a venture capitalist and chairman of Sequoia Capital, the original backers of Apple, Cisco, YouTube and WhatsApp; he has also served on the board of directors of Google, LinkedIn, PayPal and Yahoo!. He is a former journalist with Time Magazine and author of the first history of Apple, The Little Kingdom. Originally from Wales, he lives near San Francisco, CA.

• Sold to: Hodder (UK & BC), Intrinseca (Brazil), Nation Books (Thailand), Beijing Xiron (China), Lindhardt og Ringhof (Denmark), Plassen Verlag (Germany), Random House Korea (Korea), Mann-Ivanov-Ferber (Russia), Tre Publishing (Vietnam), Ciela (Bulgaria), Nihon Bungeisha (Japan), HVG (Hungary)

www.thegernertco.com 21

Jeff Gramm, DEAR CHAIRMAN: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism

A must-read for the business community and investors on how shareholders have shaped the history of some of the world’s most important companies.

Business history

Publisher: HarperBusiness, February 23, 2016 Editor: Hollis Heimbouch Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Final pages

• “Jeff Gramm has a refreshing approach to the generations-long conflict between entrenched corporate management and shareholder activists. … An engaging and worthwhile read.” —Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System • “DEAR CHAIRMAN is a fascinating and colorful history of what resulted when that was occasionally forgotten or ignored. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to participate in our great ownership system, as investor or manager.” —Charles R. Schwab, Chairman, The Charles Schwab Corporation • "When major shareholders get actively involved, how do they think about companies and their value? Jeff Gramm breaks new ground in a book which is exciting, wise, well-written, and above all else instructive and useful."—Tyler Cowen, NYT bestselling author of The Great Stagnation

A sharp and illuminating history of one of capitalism’s longest running tensions—the conflicts of interest among public company directors, managers, and shareholders—told through original letters from some of our most legendary and controversial investors and activists

The disputes between shareholders and major corporations make daily headlines. But the struggle between management and those who own stock has been going on for nearly a century. Mixing never- before-published and rare, original letters from Wall Street icons—including Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett, Ross Perot, Carl Icahn, and Daniel Loeb—with masterful scholarship and professional insight, Dear Chairman traces the rise of shareholder activism from the 1920s to today, and provides an invaluable and unprecedented perspective on what it means to be a public company, including how they work and who is really in control.

Jeff Gramm is Portfolio Manager at Bandera Partners, the hedge fund he co-founded in 2006. He serves as a Director of two public companies, and teaches a course on value investing at Columbia Business School where he received his MBA in 2003. He lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn.

• Sold to: Grand China Publishing (China)

www.thegernertco.com 22

Mark Greif, AGAINST EVERYTHING (Or, Hate as Love) and HOW TO LOOK AT PORN

Two new books from one of the most brilliant and exciting thinkers in a generation – and a co- founder of literary magazine n+1.

Philosophy / Cultural criticism

Publisher: Pantheon, Autumn 2016 / Autumn 2017; Verso in the UK & British Commonwealth Editor: Gerry Howard Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Manuscript / Proposal

Sold, at auction, in a strong six-figure advance to Gerry Howard at Pantheon.

In the eleven years since Mark Greif launched n+1 with five friends, the magazine has come to be seen as one of the most important developments in American literature and its premier incubator of new talent. According to William Deresiewicz in Harper’s, Greif is “unmistakably the journal’s cleanup hitter, the biggest slugger in its lineup. I will not insult Greif by calling him a public intellectual. He is an intellectual, full-stop.” That reputation, affirmed elsewhere by the likes of James Wood, Pankaj Mishra, and Louis Menand, rests largely on the essays he published in n+1; they were twice chosen for Best American Essays, the second time by David Foster Wallace. Collected for the first time in AGAINST EVERYTHING (Or, Hate As Love), their subjects range from exercise and reality television to YouTube and war. Like his hero, Susan Sontag, Greif believes nothing should be beneath a critic’s attention; and, one must learn to hate the world as it is in order to love the world as it could be. One year later will come HOW TO LOOK AT PORN, a treatise in the tradition of Barthes and Berger on the signal development in the recent history of sexuality – the proliferation of online pornography and its incorporation into a basic category of the aesthetic.

