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A Freddie Mercury biography and a six-figure deal signed following a trans-Atlantic auction are among the pre London Book Fair deals agented by Mulcahy Conway Associates.
The agency said it anticipated a busy fair of rights deals with translation being handled by ILA.
Simon & Schuster senior commissioning editor Francesca Main and Scribner's Samantha Martin bought world English rights to Wendy Wallace's The Painted Bridge. The publishers paid six figures at simultaneous auctions in the UK and US. The book is co-agented by Ivan Mulcahy and Laetitia Rutherford. Italian rights were pre-empted by Mariagiulia Castagnone, editorial director of Piemme.
S&S also acquired world rights to publish titles from the archive of Country Life magazine, in a major six-figure licensing deal, negotiated by Jonathan Conway.
Non-fiction editor Hannah Black at Hodder and Stoughton paid a high five-figure sum for world rights to Freddie Mercury: the Definitive Biography by Lesley-Ann Jones. Also agented by Mulcahy, the book will be published in autumn 2012, coinciding with a new film about Mercury starring Sasha Baron Cohen as the Queen frontman.
Jonathan Conway sold world rights to two books by “Celebrity Masterchef” winner Lisa Faulkner. Francine Laurence at Simon & Schuster paid a six-figure sum for the books.
Ingrid Connell, Macmillan editorial director for non-fiction, won an auction for Guard a Silver Sixpence, a nostalgic family memoir by Felicity David.
Ebury publisher Jake Lingwood acquired Uk and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to a travel memoir Voyages of the Princess Matilda by Shane Spall, wife of actor Timothy Spall, who will co-promote. Agent Laetitia Rutherford sold the title in a two-book six-figure pre-empt.
Rutherford also sold world rights to The Frog Princess, a rags-to-riches memoir by former beauty queen Angie Beasley. Michael Joseph editor Daniel Bunyard acquired.