Deals. (between the lines).

Agent Djana Pearson-Morris has sold Proverbs to the People, a short story collection based on African and African American proverbs to senior editor Karen Thomas at Kensington's Dafina Books. The collection will be released in 2003. Tracy Price Thompson, author of Black Coffee, will serve as editor. Among the contributors are Pearl Cleage, Lolita Files, Donna Hill and Omar Tyree. Thomas also picked up Jeff Gardere's Love Prescription, a relationship book for black men and women, and Cry Me A River by Ernest Hill, a novel set in Louisiana about a father recently released from prison and the support he must give to his son who has been arrested. Both books are scheduled for release in 2003. The self-published novel Like Boogie on Tuesday by Linda Dominique Grosvenor was acquired by BET Books' senior editor Glenda Howard-King and will kick off BET's new Sepia imprint in January 2002. A&B Books has acquired and re-released the self-published Baggage Check by Curtis Bunn. Bunn's next book entitled Bookclub, five novellas about book clubs in five cities, will also be released by A&B Books under its Upstream Publications imprint in June 2002. Clifford Benton of Audacity--The Literary Consortium was the agent.