Mark Greif is the author of The Age of the Crisis of Man (Princeton University Press, 2015) that The NYT Book Review declared “an important book…a brilliant book;" and the London Review of Books called “bracingly ambitious.” Bluescreen, translations of Greif’s essays on media, was published by Suhrkamp in Germany where he is now recognized as America’s preeminent young intellectual. His work has appeared in London Review of Books, New York Times, Boston Globe, TLS, NYT Book Review, Harper’s, Guardian, New Statesman, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, Le Monde, Courrier Internationale, Etiqueta Negra, Village Voice, Dissent, and, principally, n+1.

Mark Grief was born in 1975, received a BA summa cum laude from Harvard in History and Literature, an M.Phil. from Oxford in English as a British Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 2007. Since 2008, Greif has been on the faculty of the New School in New York, where from July 2015 he is Associate Professor. He lives with his wife and daughter in Stony Brook, NY.

• Sold to: Verso (UK & BC), Suhrkamp (Germany)

www.thegernertco.com 23

Heather Havrilesky, HOW TO BE A PERSON IN THE WORLD: Advice, Epiphanies & Digressions from Ask Polly

A razor-sharp and hilarious guide to becoming a better person from the writer of the popular “Ask Polly” column for New York magazine.

Advice / Relationships

Publisher: Doubleday, June 7, 2016 Editor: Yaniv Soha Agent: Sarah Burnes Material: Edited manuscript

• “Heather Havrilesky is that rare writer who can dish out tangy snark, but never fail to aim the knife back at her own damaged, hilarious heart. She’s dealing, brilliantly, with the curse of having too much insight — of herself and the world around her. Required reading.” —Patton Oswalt, New York Times bestselling author of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland • “Sometimes I think Heather Havrilesky’s “Ask Polly” column is the only true thing on the Internet…she offers up a slyly powerful critique of the ways in which culture shapes the individual. How To Be a Person In the World distills her salty, expansive wisdom into a guide for better living that's both pragmatic and philosophical, a large-hearted reminder that all of us are struggling, and none of us is alone.”—Kate Bolick, New York Times bestselling author of Spinster • "What I love so much about Heather Havrilesky and her new book is that, beside being her usual brilliant, hilarious, equally kick-ass and compassionate self, she actually gives great advice."—Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Small Victories • "Heather Havrilesky’s advice leaves me laughing, nodding in recognition, pumping my fist with excitement, and furiously underlining passages to capture the wisdom that drops out of her mouth. At a time when we’re all navigating so many cheap and conflicting messages of how to be cooler, smarter, and happier, “Ask Polly” is a powerful reminder to listen to ourselves. “ — Sarah Hepola, New York Times bestselling author of Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank to Forget

HOW TO BE A PERSON IN THE WORLD is a fiercely original experiment in personal nonfiction from the popular advice columnist of “Ask Polly” in New York magazine. A mix of previously published material, as well as new columns in response to reader’s questions on relationships and self improvement, the book is an aggressive, vivid, smart succession of impassioned inquiries and emotional insights that will encourage readers to reflect on their own lives and will deliver a message about the importance of owning your full self, flaws and all. The arrival of an exciting new voice in nonfiction.

Heather Havrilesky writes the “Ask Polly” column for New York Magazine's The Cut, the Best Seller List column for Bookforum, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of the memoir DISASTER PREPAREDNESS (Riverhead, 2011) and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, O Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, The Baffler, The Awl, NPR’s "All Things Considered," and in several anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a loud assortment of dependents, most of them non-deductible.

www.thegernertco.com 24

Garry Kasparov, WINTER IS COMING: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped

A cogent and insightful call to action against Vladimir Putin by the World champion chess player and prominent Russian dissident.

Foreign affairs

Publisher: Public Affairs, October 27, 2015 (US) / Atlantic Books (UK), October 27, 2015 (UK) Editor: Ben Adams Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Advanced Readers Copy

North American rights to Public Affairs in a six-figure deal • UK & BC deal with Atlantic Books (at auction) • 12 international deals

• “It's always important to read Garry Kasparov, who warned of the dangers of Putinism long before so many others.”—Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag and Iron Curtain, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction • “Garry Kasparov has the information-processing capacity of a supercomputer and the eloquence of an extraordinary orator.”—Masha Gessen, author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot • “A passionate indictment both of Russia's kleptocracy and the complacency of Western democracies in the face of Putin. This threat has become our central foreign policy challenge, and Kasparov's arguments are essential in understanding how to face it.”—Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University • “As one of the most influential critics of Vladimir Putin's reign of Terror, Garry Kasparov has become a champion for the causes of freedom, democracy and human rights in Russia.” – United States Senator John McCain

Vladimir Putin has grown not only into a dictator but a global threat. Garry Kasparov has been a vocal critic of him for over a decade, leading the pro-democracy opposition to him in the farcical 2008 Presidential election. Kasparov now urges a forceful stand--diplomatic and economic--against him. Argued with the force of Kasparov's world-class intelligence, conviction, and hopes for his home country, Winter is Coming is an unmistakable call to action against a threat we’ve ignored for too long.

