FICTION

Roderick Anscombe

THE INTERVIEW ROOM

St. Martins Press (editor George Witte), June 2005, paperback February 2007

Sold to: Ivrit (Israel); Sijthoff (Holland); Droemer (Germany); TV2 (Denmark); Jardim dos Livros (Brazil); Dogan Egmont (Turkey)

Film rights optioned by John Gertz of Zorro Productions, screenplay by Nancy Larson (Wizard of Loneliness)

Roderick Anscombe makes a new debut in this original thriller set in a maximum security psychiatric facility outside of Boston. Paul Lucas, who like Anscombe is a forensic psychiatrist, is assigned the case of Harvard student Craig Cavanaugh, the son of the patrician Cavanaugh family. Craig, a classic sociopath, is charming and attractive, and is accused of stalking his teaching assistant. Lucas is drawn further into the case than he would have imagined when Craig invades his personal world, methodically exposing Lucas’ already precarious relationship with his wife. As a result of his daily, one-on-one encounters with violent men, as a forensic psychiatrist at Bridgewater State Hospital, Anscombe has become an expert in the assessment of dangerousness. His specialty in interview technique allows him to detect the emotional sub-text of a criminal’s word choice, voice quality, and body-language. Through his fine tuned knowledge of the art of the interview, his fictional scenes unnervingly reveal his characters, and creating a new brand of thriller.

Roderick is an Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School, where he teaches interview technique. In addition to his fiction—THE SECRET LIFE OF LASZLO COUNT DRACULA (Hyperion, 1994) and SHANK (Hyperion, 1996), which have been translated into twelve languages—Anscombe has published articles in scholarly journals on psychotherapy and the unconscious. He was born in England and educated at Oxford, emigrating to the USA after medical school. He lives with his wife in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

“The most original thriller I have read in a long, long time, with pacing and cutting edge medicine that will keep you late into the night. Roderick Anscombe is a welcome new voice in suspense. His writing is lean and sharp, with characters that matter, and ideas that are totally fresh.”

—Michael Palmer, bestselling author of FATAL

“THE INTERVIEW ROOM is a new kind of thriller—provocative, entertaining, and morally chilling, for people who like their justice subtle. A sly shocker that will invade your psyche and shake up your beliefs about good people and how bad they can get, it’s an absorbing debut for a talented writer.”

—Perri O’Shaughnessy, author of the New York Times bestselling UNLUCKY IN LAW and PRESUMPTION OF DEATH

Roderick Anscombe

VIRGIN LIES

St. Martins Press (editor George Witte) March 2007, paperback April 2008

Sold to: Sijthoff (Holland); Droemer (Germany); Jardim dos Livros (Brazil); Dogan Egmont (Turkey)

Film rights optioned by John Gertz of Zorro Productions

In the second appearance, forensic psychiatrist Paul Lucas works on the side of the police in a child abduction case involving his wife’s agency for struggling young women. Lucas, seasoned expert in detecting lies through interviewing criminals, is responsible for scoping out the criminals—an older man and his younger accomplice who have a history of pornography. But without real evidence, Lucas’ conscience is pushed, as to how far he can go in applying psychological torture to procure answers about the girl’s whereabouts before she dies.

“Packed with authentic detail, VIRGIN LIES is a fascinating thrill-ride.  Roderick Anscombe has moved to the top of my “must read” list.”

—Erica Spindler NYT bestselling author of KILLER TAKES ALL and COPYCAT

Tess Callahan

APRIL AND OLIVER

Grand Central (editor Deb Futter), June 2009

Ms. available

Sold to: Frassinelli/Sperling (Italy)

APRIL AND OLIVER is a beautiful and stirring first novel about two inseparable childhood friends whose existences again collide after the sudden death of April’s younger brother. Both by now have lives of their own – Oliver, a law student newly engaged, has completely abandoned the promise of his youth as a piano prodigy, something that his fiancée knows nothing about; and April, a bartender, leads a reckless life, especially when it comes to men. But when Oliver tries to tend to April in her grief, the foundation of Oliver’s life is less stable than it seemed, and April perhaps has a more solid core than she shows the world. Their connection proves to be the force that helps each of them find their way.

Tess Callahan’s fiction has appeared in publications such as Agni, Cottonwood, The Stylus Anthology, and New York Newsday, and was nominated for a Pushcart. She has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, and has attended Breadloaf, Squaw Valley and the Ragdale Foundation.

