Previously, I excerpted books about Casey Wasserman’s role in the L.A. fires recovery, Arsenio Hall’s late-night challenges and Coppola & Lucas’ ill-fated ’70s studio. Subscribe to The Optionist, my weekly list of available IP: books (new and backlist), journalism, short stories, graphic novels and more.
It’s been a great first half of the year over here at Optionist HQ. I’ve seen many of my picks put into development — the goal of anyone recommending IP. Among my personal favorites is a feel-good story about navigating the rut that every long-term relationship hits at one point or another that I described as having Shrinking vibes and that was picked up by… Shrinking co-creator Bill Lawrence. Other titles and stories picked up: a fantastic piece of journalism about the backcountry rescue team at America’s most dangerous national park and a soapy drama set at a Black megachurch.
If you’re not familiar with The Optionist, it’s my curated guide to the best available IP, and — in this summer season with hopefully extra time to read — I’m running a special offer for new subscribers.
My colleagues at The Ankler recently compiled an amazing list of summer reading recommendations from 100 of the biggest names in culture and politics. Today, from The Optionist, I have six picks from my columns this year whose rights are inexplicably still available and — a bonus! — also make for fantastic beach reads.
Finding good IP takes a lot of time and legwork. I comb through all the new book releases, listen to an unhealthy number of podcasts, read an ungodly number of magazines and newspapers (my base list is almost at 50!) and hunt for overlooked backlist titles to curate an essential list of available IP each week, which lands in your inbox every Friday. Think of it as a cost-effective way to add a relentless IP scout with great taste to your team for about the cost of lunch.
Sometimes even without getting formally optioned, my picks inspire in interesting ways.
An early pick of mine was the fascinating story of a group of seven Korean refugees who enrolled in Howard University in the 1890s after fleeing their country’s civil war. Once at the school, the group captivated the campus with their singing; indeed, the oldest known recordings of certain Korean folk songs anywhere are wax cylinder recordings of these kids in the Library of Congress. Anyway, someone associated with K-pop band BTS flagged The Optionist write-up for them, and — long story short — it inspired the megagroup’s new album, Arirang.
The same shrewd eye and smart analysis can help you find your next hit — or hit of inspiration. If you’ve never tried The Optionist, here’s a special summer trial offer — just for The Ankler subscribers:
On to the picks! I’ve got a little something of everything for people to choose from: There’s an Indiana Jones-esque thriller about the hunt for a lost city, a college hockey romance series in the vein of Heated Rivalry and Off Campus and a riveting true-crime procedural. Plus, if horror’s your jam, I’ve got one that’s a smart offbeat riff on, yes, Weekend at Bernie’s. For the kiddies (and the kid in all of us), there’s a promising kids’ adventure series about pirates, a magical island and the hunt for a buried treasure.
The full lineup for today’s free post for all:
🌙💤An Only Murders in the Building-like found-family procedural about a group of New Yorkers who meet at an all-night diner.
🏰 Indiana Jones meets Jack Reacher in this thriller about an archaeologist hunting for a lost city.
🏒❤️ A (straight) hockey romance series following the players on an elite college team and their complicated love lives.
🐑 A comedy/horror road trip pitched as Philip K. Dick meets the Coen brothers.
🏴☠️ A movie-ready kids’ adventure that’s part Goonies, part Outer Banks and part Percy Jackson about the race to find a pirate treasure hidden on a mystical island.
🍙 An American-set true-crime procedural with Scandinavian noir vibes that’s big-screen-ready, centered on a public defender representing a defendant in a horrific crime
BOOKS I LIKE (current)
Mystery
- For fans of: Only Murders in the Building
- Potential logline: Four insomniacs meet in an online group chat for the sleep-deprived, bond at an all-night diner, and become amateur sleuths after one of them goes missing.
The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch (Berkley, April). I loved the setup here. It obviously owes a debt to shows like Only Murders in the Building and movies like The Thursday Murder Club, but the characters and narrative twists made it feel fresh.
