Tanya Egan Gibson’s debut novel A Book for Carley, promoted to publishers by the author’s literary agent Susan Golomb as similar in style to Marisha Pessl’s bestselling Special Topics in Calamity Physics, has been sold at auction for six figures to Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group USA.

Ms. Golomb, who also represents Ms. Pessl, said in an interview last week that Ms. Gibson’s book is set in a wealthy community on the North shore of Long Island, and centers around a 16-year-old girl who struggles with the “terribly materialistic world” in which she lives. Like her classmates, Ms. Golomb said, the girl does not like to read, and her parents, in an attempt to get her to embrace literature, hire someone to write a book fitted specifically to her taste and sensibility.  read more »