Anjali Banerjee sold Haunting Jasmine to Wendy McCurdy at Berkley via agent Kevan Lyon of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. The novel of magical realism tells the story of “a recently divorced Indo-American woman who travels to a Pacific Northwest island to run her eccentric great aunt’s mysterious bookstore, where she discovers a latent ability to communicate with the spirits of dead authors that inhabit the shop; spirits that help her make the bookstore prosperous, mend family relationships, and learn the many turns love can take.”
Indian-born Banerjee grew up in Manitoba and California. Her first novel was the YA Maya Running (Random House, 2005), it was followed by Looking for Bapu (2006). Downtown Press published her first adult novel, Imaginary Men (2005), and her second, Invisible Lives (2006). Wizards of the Coast published two more of her children’s novels, The Silver Spell and Rani and the Fashion Divas.