McCormick Literary | London Book Fair | 2019 2 FICTION RIVALS By Shannon Burke Yet another surprising turn for the extraordinarily talented and versatile writer of Black Flies and Into the Shadow Country. RIVALS is the story of the Brennan family of Chicago, as told by Willie Brennan, the second oldest son, a sensitive, stubborn dreamer who doesn’t quite fit in with the Brennan family ethos. In the Brennan home, “duties” (schoolwork, the newspaper route, and construction and carpentry work) and “pleasure” (concerts, family vacations, baseball games) are meted out to the children with equal intensity and zeal, punctuated by the occasional beat down and remorseful apology. This pressurized environment sets the Brennan kids apart from their rich classmates and neighbors, and it’s not surprising that the relationship between Willie and his older brother Coyle becomes the central focus of Willie’s teenage years. Coyle is Willie’s shadow self—his fiercest competitor, his only meaningful ally against their father, and the person whom Willie regards with as serious scrutiny as he does himself. RIVALS is a novel about what makes a family, about love and hatred, and about growing up and realizing you can’t ever separate yourself from the forces that shaped you. Shannon Burke is the author of Into the Savage Country, Black Flies, and Safelight. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. NA rights: Pantheon (Deborah Garrison) | Delivery April 2019; Publication TBD Foreign publishers of INTO THE SAVAGE COUNTRY: 10/18/France PERMANENT RECORD By Mary HK Choi YOUNG ADULT FICTION Making it in New York City is always a challenge—especially when you have no clue what to do with your life. After a year of college Pablo is working at his local 24-hour deli, selling overpriced snacks to brownstone yuppies. He’s dodging calls from the student loan office and desperately searching for his next move. Leanna Smart’s life so far has been nothing *but* success. Age 8, Disney Mouseketeer; Age 15, first Number One single on the US pop chart; Age 17, *tenth* Number One single; and now, at Age 19…it’s all starting to get a little old. Is the rest of life going to be this queasy blur of private planes, weird hotel rooms and strangers asking you for selfies on the street? Leanna and Pab were always going to be an odd couple. After they randomly meet at 4AM in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn, they both know they can’t be together forever. So they keep things DL and off Instagram for as long as they can. Obviously it takes about three seconds before the world finds out—at which point everything goes pear-shaped. McCormick Literary | London Book Fair 2019 3 PERMANENT RECORD is a book about impossible love, but also about young people and ambition. About trying to leave your mark on the world. Because it’s a book by Mary H. K. Choi, we also know that it’s crackling with energy, unexpected insights, jokes, down-the-rabbit-hole digressions, detailed descriptions of junk food, and, at the end of the day, an almost ESP-level grasp of the inner worlds of her characters. Mary H.K. Choi is the author of EMERGENCY CONTACT and a writer for The New York Times, GQ, Wired, and The Atlantic. She has written comics for Marvel and DC, as well as a collection of essays called OH, NEVER MIND. She is the host of Hey, Cool Job!, a podcast about jobs, and is a culture correspondent for VICE News Tonight on HBO. Mary grew up in Hong Kong and Texas and now lives in New York. NA rights: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (Zareen Jaffery) | Delivered; Publication September 3, 2019 Foreign publishers of EMERGENCY CONTACT: Gallimard Jeunesse/France, Urano/Spain, Intrinseca/Brazil, Zysk I Ska/Poland, AST/Russia, Albatros/Czech Republic NIMA By Adam Popescu NIMA is a lyrical debut novel about a young Sherpa woman living in the foothills of the Himalayas, a range so immense and a place so isolated it is hard to imagine anything existing beyond it. Nima is the eldest daughter in a poor farming family that has recently been beset by grief and tragedy. Her baby brother, Ang, was killed in an avalanche that also disabled her father. Nima is betrothed to Norbu, a local Sherpa, but Nima stuns both families by fleeing her home on the eve of their wedding and striking out on her own, in search of a new destiny. Disguised as a man, Nima seeks work and is hired by an American journalist to guide their small group up to Everest Base Camp. The journey is treacherous, and Nima challenges every restriction her culture places on her gender while balancing the duties of her new role as guide. Her journey is ultimately one of adventure, danger, self-discovery, and even love. Popescu –a journalist who has reported from Mount Everest for the BBC –brings to life the many contradictions