Garry Kasparov spent twenty years as the world’s #1 ranked chess player. In 2005, he lead the pro- democracy opposition against Putin, and ran for the presidency of Russia in 2008. In 2012, he was named Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Václav Havel. He has been a contributing editor to The Wall Street Journal since 1991, and his 2007 book, How Life Imitates Chess, has been published in twenty-three languages. He lives in self-imposed exile in New York with his wife, Dasha.

• Sold to: Atlantic Books (UK & BC), Atlas Contact (Netherlands), Pantheon Verlag (Germany), Fandango Libri (Italy), Profil (Croatia), HVG (Hungary), Uitgeverij Atlas (Netherlands), Michel Lafon (France), Insignis (Poland), Clube do Autor (Portugal), Ucila (Slovenia), Hemiro (Ukraine)

www.thegernertco.com 25

Maria Konnikova, THE CONFIDENCE GAME: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It…Every Time

An investigation into con artists, and the people who fall for their schemes, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind.

Psychology

Publisher: Viking (US), January 12, 2016 / Canongate (UK), January 28, 2016 Editor: Wendy Wolf Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Advance Readers Copy

A strong six-figure deal for NA rights • From the New York Times bestselling author of MASTERMIND, which sold in 19 foreign deals

• “By plumbing the depths of real stores of swindlers and their victims, and by drawing on new scientific research into the nature of deception, she does more than just show in riveting detail how these cons unfold; she also reveals their hidden psychological dimensions, and why we all may be perfect mark.”— David Grann, bestselling author of The Lost City of Z • “The story of the con artist may be unmatched for combining human interest with insight into human nature, and star psychology writer Maria Konnikova explains their wiles to us with her characteristic clarity, flair, and depth.” —Steven Pinker, bestselling author of How the Mind Works • “If you liked Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, you’ll love this lucid and revelatory look into our oh-so-susceptible selves.” —Erik Larson, bestselling author of The Devil in the White City

While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen—the Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs—are elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it, over and over again? From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings readers into the world of the con, examining the relationship between artist and victim.

Maria Konnikova’s articles have appeared online and in print in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Slate, and the Scientific American, among numerous other publications. Maria blogs regularly for the New Yorker and formerly wrote the “Literally Psyched” column for the Scientific American and the popular psychology blog “Artful Choice” for Big Think. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University.

• Sold to: Canongate (UK & BC), Atlas-Contact (The Netherlands), Agora (Poland) • Option publishers: Ariston (Germany), Paidos (Spain), Ponte alle Grazie (Italy), Business Weekly Publications (Taiwan), Atticus-Azbooka (Russia), Campus Editora (Brazil), Chungrim (Korea), Hayakawa (Japan), Amarin (Thailand), Computer Press (Czech Republic), Helios (Estonia), HVG (Hungary), China CITIC (China), Domingo (Turkey), Bertrand (Portugal), Alma Littera (Lithuania)

www.thegernertco.com 26

David Lynch and Kristine McKenna, LIFE AND WORK

A revealing and intimate hybrid of biography and memoir from the revered and influential director of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks.

Autobiography/memoir

Publisher: Grand Central (US), 2017 (US) / Canongate (UK), 2017 Editor: Ben Greenberg Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Proposal

North American rights to Grand Central in a major deal, at auction • Publication anticipated for early 2017 after the release of the new Twin Peaks series on Showtime • UK & BC rights pre-empted by Canongate for six figures • 6 foreign deals

Director, screenwriter, artist, musician, actor and author, David Lynch has been recognized as one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the past forty years. Particularly known for the film Blue Velvet and the cult television series Twin Peaks, historically David Lynch has eluded journalists and biographers, and as such there is much misinformation printed about him. Lynch is now ready for an accurate and authorized story to be told, but in a way that befits his artistic style and reputation.

LIFE AND WORK will be an unusual hybrid of biography and memoir based on interviews with approximately ninety of Lynch’s friends, family and associates. He opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he’s made along the way, and the struggles he’s faced to bring his projects to fruition. This is Lynch riffing on his own life, unfiltered and unedited – a fascinating combination of primary source material and analysis.

