Knopf Doubleday has announced that Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL will publish September 15, with a first printing said to be five million copies. Featuring the protagonist from the Da Vinci Code, Brown’s editor Jason Kaufman says “this book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan’s readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises.” Brown adds, “This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey. Weaving five years of research into the story’s twelve-hour timeframe was […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
People, and Announcements
Laura Ford will move over to the Ballantine editorial team as Editor, reporting to publisher Libby McGuire. She has been at Random House since 2001, when she began there as an editorial assistant. Ford will continue to edit the books she has acquired for Random House and they will remain on that list. Former Houghton Mifflin publisher Janet Silver is joining Zachary Shuster Harmsworth as an agent and literary director, in their Boston office. In the UK, Peter Robinson is formally merging his eponymous literary agency with Rogers, Coleridge & White (which has been handling foreign rights and other functions […]
Delacorte to Issue Unpublished Vonnegut Stories
Delacorte Press has assembled a collection of previously unpublished short stories by the late Kurt Vonnegut, which will include illustrations by the author, for publication in November 2009. The publisher has plans for a second collection of unpublished Vonnegut “writings” and a book of correspondence to and from the author. They also have acquired a follow-up memoir by the author’s son, pediatrician Mark Vonnegut. Bantam Dell editor-in-chief Nit Taublib and editor Kerri Buckley are credited in the announcement as having “put the collection together, often comparing and contrasting many annotated drafts of individual stories.”
Harper Finds Another Crichton Novel
An assistant to the late Michael Crichton found a complete manuscript for PIRATE LATITUDES, an adventure story set in 17th century Jamaica about a plan by the Jamaican governor and a pirate named Hunter to raid a Spanish galleon, in his computer files. HarperCollins will publish that book on November 24. But the status of the thriller that Crichton was working on when he died (originally due to have been published at the end of last year, but postponed) is less clear. Neither his agent Lynn Nesbit nor editor Jonathan Burnham has seen that manuscript yet, but they are nonetheless […]
More Wimpy Kid for Fall
Abrams’ Amulet Books imprint has announced Jeff Kinney’s fourth installment in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series for publication October 12. All details–cover art, title, and first printing–will “be unveiled over the next few months.”
"Final" Robert Jordan Book to be Published in Thirds
Tor announced today that Brandon Sanderson’s much-anticipated completion of the late Robert Jordan’s unfinished final installment of the Wheel of Time series has expanded so much that it will be published in three (sizable) volumes. Having promised fans a book this year, the first part, comprising a manuscript of about 300,000 words, will be published as THE GATHERING STORM on November 3. (The next two volumes are tentatively titled SHIFTING WINDS and TARMON’GAIDON, though Sanderson notes on his blog the title of the first one changed rather quickly. Together the three installments comprise A MEMORY OF LIGHT.) Editor (and Jordan’s […]