A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe
By Mark Dawidziak
(St. Martin’s Press)

“A poignant and realistic picture of Poe through the fascinating black prism of his mysterious death”.
--J.W. Ocker, Edgar Award-Winning Author of Poe-Land

It is a moment shrouded in horror. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a lingering, painful, haunting manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own incredibly influential terror tales.

It is a moment surrounded by mystery. It is, in fact, a double-barreled mystery. What was the cause of Poe’s death, and what happened to him during the missing days before he was found, delirious and “in great distress,” on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own? Why did he look so disheveled, his hair unkempt, his face unwashed... READ MORE>

Big news keeps coming from First Second Books.

LET THERE BE DARK 
by Saul Williams and Paul Davey, also known as Mattahan.

Saul Williams is a supernova: a rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, actor and filmmaker, an American artist and a truly global voice like no other, a chameleon of media, genres, and creative movements. Now add the brilliant, dazzling artist Paul Davey and treble the wonder of this project LET THERE BE DARK — a groundbreaking offering at the crossroad of poetry, painting, comics and memoir the likes of which you've never seen.

Roman Polanski: Behind the Scenes of
His Classic Early Films.
By Jordan R. Young
Applause (Forthcoming December 2022)

Between his 1962 debut A Knife in the Water and the 1968 blockbuster Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski directed three movies—Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, and The Fearless Vampire Killers—that remain a crucial but too often overlooked piece of his
filmography. In this remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the director’s early output, Jordan Young gives us a revealing look at Polanski at work in the years before his rise to global infamy. Full of eye-opening, freshly unearthed details, we see Polanski laboring on movies under some of the worst possible conditions, contending with financing nightmares (both Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac were underwritten by soft-core porn peddlers), poisonous enmities amongst cast and crew, and collaborators who, in the director’s words, “did their best to make me feel like a monster.” READ MORE>

Rio L.A.: Tales from the Los Angeles River
By Patt Morrison
(Published by Angel City Press)
Revised Edition of the Los Angeles Times Best Seller
With Photographs by Mark Lamonica
With a New Foreword by Julia Meltzer

The bestselling book about the Los Angeles River, originally published in 2001, is updated with an Afterword that includes the Los Angeles County 2021 Master Plan to improve the quality of life and ecosystem health in the region--all centered at the original source, the Los Angeles River.

RIO-LA: Tales from the Los Angeles River 20th Anniversary Edition traces the history and lore of the Los Angeles River. When the book was first published in 2001, few people even regarded the river, but because of Morrison’s devotion to the topic, LA River has been rediscovered. The river has become the center of the county’s 2021 Master Plan to reestablish it as the heart of the city, its lifeline to all things positive: an antidote to homelessness; a source of increased affordable housing; new jobs, good health; serenity. Morrison traces this rediscovery in her extensive new Afterword, following pages of river history, dating back to before the founding of the pueblo called Los Angeles. Together Morrison and Lamonica explore the river and the culture that evolves around this virtual oasis in a land of super highways and celluloid dreams.
READ MORE>

Dirty Dealing: Grosso v. Miramax—Waging War with Harvey Weinstein, and the Screenplay that Changed Hollywood  
By Jeffrey Allan Grosso
(Published by Permuted Press/Simon & Schuster, Forthcoming June 2022)

A rollicking recounting of the landmark case a writer brought against Miramax, whom he accused of stealing his screenplay and turning it into the cult classic Rounders.

When a young screenwriter goes online to check out the promotional website for a new poker movie called Rounders, he’s shocked to discover how similar it is to a screenplay he wrote a few years earlier and submitted to a number of studios. When he later sees the Miramax-produced film in theaters, he is astonished by the number of overlapping elements—the protagonist playing Texas Hold ’em to pay his way through college while deceiving the girlfriend who believes he’s quit, the loss of everything he has in a single hand of high-stakes Hold ’em, a character named “Worm,” and many other commonalities that form the foundation of what will become his lawsuit against Miramax. He leaves the theater that day feeling that not only has the studio stolen his script, but his life, which had encompassed years of professional poker playing that informed the screenplay he hoped would open the door to a writing career in Hollywood. READ MORE>

Dear Goldie Hawn, Dear Leonard Cohen,
By Claudia Sternbach
(Published by Unruly Voices [an Imprint of Paper Angel Press], December 2021)

After suffering a devastating loss, Claudia writes letters to family and friends, the famous and the infamous, as a means to explore the events in her own life and find meaning in human connections.