David Lynch is the one of the most influential directors of the past 50 years. He has been nominated for three Academy Award nominations, and he has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. The French government awarded him the French Legion of Honor. He is currently shooting the new 9-episode series of Twin Peaks, which will air on Showtime in 2017.

Kristine McKenna is a journalist, critic and art curator, and the author of two collections of interviews: The Book of Changes and Talk to Her.

• Sold to: Canongate (UK & BC), Heyne (Germany), Mondadori (Italy), Gads Forlag (Denmark), LIKE (Finland), Paseka (Czech Republic)

www.thegernertco.com 27

Alex Mar, WITCHES OF AMERICA

When most people hear the word “witches,” they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the millions of people who practice Paganism today, it’s a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. A deep dive into the world of present-day witchcraft.

Religion

Stretching beyond the America in the title, this book brings the wit of Susan Orlean and the insight of Leslie Jamison to the universal question: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all?

Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books/FSG, October 20, 2015 Editor: Sarah Crichton Agent: Sarah Burnes Material: Advanced Readers Copy

• “An expertly crafted spiritual journey…Mar writes with clarity and candor, provides ample background information, and is neither preachy nor cheesy. She presents all her subjects as interesting individuals.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) • “An enchanting and addictive report shedding much-needed light on a spiritualistic community obfuscated by historical misinterpretation and pop-culture derision.” –Kirkus • “Written with a beguiling blend of heart and wit, Alex Mar’s Witches of America sustains its thrall with something that runs much deeper than intrigue or pageantry. It compelled me with the depth and scope of its curiosity, following its driving questions—about meaning, faith, and longing for community and wonder—on a breathless, deepening, and constantly surprising quest.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams • “I would never have described myself as someone ‘interested in witchcraft.’ Alex Mar’s book left me feeling the fault had been mine. It’s brave and sharp and tenaciously researched. I learned a lot about women from these witches.” —John J. Sullivan

Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible-or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying all faiths: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all? Whether evangelical, Pagan priestess, or atheist, each of us craves a system of meaning to give structure to our lives. Sometimes we just find it in unexpected places.

Alex Mar is a non-fiction writer based in her hometown of New York City. She has contributed to The Believer, Oxford American, Elle, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, New York magazine, and other publications. She is also the director of the documentary feature American Mystic. Witches of America is her first book.

www.thegernertco.com 28

Jane McGonigal, SUPERBETTER : A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient – Powered by the Science of Games

An innovative guide to living gamefully, and an exciting new take on self-help, form the gaming expert and the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken.

Self-help/Psychology

Publisher: Penguin Press, September 15, 2015 (US) / HarperCollins, January 14, 2016 (UK) Editor: Scott Moyers Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Finished copies

New York Times bestseller • Sold in a major deal to Penguin Press

• “Don’t we all want to be better than before? If fact, we’d like to be superbetter! Jane McGonigal’s fascinating, ground-breaking approach shows how ‘living gamefully’ can help us lead happier, healthier, more engaged lives.”—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project • “Hundreds of thousands of people have had their lives changed by Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter program, and I see why. It’s a marriage of positive psychology with pioneering insights from cutting-edge game design. This is a plan for profound growth in the face of whatever challenges life throws at you - and whatever ones you can throw at yourself.”– Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit

In 2009, game designer and author Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion that wouldn’t heal. Unable to think clearly, or work, or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal—a common symptom for concussion sufferers. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a game. What started as a simple motivational exercise became a set of rules she shared on her blog. These rules became a digital game, then an online portal and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. Today more than 400,000 people have played SuperBetter to get happier and healthier.

Jane McGonigal, PhD, is the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future and the author of The New York Times bestseller Reality Is Broken. Her TED talks on games have been viewed more than ten million times. She has developed resilience-building games for the American Heart Association, the World Bank, the Oprah Winfrey Network, the New York Public Library, and Nike.

• Sold to: HarperCollins UK (UK & BC), Herder (Germany), Hayakawa (Japan), Cheers (China), Eurasian (Taiwan)

www.thegernertco.com 29

Randall Munroe, THING EXPLAINER: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

From the creator of the webcomic xkcd and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What If?, brilliantly annotated blueprints that explain everything from nuclear bombs to ballpoint pens.

