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Headline has won out in a seven-way auction for a US début novel reportedly sold for more than $1m in the States, with the UK publisher understood to have to have paid more than £100,000.
Associate publisher Claire Baldwin bought British Commonwealth rights for The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani from Eugenie Furniss, head of books at William Morris Endeavor, with the publication date to be confirmed.
Publishers Weekly reportedthat Riverhead, a division of Penguin Group US, paid in the "seven-figure range" at auction to acquire the book in the US, with rights also sold to Rizzoli in Italy, Modan in Israel, Denoel in France, Luitingh Sijthoff in Holland, and Intrinseca in Brazil.
The book is described as set during the 1930s Depression among the high society of America's south, centring on a girl who is sent away from her family to an equestrian boarding school in the Blue Ridge mountains. There she enters into, and learns to negotiate, a world full of money and beauty. Meanwhile, she is also struggling to come to terms with her memories of a terrible family tragedy, and the part she played in it.
Baldwin called it a "wonderful" novel which was generating a lot of excitement in-house, and said: "The moment I started reading the gorgeously written Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls I fell in love with it. The voice is fresh and captivating, with the suspense of family secrets driving the narrative, and the characterisation is perceptive and beautifully observed. I am absolutely thrilled to be publishing this wonderfully gifted author on our list."
Furniss added: "We are delighted to have sold Anton's stunning début novel to Headline . . . The whole team there are clearly passionate about the book and are committed to making it a major hit."