The story is fittingly set in New York, aka “the city that never sleeps.” The group includes: Sybil, a new empty nester with an absent (cheating) husband; Zeke, an MLB pitcher struggling to recover from an injury the previous season; and Julian, a candy shop owner mourning his dead wife and trying to reconnect with an estranged daughter. On their first night out together, the trio befriends Betty, a young waitress with a complicated past.
The group becomes a found family of sorts as they help each other work through their issues. But even found families have problems. Sybil’s attempts to help Betty unwittingly expose Betty to danger from her past. When Betty disappears, the group sets out to find her. The more they sniff around, the more dangerous things become. Along the way, Julian dies. (FWIW, Scotch’s willingness to kill off a major character is a plus for me and gives the story real stakes.) Ultimately, the surviving duo untangles the mystery and rescues Betty.
The characters here are unique and well-developed. They feel real. And I loved the feel-good aspect of their found family and how deeply they care for one another. Also, a low-key May-December romance develops between Zeke and Sybil, adding another dimension to the story. The mystery is engaging and keeps you guessing. My biggest complaint: I love the premise so much that I’d love to see it as a series. But the story is pretty closed-ended, so it leans more towards being a movie. The setup could be tweaked to work as a series, but I think that would mean abandoning this specific plot — or at least changing it significantly. That said, a standalone movie would work very well.
I’m friendly with Scotch and have been a fan for a long time. Her strengths are all on display here — her ability to come up with a clever premise and create rounded, charming characters. She’s written nearly a dozen novels, some of which have landed on the bestseller list. A number have been in and out of development, but none have made it to the screen. One will. And its success will have everyone wondering why folks slept on her for so long.
REPS: Berni Vann/CAA
Romance
- For fans of: Heated Rivalry (but straight)
- Potential logline: Three star players on Waterfell University’s championship-caliber hockey team find love with unlikely partners who also help them overcome their personal demons.
Unsteady (Atria, 2023), Unloved (Atria, 2025) and Unbound (Atria 2026) by Peyton Corinne I discovered the three-book Undone series while following up on my pledge to explore romance more. It also happens to be a hockey romance — perhaps you’ve heard something about hockey romances lately? — but I think this series stands on its own, even without the Heated Rivalry comp. One thing I liked is how distinct it feels from Heated Rivalry in plot and characters, while still retaining the hockey setting.
Each book is basically a standalone romance, but they share characters and a setting at Waterfell University and its national powerhouse hockey team. Unsteady, the first book, follows the romance between Rhys and Sadie. Rhys is the team captain and star player — and the son of an NHL legend — who is recovering from a brutal hit that gave him a serious concussion and panic attacks on the ice; Sadie is a figure skater with a complicated family life (debt, custody battles) and a bad reputation around campus.
Unloved, the second book, centers on star left winger Matt “Freddy” Frederic and his tutor, Ro Shariff. Freddy has learning disabilities and is struggling to pass biology with a professor who hates him; Ro is the brainy tutor assigned to help him. The twist is that they share a past neither fully remembers. Ro is still swooning over a kiss she had with him one night that Freddy doesn’t recall, while Freddy can’t forget a drunken but heartfelt late-night conversation that Ro doesn’t remember.
Unbound, the third book (which was published in the spring), focuses on neurodivergent goalie Bennett Reiner, whose meticulous routines help him manage his OCD, and Paloma, whose big attitude and promiscuity mask deep personal trauma. They share a history that their college friends don’t know about. The story alternates between the original relationship and their reunion in college, as Bennett (who never truly got over Paloma) discovers her traumatic past. The question is: Can his need for order and routine survive the chaos of her life, or will he become… unbound?
Corinne’s mix of imperfect characters, angst, a little spice and swoony romance has won her tons of fans. Her athletes are particularly compelling, combining the burdens of family legacies and personal promise with real-life challenges like OCD and dyslexia.
