Latest in Books

EXCLUSIVE: Gato Grande, an Amazon MGM Studios company, has optioned the rights to Ana Reyes' bestselling novel The House in the Pines, for television development. The psychological thriller revolves around a woman, who armed with only hazy memories, long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden death and…

EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company have nabbed The Best Christmas Pageant ever which The Chosen creator/producer/director Dallas Jenkins will direct and adapt from Barbara Robinson’s comedic family book and play. Cameras roll next month in Canada for a 2024 holiday…

John le Carré’s famous spy character George Smiley hasn’t retired quite yet. Nick Harkaway, le Carré’s son, is writing a new Smiley novel that will publish globally in fall 2024. Smiley was known for his depiction as the archetypal British secret agent of the 20th century through novels such as The Sp…

UPDATED with U.S. debut. Spotify, which last month launched audiobooks in the UK and Australia as part of its offerings for Premium subscribers, has expanded the new business to the U.S. U.S. subscribers will now have access to 200,000 audiobook titles, the company announced Wednesday. At launch, 15…

EXCLUSIVE: The company that holds rights to the literary estates of Langston Hughes and Evelyn Waugh is heading on a West Coast charm offensive and has snapped up the estate of Somerset Maugham. International Literary Properties (ILP) launched in 2019 but has so far focused on the UK and East Coast…

Crazy Legs Features has nabbed film rights to The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince, the bestseller from Mayte Garcia, chronicling her romance with the iconic musical artist, for development as a scripted biopic. With the WGA strike in the rearview mirror, the company is now in search of a writer to pen…

Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me is big. But it’s not the biggest. First week sales reports indicate the memoir has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S. alone through its first week. The sales figures include pre-orders, print sales, e-books, and audiobooks. Print accounted for 418,000 copies…

EXCLUSIVE: Euphoria producer A24 has turned to a series of self-published, TikTok-famous novels for its latest project out of the UK, Deadline understands. The independent studio has snapped up the rights to Jessa Hastings’ Magnolia Parks universe books, which went viral on TikTok and have been…

Paramount has completed the $1.62 billion sale of book publisher Simon & Schuster to investment firm KKR, nearly a year after a richer sale to Penguin Random House ran aground over regulatory issues. The all-cash transaction, announced last August, makes Simon & Schuster a stand-alone private company…

Britney Spears apparently has more to say than the bombshells already dropped in her new memoir, The Woman in Me. On Saturday, the star promised a Vol. 2 is coming in 2024. "Humor is the cure to everything !!! Play on !!! Volume 2 will be released next year … get ready !!!" Spears wrote on…

Anthony Holden, whose chronicles of the Royal Family’s troubles caused him to be referred to once as “The Most Reviled Man in Britain,” died on Oct. 7 at his home in London. He was 76 and had a brain tumor, his son Ben said. Related Stories …

Henry Winkler, now 77, has recounted his struggles with reading his lines on his hit 1970s sitcom Happy Days because of his dyslexia. In an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond, Winkler wrote that he was “so f—ing angry” when he was diagnosed at age 31, when he was…