What authors received YA book deals this month?
Fantasy
Ashok Banker’s The Rise trilogy sold to Delacorte for publication in fall 2018. Pitched as Six of Crows meets An Ember in the Ashes, a young thief and her gang battle to overthrow a brutal tyrant and a demon invasion.
J.A. Reynolds’ Opposite of Always sold to Katherine Tegen Books for publication in spring 2019 in a two-book deal and to Macmillan UK Children’s in a two-book deal, along with a dozen other international publishing houses. A boy falls for a girl and loops back in time at the moment of her death, returning to the moment they first met, over and over again.
Gena Showalter’s next series, about an average teen discovering she’s the Evil Queen in fairytales, sold to Harlequin for publication, along with the next two books in her Lords of the Underworld series.
Evelyn Skye’s next duology sold to Balzer + Bray for publication in fall 2018. Circle of Shadows follows an assassin named Sora who is accused of being a spy and must prove her loyalty while her former partner and best friend Daemon hunts her to bring her to justice.
Zoraida Córdova’s Hollow Crown duology sold to Disney-Hyperion for publication in summer 2019. In the Kingdom of Selvina, the royal family is destroying magic, and memory thief Renata plans to exact revenge. But when her first love is captured, Ren must kill the leader of the King’s Justice.
Miranda Asebedo’s The Girls of Cottonwood Hollow sold to HarperTeen for publication in fall 2018. After a tornado unearths the diary of a dying woman who cursed the girls of a rural Kansas town, Rome and her best friends discover the curse and the stories around the town legend aren’t at all true.
Sci-Fi
Sangu Mandanna’s Spark of White Fire trilogy sold to Sky Pony for publication in fall 2018. A space opera inspired by Mahabharata, the series follows a cursed and forgotten child of an empire’s queen who wants to return to her real family and finds herself on the wrong side of a war that could destroy kingdoms across the galaxy.
Contemporary
Nadine Jolie Courtney’s All-American Muslim Girl sold to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for publication in spring 2019. A 16-year-old girl struggles between two worlds and the difficulties of a modern Muslim teenager in America.
9 Days and 9 Nights, the sequel to Katie Cotugno’s 99 Days, follows Molly Barlow to Europe the summer after her first year of college and will be published in summer 2019 by HarperCollins’ Balzer + Bray imprint.
David Kreizman’s The Year They Fell sold to Macmillan’s Imprint imprint for publication in spring 2019. Five teenagers who used to be best friends in preschool are drawn back together after a tragic accident.
Bill Konigsberg’s The Music of What Happens sold to Scholastic’s Levine imprint for publication in spring 2019. Two gay teens meet and fall in love while working on a food truck in Mesa, Arizona.
Natasha Diaz’s Color Me In sold to Delacorte for publication in spring 2019. A mixed-race Jewish girl must decide who she is and where she fits within her two worlds: Harlem and Westchester County.
Lev “L.C.” Rosen’s Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) sold to Little, Brown for publication in fall 2018. A sexually active gay teenager writes a sex column and is stalked by someone who wants to blackmail him back into the closet.
Sloane Leong’s A Map to the Sun sold to First Second for publication in 2019. This graphic novel follows a struggling girls’ basketball team in a fictional neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Julie Halpern and Len Vlahos’s untitled contemporary sold to Feiwel and Friends for publication in fall 2019. A breakup, breakdown, and breakthrough are told through two different points of view.
Andrew Simonet’s The Rubber Room sold to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for publication in fall 2018. Jason and Meili connect after meeting in detention, and as Meili plots a dangerous path back to her affluent life in Hong Kong, Jason dreams of escaping his poverty and isolation.
Emma Mills’s Famous in a Small Town sold to Henry Holt for publication in early 2019, with a second contemporary novel to follow in early 2020. Sophie plans to finance her school’s marching band trip to the Rose Parade by bringing local country singer Megan Pleasant back to headline a fundraising festival – except Megan has publicly sworn never to return.
Jeff Zentner’s TV Six sold to Crown in the U.S. and Tundra in Canada for publication in spring 2019, with a second novel to follow in spring 2020. Two best friends must make decisions about the “creature feature” show they host on their local cable access TV station as they enter their senior year of high school.
Tanaz Bhathena’s Last Days, First Days sold to Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S. and U.K. and Penguin Canada in Canada for publication in winter 2019. Two lovestruck teens must find the courage to be who they want to be in order to be with each other.
Marisha Pessl’s psychological suspense Neverworld Wake sold to Delacorte for publication in summer 2018. A group of teens who graduated from an elite boarding school reunite the next summer and are faced with an impossible choice: only one of them can live and the decision must be unanimous.
K.J. Reilly’s Sometimes We Gave Them Names sold to Disney-Hyperion for publication in fall 2018. Joel, burdened by too many secrets and a full of unsent text messages, grapples with the aftermath of loss and finds resilience through an unusual friendship and an unspoken crush.
Genre Unspecified
Katie Cotugno’s The Calling, to be published in spring 2018 by HarperCollins’ Balzer + Bray imprint, follows two sisters who are hiding a dark secret about who — and what — they are.
Deborah Markus’s The Letting Go sold to Sky Pony for publication in July 2018. It tells the story of three Emilys: one who closed herself off after seeing everybody she loved murdered; Emily Dickinson, whose legacy becomes Emily’s only comfort; and M, who gets too close to Emily and puts herself in the killer’s path.
Nonfiction
Leslie Odom Jr.’s Failing Up: How to Rise Above, Do Better, and Never Stop Learning sold to Feiwel and Friends for publication on March 27, 2018. The book offers guidance and encouragement for readers on the cusp of something big.
Chessy Prout’s memoir sold to Simon & Schuster’s McElderry imprint for publication on March 6, 2018. The St. Paul’S School assault survivor shed her anonymity on national TV last August; I Have The Right to: A High School Survivor’s Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope is co-written with Jenn Abelson, a journalist for the Boston Globe.
Patricia Hruby Powell’s untitled YA profile of seven key female leaders in the suffrage and civil rights movements sold to Chronicle for publication in spring 2020.
