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Sceptre senior editor Jocasta Hamilton has bought a début novel set in 1930s Manhattan in a "significant" pre-emptive deal.
Hamilton acquired British Commonwealth rights to Rules of Civility by Amor Towles [pictured] for a six-figure sum. The deal was struck through agent Cathryn Summerhayes on behalf of Dorian Karchmar at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment.
A five-way auction has just concluded for US rights, which are going to Molly Stern, editorial director at Viking Penguin, also for six figures.
Set in New York in 1938, the novel traces "a watershed year" for narrator Katey Kontent, a young woman of "formidable intellect, bracing wit, and uncommonly good legs".
Hamilton made the offer "over a very appropriate midday Martini". She described the book as "an elegant fairytale and a classic coming-of-age story", and compared the style to a mixture of F Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Truman Capote.
She said the "evocation of the place and period" and the first-person narration from Kontent "who makes it against the odds" made the book "quite unusual".
"It was just one of those rare books where you think 'I have to have it'," Hamilton added.
The exact publication date has not been finalised—it will be co-ordinated with Viking in the US—but has been pencilled in for spring 2011.