What authors received YA book deals this month?
Contemporary
Angela Thomas’s The Hate U Give sold to Balzer + Bray after a heated 13 publishing house auction, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Starr, trapped between the slum she grew up in and the prep school she attends, is an eyewitness to a police officer shooting her best friend.
McCall Hoyle’s The Thing with Feathers sold to Blink for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Emilie leaves her homeschooling for high school in North Carolina and tries to keep her epilepsy a secret.
Hadley Dyer’s Here So Far sold to HarperCollins for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. George Warren falls in love with an older man named George, befriends a moonshiner, and becomes attached to a pig under the gaze of a lighthouse.
Emily Barr’s The One Memory of Flora Banks sold to Philomel in a two-book deal, according to Publisher’s Lunch. A girl with anterograde amnesia journeys to Norway to find the one person she believes can restore her memory loss.
Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, under the pseuodnym Christina Lauren, sold their novel Autoboyography to Simon & Schuster for publication in 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Tanner Scott signs up for a novel-writing class and falls for Sebastian.
Steve Bloom’s The Stand In sold to Carolrhoda Books for publication in fall 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A high school senior agrees to accompany the daughters of the desperate and wealthy social elite to proms and homecomings in exchange for a paycheck.
Kenneth Oppel’s Every Hidden Thing sold to Simon & Schuster for publication in fall 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A forbidden love blooms between the son and daughter of arch-rival fossil hunters.
Sarah Benwell’s Kaleidoscope Song sold to Simon & Schuster, according to Dahlia Adler’s blog. Neo loves music, and when her favorite station broadcasts in a local bar, Neo can’t resist going. Not only does she fall in love with music – she falls in love with a girl named Tale.
Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison’s Freshers sold to Delacorte for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. The YA novel tackles love, sex and friendship in the first two months of college
Lianne Oelke’s House of Orange sold to Clarion for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. After being expelled from high school, Jane Sinner solves her housing problems by joining a “Big Brother”-esque web series.
Una LaMarche’s You in Five Acts sold to Razorbill for publication in fall 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Five friends at a performing arts school prepare for the performance that determines their future.
Sarah Henson’s Devils Within sold to Sky Pony for publication in spring 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Raised in a white supremacist compound, Nate kills its leader – his father – in self-defense and flees to live with his estranged uncle.
Eric Smith’s anthology Welcome Home sold to Jolly Fish Press for publication in fall 2017, according to Smith’s blog. The anthology, featuring stories relating teens who have been adopted or fostered, will donate its royalties to organizations that work with adoptees and foster kids.
Eirka L. Sánchez’s Brown Girl Problems sold to Knopf for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. When Julia’s older sister – the perfect Mexicana daughter – is killed, Julia must burden her parent’s expectations and uncover her sister’s secrets.
Claire LaZebnik’s Things I Should Have Known sold to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for publication in spring 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A popular teen tries to find love for her autistic sister.
Abigail Johnson’s If I Fix You sold to Harlequin Teen for publication in fall 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A car-obsessed girl’s heart is crushed when she walks in on her mother with the boy she might love.
Melissa de la Cruz’s Something In Between sold to Harlequin Teen, according to Publisher’s Lunch. A girl receives a national scholarship before learning that she and her immigrant family are in the U.S. illegally.
Emma Chastain’s A Year in the Life of Chloe Snow sold to Simon Pulse in a two-book deal, according to Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Weekly. Scheduled to release in spring 2017, A Year in the Life of Chloe Snow is told in 365 diary entries over the course of her freshman year in high school.
Kristin Bartley Lenz’s The Art of Holding On and Letting Go sold to Elephant Rock Books for publication in September 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. “Set in Ecuador, Michigan, and California, the book is about the transformative power of nature, love and loss, and the discovery that home can be somewhere very different from where you started.”
J.J. Strong’s Us Kids Know sold to Razorbill for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A group of teens in suburban New Jersey deal with the disastrous error of one that affects them all.
Kiersi Burkhart sold to books to Carolrhoda: Honor Code for publication in fall 2017 and Tower of Smoke and Lies for publication in spring 2018, according to Publisher’s Weekly. In Honor, a prep school is rocked by scandal. In Tower of Smoke and Lies, two princesses are willing to do whatever it takes to become queen.