Science and wordplay

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 24, 2015 Editor: Alex Littlefield Agent: Seth Fishman Material: Final pages

North American rights sold in a seven-figure deal • WHAT IF? was an international bestseller with more than 1 million copies in print

Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? Randall Munroe is here to help using line drawings and only the thousand (or, rather, “ten hundred”) most common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including:

Food-heating radio boxes (microwaves); Tall roads (bridges); Computer buildings (datacenters); The shared space house (the International Space Station); The other worlds around the sun (the Solar System); The big flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates); The pieces everything is made of (the Periodic Table); Planes with turning winds (helicopters); Boxes that make clothes smell better (washers and dryers); and The bags of stuff inside you (cells)

Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone—age 5 to 105—who has ever wondered how things work, and why.

Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What If?, the science question-and- answer blog What If, and the popular webcomic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the Internet full-time, supporting himself through the sale of xkcd t-shirts, prints, posters, and books. He likes candlelight dinners and long walks on the beach. Very long walks. He lives in Massachusetts.

What If? publishers: John Murray Press (UK &BC), Knaus (Germany), Bompiani (Italy), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Unieboek (Netherlands), Flammarion (France), Aguilar (Spain), Prah (Czech Republic), AST (Russia), Sigongsa (Korea), Hayakawa (Japan), Klidarithmos (Greece), Athenaeum (Hungary), Czarna Owca (Poland), United Sky (China), Commonwealth (Taiwan), Pegasus (Turkey), Saída de Emergência (Portugal), WSOY (Finland), WeLearn (Thailand), Heliks (Serbia), Modan (Israel), Volante (Sweden), Font Forlag (Norway), IKar (Czech Republic), Nha Nam (Vietnam), Loxodonta (Denmark), Aripaev (Estonia), PT Gramedia (Indonesia)

www.thegernertco.com 30

Stephen Witt, HOW MUSIC GOT FREE: A Tale of Obsession and Invention

An irresistible story of greed, cunning, brilliance, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn’t just a story of the music industry— it’s a must-read history of the Internet itself.

Narrative non-fiction

Publisher: Viking, June 16, 2015 / The Bodley Head, June 18, 2015 Editor: Allison Lorentzen Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb Material: Finished copies

• “The richest explanation to date about how the arrival of the MP3 upended almost everything about how music is distributed, consumed and stored. … It has the clear writing and brisk reportorial acumen of a Michael Lewis book.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times • “Taut, cleareyed. . . . [A] complex, groundbreaking story.”—The New York Times Book Review • “Whip-smart, superbly reported and indispensable.”—The Washington Post

How Music Got Free is the incredible true story of Dell Glover, a factory worker at a compact-disc manufacturing plant who brought the music industry to its knees. Working from a small town in North Carolina, Glover was the Patient Zero of music piracy, leaking thousands of albums from the plant over nearly a decade. If you’ve ever pirated music—or even borrowed it—Glover’s handiwork is on your hard drive.

But Glover couldn’t do it alone. He needed the help of his smuggling confederates, who conducted a years-long campaign of infiltration into the music industry’s global supply chain. He needed the help of the men who invented the mp3, a group of academics working in a forgotten audio laboratory in Germany. He needed the help of the torrenters, who, from dormitories and bedrooms across the planet, built distribution networks for his leaks. Most of all, he needed the unwitting assistance of the music industry itself, and the powerful music executive whose strategy of consolidation brought the biggest musical acts of the decade into Glover’s reach. The gripping untold story of the music piracy revolution and the man who almost singlehandedly brought down the industry.

Stephen Witt graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 2011; this book stemmed from his Master's thesis, which won a Lynton Fellowship. Witt graduated from the University of Chicago in 2001 and he worked as a financial analyst before attending journalism school. HOW MUSIC GOT FREE is his first book.

• Sold to: The Bodley Head/RHUK (UK & BC), Einaudi (Italy), Eichborn (Germany), Intrinseca (Brazil), Whilte Label Publishing (Russia)

www.thegernertco.com 31 more opportunities in… literary fiction

Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING

Publisher: Little, Brown, September 2011 Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb

** INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ** After weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, more than 500,000 US copies sold Amazon’s #1 pick of 2011 • UK and Dutch bestseller • Chosen for 30 Best Of lists • Television rights under development with SundanceTV and Todd Field (In the Bedroom) producing

• "A magical, melancholy story about friendship and coming of age that marks the debut of an immensely talented writer." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • “The Novel of the Year” — GQ • Rave reviews in The New York Times, Booklist, NPR, The Chicago Tribune, Vogue, The New Yorker, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and many more. • Quotes from Jonathan Franzen, John Irving, Jay McInerney, Benjamin Kunkel, Tea Obreht and more.

At Westish College, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, this is an unforgettable debut.

Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and was educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder and coeditor of n+1.

• Sold to: Fourth Estate (UK & BC), De Bezige Bij (the Netherlands), Hayakawa (Japan), Dumont (Germany), Rizzoli (Italy), Lattes (France), Salamandra (World Spanish), Columna Edicions (Catalan), Sigongsa (Korean), Civilização Editora (Portugal), Intrinseca (Brazil), Norstedts (Sweden), Cartaphilus (Hungary), Gyldendal (Norway), Mozaik (Croatia), China Times (Taiwan), Politikens (Denmark), Otava (Finland), Mladinska Knjiga Zalozba (Slovene), Kinneret (Israel)

www.thegernertco.com 32

Alice McDermott, SOMEONE Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, September 2013 Agent: Sarah Burnes

New York Times bestseller Long listed for the National Book Award • National Book Critics Circle nominee Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly , Kirkus, Booklist and Library Journal.

• “The essential work of an examined life.”—New York Times Book Review • “[A] deceptively simple tour de force. McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, is an exceptional writer: in her hands, an uncomplicated life becomes singularly fascinating.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) • “This micropoetry elevates the book from a gentle story to a multilayered Our Town-like tale." —People magazine (3 ½ stars out of 4) • “One of the author’s most trenchant explorations into the heart and soul of the 20th-century Irish- American family.”—Kirkus (starred review)

An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys; its bursts of brilliant clarity and moments of profound confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott’s extraordinary return to form, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott’s deft, lyrical voice. Marie’s first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother Gabe’s brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, eventual breakdown; the Second World War; their parents’ deaths; the births and lives of Marie’s children; the changing world outside her Brooklyn window—McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks truthfully of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today. Alice McDermott is the author of six previous novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; That Night – finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Charming Billy - winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes, all published by FSG. She has also won a Whiting Award and has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives with her family outside of Washington, D.C. • Sold to: Bloomsbury (UK & BC); Einaudi (Italy), La Table Ronde (France), Editora Globo (Brazil), Minuscula (Catalan), Libros del Asteroide (Spain), Uitgeverij Link (Netherlands)

www.thegernertco.com 33

Téa Obreht, THE TIGER’S WIFE

Publisher: Random House, March 2011 Agent: Seth Fishman

International Bestseller More than 1.5 million copies in print

The youngest of New Yorker’s Top 20 Under 40 • A National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 • One of Waterstones’ 11 best debut novels of 2011 • Cover of the New York Times Book Review • #1 Indie Bestseller • New York Times Hardcover & Paperback Bestseller • 2011 Orange Prize Winner

Set in present day in a Balkan country ravaged by years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, receives word of her beloved grandfather’s death under strange circumstances. As she searches for the truth behind his death, she stumbles across the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife. An involving mystery, an emotionally riveting family story, and a wondrous evocation of an unfamiliar world, THE TIGER’S WIFE is a brilliant novel.

Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and is forthcoming in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

• Sold to: Weidenfeld & Nicholson (UK&BC), RHM (Spanish), Kinneret (Israel), Presença (Portugal) Signatuur (the Netherlands), Leya (Brazil), Hyundae Munhak (Korea), Rowohlt (Germany), Rizzoli (Italy), Bonniers (Sweden), Calmann Levy (France), Gyldendal (Denmark), Angle (Catalan), Schibsted (Norway), Siren (Turkey), Algoritam (Croatia), Yilin (China), China Times (Taiwan), Eksmo (Russia), WSOY (Finland), Cartaphilus (Hungary), Laguna (Serbia), Pergament (Bulgaria), Patakis (Greece), Arab Scientific Publishers (Arabic – World), Argo (Czech Republic), Forlagid (Iceland), Baltos Lankos (Lithuania), Drzewo Babel (Poland), Erein (Basque), Mladinska (Slovene), RAO (Romania), Buybook (Bosnia), Matica (Macedonia), Shinchosha (Japan), Fortuna (Slovak), Morava (Albania)

www.thegernertco.com 34 more opportunities in… commercial fiction

Robin Sloan, MR. PENUMBRA’S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, October 2012 Agent: Sarah Burnes

A literary adventure story for the twenty-first century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson.