There are plenty of fun ways to adapt these books, either as an anthology series or by intertwining all three stories into one ongoing series. Heated Rivalry is, of course, a unicorn that can’t really be replicated, but the Undone books have the right raw ingredients: unlikely couples, a mix of heart and heat and strong character arcs. Similar to Heated Rivalry, Undone was originally self-published, became a viral hit, transitioned to traditional publishing and maintains a passionate fanbase. Plus, as Heated Rivalry demonstrated, you can make a show like this on a very reasonable budget. That’s a pretty solid foundation to build on in my opinion.
REPS: Nicole Weinroth and Carolina Beltran/WME
Action-Adventure
- For fans of: Indiana Jones meets Jack Reacher
- Potential logline: A Green Beret-turned-archaeologist hunts for a lost city in the Saudi Arabian desert while being pursued by terrorists, the Saudis and other shadowy forces.
Desert Heist by Alex Dekker (Emily Bestler Books, July) If you were trying to create a novel that was the perfect intersection of Dad TV and gamer energy, you could do a lot worse than this globe-trotting action-adventure about a Green Beret-turned-Harvard archaeology student racing through Yemen and Saudi Arabia in search of a lost civilization.
After a disastrous deployment in Yemen that leaves most of his team dead, Nate Wilde walks away from the Green Berets and enrolls in a PhD program in archaeology at Harvard. But when his dissertation proposal to locate the lost city of Ubar is rejected and the Saudis deny him entry, he does what any grad student with Indiana Jones fantasies would do: sneak into the country to find it anyway.
Nate recruits a Dirty Dozen-esque group of friends: a former British special forces medic, a rich playboy who also happens to be a retired UFC champion and Nate’s best friend from the Army. Along the way, they’re joined by a beautiful Egyptian geologist searching for her missing father — the same man whose research may hold the key to Ubar’s location.
Their only way into Saudi Arabia is through Yemen, forcing Nate to confront the trauma that drove him out of the military. As they race across the desert, they’re pursued by ISIS terrorists, the Saudis, Russian spies and assorted sinister forces.
Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s implausible. But it’s also undeniably fun. Nate Wilde is a Jack Reacher-meets-Indiana Jones fantasy come to life. The supporting characters are sharply drawn, giving the story a feel-good, Band of Brothers camaraderie. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark or the best of Dan Brown and Clive Cussler, the novel weaves in just enough historically plausible detail to ground the story and let readers catch their breath between action set pieces.
This is definitely a big-budget extravaganza that demands a movie star’s name above the title. It feels like the kind of role Chris Pratt has been hunting for to recapture some of that Star-Lord charm that’s been missing from his more recent choices (and social media posts). Other strong options: Glen Powell, Jake Gyllenhaal or Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan. Actually, if Ryan Coogler ever wanted to make his own Indiana Jones and reunite with Jordan, this could be the ticket.
Desert Heist is touted as the first book in a series, so expect more Nate Wilde adventures in print and, likely, on screen. Also expect to see this one tucked into plenty of beach bags and pool totes all summer long.
REPS: Will Watkins/CA
Kids/Action-Adventure
- For fans of: Percy Jackson and Outer Banks
- Potential logline: A 12-year-old girl learns she’s the heir to a pirate’s treasure, but first she must use clues left by her ancestor to find it on a mysterious island that appears only once every 200 years.
Isle of Ever/The Curse Breaker by Jen Calonita (Sourcebooks Young Readers, 2025 & just out) I’m a big believer that there’s a market opportunity for more kids’ content, especially drawing on book IP. Kids are big readers, and popular kids’ series tend to be perennial sellers — meaning there are often older fans with nostalgia as well as young readers. There’s an especially sweet spot for the not-quite-YA-but-older-than-children’s-books crowd. I’m thinking of classics like The Goonies as well as recent successes like One Piece and Percy Jackson. It’s part of the reason I liked this treasure hunt series — the second book just published — that features pirates, a Brigadoon-style island and a plucky heroine.
