Maile Meloy –the literary novelist who wrote Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter — has just sold her first children’s book to G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. Publication is set for fall 2011.

ICM agent Amanda Urban negotiated the deal with G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers publisher Jennifer Besser. Ellen Goldsmith-Vein from The Gotham Group will handle film rights for the upcoming book. Meloy was named one of Granta‘s Best Young Novelists, and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta.

Here’s more about the book: “Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and aimed at readers ages 10-14, The Apothecary tells the story of a young girl whose life magically transforms when she moves to London and meets a mysterious apothecary in a race to save the world from nuclear war.”