This Week's Book Deals Include One on Bombay!

This week’s publishersmarketplace weekly has a few interesting book deals to report. I go through these deals every week, a bit grumpily, since I have submitted to some of these literary agencies, and fondly hope they would take a second look at my re-written novel. They are worth a look, if only for the aspiration value, I guess:

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Debutante John Pipkin's novel Woodsburner chronicles the lives of a lovesick Norwegian immigrant farm hand, a struggling bookseller, a fire and brimstone preacher, and a pencil maker named Henry David Thoreau as their stories intersect over a fire Thoreau accidentally set which burned 800 acres near Walden Pond, to Janet Silver at Houghton Mifflin, in a pre-empt, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).

MacArthur fellow, National Magazine Award and Pulitzer-winner, and New Yorker writer Katherine Boo's book On the Western Express (obviously, the Western Express Highway in Bombay’s west side), chronicling the lives of families in a Bombay slum as they struggle to find a niche in a fast-moving global economy, to Kate Medina at Random House, in a two-book deal, by Amanda Urban at ICM (world).

Nafisa Haji's The Writing on My Forehead, the story of a free-spirited and rebellious Muslim-American of Indo-Pakistani descent who finds herself caught in a struggle between her family's traditions and her desire for independence, to Laurie Chittenden at William Morrow, by BJ Robbins at BJ Robbins Literary Agency (World).

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