DIE HYAZINTHENSTIMME de Daria Wilke

A young castrat flees the pseudo-Baroque world of a secret boarding school for boys to find his sister. When he comes to Vienna, observed secretly by the influential school director, he has to fight for his freedom, and for his voice.

DIE HYAZINTHENSTIMME
(A Hyacinth Voice)
by Daria Wilke
Residenz Verlag, August 2019

“The tsar”, the owner of a secret boarding school, “House Settecento”, has established a certain microcosmos which he thinks necessary to reenact the Italian Baroque opera as exactly as possible: There’s a living room for the boys, an old library, an additional house for those who cannot sing anymore, and a hospital where a surgeon operates in secrecy. The pupils are being taught to become stars – they will appear in secret stagings.

Matteo has been brought there many years ago, together with his twin sister, Nina. Matteo has the most beautiful voice of all. He is the “new Farinelli” and prepares himself for his first appearances on stage. Nina learns to help out in the hospital. One day, an agent brings Timo into the castle, a little boy from a poor family with a beautiful voice. Like all other boys, Timo is supposed to be castrated. But the surgeon has to travel, and Nina is being asked to do the operation. Nina, however, only feigns the operation. When this comes out, she flees from the school with Timo, and Matteo loses his voice when she is gone.

The tsar tries everything to convince Matteo to follow her to Vienna. In Vienna, Matteo’s voice comes back to him, but he finds it very difficult to live in a freedom he has hardly ever experienced and feels lost. At the same time, he feels that every step he takes is being observed by the tsar. One day, a former student of “House Settecento” who had the courage to leave the school finds him on the road and helps him to a role at the theatre. During the premiere, Matteo sees the tsar sitting in the audience, as well as Nina and Timo…

Daria Wilke was born in Moscow in 1976 into a family of actors and spent her childhood in the marionette theatre where her parents worked. After completing her studies in Psychology, Education, and History, she worked as a journalist for various daily newspapers in Russia. In 2000, she moved to Vienna where she still lives and works at the Institute of Slavonic Studies. She writes books for adults, children and young adults in both Russian and German.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I UGLY CRY de Joya Goffney

A heartfelt, tortured, contemporary YA high-school romance with epistolary elements about an overly enthusiastic list maker who is blackmailed into completing a to-do list of all her worst fears. Perfect for fans of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

EXCUSE ME WHILE I UGLY CRY
by Joya Goffney
On submission in the US

Quinn Jackson keeps track of everything—from the days she’s ugly cried, to “The Most Horrifying Moments of My Humanity”, to all the boys she’d like to kiss. All her lists are organized in a sectional red notebook that unfortunately looks a lot like Carter Bennett’s.

When Carter comes over after school to work on their history project, Quinn, distracted by his good looks and charm, doesn’t notice when their notebooks are switched. Not only does Carter read her entire (mortifying!) journal of lists, he charges her hundreds of dollars to get her journal back… and further, comes up with a to-do list of his own, with separate fees attached to each challenge. If Quinn doesn’t complete every item by the end of the month, he’ll post pictures of her most personal lists to the whole school. Through facing Carter’s enraging to-do list, Quinn unexpectedly finds the courage to move from passivity to action—to change the way she’s living her life, and somehow, to fall in love along the way.

CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS de Paul Buchanan

A hat-trick of acquisitions for Legend Press

CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS
by Paul Buchanan
Legend Press, publication April 1st 2020

City of Fallen Angels, a stylish commercial thriller, will be the first in the PI John Keegan series and will be published by Legend Press on 1st April 2020. Book Two, Valley of Shadows, will follow in 2021.

Summer, 1962. A scorching heat wave is suffocating L.A. PI John Keegan is offered a small fortune to find a beautiful woman from a set of photographs. He refuses; the job seems suspicious. But the next day the same woman, Eve, turns up, unbidden, on his doorstep. Eve fears for her safety. She is being watched. Before Keegan knows it, someone has been killed with Keegan’s own gun, and he gets sucked into a world of suspicion and betrayal where he’s never quite sure where the truth lies. Before long he’s the prime suspect in a murder he didn’t commit, and all the evidence seems to point in his direction. It’s almost like someone planned it that way.

Paul Buchanan earned a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California and an MFA in fiction writing from Chapman University. He teaches and writes in the Los Angeles area.

MATT DAMON ET BEN AFFLECK JOUERONT DANS L’ADAPTATION DU DERNIER DUEL d’Eric Jager

Matt Damon et Ben Affleck se retrouvent de nouveau sur l’écriture d’un scénario Le Dernier Duel qui sera adapté sur grand écran par Ridley Scott https://www.actualitte.com/article/culture-arts-lettres/matt-damon-et-ben-affleck-joueront-dans-l-adaptation-du-dernier-duel-d-eric-jager/96042.

LE DERNIER DUEL de Eric Jager a été publié en 2010 aux Editions Flammarion: https://editions.flammarion.com/Catalogue/libres-champs/le-dernier-duel

FREE, MELANIA de Kate Bennett

The first behind-the-scenes look at the life of the most enigmatic First Lady in United States History

FREE, MELANIA: The Unauthorized Biography
by Kate Bennett
Flatiron, December 2019

Melania Trump is an extremely fascinating subject.  In many ways, she is the most modern and groundbreaking First Lady in recent history. A former model whose beauty in person leaves people breathless, a woman whose upbringing in a communist country spurred a relentless drive for stability, both for herself and for her family. A reluctant pillar in a controversial presidential administration who speaks five languages and runs the East Wing like none of her predecessors ever could—underestimate her at your own peril (as a former government official did and was summarily fired). But who is she really?
In Free, Melania we get an insider look at Melania Trump, from her childhood in Slovenia to her days in the White House, and everything in between. We see the Trump family dynamics that Melania has had to navigate, including her strained relationship with Ivanka. We get a rare glimpse into what goes into her famous and sometimes infamous clothing choices (including perhaps the real message behind Melania’s controversial jacket, “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”, which she wore while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border), and how a publicly quiet Melania actually speaks very loudly—if you just know where, and how, to listen. And we get a behind-the-scenes look at her often eyebrow-raising relationship with Donald Trump, from their beginnings to becoming the most unusual First Family in modern history.
The author, Kate Bennett is the perfect person to write this book.  Currently a reporter for CNN, she is the only journalist in the White House press corps to cover solely First Lady Melania Trump and the Trump Family.
The book will have an 8-page color photo insert.