Publishing Deals from Bologna

Publishers Lunch today has a selection of the many deals struck at the Bologna Book Fair:

Gabrielle Zevin's first three books in the BIRTHRIGHT SERIES, set in a dystopian future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband while water and paper are carefully rationed, the series relates the ascension and ultimate downfall of a 16-year-old girl, the heir apparent to an important and dangerous New York City crime family, to Farrar, Straus Children's.

Twenty-five-year old debut author Lauren DeStefano's THE LAST CHEMICAL GARDEN, the first in a trilogy in a dystopian world, the result of a failed effort to create a perfect race, which has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years, following a sixteen-year-old girl sold as a polygamous bride -- yet her husband is hopelessly in love with her and opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought possible, to Simon & Schuster Children's, in a pre-empt, for publication beginning in April 2011. Rights to the trilogy to Harper UK, at auction, in a six-figure deal.


Lila Fine's VIXEN, the first novel in The Flappers series, to Delacorte, in a three-book deal.

Robin Wasserman's THE BOOK OF BLOOD AND SHADOW, about a girl who, upon discovering her best friend murdered and her boyfriend the apparent killer, is caught up in a dangerous world of competing secret societies, all searching for the Luminus Dei, an ancient device that will supposedly allow direct communication with God, to Knopf Children's, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2011.

Ilsa Bick's ASHES, which begins when an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky, killing the vast majority of the world population and zapping every electronic device. Everyone still alive has changed considerably -- some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh), to Egmont.

Jeff Hirsch's debut, THE LONG WALK HOME, a post-apocalyptic story, set after "The Collapse," when America was destroyed by a war with China and a pandemic flu, about what happens when a boy who has spent his whole life only surviving finds a place where he can truly live, to Scholastic, at auction, in a two-book deal.