Jennifer Brehl at Morrow acquired North American rights, in a three-book deal, to Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (pictured l.) from Stephen Barbara at InkWell. The novel, the agency said, follows “a semi-professional gamer hired by a tech company to accompany a man on a long-distance trip. The man is ‘mostly’ dead, kept ‘alive’ by AI tech implanted in his brain, and along the way wakes into a disorienting consciousness filled with monstrous grotesqueries and no memory of who he is.” Release is set for summer 2026.

Millicent Bennett at HarperCollins purchased North American rights, at auction, to Sarai Walker’s Furious Violet from Alice Tasman at Jean V. Naggar. The “subversive feminist thriller,” per the agency, follows “ ‘Gen-X Miss Marple’ Violet ‘West’ Shelley, a crime writer and the daughter of a famous dead poet, who, on the verge of turning 50, retreats to her Colorado hometown to finish writing a book about a serial killer, only to become the target of her own true crime story.” Release is set for July 2026.

Elisabeth Dyssegaard at St. Martin’s Essentials bought, at auction, North American rights to Life Is a Sacred Text by rabbi Danya Ruttenberg from Jill Grinberg, who has an eponymous shingle. Drawn from Ruttenberg’s e-newsletter of the same name, the book, the agent said, offers “an expansive, liberatory road map for personal and cultural transformation by way of one of the world’s most ancient and charged tomes, the Five Books of Moses,” in an effort to “reclaim the Bible for everyone” and provide “meaning regarding the big questions in life as well as tools to meet our destabilizing moment.” Publication
is planned for 2027.

Diana Pho at Erewhon took world rights to New York Times reporter Sarah Maslin Nir’s debut fantasy novel, The Unicorn Hunter, from Jessica Friedman at Sterling Lord Literistic, for a fall 2026 release. The publisher called it “a fresh take on high fantasy and epic adventure, and a thrilling love story following a foundling named Thea, growing up in a world that is crumbling ever faster beneath a mysteriously blighted sun, who is set on a quest by magical creatures to restore the land and right the terrible wrong that poisoned the sun: the slaughter of the unicorns.”

Sara Rodgers at Mira netted North American rights, in an exclusive submission, to Tessa Bickers’s The Night Bus from Jemima Forrester at David Higham. The “heart-warming romance,” per the publisher, finds “two strangers, after a chance encounter on public transit involving a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, setting out on a journey to solve a literary mystery and win back a lost love that leads them somewhere entirely new together.” Publication is scheduled for summer 2026.

In Brief

• Jennifer Bergstrom at Gallery secured world rights to actor Charlie Sheen’s The Book of Sheen from Betsy Berg at Berg Entertainment Enterprises and Ian Kleinert at Paradigm, with Aimee Bell set to edit, for a September 9 release.

• Judith Curr at HarperOne picked up world rights to surgeon Elisa Port’s The Breast Advice: A New Paradigm in Breast Cancer Information from Erica Spellman Silverman at Trident. Gabriella Page-Fort will edit, for a fall 2026 release. HarperCollinsEspañol will publish in Spanish.

• Sydney Collins at Ballantine preempted world English rights to Reason magazine editor Emma Camp’s Good Boundaries: Essays on the Age of Risk-Aversion from Mackenzie Williams at Janklow & Nesbit. Pub date TBD.

• Andrea Palpant Dilley at Zondervan won world rights, at auction, to Nancy Reynolds’s debut, Things Your Teenager Wishes You Knew: What’s Really Going On in Their Head and Heart and How to Stay Connected Through It All, from Rebekah Von Lintel at Embolden, for a spring 2027 release.

• Amy Lyons at Red Wheel/Weiser landed world rights to The Cultural Roots of Tarot by Sanyu Estelle Nagenda from Rita Rosenkranz at the eponymous agency, for a fall 2026 release.