In this third memoir by Claudia Sternbach, she once again knits together fragments — this time using letters written to the likes of Goldie Hawn, Leonard Cohen, Vermeer, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and more — to shape a story of a woman attempting to make sense of the life she is living and those who have been a part of it — knowingly or not. READ MORE>

A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of One of California’s Most Notorious Killers
A True Crime Memoir
(forthcoming from Pegasus Books/Simon & Schuster)
By Deborah Holt Larkin

1950s. The California Riviera.  A crime so utterly bizarre, if it were not so tragic, it would be a comedy. Call it a Greek Tragedy: Young nurse meets Oedipus and Medea in Santa Barbara.

A Lovely Girl is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and entirely gripping story of a notorious 1958 murder case. Told with bursts of dark humor, this book combines a true crime page turner with alternating chapters of a poignant, coming-of-age memoir told in the authentically narrated ten-year old voice of author Deborah Holt Larkin. We soon find out that young Debby and her happy but slightly eccentric family are intimately embroiled in the unfolding murder investigation. READ MORE>

Leonard, Marianne, and Me: Magical Summers on Hydra Hardcover – May 30, 2021
By Judy Scott (Author)

In 1973, Judy Scott was intent on traveling to Istanbul, but serendipitously she stumbled onto the incomparable Greek island of Hydra and the people who would continue, over many subsequent visits, to enhance and influence her life ever after.

This memoir, based on notebooks and journals Scott kept during various times and visits to her favorite place on earth, recounts in very intimate detail her interactions and developing relationships with singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and his beautiful muse and “love of his life” Marianne Ihlen. 
READ MORE>

Saolomea, Saolomea!
By Anisia Uzeyman
Not a Cult Publishers (Forthcoming 2021)

Rwandan-American Filmmaker Anisia Uzeyman’s screenplay
as poetry as prose.

A mentally challenged mother and her young son navigate their way through tumultuous waters to survive the ordained gods of a city of angels.

Envisioned as a social thriller, narrated by the protagonists of a ragtag world, where The Spirits are real humans and humans are spirits fighting to survive.

SAOLOMEA, SAOLOMEA is the story of who these ‘ Spirits’ are that one would call ‘monsters’, ‘creatures’ etc... but really are more like Gods; and how they handle a single mother working to outlive the reality of worlds in deadly competition.
READ MORE>

2020:  Our client David Thibodeau’s book Waco: A Survivor’s Story (Hachette Books) just came out on Netflix.  It stars Taylor Kitsch and John Leguizamo. Have a Look.

Waco: A Survivor’s Story
By David Thibodeau and Leon Whiteson with Aviva Layton
(Published by Hachette Books)
A Book and Six-Part Television Series on Paramount Network

25 YEARS LATER, THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED SURVIVAL STORY OF WACO, BY DAVID THIBODEAU, ONE OF ONLY FOUR UNPROSECUTED SURVIVORS, COMES TO TELEVISION IN A HOTLY ANTICIPATED MINISERIES STARRING MICHAEL SHANNON AND TAYLOR KITSCH.

25 years later, the re-issued book Waco, A Survivor’s Story and a six-part miniseries can be seen on Paramount Network (now in 2018.)  Today, it grips the nation and its audience just as choppy cable-news coverage of a tense government standoff did in 1993. Only nine people survived the massive conflagration that trapped and killed 74 others—including 21 children—in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993, and 24-year-old David Thibodeau was one of them. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, Thibodeau is releasing his critically acclaimed memoir in ebook, paperback, and audio-book form for the first time. Now with a haunting new epilogue, WACO: A SURVIVOR’S STORY (Hachette Books; published on January 2, 2018) is the original and most definitive inside account of what happened on that fateful day. READ MORE>>

Check Out The Agency’s client Mandy Harvey on America’s Got Talent:

Mandy Harvey appeared week of June 6, 2017 on Season 12 of America’s Got Talent. She was advanced to the final by the “Golden Buzzer.” Mandy is an extraordinary jazz singer. She lost her hearing when she was 19. Her book is going to be published Fall 2017. (Howard Books/Simon & Schuster.) See the following notes. Very inspirational. Her book is called Sensing the Rhythm: Finding my Voice in a World Without Sound.

