Trio of local book deals

Publishers Lunch brings word that Maria Shriver has sold Just Who Will You Be, "presenting life lessons and reflections on what's important in her life, inspired by a poem she wrote for a graduation speech," to Hyperion for publication in April. Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael D'Antonio will write The O'Malley: The Man Who Broke Brooklyn's Heart, Won L.A.'s Love, and Changed Baseball Forever, based in part on access to never-before-used documents and letters involving the late Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, for Riverhead. Publication is expected in early 2009. And Angela Robinson, head writer for "The L-Word," will turn her webcast Girltrash! into a graphic novel "featuring the coolest bunch of bad girls ever to hit the mean streets of Los Angeles." June Kim will illustrate and Three Rivers Press will publish.

Honorable mention: Sarah Ellison, the Wall Street Journal's print media reporter, has sold Houghton Mifflin a book that Publishers Lunch says will use "the story of Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal (which she covered) as the centerpiece of a cultural portrait of our rapidly transforming media world, the decline of the American newspaper, and the ascension of the new communications moguls." Look for it on 2009.