Curtis Brown Australia RIGHTS NEWSLETTER January 2014 by Curtis Brown Australia

Curtis Brown Australia January 2014 Rights Newsletter

1 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au

ADULT FICTION HAPPY EVA AFTER Chris Harrison (Arena, Allen & Unwin) Genre: Fiction Description: As a teacher at the Fawlty Towers of London language colleges, Sebastian Pink is accustomed to confusion caused by the complexities of the English language. Married to Sarah, a career woman who has long been a total workaholic but is now desperate for a baby, Sebastian feels ambivalent about becoming a parent. Sarah has effectively been absent from his life for so long that they've grown apart and these days his social life has come to revolve around his work; walking his dog, Claude; and his obsessive daily completion of the cryptic crossword. When an alluring Czech student called Eva becomes one of Sebastian's students - and inadvertently provides him with the last solution in his morning crossword - he finds himself drawn into a sordid suburban tangle based mainly on his own misinterpretations and feverish imagination. HAPPY EVA AFTER is a seriously funny comedy about a bloke, his wife, his dog, an alluring young woman with a mysterious past, and the nuances of the English language. Rights Available: English language excl ANZ, Translation, Film/TV, Audio Agent: Fran Moore fran@curtisbrown.com.au

THE SPY [JED WALKER THRILLER #1] James Phelan (Hachette) Genre: Fiction Description: 'Jed Walker is right there in Reacher's rear-view mirror.' Lee Child, international bestselling author. A sinister group code-named Zodiac has launched devastating global attacks. Twelve targets across the world, twelve code-named missions. Operating distinct sleeper cells, they are the ultimate terrorist organisation, watching and waiting for a precise attack to activate the next group. It is a frightening and deadly efficient way to stay one step ahead. And cause the most chaos. For ex-CIA operative Jed Walker, chaos is his profession. On the outer, burned by his former agency, he is determined to clear his name. Stopping Zodiac is the only way. Desperate to catch the killers and find the mastermind, he can't afford to lose the next lead, but that means that sometimes the terrorists have to win. Ultimately, it all comes down to Walker: he's the only one who can break the chain and put the group to sleep . . . permanently. It's exactly eighty-one hours until deadline. Rights Available: English language excl ANZ, Translation, Film/TV Agent: Pippa Masson / Laura Dunn laura@curtisbrown.com.au 2 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au

BARRACUDA Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin) Genre: Fiction Description: His whole life, Danny Kelly has only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done - every thought, every dream, every action - takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment. His parents struggle to send him to the most prestigious private school with the finest swimming program; Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best and knows Danny is, too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny's win-at-all-cost ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys - he's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything they want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all. A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller THE SLAP, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families. It is about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. BARRACUDA is brutal, tender and blazingly brilliant; everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and world. Rights Available: Film/TV Agent: Fiona Inglis fiona@curtisbrown.com.au

3 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au

NON FICTION UP FROM DOWN UNDER Jeff Apter (The Five Mile Press) Genre: Non Fiction Description: UP FROM DOWN UNDER tells the remarkable untold story of how Australian music took over the world. Beginning with Peter Allen’s unlikely journey from the plains of Tenterfield to the stage of New York’s Radio City Music Hall — astride a camel, no less — and charting the rollercoaster rides of the Little River Band, Helen Reddy, the Bee Gees, Air Supply, Rick Springfield, Men at Work, Keith Urban and recent Grammy-winner Gotye, this broad panorama plots the massive influence our tiny population has had on popular culture over the past 40 years. Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Pippa Masson / Fiona Inglis fiona@curtisbrown.com.au

THROUGH THE FARM GATE Angela Goode (Allen & Unwin) Genre: Non Fiction Description: Angela Goode grew up enchanted by farm life. Having spent long sunny days yabbying and riding horses on friends’ farms, she looked set to replicate those idyllic rural times when she married Charlie, a cattle breeder. As Angela and Charlie began to build their dream farm from scratch, they never imagined the years of hardship and obstacles they would encounter along the way. From one large cattle stud, they moved to another with their city partners. It was here that Angela, who had previously enjoyed a career as a journalist, found herself caught between city life and country, her past and her present. The reality of farm life set in as they battled drought while under pressure from escalating interest rates. Both the land and the animals were being pushed hard as land prices plummeted, livestock prices crashed, crops were ruined and the bank tried to wring every last dollar. But just as life seemed near impossible, hope returned in the form of a run-down former sheep and onion farm called Field of Mars. Here Angela and Charlie combined their cattle stud and Lucerne seed crops with the protection of wildlife. Field of Mars was home to rare trees, red-tailed back cockatoos and bush stone curlews which made it the perfect place to link business with conversation and create their dream farm. THROUGH THE FARM GATE takes us through the pain, the joys, the fears, dedication and complexity of what it takes to live on the land. Angela's honesty and her enduring love affair with the farm shines through every page of this funny, heart-warming memoir of dreams and determination. Rights Available: English language excl ANZ, Translation, Film/TV, Audio Agent: Fran Moore fran@curtisbrown.com.au 4 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au

