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Feb 21 – Feb 28, 2011 Edition Random House Pre-Empts Debut Novel

NEW YORK, NY/AUTHORLINK NEWS/February 23, 2011—Random House Executive Vice President, Executive Editorial Director, Kate Medina pre-empted the debut novel THE AGE OF MIRACLES by Karen Thompson Walker for the Random House imprint. Of the acquisition, Kate Medina said, “We fell in love with this stunningly original and beautifully written book, and with the author, Karen Thompson Walker.” Susan Kamil, Publisher of Random House, announced the acquisition of North American rights from the author’s agent, Eric Simonoff of the WME. Terms were not disclosed. Of the acquisition, Susan Kamil said, “We are thrilled to be publishing Karen and her extraordinary debut.”

Karen Thompson Walker, a graduate of the Columbia MFA program and an editor of fiction and non-fiction at Simon & Schuster, wrote THE AGE OF MIRACLES over the past three years, writing for an hour each morning before heading out to her day job. The novel centers on an eleven-year-old girl and her family who wake one morning in their modest suburban home in California, to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. Set against this mysterious looming global disaster, THE AGE OF MIRACLES unfolds a suspenseful family drama, a moving story of the lows and highs of a girl’s adolescence, and a poignant story of first love, beautifully mapping the effects of catastrophes big and small on the lives of ordinary people. The book will be published in 2012. The Random House Publishing Group is a division of Random House, the world’s largest trade-book publisher, whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.