Science Fiction
Lisa Koosis’s Resurrecting Sunshine sold to Albert Whitman for publication in fall 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. It follows a grieving young musician must decide whether to clone the girl he loved.
Jonathan Maberry’s Mars One sold to Simon & Schuster for publication in spring 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A teenager leaves behind everything he knows to help establish the first human colony on Mars.
Romily Bernard’s Never Apart sold to Entangled Teen for publication in summer 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A girl and boy die repeatedly in parallel words at the hand of the same killer until the fall that unravels everything.
Alison Gervais’s Wattpad story 27 Days sold to Blink for publication in summer 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Hadley Jamison must go back 27 days to save a boy she barely knows.
Adam Silvera’s They Both Die At The End sold to Harper Children’s for publication in fall 2017, along with a second untitled novel, according to Publisher’s Lunch and Publisher’s Weekly. Two teens meet using the Last Friend app in a near-future NYC where people are alerted on the day they will die.
Fantasy
Katrina Leno’s Everything All at Once sold to HarperCollins Children’s Books for publication in summer 2017, along with a separate untitled novel, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Lottie’s Aunt Helen leaves Lottie a series of dares that push her to unravel the magical inspiration for her aunt’s famous books.
Coert Voorhee’s On The Free sold to Carolrhoda Lab for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Three teens survivors of a wilderness program gone wrong must overcome the wilderness of the Colorado mountains and the demons who put them there.
Hillary Monahan’s “feminist horror YA novel” The Wagon Witch’s Apprentice sold to Delacorte Press for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. A traveller girl must exact a horrifying revenge to save a truly good person.
Tara O’Connor’s magical realist YA The Altered History of Willow Sparks sold to Oni Press for publication in spring 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Willow Sparks finds a mysterious book that can change her life, but must decide between new and old friends when she suddenly becomes popular.
Gabrielle Prendergast’s fantasy series Zero Repeat Forever sold to Simon & Schuster, with the first book to release in 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Raven is one of the few humans to survive after the Nyx attack. But when Raven meets Eighth, a Nyx warrior, Eighth decides to help get Raven to safety.
First Second bought Vera Greentea and Yana Bogatch’s YA fantasy novel Grimoire for publication in 2018, according to Publisher’s Weekly. In a town where every woman is a witch, things change when one goes missing.
Historical
Adele Griffin’s Your Only Girl sold to Algonquin Young Readers for publication in 2017 in a two-book deal, according to Publisher’s Weekly. In 1976, in a wealthy enclave on Fire Island, an insider and a girl from outside the community fight for the love of a newcomer.
Graphic Novels
Author Kevin Panetta and illustrator Savanna Ganucheau sold their YA graphic novel Bloom to Fist Second Books for publication in winter 2018, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Ari and Hector fall in love while working at a bakery.
Author Mairghread Scott and illustrator Robin Robinson’s Cold Iron Wars sold to First Second Books for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Isabel must save both the human and fey worlds in San Francisco.
Genre Unknown
Elise Chapman’s Along the Indigo sold to Abrams for publication in fall 2017, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Desperate to avoid working at a brothel, a young woman forges a connection to a boy with a tragic past unexpectedly linked to her own.
Amy McNamara’s A Flicker in the Clarity sold to HarperCollins for publication in spring 2017, along with a second untitled YA novel, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Evie Ramsey learns that loving your best friend can’t save her, and to become yourself, you need to strike out on your own.
Nonfiction
Jazz Jennings’ memoir Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen sold to Crown for publication in summer 2016, according to Publisher’s Weekly. The teen transgender advocate and star of TLC’s I Am Jazz will follow her journey and how her story helped shape the mainstream attitude towards the transgender community.
Shane Burcaw’s Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse sold to Roaring Brook Press for release in spring 2018, according to Publisher’s Weekly. The YA essay collection chronicles Shane’s experiences with how people perceive him and his spinal muscular atrophy.
We here at YA Interrobang also want to congratulate friend-of-the-site Kaye. M, who sold a novel under the name Karuna Riazi to Simon & Schuster. The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand is a middle-grade fantasy novel, following a Bangladeshi-American girl and her friends as they defeat a diabolical board game, and will release from Simon & Schuster’s new Salaam Reads imprint in 2017. Congratulations!