Charlie Carillo

YOUR MOTHER WILL KILL US WHEN SHE FINDS OUT

Kensington Publishing (editor Gary Goldstein), 2009

UK rights with Kensington, all other rights controlled by Anne Edelstein Literary Agency

Ms. due available

This poignant, subversive, and above all hilarious novel tells the story of divorced father and veteran tabloid journalist Sammy Sullivan and his son, Jacob. The same day Sammy loses his job, Jacob gets kicked out of his final year at an exclusive Manhattan prep school, all while the mother is away at an academic conference. And so begins the father and son’s weekend together, a voyage of mutual discovery that leads them to Sammy’s childhood stomping grounds in Queens – revisiting his old neighborhood, a bout with the Catholic Church, and even a grandfather who the son had never before met.

Charlie Carillo’s first book – Shepherd Avenue (a young adult book published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1986 and named one of the best books of the year by the American Library Association) and his second My Ride With Gus (Pocket, 1996 – hardcover and paper) have both by optioned several times for film. Throughout the 1980’s Charlie Carillo wrote for the New York Post, where he also had a personal column. For the next decade he worked for Inside Edition, where he continues to freelance today. Charlie Carillo also writes for a number of magazines from his current home in London.

Austin Ratner

THE JUMP ARTIST

Bellevue Literary Press (editor Erika Goldman), Spring 2009

Ms. due September 2008

In this haunting debut novel, Austin Ratner reimagines the life of renowned photographer Philippe Halsman. While known for his portraits of famous personalities and beautiful women, including the Life magazine cover portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Halsman received early notoriety in the today-forgotten ‘Tyrolean Dreyfus Affair’. In 1929, twenty-year old Halsman was hiking with his father in the Tyrolean Alps when the elder Halsman fell to his death, apparently due to a heart attack. The death was then turned into a crime, the young Halsman charged with patricide. Convicted by a Tyrolean jury, he was painted as a hateful Jewish money-grubber with an oedipal complex. Halsman spent his young manhood, age 20-22, in Austrian prison and was released only with pressure from the European intelligentsia including Freud and Einstein. Magnificently researched and artistically rendered, Ratner breathes life into this shocking case and the continuing story of how it affected Philippe Halsman’s vision of the art of photography, humankind, and the world.

Austin Ratner, former professor of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve, is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of Iowa. He has won several awards for his short fiction, including Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, the ‘Slush Pile Gold Award’ from the Missouri Review, and the Arthur Miller Prize in Fiction at the University of Michigan.

NON-FICTION

Tsultrim Allione

FEEDING YOUR DEMONS: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict

Little, Brown & Co. (editor Tracy Behar) April 2008

Galleys available

Forward by Jack Kornfeld

Sold to: Servire (Holland); Arkana (Germany); Mondadori (Italy)

Working against the contemporary instinct to fight that which we do not like, Tsultrim Allione teaches us that the way to eliminate the fears that haunt us most and that impede our ability to live life to its fullest, is to nurture those demons, not to wage war against them. Tsultrim's technique is rooted in the eleventh century practice of 'Chod,' (which literally means 'cutting through' fear) developed by the yogini Machig Lapdron, the only woman credited with founding her own lineage in Tibet. Her distinctly feminine approach is unusual in that it draws from both Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Shamanism, and was so popular that it spread through all branches of Tibetan Buddhism. Tsultrim has developed a series of five steps to translate the ancient practice of ‘Chod’ for a contemporary western audience, a method she has taught at the 'Conference of Western Buddhist Teachers,' where attendees included H.H. Dalai Lama and some of the highest Tibetan Lamas and Western teachers. She has also addressed large audiences in many other venues, including the Omega Institute, Esalen Institute, Naropa, and the CG Jung Institute, among many others. In 1993, she founded Tara Mandala, a 600 acre retreat center in Colorado, where she attracts many hundreds of students seeking to learn her practice.

Tsultrim Allione has a long history of providing a bridge between eastern and western traditions, having been ordained as one of the first Western Buddhist nuns in the Tibetan Kagyu order. When she returned to the US during the 1970's, she served on the faculty of Naropa University, at which time she became Allen Ginsberg's meditation instructor. Her book WOMEN OF WISDOM (published by Routledge, 1984; Snow Lion, 2000) has been in print for 20 years over numerous editions. Her work has also been anthologized widely.