Here’s the story: On her 12th birthday, Everly “Benny” Benedict discovers she’s the heir to a massive pirate fortune — a bounty that could change her and her mother’s lives — saving them from losing their house — if only Benny can follow the clues. The mystery centers on the Isle of Ever, a legendary landmass that appears only once every 200 years on a Blood Orange Moon for just one week. Benny must use her ancestor Evelyn Terry’s 1825 diary to decode riddles before the island vanishes again.
The stakes go up in the sequel when Benny learns her long-lost father is actually Captain Jonas Kimble, the immortal pirate who first found the treasure in 1625. Book two is more of a high-stakes heist-thriller, as Benny and her friends race against Grace O’Malley — Kimble’s former partner and a near-immortal chameleon who spent decades as a Hollywood movie star — to collect the pieces of the Tesouro Eterno (Eternal Treasure) and summon the Pirate Queen. Meanwhile, Grace has joined forces with the powerful and corrupt Rudd family (including Benny’s former friend, Ryan), who are descendants of the treacherous Axel Rudd.
Benny makes for a classic and relatable children’s hero. She’s smart but stubborn and unwilling to quit. It needs an actress young enough to grow with the sequels, but I’m imagining a Mckenna Grace type. Charlie Hunnam or Tom Hardy would be perfect as her long-lost pirate father, Jonas Kimble, who is full of world-weary charm and anachronisms and is fiercely protective of her. Grace demands a real movie star who can believably go from the red carpet to secret villain, so someone like Cate Blanchett or Charlize Theron.
This is just fun — and good for kids of all ages. It blends the Outer Banks’ treasure-hunt premise with the mystical lore of Percy Jackson in a high-concept take on the pirate-legend trope that’s at once grounded and fantastical. There’s the recognizable modern-day setting (on Long Island) mixed with a secret world hiding just out of plain sight. The 1825 segments balance nicely with the propulsive present-set treasure hunt. The mystery is engaging, and the father-daughter relationship gives it heart. I like this as a big-screen potential franchise experience. I think it would fill a box office need, but it would also work as a streaming series.
REPS: Mary Pender/WME
True Crime/Procedural
- For fans of: Dark Winds
- Potential logline: In this true story, an Anglo public defender takes a job in remote Alaska, where she must defend a local drifter accused of raping and murdering two indigenous sisters.
Sisters of the Midnight Sun by Rebecca Wright Stevens (Counterpoint, July) This is a compelling true-crime procedural about the attempt to solve the rape and murder of two indigenous sisters in Alaska, as told by the public defender who represented a local man fingered for the crime (who then became a star witness). It has superior world-building and a morally complex case at its center. FYI: This story already has a writer attached to adapt it, but I don’t think that should be a dealbreaker for considering optioning it.
In her early 40s and suddenly widowed, Rebecca Wright flees her quiet life in Washington to become a public defender in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska, an oil-rich, culturally powerful indigenous (Inupiat) stronghold at the edge of the habitable world. Soon after, the town is shattered by the rape and murder of Bernice and Wanda Ipalook. Rebecca has to represent local drifter Amos Lane, who not only has been charged with the crime but has been convicted in the court of public opinion. As the trial unfolds, Rebecca finds herself caught in a clash of cultures between the formal legal system and an Inupiat community that believes Lane deserves a traditional form of justice the law can’t provide. While navigating a budding romance and her own internal grief, Rebecca must decide how far she will go to protect a man she suspects might be a killer. The trial becomes a pressure cooker where time, evidence and loyalty are distorted by the unending 24-hour daylight. By the time the verdict comes in, the question isn’t just who killed the Ipalook sisters, but whether a Western court is even capable of delivering justice in the Arctic.