New York Times Bestseller • International bestseller in Germany and Italy Indie Next Pick for October 2012 • Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection • Picked by Newsweek for its Fall Book Preview • 25 international licenses

• "An old-fashioned tale likably reconceived for the digital age."—PW (starred review) • “Sloan’s debut novel takes the reader on a dazzling and flat-out fun adventure, winding through the interstices between the literary and the digital realms.” —Kirkus • “A real tour de force. Robin Sloan comes across as so big-hearted, so in love with the world that the reader is swept along by his enthusiasm.”—George Saunders • “Reminds us that there is an intimate, adventurous joy in the palpable, papery things called novels, and the warm little secret societies we used to call "book stores." —John Hodgman

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone and serendipity has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests - a modern day cabinet of wonders ready to jolt and intrigue every curious reader. Robin Sloan splits his time between San Francisco and the Internet.

• Sold to: Atlantic (UK&BC), Text (ANZ), Blessing Verlag (Germany), Roca Editorial (World Spanish), Corbaccio (Italy), Novo Conceito (Brazil), WSOY (Finland), Klidarithmos (Greece), Modan (Israel), Woongjin (Korea), Marco Polo Press (Taiwan), Alpha Books (China), Host (Czech Republic), Trend Kitap (Turkey), Ara Llibres (Catalan), Gabo (Hungary), A-Team Publishing (Russia), Aktuell (Slovak), Albatros (Poland), Bertrand (Portugal), Gamme Magie (Thailand), Libretto Forlag (Norway), Lumen (Croatia), Michel Lafon (France), Tokyo Sogensha (Japan), Iris (Denmark)

www.thegernertco.com 35

Olen Steinhauer, ALL THE OLD KNIVES

Publisher: Minotaur, March 10, 2015 Agent: Stephanie Cabot

New York Times Bestseller!

Film rights pre-empted in a six-figure deal with Olen Steinhauer attached to write the screenplay and Neil Burger (Divergent) to direct • Foreign sales in eleven territories • Amazon Best Book of the Month

• “A sneaky little gem.” —The New York Times • “A splendid tour-de-force.” —Washington Post • “Steinhauer is a very fine writer and an excellent observer of human nature, shrewd about the pleasures and perils of spying.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) • “Masterfully plotted and suspenseful stand-alone." —Kirkus (starred review) • "Takes Hitchcockian suspense to new heights."—Library Journal (starred review) • "Delivers intrigue, suspense, and a heart-stopping finale." —Booklist (starred review)

In the idyllic town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, two ex-lovers meet for dinner. Celia, once a CIA spy, now a wife with a family, and Henry, still mired in the shadowy world of espionage in Vienna. As they relive their memories of a disastrous terrorist hijacking years ago, the motive behind this meeting remains obscured: is it to rekindle a lost romance or reignite a conspiracy? Often compared by critics to Graham Greene, Steinhauer is one of the most versatile and acclaimed writers of a generation.

Olen Steinhauer, the New York Times bestselling author of The Cairo Affair and The Tourist, and seven other novels, is also a two-time Edgar Award finalist. www.olensteinhauer.com.

• Sold to: Picador (UK & BC), Blessing (Germany), Ambo/Anthos (Netherlands), Presses de la Cité (France), Piemme (Italy), Record (Brazil), Iwanami Shoten (Japan), Bertrand (Portugal), Czarna Owca (Poland), RH Korea (Korea), Euromedia (Czech Republic)

www.thegernertco.com 36 more opportunities in… non-fiction

Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd), WHAT IF? popular science Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 2014 Agent: Seth Fishman

From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask.

#1 New York Times Bestseller • #1 Bestseller on Amazon • #1 Non-fiction book in the UK • #2 bestseller on Der Spiegel list in Germany • More than 600,000 copies in print worldwide • Twenty-nine foreign deals

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe’s iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have an enormous, dedicated following, as do his deeply researched answers to his fans’ strangest questions. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? • Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? • What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City? His responses are masterpieces of clarity and wit, gleefully and accurately explaining everything from the relativistic effects of a baseball pitched at near the speed of light to the many horrible ways you could die while building a periodic table out of all the actual elements.

Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, is the creator of the webcomic xkcd and the author of xkcd: volume 0. The International Astronomical Union recently named an asteroid after him; asteroid 4942 Munroe is big enough to cause a mass extinction if it ever hits a planet like Earth.