“Feeding Your Demons offers an original and powerful approach to challenging the forces at work in the shadows of our psyche. Tsultrim Allione has done a masterful job of translating ancient—and fascinating—methods to heal modern emotional troubles.”

—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

“Feeding Your Demons is a bold, beautiful, and original work, a book that Carl Jung could only have dreamed of writing. Bringing the wisdom of Tibet straight into our daily lives, Tsultrim Allione shares the accumulated fruits of her own deep understanding. She does this in a completely accessible way, taking the most profound insights and rendering them simply and straightforwardly without compromising them. This is an extraordinary accomplishment, a gift to all who read it.”

—Mark Epstein, M.D., author of Thoughts without a Thinker

Arjia Rinpoche

SURVIVING THE DRAGON

Introduction by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Rodale (editor Karen Rinaldi), Fall 2009

Ms. due January 2009

In this remarkable historical document, Arjia Rinpoche tells the story of his life as a Tibetan lama under Chinese rule and his escape from Tibet to the United States ten years ago at age 48. Chosen as the reincarnation of Arjia Rinpoche at age 2, he was sent life at Kumbum Monastery, one of the most important monasteries in Tibet. In 1950 when Mao came into power, the eight-year-old Arjia found himself stranded in the monastery when all of the monks and attendees were sent to prison. He learned to operate under the different Chinese regimes, surviving as the government proceeded to whittle away at religious freedom of the Tibetans, and to dampen individual spirit and belief. He was very close to the Panchen Lama, with whom he shared the same tutor, and like the Panchen Lama lived with many obligations to Central Party in Beijing as the second highest religious leader remaining in Tibet. Rinpoche was with 10th Panchen Lama when he died under dubious circumstances, and he was present for the rigged selection of the ‘counterfeit’ 11th Panchen Lama. When the Chinese government requested that he be the tutor of the new reincarnate youth, Rinpoche saw no choice but to flee, and so began his harrowing flight from Tibet in 1998, when he found political asylum in the US.

Arjia Rinpoche today directs the Tibetan and Mongolian Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana (originally founded by the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother). He appears regularly on TV and radio, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, and lectures widely.

Stephen Batchelor

CONFESSIONS OF A BUDDHIST ATHEIST

Spiegel & Grau (editor Cindy Spiegel), Fall 2009

Ms. due December 2008

Sold to: Heyne (Germany)

In Confessions of an Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor moves away from the agnostic questioning of his earlier classic, Buddhism Without Beliefs, to look at the value Buddhism can have in a secular world. Batchelor’s inspiration comes from his recent translation and study of the Pali Canon, the first recorded document of the Buddha’s life, and his examination of his own personal journey through Buddhism – from a questioning (ex)monk to interpreter and critic of Buddhist thought. The crux of this book is the understanding that the Buddha was a man who looked at human life in a radically new way, an unequivocally secular view that has nothing to do with the piety or religiosity that has come to be part of the definition of modern Buddhism. This is an eloquent book for a contemporary audience grappling with the meaning of spirituality and religion in today’s world.

Stephen Batchelor is a former monk in the Tibetan and Zen traditions and the author of the national bestseller, BUDDHISM WITHOUT BELIEFS, and many other books. He lectures and conducts meditation retreats worldwide, and is a contributing editor for Tricycle. He lives in France.

Tara Brach

TRUE REFUGE: The Presence that Heals and Frees Our Heart

Bantam Books (editor Toni Burbank), 2010

Ms. due 2009

Options: Droemer Knaur (Germany); Kosmos (Holland); Rider (UK); Oak Tree Publishing (China; Simplified Characters); Bright Discovery (China; Complex Characters)

A natural book to follow her award-winning Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach speaks to her ever-widening audience of TRUE REFUGE. ‘True refuge’ is not to be found outside or down the road, but can be within. Through a step by step process known as RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate/become Intimate, Natural loving awareness), she teaches how awakening presence can heal and address our basic needs for safety and love. The book is steeped in stories from Tara’s practice as well as her own life, along with guided meditations and timeless wisdom teachings. Readers will learn to bring a practice of meditative presence to the everyday realities of living and dying.

Tara Brach has been a mental health professional for over 25 years and currently practices in Washington, DC. A Buddhist lay priest and popular teacher of Buddhist mindfulness, she is the founder and guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community, where her weekly meditation classes are attended regularly by more than 120 students. She teaches throughout the country, and is currently focusing her workshops on the ‘True Refuge’ techniques.

