Twofer

July 20, 2011 It’s hard enough for an unpublished writer to sell one literary novel in this publishing climate; to sell two must feel a little like winning the lottery. Courtney Miller Santo, a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Memphis now knows the feeling: William Morrow has bought her debut novel, Roots of the Olive Tree, along with her next book, “for six figures,” according to Publisher’s Weekly. Santo’s agent, Alexandra Machinist of Janklow & Nesbit Associates, compares Roots of the Olive Tree to Sue Monk Kidd’s bestseller The Secret Life of Bees, noting that it “follows an inter-generational group of women who live on an olive grove and whose bonds, and secrets, are exposed when a geneticist arrives to study the key to their longevity.”