of the region through Nima’s eyes: trails strewn with litter overlooking majestic views; Buddhist clarity marred by sexual oppression; and a tourism industry that fuels the local economy but also threatens to destroy it. Adam Popescu is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, Outside, The Guardian, and others. NA rights: Unnamed Press (Chris Heiser) | Delivered; Publication May 21, 2019 McCormick Literary | London Book Fair 2019 4 BARN 8 By Deb Olin Unferth From the author of the critically acclaimed Wait Till You See Me Dance comes an off-kilter heist story about a group of animal rights activists and their plot to liberate one million chickens from an industrial chicken farm. Without much of a plan, teenaged Janey leaves New York City in search of her biological father in Iowa, and then learns by phone that her mother has died. Having no choice, she stays in rural Iowa, enrolls in school, and eventually becomes an auditor for chicken farms. Janey and her mentor, Cleveland, start smuggling out distressed chickens that they encounter on their audits. They find a co-conspirator in Dill, an animal rights activist who lives on a farm with his banker husband. Janey, Cleveland and Dill get the idea to plan a massive “depopulation” of an entire hen farm. A million hens. The scheme gains traction and a plan takes shape: 120 animal rights investigators, each bringing a couple of helpers, will load the million or so chickens onto 60 trucks, to take them to animal sanctuaries all over the United States. The plan works perfectly, until it all goes horribly wrong...at Barn 8. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the story collections Wait Till You See Me Dance and Minor Robberies, the novel Vacation, and the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, which was a finalist for a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, NOON, the Paris Review, and Tin House. She lives in Austin, Texas. NA rights: Graywolf (Ethan Nosowsky) | Delivery April 2019; Publication March 3, 2020 McCormick Literary | London Book Fair 2019 5 NONFICTION ARE WE THERE YET? The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless By Dan Albert In recent years, tech companies have been teaching robots to drive. Those who would sell us self- driving cars promise that they will reduce pollution, eliminate traffic, and prevent countless injuries and deaths. But even if robots turn into responsible drivers, are we ready to become a nation of passengers? In ARE WE THERE YET? Dan Albert combines historical scholarship and personal narrative to explore how car culture has suffused America’s DNA. It was the plain, old-fashioned, human-driven car that built the American economy, won our wars, and shaped our democratic creed as it moved us about. Drivers’ ed made teenagers into citizens; auto repair made boys into men. Are We There Yet? takes us from muddy tracks to superhighways, from horseless buggies to driverless electric vehicles. Like any good road trip, it’s an adventure so fun you don’t even notice how much you’ve learned along the way. Dan Albert holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan. He writes about the past, present, and future of cars for n + 1 magazine. NA rights: W.W. Norton (Brendan Curry) | Delivered; Publication June 2019 EVERYDAY STRONG: Six Principles to Build Everyday Resilience By Samantha Boardman, M.D. Most of us can cope with a major life crisis with some combination of internal fortitude and outside support. We have capital-r Resilience, a word now so broadly applied as to be nearly meaningless. But what’s harder for most of us to deal with are the everyday challenges, like the competing demands of our families and bosses, conflicts with friends, and routine losses and disappointments. In this energizing, inspiring and practical book, Dr. Boardman shows us how to build and fortify our everyday resilience. Rather than a strict regimen, she offers a toolbox of fresh strategies that challenge our routine responses to stress, expand our emotional vocabulary, and lead to greater happiness and well-being. Samantha Boardman is a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry and Assistant Attending Psychiatrist at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York City. A graduate of Harvard and Cornell University Medical College, she has a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the founder of PositivePrescription.com. NA rights: Viking (Rick Kot) | Delivery June 2019; Publication TBD UK rights: Penguin Life McCormick Literary | London Book Fair 2019 6 SICK FOR A NEWER GHOST: The Untold Story of the Federal Writers’ Project by Scott Borchert When Franklin Roosevelt signed the Federal Writers’ Project into existence on July 27, 1935, nothing quite like it had been attempted in any nation.