John Carlin

PLAYING THE ENEMY: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation

Penguin Press (editor Eamon Dolan) August 2008

Books available

Sold to: Grove/Atlantic (UK); Herder (Germany); Kosmos (Holland); Sperling (Italy); Seix Barral (Spain); Sextante (Brazil); Ariane Edition (France); Presença (Portugal); La Campana (Catalán); NHK (Japan); Paschalidis Publications (Greece); EDUbox Publishing (Korea); Recorded Books (audio)

Film rights to Revelations Entertainment with Warner Bros.; Clint Eastwood directing; starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon; screenplay by Tony Peckham; production slated for January 2009.

This is the highly dramatic story of the moment of reconciliation between blacks and whites, a moment that the world would have considered impossible before it happened. In solving apartheid, ‘the crime against humanity,’ Mandela managed to ignite the kernel of human spirit that apparently resides within all of mankind, even when steeped in centuries of hatred. This symbolic moment happened in 1995 when the all-white Afrikaner rugby team, at Mandela’s instruction, for the first time sang the new black national anthem in its original Xhosa language and from there miraculously and against all odds won the World Cup. But the real story is the backdrop and personal histories of the politicians, prison mates, rugby players that led up to this historic juncture. With Nelson Mandela’s blessing, and volumes of original tapes and interviews, this is the story that John Carlin tells in PLAYING THE ENEMY.

John Carlin is an award-winning El País reporter and award-winning contributor to the Observer, Sunday Times and London Independent, he lived in South Africa as a foreign correspondent from 1989 to 1995, the crucial years in South Africa’s dramatic history, during which time he became intimate with Mandela, the political milieu and the human stories attached to it. He wrote the documentary ‘The Long Walk of Nelson Mandela for PBS’s Frontline (also aired on Channel 4 BBC and worldwide) and was nominated for an Emmy. His book HEROICA TIERRA CRUEL (Seix Barral, 2004) is a collection of his articles on South Africa and Rwanda published in Spanish. His book WHITE ANGELS (Bloomsbury UK, 2004) was a finalist for the 2004 William Hill Award.

James Goodman

ABRAHAM KILLED ISAAC

Pantheon Books (editor Dan Frank) 2009

Ms. due September 2008

The sacrifice of Isaac has been told throughout the world throughout history, a story as manifold as it is powerful. Through its many versions, Goodman shows how the creation of history is an arbitrary business. Stories are passed down within a community, affected by world events, and at the same time treated as true. This is a timely and provocative view of history and myth, in an era when political decisions are based on what is perceived to be ‘absolute truth.’

James Goodman is a professor at Rutgers University where he teaches narrative history. He is also the author of BLACKOUT (FSG, 2003) and STORIES OF SCOTTSBORO (Pantheon, 1994), a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

Roy Richard Grinker

UNSTRANGE MINDS: Remapping the World of Autism

Basic Books (editor Amanda Moon) January 2007, paperback March 2008

Sold to: Icon Books (UK), Ambo Anthos (Holland), appletreetales (Korea), Seiwa Shoten (Japan)

Winner of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) prestigious 2008 Ken Award; Library Journal ‘Best Book of 2007’ selection

Major reviews in Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, People, Slate, The Guardian, UPI, Library Journal (starred review), WAMU Diane Rehm Show, and Nature

Anthropologist Richard Grinker looks into the questions that people are now ready to ask about the international phenomenon of autism. There have been books by parents dealing with autism, and there have been books by ‘high functioning’ autistic people. Grinker’s new book goes beyond potential treatments and personal experience, and looks at why people now think that autism, which only a decade ago was considered to be a relatively rare condition, has reached epidemic proportion, and indeed is considered to be the most widespread of any childhood disease. Grinker is a highly regarded anthropologist, who also happens to be the father of an autistic daughter, as well as the son of a family steeped in traditional psychoanalytic practice. As a good anthropologist does, he uses his personal bias as the root of his study, and then evaluates his own culture, by making comparative studies in other countries that also deal with autism. UNSTRANGE MINDS will be for autism what Andrew Solomon’s NOONDAY DEMON was for depression.

Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and Human Sciences at George Washington University, and Editor in Chief of The Anthropological Quarterly. His book IN THE ARMS OF AFRICA: The Life of Colin Turnbull was a finalist for the Victor Turner Prize for Innovative Anthropological Writing awarded by the American Anthropological Association. (Rights sold to Shinjusha (Japan). He is also the author of numerous academic books and articles. He has appeared on many television and radio shows. He has taught at Harvard University, Carleton College, as well as George Washington University.