Links to Mandy Harvey’s appearance on America’s Got Talent:
New York Times | MSN.com

RECENT NEWS

Sensing the Rythm
Mandy Harvey with Mark Atteberry
(Howard Books/Simon & Schuster)

A memoir with a message, Sensing the Rhythm is a collection of A collection of personal and powerful life lessons gifted musician-jazz singer and motivational speaker Mandy Harvey learned during her unlikely journey from normalcy into profound deafness and ultimately to a career as one of the world’s most astonishing musical artists - who has found new ways to ”hear” and sing; Mandy has recorded four albums, made numerous national television appearances, and performed at some of the country’s most revered venues. Most recently Mandy placed fourth on America’s Got Talent. See Mandy’s interviews and tour schedule at this link. https://edkeane.com/category/news/mandy-harvey/

READ MORE>>

Working Actor: Breaking in, Making a Living (And Making a Life) in the Fabulous Trenches of Show Business! 
By David Dean Bottrell
(Forthcoming from Ten Speed Press/PenguinRandomHouse)
On-sale date: 2/19/19

David Dean Bottrell was blessed to have a remarkable and much-talked about recurring role on that iconic series, Boston Legal.  He played “Lincoln Meyer,” the psychotic, murderous Peeping Tom and kidnapper of Candice Bergen. It was a phenomenal role.  Even now, people still stop him in the street to ask him about the experience.  READ MORE>>

Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination
A Biography by Nicholas Parisi
(Forthcoming from The University Press of Mississippi)

Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, arguably is the most influential writer in television history. As narrator and host of this timeless series, Serling became one of the twentieth century’s most iconic figures. Nicholas Parisi’s Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination, interweaves Serling’s fascinating biography with rich discussions of his equally fascinating fiction. We follow Serling’s life story from the trenches of World War II to his personal wars with the major television networks. Rod Serling was a man of vision, integrity, and above all a man of passion. This is his story. (Includes a multitude of photos with ephemera from the author’s collection and research.) With a Foreword by Serling’s daughter, Anne Serling. and photos and ephemera from the author’s collection and research. READ MORE>>

Theodore Roosevelt for Nature Lovers: Adventures with
America’s Great Outdoorsman
By Mark Dawidziak
(Forthcoming from Lyons Press, 2018)

Television critic, journalist and author of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone and Mark Twain for Cat Lovers Mark Dawidziak's Theodore Roosevelt for Nature Lovers: Adventures with America’s Great Outdoorsman is a handsomely designed and richly illustrated volume that gathers our incredibly robust 26th president's thoughts on the natural sciences, the American frontier, conservation, the animal kingdom, forestry, the National Parks, exploration, and many other topics relating to the outdoors and the study of nature. Fascinated with Teddy Roosevelt since childhood, Dawidziak also included insights from such experts as filmmaker Ken Burns and historian Douglas Brinkley. The book's many anecdotes include tales about the menagerie of White House pets and, of course, the story of the Teddy Bear to Holly Rubino at Lyons Press by Charlotte Gusay at The Charlotte Gusay Literary Agency.

