Bestselling author David Baldacci  has signed a deal with Scholastic for a middle grade fantasy novel.

The children’s publisher will release The Finisher next March, the story of a fourteen-year-old girl named Vega Jane.

Scholastic Trade president Ellie Berger negotiated the deal with Aaron Priest, of the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. Executive editor Rachel Griffiths will edit the manuscript.

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David Menasche, a teacher with stage 4 brain cancer, raised more than $26,000 on gofundme (a crowdfunding site) for a road trip to re-connect with 75 former students.

Menasche documented the 101-day cross-country journey in a memoir entitled The Priority List: A Teacher’s Final Quest to Discover Life’s Greatest Lessons. In an interview with the Broward/Palm Beach New Times, he revealed that “the purpose of the trip was to regain what brain cancer took from me. Basically, my classroom.”

Menasche met and signed up with a literary agent after one of his students wrote a Miami Herald piece about his traveling venture. Brandi Bowles of Foundry Literary + Media negotiated the deal. Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will release the book on January 14, 2014.

The author of The Secret will release Hero on November 19th. Simon & Schuster’s Atria Publishing Group will publish the new book by bestselling author Rhonda Byrne.

Publisher Judith Curr described the new title: “this book will inspire and show us all how to search for, find, and live our dreams.” There are currently more than 25 million copies of The Secret in print. Here’s more about the new book, from the release:

Hero brings together the wisdom and insight of twelve of the most successful people living in the world today. By following their seemingly impossible journeys to success, Hero reveals that each of us was born with everything we need to live our greatest dream – and that by doing so we will fulfill our mission and literally change the world.

Jason Priestley, the actor who played Brandon Walsh on the popular Beverly Hills 90210 TV series, has inked a memoir deal with HarperOne.

In this book, Priestley plans to reveal details about his Hollywood journey, his race car crash in 2002, and “never-before-revealed” details about working on the 90210 set.

Priestley currently stars in Call Me Fitz on DirecTV’s channel 101. Executive editor Nancy Hancock negotiated the deal and the book will come out in spring 2014.

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The blogger behind Thug Kitchen has landed a cookbook deal.

The blog site was founded in 2012, publishing healthy recipes with profanity-laced descriptions. The writer makes a mission out of “verbally abusing everyone into a healthier diet.”

According to the announcement post, Rodale will publish the book for the United States and House of Anansi will handle the Canadian edition. Publication is set for fall 2014.

Would you take advice from elementary school students?

Simon & Schuster will publish Isabelle & Isabella’s Little Book of Rules in October, written by Isabelle Busath (age 10) and Isabella Thordsen (age 8). This book contains Busath and Thordsen’s rules of life such as “recycle,” ”don’t bite the dentist,” and “protect this rule book.”

The girls originally caught media attention when their lost handwritten manual was returned to them by good samaritan Raymond Flores.

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Swedish author Jonas Jonasson has inked a book deal with HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint for his second novel, The Illiterate Who Could Count. Jonasson previously wrote the bestseller, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared.

Publication is set for fall 2014. Carina Barndt at Barndt New Agency negotiated the deal with Ecco publisher Daniel Halpern. Here’s more about the book:

Jonasson now returns with an ironic look at fundamentalism in all its guises. The new novel is a trip that takes us from the shelters of Soweto to a potato van in Sweden with a cast of incredibly strange people. The 100 Year Old Man was an international success that sold more than 1 million copies in the UK, Sweden and France, more than 2 million in Germany, and almost six million copies, in total, worldwide. THE ILLITERATE WHO COULD COUNT will be published by Ecco, in the Fall of 2014, as well as by HarperCollins Canada and 4th Estate in the UK.

Elle Magazine ran a long profile of Special Topics in Calamity Physics author Marisha Pessl this month.

Pessl has a new book called Night Film coming out on August 20th, and the profile explored how she landed an agent for her debut novel. She would end up with a $615,000 advance for Special Topics in Calamity Physics, according to the article. Check it out:

In 2004, Pessl cold-e-mailed 15 literary agents about her novel, including Susan Golomb, who represents Jonathan Franzen. Golomb was charmed by Pessl’s note—in particular, by her blurbworthy description of her own work: “a funny, encyclopedic and wildly ambitious literary tale about love and loss, youth and yearning, treachery and terror” … In 2008, Pessl left Golomb for superagent Binky Urban, whose agency, ICM, has a strong Hollywood division. (Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy are among Urban’s clients.) Then she changed publishers, moving to Random House. “I happened to meet Binky Urban socially, and it just seemed like a very nice fit, the two of us,” Pessl said of the agent who reportedly secured her a $1 million deal for Night Film and a $1.5 million deal for a yet-to-be-written third novel.

18-year-old ballet dancer Michaela DePrince has signed a book deal to write her memoir.

DePrince appeared in the 2011 documentary, First Position. Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers will publish the book in fall 2014.

Executive editor Erin Clarke negotiated the deal with Full Circle Literary agent Adriana Dominguez. DePrince’s adoptive mother, Elaine, will co-write the book.

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Little, Brown will republish seven books written by the great Paris Review editor and journalist George Plimpton.

The books scheduled for release in 2015 include: Paper Lion, Out of My League, The Bogey Man, Mad Ducks and Bears, Shadow Box, Open Net and One for the Record. Here’s more from the release:

[the books] will include new material, including early drafts with handwritten annotations. All seven books will also be published for the first time in ebook format, enhanced with audio and video clips; audio editions are also forthcoming from Hachette Audio. Plimpton is credited with some of the very best sports writing in history, and his work has been praised the world over … Ten years after his death, George Plimpton has never been more popular—he redefined modern journalism and his enduring legacy lives on in the many writers, editors, and journalists at work today.

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