“This is a wise and compassionate book, informed by academic rigor, deep personal feeling, and sensitivity not only to the difference that is autism, but also to the variety of human experience across cultures and classes. Grinker’s research is as wide-ranging as it is open-minded, bringing together the precision of social science and the artistry of memoir...to build polemical arguments about the nature and prevalence of autism. He speaks of how people have responded to the illness, and how else we might respond, and in doing so challenges us to make a better world.”

—Andrew Solomon, author of THE NOONDAY DEMON

“Richard Grinker's descriptions of the perceptions of autism in other cultures are fascinating, uplifting, moving, and disturbing.”

—Temple Grandin, Ph.D., author of THINKING IN PICTURES

Kay Larson

WHERE THE HEART BEATS: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists

Penguin Press (editor Ann Godoff), 2010

Ms. due Fall 2009

Where the Heart Beats promises to be a groundbreaking history of intellectual currents of the postmodernist cultural movement, and an illuminating view of Cage and his influence of modern art. For several decades an art critic, columnist, and editor, Kay Larson left her position at New York Magazine in 1994 to enter Zen practice at a monastery in upstate New York. There she became captured by the work of Cage. As her grasp and fascination with him grew, so too did her understanding of the pivotal influence of the Zen teachings of Suzuki on his life in the 1950’s and how Cage absorbed and, in turn, unleashed this perspective on the coterie of abstract expressionists and critics, including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli, and Harold Rosenberg, among others. Hence the celebration of silence, non-doing and non-intention became the root of the groundbreaking acknowledgement of the art of process rather than product.

Steeped in cultural references from the Dadaists and Italian surrealists to the Beats, and historic influences of Schoenberg and Duchamp, Larson artfully takes us on the journey of Cage’s evolution, through his collaboration with Merce Cunningham, and beyond -- exploring his inspirational role in shaping the cultural era of postmodernism.

James Shapiro

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: 1599

HarperCollins (editor Hugh Van Dusen), Fall 2005, paperback June 2006

Sold to: Faber (UK); Siruela (Spain); Planeta (Brazil)

Optioned by Sam Mendes/Neal Street Productions for multi-part TV series

Winner of THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

Winner of The Theatre Book Prize

The year in question is 1599, the year that Shakespeare wrote four plays, including Hamlet, Henry V, As You Like It and Julius Caesar, and the year that he is thought by critics to have burst into his genius. Prof. Shapiro acknowledges his genius but also credits his phenomenal output that year with financial and personal reasons, as much as anything else. It was at the beginning of this year that Shakespeare made the unprecedented move of buying into the Globe Theatre, and also it was at the beginning of this year that he watched his colleague Spenser die unknown and penniless. This book is a literary, cultural and social history of Shakespeare and his work.

James Shapiro is Professor of English at Columbia University, where he teaches Shakespeare. He is the author of OBERAMMERGAU: THE TROUBLING STORY OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS PASSION PLAY (Pantheon, 2000), as well as SHAKESPEARE AND THE JEWS (Columbia, 1996) and RIVAL PLAYWRIGHTS: MARLOW, SHAKESPEARE, JONSON (Columbia, 1991). He reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review and other publications. He has been a visiting scholar at the New Globe Theatre in London, has advised on Shakespeare for the Public Theater in New York City, and this year he taught the faculty seminar in Shakespeare at the Folger Library, where he delivered the ‘birthday lecture.’

“As a yarn, this is up there with the 'Da Vinci Code' but in '1599' it’s all true!”

—Sir Ian McKellan

“Mr. Shapiro has given us by his encyclopedic scholarship and lucid narrative a hitherto unknown Shakespeare.”

—Jacques Barzun, author of FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE

“By voracious reading and a sharp eye for detail, Mr. Shapiro helps us hear the plays through a buzz of contemporary voices-religious, loyal, sceptical, iconolclastic, seditious...What strikes him most about Shakespeare is his sensitivity to ‘the epochal, to moments of profound shifts’; tipping points between Catholicism and Protestantism; between religion and secularism; between nobility and the merchant class, the chivalric knights and the bureaucrat, the hero and the sceptic. This complex and wide-ranging book was a huge critical success when it was published in Britain earlier this year. American readers, for whom the book is now just available, are also likely to enjoy Mr. Shapiro's nose for the crystallising event or quote that makes these pairs of opposing concepts almost palpable.”