• Sold to: John Murray Press (UK &BC), Knaus (Germany), Bompiani (Italy), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), Unieboek (Netherlands), Flammarion (France), Aguilar (Spain), Prah (Czech Republic), AST (Russia), Sigongsa (Korea), Hayakawa (Japan), Klidarithmos (Greece), Athenaeum (Hungary), Czarna Owca (Poland), United Sky (China), Commonwealth (Taiwan), Pegasus (Turkey), Saída de Emergência (Portugal), WSOY (Finland), WeLearn (Thailand), Heliks (Serbia), Modan (Israel), Volante (Sweden), Font Forlag (Norway), IKar (Czech Republic), Nha Nam (Vietnam), Loxodonta (Denmark), Aripaev (Estonia), PT Gramedia (Indonesia)

www.thegernertco.com 37

Peter Thiel with Blake Masters, ZERO TO ONE: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Publisher: Crown Business, September 16, 2014 Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb

#1 New York Times bestseller • Sold to Crown Business for seven figures in a heated auction • Sales in 30 foreign territories

• “This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.” —Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook • “Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.” —Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla • "The first and last business book anyone needs to read; a one in a world of zeroes." —Neal Stephenson, New York Times best-selling author of Cryptonomicon

Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. Progress comes from monopoly, not competition. Competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole. Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. What valuable company is nobody building?

Peter Thiel, an entrepreneur and investor, co-founded PayPal and the data analytics firm Palantir Technologies. He made the first outside investment in Facebook, funded companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn, and started the Thiel Foundation, which nurtures tomorrow’s tech visionaries. Blake Masters co-founded Judicata, a technology startup that builds tools for legal research and analysis.

• Sold to: Virgin Books (UK & BC), Campus Verlag (Germany), Lattes (France), RCS Libri (Italy), Ediciones Deusto (World Spanish), Objetiva (Brazil), Atlas-Contact (The Netherlands), China CITIC (China), NHK (Japan), CommonWealth Magazine Publishing (Taiwan), Korea Economic Daily (Korea), Alpina (Russia), Modan (Israel), WeLearn (Thailand), Aripaev (Estonia), Lua de Papel (Portugal), Gabo (Hungary), Tre (Vietnam), Jan Melvil (Czech Republic), Kastaniotis (Greece), MT Biznes (Poland), Publica (Romania), PT Gramedia (Indonesia), iSquare Publishing (Mongolia), Pegasus (Turkey), Nash Format (Ukraine), Jarir Bookstore (Arabic), Citadella (Slovak Republic), Vecernji List (Croatia), Eugrimas (Lithuania)

www.thegernertco.com 38

THE GERNERT COMPANY INTERNATIONAL CO-AGENTS

For queries concerning John Grisham in all territories, please contact Ms. Rebecca Gardner [email protected]

TRANSLATION CO-AGENTS

German Mr. Christian Dittus & Ms. Antonia Fritz, Paul & Peter Fritz AG [email protected]; [email protected]

French Ms. Eliane Benisti, Agence Eliane Benisti [email protected]

Italian Ms. Erica Berla, Berla & Griffini Rights Agency [email protected]

Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic Mr. Philip Sane, Lennart Sane Agency [email protected]

Spanish Ms. Teresa Vilarrubla, The Foreign Office [email protected]

Portuguese Ms. Tassy Barham, Tassy Barham Associates [email protected]

Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Macedonia, Bosnian and Albanian Ms. Anna Droumeva, Andrew Nurnberg Associates Sofia [email protected]

Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Ms. Tatjana Zoldnere, Andrew Nurnberg Associates Baltic [email protected]

Czech, Slovak and Slovene Ms. Petra Tobiskova, Andrew Nurnberg Associates Prague [email protected]

Hungarian and Croatian Ms. Judit Hermann, Andrew Nurnberg Associates Budapest [email protected]

www.thegernertco.com 39

Greek Mr. William Roberts, The Gernert Company [email protected]

Russian Ms. Ludmilla Sushkova, Andrew Nurnberg Associates Moscow [email protected]

Hebrew Ms. Efrat Lev, The Deborah Harris Agency [email protected]

Polish Ms. Maria Starz-Kanska, Graal Ltd [email protected]

Turkish Mr. Atilla Turgut or Mr. Ozgur Emir, Akcali Copyright Agency [email protected] [email protected]

Japanese Mr. Ken Mori, Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc. [email protected]

Complex and Simplified Chinese Ms. Joanne Yang, Bardon-Chinese Media Agency [email protected]

Korean Ms. Sue Yang, Eric Yang Agency [email protected]

Thai Ms. Pimolporn Yutisri, Tuttle-Mori Agency [email protected]

Indonesian Mr. Santo Manurung, Maxima Creative [email protected]

For all other markets including the UK & British Commonwealth contact Ms. Rebecca Gardner ([email protected])

www.thegernertco.com 40