As an author, Stevens really brings Utqiagvik to life, and the contrast between Western and indigenous ways is especially evident in the clash between ideas of law and justice. Rebecca, the outsider, a “tanik” to the locals, functions as an audience POV for all of this. It’s easy to picture how cool the landscape and the perpetual daylight could look on screen.
Rebecca is a strong lead character who is nursing her own pain while trying to balance her commitment to the formal legal system with her growing ties to the local community. She’s smart and resilient but feels the weight of the world. She’s a perfect mix of fish-out-of-water and classic cinematic lawyer. Picture Rebecca Hall or Mary Elizabeth Winstead. I see a Barry Keoghan-type playing Lane, the suspect-turned-star-witness. It’s not a huge part, but it’s central to the story. Finally, getting a local indigenous actor to play Joshua Ahvakana, the Inupiat elder and whaling captain who befriends Rebecca, would probably be preferable, but Zahn McClarnon would also be perfect here.
This would make for a fantastic true-crime procedural — a prestige one that’s morally complex and deals with the important issue of violence against indigenous women. It’s a Scandinavian noir spin on Dark Winds meets Anatomy of a Murder but set in Alaska. As is, it could easily be translated into a feature, but I could also picture stretching it into a short series and using the strong setting to expand into fictional sequels.
REPS: Alex Frankel/IAG
Sci-Fi
- For fans of: Blade Runner meets Weekend at Bernie’s
- Potential logline: A twentysomething slacker is recruited to escort a body across the country, but then discovers that it might not be as dead as she was told. In fact, it may be part of a nefarious plot.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (William Morrow, June) I loved this mashup of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Blade Runner) and Weekend at Bernie’s. Tremblay is a mad genius and also one of the best horror writers today. Those qualities are on full display in his latest novel, which adds the offbeat wit of Joel and Ethan Coen to Dick’s heady brand of sci-fi. That said, calling Tremblay a horror writer actually undersells his broad appeal. He reminds me a lot of Stephen King (who is also a fan). This book mixes humor, heart, clever riffs on classic stories and pop-culture references in a tale that speaks to our current anxieties about AI and tech.
The story centers on twentysomething Julia, a former semi-pro gamer who lives with an uncle and is barely getting by despite having two jobs (both of which she hates). She gets an offer she can’t refuse from her estranged mother, the CFO of a major tech company. Promised a big payday, all she has to do is escort a guy from California to the East Coast via a cross-country flight with a changeover. But there’s a catch — did you think there wouldn’t be a catch? — he’s in a vegetative state but remains functional thanks to some new AI tech that’s been implanted in his head, which is controlled by Julia with what’s essentially a video-game controller.
“You want me to remote control this dead dude across the country?” she asks. Basically, the answer is yes. The company assures her that he’s not “dead dead” and she can move him around, but he doesn’t have consciousness.
That turns out to be a lie. Julia’s Frankensteinian charge (whom she’s nicknamed “Bernie”) is semi-aware of the weird, monstrous world around him. Bernie has no memory, but he’s sure that he needs to find someone, if only he can remember who. Thus begins the strangest cross-country trip ever.
A whistleblower soon reaches out to Julia, telling her that her mother’s company wants to use this tech for sinister purposes, such as creating an army of zombie-like, remotely controlled soldiers. At the same time, she’s slowly realizing that Bernie is more aware of things than she was led to believe.
This was super fun. The story is told via Julia and Bernie’s alternating POVs. The Bernie chapters are genuinely unnerving. It’s like being in Frankenstein’s head. He’s aware of his surroundings, but just barely (he has some fleeting memories). As for Julia, she’s a great main character — a believable twentysomething slacker with a nice arc. Julia’s journey becomes the audience’s journey — from marveling at the tech to suspecting that something bigger is going on to deciding to save Bernie by returning him to his family so he can be properly buried. This was a weird, wild blast.
REPS: Howie Sanders/Anonymous Content
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