—The Economist

“An inspired account of Shakespeare’s finest year...Shapiro’s superb book—the product of marathon scholarship, inspired insight, narrative flair, astute surmise, and searching intelligence—brings Shakespeare’s outer and inner worlds, and the interplay between them, alive with such thrilling immediacy.”

—Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

James Shapiro

CONTESTED WILL: The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy

Simon & Schuster (editor Bob Bender), 2010

Ms. due Fall 2009

Sold to: Faber (UK)

James Shapiro embarks on a search to answer the question he is most asked by lecture audiences far and wide – ‘Who wrote the plays?’ It’s a topic of so much curiosity, that Shapiro is now being courted by ITV/BBC documentary film makers interested in following him on his path (a la the Da Vinci Code) as he researches his new book. While academics may roll their eyes at this constant question, it’s unmistakably a matter of great and ongoing interest that includes interrogators as widespread as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin and Malcolm X. As important as the answers that Shapiro will find, is the history of the inquiry question itself, which really began in the mid-19^th century. Shapiro maintains that in England the debate has to do with class – How could a glover’s son possibly have written what Shakespeare was said to have written? While in American circles, Shapiro says it has more to do with a commitment to conspiracy theories. At the root of this mystery for Shapiro is an inability to understand why it that so many people subscribe to the belief that Shakespeare wasn’t writing primarily for the general public, something that Shapiro fastly adheres to in his own writing and reason.

James Shapiro

THE YEAR OF LEAR: SHAKESPEARE IN 1606

Simon & Schuster (editor Bob Bender), 2014

Ms. due Fall 2013

A natural book in the tradition of the award-winning and critically acclaimed A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: 1599 comes the book that revolves around the year 1606, the year Shapiro views as Shakespeare’s most fruitful year as a mature playwright. This year that takes in King Lear, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra, is also the year of the Plague and the Gunpowder Plot. It’s also a time of Shakespeare’s on reflection on his old age and his art.

Russell Shorto

DESCARTES’ BONES: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason

Doubleday (editor Bill Thomas), September 2008

ARCs available

Sold to: Mouria (Holland); Longanesi (Italy); La Campana (Catalán); Objetiva (Brazil)

From the author of the bestselling THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, this is a fresh take on Descartes’ legacy—a narrative history of modern thought as seen through the history of Descartes’ remains, body and soul—with a deep relevance for our contemporary world. Descartes’ bones have been entangled with some of the major forces that define the modern era: the rise of democracy, the evolution of the sciences, the struggle between science and religion. In tracking them, Russell Shorto follows a forgotten road through history. The exotic fact that sets Shorto’s elegant story in motion is that after Descartes’s death, and with the blessing of the Catholic Church, his body was dismembered. DESCARTES’ BONES tells the story of the man who, more than any other individual was responsible for bringing into being the force that shaped the modern world, his scientific “method”. In doing so, Descartes split modern consciousness between faith and reason. Tracing the journey of these much sought after bones, Russell Shorto brings us the tale of the genesis of our ‘modern’ and ‘post-modern’ world, and in doing so, sheds remarkable light on where we are today.

Russell Shorto writes regularly for The New York Times Magazine, as well as for GQ, The New Yorker, and many other publications. He is also the author of GOSPEL TRUTH: The New Image of Jesus Emerging from Science and History and Why it Matters (Riverhead, 1997) and SAINTS AND MADMEN: Psychiatry Opens Its Doors to Religion (Holt, 1999). Currently, he is living in Amsterdam researching his book.

Rachel Simon

BUILDING A HOME WITH MY HUSBAND: Love, Design, and the Discovery of Life’s Purpose

Dutton (editor Trena Keating)

Ms. due July 2008

Options: Bompiani (Italy); Hodder Headline (Australia); Hayakawa (Japan); Forum (Sweden); DeKern (Holland); Fembooks (Chinese Complex); Hong-Ik(Korea); Nation Books (Thailand)

Author of the major bestseller and movie-adapted RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER, Rachel Simon's BUILDING A HOME WITH MY HUSBAND tells of the year she discovered that renovating a house is mostly about the hard-won rewards of marriage and embracing the imperfect love of a flawed family. In this latest book Rachel and her husband Hal, like many couples across America, embark on a total home renovation. As walls are torn down and rebuilt, kitchen cabinets designed and installed, and a major gas explosion nearly takes all the work back to its first stage, Rachel learns about house construction—but also the construction of a marriage, and how it can be challenged, fortified, and renewed. Her inquisitive, contemplative voice will resonate with the same audience that enjoyed RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER, and beyond.