ON WARNE Gideon Haigh (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin) Genre: Non Fiction Description: 'Haigh writes as poetically as Warne bowled . . . simply irresistible. A fabulous read.' Ken Piesse, Universal's Summer Cricket Tour Guide 2012-13 Now that the cricketer who dominated airwaves and headlines for twenty years has turned full-time celebrity, his sporting conquests and controversies are receding into the past. But what was it like to watch Warne at his long peak, the man of a thousand international wickets, the incarnation of Australian audacity and cheek? Gideon Haigh lived and loved the Warne era, when the impossible was everyday, and the sensational every other day. In ON WARNE, he relives the highs, the lows, the fun and the follies. Drawing on interviews conducted with Warne over the course of a decade, and two decades of watching him play, Haigh assesses this greatest of sportsmen as cricketer, character, comrade, newsmaker and national figure – a natural in an increasingly regimented time, a simplifier in a growingly complicated world. The result is a whole new way of looking at Warne, at sport, and at Australia. Winner: 2013 Jack Pollard Literary Award (Australian Cricket Society), & the 2013 UK Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Clare Forster claref@curtisbrown.com.au

UNCERTAIN CORRIDORS Gideon Haigh (Viking, Penguin) Genre: Non Fiction Description: 'The Bradman of cricket writing' Sunday Telegraph UNCERTAIN CORRIDORS collects the best of Gideon Haigh’s despatches, narrating the collapse of cricket's traditional structures and the uneasy and troubled evolution of its new order, through the stories of Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey, Shane Warne and others. As cricket worldwide grows richer and crazier, thanks to the financial might of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the unstoppable spread of T20, this is the essential guide – sports journalism at its most informed, passionate and uncompromisingly independent. Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Clare Forster claref@curtisbrown.com.au

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CAPTURING MINFULNESS Matthew Johnstone (Pan Macmillan) Genre: Non Fiction Description: The present moment is all there is, if only we knew how to be truly alive in it. Becoming mindful is the key to living your life fully, and enjoying the beauty and extraordinary moments that can be found in our everyday. One path to mindfulness is by becoming photopresent. In his beautiful new book, wellness author Matthew Johnstone shares how the simple art of taking a photograph can be taken one step further to retrain your attention to be in the moment. A natural extension of his BLACK DOG series and QUIET THE MIND, CAPTURING MINDFULNESS is, like meditation, an important practice for a contented life. Rights Available: English language (North America only), Translation, Film/TV, Audio Agent: Pippa Masson / Grace Heifetz grace@curtisbrown.com.au

GREEN PICKLED PEACHES A COLLECTION OF RECIPES AND MEMORIES Chui Lee Luk (Hardie Grant) Genre: Cookbook Description: From comforting Sunday noodles to sweet dumplings and spicy crab, the recipes Chui Lee Luk creates - both at home and in her highend restaurant Claude's - hold some essence of her earliest, and most revered, food memories. In GREEN PICKLED PEACHES Chui recollects memorable and influential eating experiences from her childhood in Sabah, Malaysia - and how the sense memory has inspired the food she recreates today. Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Pippa Masson / Grace Heifetz grace@curtisbrown.com.au

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WILL MOZART MAKE MY BABY SMART? Andrew Whitehouse (UWA Publishing, The University of Western Australia) Genre: Non Fiction Description: Do mobile phones and bicycles kill sperm? Do pregnant women really suffer from baby brain? Do violent video games cause aggression? Does sugar make kids hyper? Professor Andrew Whitehouse of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research poses those questions that make you gasp, snigger and ponder; the questions that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve thrown around over a coffee with friends, without ever reaching a conclusion. In a wonderful combination of stories from modern parenting, tales from history, and scientific research, Andrew Whitehouse busts open thirteen of the best myths around, and provides reassurance and light relief from the challenges of parenthood. Rights Available: English language excl ANZ, Translation excl Greek language, Film/TV, Audio Agent: Tara Wynne tara@curtisbrown.com.au

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CHILDREN’S CODE BREAKER [BILLIE B MYSTERIES #2] Sally Rippin (Hardie Grant Egmont) Genre: Children’s fiction Description: One day Billie and Jack find a note hidden under a rock at school. It seems to be written in code! It's time the two friends put their code-breaking skills to the test. Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Pippa Masson / Grace Heifetz grace@curtisbrown.com.au

SPOOKED! [TRULY TAN #3] Jen Storer, illustrated by Claire Robertson (ABC Books, HarperCollins Publishers) Genre: Children’s fiction Description: Tan and the Chosen Few have another mystery on their hands... The 'stonies' (stone animal statues) around Peppercorn Valley have been mysteriously disappearing. But who would steal them? What could the thief want with a stone emu or flamingo? This mystery is truly baffling! It's a good thing Tan has the mind of a Great Detective... A brilliant chapter series for fans of Alice-Miranda, Judy Moody and The Famous Five. Rights Available: Film/TV, Audio Agent: Clare Forster clare@curtisbrown.com.au

8 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au