Along Comes The Association:
How a Group of Beloved 1960s Musicians Invented Folk-Rock and Made Rock and Roll History… in Three-Piece Suits
(Forthcoming from Rare Bird Books)
By Russ Giguere & Ashley Wren Collins

Along Comes The Association tells the story of how Russ Giguere and his fellow band members came together to create unparalleled music, unique to the time and place, and never again to be repeated. And yes, there are drugs and there are women (it was the sixties, after all), such as the lovely Linda Ronstadt and Helen Mirren. In reading Along Comes The Association, you are transported back in time to post-1963 America. Go on, try to resist the urge to roll one while floating on the musical cloud of melodic rock that Russ Giguere and his band members popularized and we still cherish to this day… READ MORE>>

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone (Illustrated with stills from the original series)
By Mark Dawidziak
St. Martin’s Press, 2016

Can you live your life by what The Twilight Zone has to teach you? Yes, and the proof is in this lighthearted collection of life lessons, ground rules, inspirational thoughts, and stirring reminders of what we were taught as children and young adults. Written by veteran TV critic, lifelong Twilight Zone fan, author, stage director, Mark Twain scholar and sometimes-horror writer Mark Dawidziak, this breezy volume is a fun celebration of the show’s timeliness, but also, on another level, a kind of fifth-dimension self-help/inspirational book, with each lesson supported by the morality tales told by Rod Serling and his writers.

The notion that “it’s never too late to reinvent yourself” soars through “The Last Flight,’’ in which a World War I flier who goes forward in time and gets the chance to trade cowardice for heroism. A visit from an angel blares out the wisdom of “follow your passion” in “A Passage for Trumpet.” The meaning of “divided we fall” is driven home with dramatic results when neighbors suspect neighbors of being invading aliens in “The Monsters Are on Maple Street.” The old maxim about More>>

US(a.)
A New Book of Poetry by Saul Williams
September 2015 from Gallery Books / MTV Books/ Simon & Schuster

In his greatly anticipated new full-length book of poetry, the first since The Dead Emcee Scrolls in 2006, “the poet laureate of hip-hop” (CNN) Saul Williams presents his ideas, observations, realizations, dreams, and questions about the state of modern America. After living abroad for four years, Saul Williams returned to America and found his head twirling (and twerking) with thoughts on everything from race, class, and gender, to finance, freedom, and guns, to cooking shows, dog shows, superheroes, not-so-super politicians, and everything else that makes up our country. US(a.)is a collection of poems that embodies the spirit of a culture that questions sentiments and realities, embracing a cross-section of pop culture, hip-hop, and the greater world politic of the moment. It’s a punk rock oracular testament that speaks to the rebellious teen as well as the sheltered More>>

Dancing in the Baron's Shadow
Fabienne Josaphat
Unnamed Press: February 2016

Haiti, 1965. Nicolas, a bourgeois socialist is sent to the notorious Fort Dimanche prison by dictator Papa Doc's militia, and his brother Raymond must try to save him.
Haiti, 1965. Francois Duvalier, often called Papa Doc or Baron Samedi, is a brutal dictator using extreme violence to control the impoverished island nation. Unrelenting curfews are imposed on the people of Port-au-Prince and the ever-present bogeymen, Tonton Macoutes militia, have scared away even the bravest of tourists. 

For taxi driver Raymond L'Eveillé, life under these conditions is becoming increasingly untenable. Unable to properly feed his wife and young children, or pay the rent on time, Raymond's family is on the brink of destitution. By contrast More>>

Charlotte Gusay’s love of the literary has deep roots. She founded and ran for many years the prestigious book shop George Sand, Books on Melrose in West Hollywood. In 1988 (two years after a new little girl came into her life), she closed the book shop and started her literary agency. Much to her delight...
Read More >>

Exciting Announcements:
Congratulate our client Frank Wilderson who is on the long list for the National Book Award. High fives please. Check it out.

Our client David Thibodeau’s book Waco: A Survivor’s Story (Hachette Books) just came out on Netflix. It stars Taylor Kitsch and John Leguizamo. Have a Look.

Why Most Amazon Reader Reviews are Worthless
I’ve been an agent for 40 years. Publishers may not like what I’m about to say, but my observation is that most Amazon and Barnes & Noble reader reviews are either fraudulent or, at best, useless in assessing the true merit of any given title. Debut authors are largely being shut out of a fair shake, and without them, publishing will follow the network-media misstep of avoiding/shunning the fresh voices... Read More>>