In addition to her previous memoir RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER (Houghton, 2002; paperback Plume, 2003; TV movie distributed by Hallmark, 2005), Simon has written THE WRITER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE (Story Press, 1997), a novel entitled THE MAGIC TOUCH (Viking, 1994), and a story collection—LITTLE NIGHTMARES, LITTLE DREAMS (Houghton, 1990). She is also a teacher, speaker, and vocal advocate of tolerance and the understanding of mental retardation.

Maryanne Wolf, Ph.D.

PROUST AND THE SQUID: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain

HarperCollins (editor Gail Winston), September 2007, paperback August 2008

Sold to: Icon Books (UK); Ediciones B (Spain); Levne knihy KMa (Czech Republic); Patakis Publications (Greece); Intershift (Japan); Sallim Publishing (Korea); Business Weekly Publications (Complex Chinese); Vita e Pensiero (Italy); Spektrum (Germany); HighBridge (audio)

Publisher’s Weekly ‘Best Books of the Year,’ one of 24 non-fiction picks; New Yorker feature piece in Caleb Crain’s “Twilight of the Books”; BookSense Pick ‘Notable Book’; Boston Globe Bestseller list

Preeminent researcher Maryanne Wolf explains that the brain was never wired for written language. It took 2,000 years for written language to develop and takes 2,000 days for a child’s brain to learn how to read, over which time it literally has to reshape itself in order to do so. And contrary to what one might expect, the brain is not Darwinian when it comes to reading; the number of people with dyslexia and their success rate in society does not seem to point to ‘survival of the fittest.’ With a passion for literacy, Dr. Wolf explains what goes right and what goes wrong as a child’s brain prepares for reading. This book aspires to do for written language what Stephen Pinker’s work has done for spoken language. It will be a revelation for those interested in the science of the brain, a crucial resource for all parents of children who learn to read, and makes groundbreaking statements about dyslexia and the study of language.

Maryanne Wolf is Professor of Child Development in the Eliot-Pearson Dept. of Child Development at Tufts University. She is Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research. She publishes widely in academic journals, and is particularly well-known for her research in the area of dyslexia. She has received a multitude of awards for her work, among them the American Psychiatric Association award for Best Teacher of the Year and a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study dyslexia in Germany. She lectures widely and internationally.

“What a timely, passionate meditation on the miracle of reading! Wolf's words provide the very pleasure she describes: We feel the precious excitement that is contact with another mind, and are duly illuminated, provoked, steadied, and renewed.”

—Gish Jen, author of Mona in the Promised Land and The Love Wife

“For everyone who has wondered how reading and writing happen, here is an entertaining, comprehensive, delightfully clear account of how our brain allowed us to become word magicians. A splendid achievement!”

—Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

“This superb book is profoundly rooted in its knowledge of neuroscience, elegant in its explanations, wide-ranging in its understanding of the history of human language and reading, solidly grounded in its applications to clinical situations, and gentle in its wisdom and compassion.”

—David K. Urion, M.D., Director of the Learning Disabilities Program at Children's Hospital Boston and Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

ADDITIONAL TITLES, RIGHTS CONTROLLED BY PUBLISHERS

FICTION

Lluis-Anton Baulenas

POR UN SACO DE HUESOS (‘For a Sack of Bones’)

Translated by Cheryl Morgan

Harcourt (editor Jenna Johnson), Spring 2008

English language rights in conjunction with Pontas Agency

Sold to: Planeta (Spain & Catalan); Flammarion(France); Wydawnictwo Literackie (Poland); Il Saggiatore (Italy); Bambook (Israel)

Set in 1949, just after the Spanish Civil War, the final wish of an old man on his death bed is that his son find the bones of his best friend, with whom he fought as a Republican solder, and give him a proper burial. To fulfill his father’s request, the son illicitly joins the Fascist military forces to find out where the bones are buried. What follows is a story of historical suspense, following the sordid years after the War, describing the concentration camps in the region of Burgos, the shooting of Republican soldiers who were buried in communal graves, and exposing other brutalities carried out by the Fascist government during the Civil War and afterwards.

Lluis-Anton Baulenas won the prestigious Ramon Llull Institute Prize in 2005 for POR UN SACO DE HUESOS. His earlier book, IDIOT LOVE was just released in Spain as a movie.

Santiago Roncagliolo

ABRIL ROJO (‘Red April’)

Translated by Edith Grossman

Pantheon Books (editor Erroll McDonald), 2009

Translation due December 2008

US and UK rights in conjunction with Silvia Bastos Agency

Published by Alfaguara (Spain); Sold to Seiul (France); Claasen (Germany); Grazanti (Italy); Teorema (Portugal); Signature (Holland); Dogan Kitap (Turkey); Grove (UK)

Alfaguara prize-winning novelist for ABRIL ROJO, 32-year old Roncagliolo has written a dark and sardonic thriller, set in Peru, beginning with an assassination that occurs during Easter holy week, 2000. It’s the intimate detail of quotidian life (at times hilariously absurd) that brings to life the misery endured by the Peruvian people during the Fujimori regime in the aftermath of the terrors of the Shining Path. The grippingly told story unfolds into a dark spiral, bringing the diligent assistant prosecutor, who begins as a process oriented civil servant deep into the corruption that saturated the country.

Endorsed by Maria Vargas Llosa and other eminent Latin American and Spanish writers, and hailed by the NY Times as one of Peru’s most important bright young literary voices, Roncagliolo is also the author of two other novels – PUDOR (Alfaguara, 2005) and EL PRINCIPE DE LOS CAIMANES (Bronce, 2002), as well as a story collection CRECER ES UN OFICIO TRISTE (Bronce, 2003).

Elizabeth Subercaseaux

A WEEK IN OCTOBER

Translated by Marina Harss

Other Press (editor Judith Gurewich), August 2008

Translation available

Sold to: Pendo (Germany, Spring 2008); Mouria (Holland); Suma de Letras/Alfaguara (Spain); Flammarion (France); Notte Tempo (Italy)

The beautiful wife of a successful Chilean architect is mired in a deep sadness as she nears the end of her life, dying of breast cancer. At her husband’s suggestion, she begins to write in a journal; one day he stumbles upon it and finds a thinly veiled version of her own life, her disappointment with their cold marriage, her reminiscences of childhood, and the death that seems to surround her. He is stunned: How does she know that he had a mistress all these years? Is he really such a fatuous bore? Could it be true that his sick wife had a passionate love affair with one of his colleagues, right under his nose? Is this just a fictional story—he asks himself, turning the pages—or his wife’s very personal diary as she awaits death? This extraordinary tale about erotic tension, deception, resilience, and death keeps us in suspense, between laughter and tears, until the haunting ending where the truth is a lie and a lie is the truth.

Elizabeth Subercaseaux was born in Chile. She worked as a journalist for a socialist magazine during the Franco Regime in Spain and, upon returning to Chile after Franco’s death, became deeply involved in the resistance against Pinochet. She wrote a biography of the dictator based on her interview with him, the only one he granted before he was ousted from power. Her other non-fiction includes Michelle, a biography of the first South American woman to be elected President, and the bestselling, humorous feminist manifesto, Ten Things a Chilean Woman Should Not Do. She has also written eight novels. Subercaseaux lives in Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Subercaseaux

THE MAN ON THE SIDEWALK

Translated by Marina Harss

Other Press (editor Judith Gurewich), 2009

Sold to: Pendo (Germany, Spring 2009)

In this unconventional “thriller,” an upstanding Chilean Supreme Court justice shoots his beautiful lover, Amalia. From his gay lover’s apartment, a married journalist happens to catch the odd sight of the judge squeezing under a fence. That very morning, after learning of the murder that occurred on the other side of the fence, he interviews the judge for a newspaper piece. Amalia’s oldest childhood friend, Teresa, reads the profile and recognizes the judge as her friend’s lover from the few details the secretive Amalia had shared. Told from each of their point’s of view in turns, these three characters struggle with the consequences of the truth: the judge to come to grips with himself as a murderer; the journalist with whether revealing the judge’s flight from the scene of the crime is worth exposing his own presence there—and with it the secret of his sexuality; and Teresa with searching for evidence of the truth she believes, and obtaining justice for her murdered friend. The drama of this elegantly-told story comes not from the crime itself, but the effect that the knowledge of it has on the lives of the living.