What authors received YA book deals this month?
Contemporary
Gillian French’s The Summer Boys sold to Harper Teen for publication in summer 2018. A waitress at an exclusive club on Mount Desert Island in Maine infiltrates a group of privileged boys who could hold the key to the murder of a wealthy family.
Rachel Roy and Ava Dash’s The 96 Words for Love sold to Little, Brown’s Jimmy Patterson imprint for publication in winter 2018. A modern retelling of the classic Indian legend of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, Raya leaves her California life behind to visit an ashram in India to confront her anxiety and realize her place in the world — and maybe fall in love.
Anica Mrose Rissi’s Always Forever Maybe sold to HarperTeen for publication in summer 2018, with a second standalone to follow. It follows a controlling relationship, an unraveling best friendship, and the boundaries of romantic and platonic love.
Kasie West’s Listen to Your Heart sold to Scholastic for publication in summer 2018, with a second book to follow in summer 2019. A girl reluctantly agrees to host the school’s podcast and finds dealing love advice is as hard as getting it.
Britta Lundin’s Ship It sold to Freeform for publication in spring 2018. A fanfic writer knows the two male characters on her favorite show are in love and tries to convince the showrunner to make it happen when she’s invited on a Comic Con tour with the cast.
Tom Pollock’s White Rabbit, Red Wolf sold to Walker Books in the U.K. for publication in February 2018; a U.S. edition will release from Soho Teen in August 2018. A teen math prodigy with extreme anxiety is caught in a web of lies and conspiracies after an assassination attempt on his mother.
Harlequin Teen bought Belly by Hillary Monahan, writing as Eva Darrows, for publication in summer 2018. A biracial Hispanic girl moves to a new town with her mother and must navigate a new school, a new guy, and the new life inside of her.
Rachael Allen’s A Taxonomy of Love sold to Abrams for publication in spring 2018. A boy with Tourette’s Syndrome is in love with the girl next door – but she’s dating his older brother.
Laurie Morrison’s Up for Air sold to Abrams’ Amulet imprint for publication in spring 2019. Annabelle is a struggling student and star swimmer who gets called up to the high school summer team and attracts the attention of an older boy – but when she finds herself alienated from her friends, she has to figure out her strengths and where she really wants to fit in.
Wendy Higgins’ Kiss Collector sold to HarperCollins for publication in fall 2018. Zae Monroe turns the table after her boyfriend cheats and her parents separate by deciding to take what she wants: kisses, as many as possible, with no emotional attachment.
Donna Cooner’s Fake sold to Scholastic for publication in 2019. A girl creates a fake social media account to connect with a boy at school; the strategy works, but her online lies increase until the girl whose identity she’s stolen becomes all too real.
Elizabeth Flynn’s Last Girl Lied To sold to the imprint Imprint for publication in 2019. When a girl’s best friend goes missing, she realizes the girl she knew might have been a carefully constructed lie, and her disappearance not an accident.
Anna Hecker’s When the Beat Drops sold to Sky Pony Press for publication in spring 2018. A diehard jazz nerd discovers a passion for DJing and tries to save her troubled sister while navigating a rocky relationship with an older guy.
Fantasy
Claire Legrand’s Sawkill Girls sold to HarperCollins’ Tegan imprint for publication in fall 2018. Three girls, desperate to unravel the mystery behind the vanished girls of Sawkill Rock, find an ancient evil is at work on the island’s privileged shores and that nothing – and no one – can be trusted.
Mimi Yu’s The Girl King sold to Bloomsbury for publication in spring 2019. In a world inspired by East and North Asian history, an exiled princess fights to reclaim the throne from her younger sister with the help of a shapeshifting boy.
Dawn Kurtagich’s These Unclosed Few sold to Little, Brown for publication in fall 2018. Based on the legend of Faustus, a centuries-old evil connects three girls across centuries in an ancient mill house in the Welsh mountains.
Kaitlin Ward’s The Caves sold to Scholastic for publication in 2018. A girl falls to the center of earth and meets survivors who might be in more danger escaping than staying trapped inside.
Kristen Simmons’ Valhalla Academy trilogy sold to Tor Teen. The first book, The Price of Admission, will release in fall 2018, with A Study in Deception and The Measure of Risk to follow. At an elite boarding school where students earn their keep running cons for the headmaster, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks gains admission into their too-good-to-be-true world.
Hope Cook’s House of Ash sold to Abrams’ Amulet imprint for publication in fall 2017. A boy in the present witnesses the torment of a Victorian-era girl trapped in a mansion with her malevolent stepfather through a cursed mirror and tries to save her.
Rebecca Podos sold two books to HarperCollins’ Balzer + Bray imprint. The Psychic Sisters of Saltville follows Ruby, whose family prophecizes their own death as teenagers. When her great-aunt dies, Ruby sets out to unwind her family history and whether they’re the heroes – or the villains – of their own story. It will release in 2019 with a second untitled book to follow in winter 2020.
Erin Summerill’s Once A King sold to HMH for publication in fall 2018. Set in the world of Summerill’s Clash of Kingdoms series, Lirra is forced on the run with King Aodren after the murder of an high official; together, they must track down the true murderer to avert a war among the four kingdoms.
Amy Rose Capetta’s The Lost Coast sold to Candlewick for publication in spring 2019. Queer teen witches cast a spell to lure Danny to the redwoods of California to help bring back a friend who’s gone blank – lost to the world.
Sci-Fi
Kathryn Barker’s Walking Romeo sold to Flatiron Books for publication in winter 2019. In a futuristic world, Jules Capulet is reeling from the end of a romance with Romeo, one that left him in a coma and her a social outcast. Enter Heathcliff Ellis, a time traveler sent on a mission to wake Romeo.
Danielle Rollins’s Dark Stars series sold to HarperTeen for publication in winter 2019. This time travel saga follows a girl from the past who stows away on a journey through time with a boy from the future and ends up caught between two groups: one who wants to protect the past, and one who wants to use time travel for their own agenda.
Historical
Mackenzi Lee’s Semper Augustus sold to Flatiron Books for publication in winter 2019. Set during the height of the Dutch tulipomania, a florist who must choose between her family’s ruin and duping her beloved’s father into buying a false Semper Augustus, the most expensive bulb of the time.
Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club sold to Dutton for publication in 2019. Set in 1950s San Francisco, the novel is a story of love and duty that explores the complicated overlap between the city’s Chinese-American and LGBTQ communities.
David Elliott’s Voices sold to HMH for publication in fall 2018. This novel in verse examines Joan of Arc’s life and death in multiple points of view, including her sword, her armor, and the saints who spoke to her.
Miriam McNamara’s Winging It sold to Sky Pony Press for publication in fall 2018. This queer historical YA novel is set after the Wall Street crash of 1929 and features lady pilots, a barnstorming circus, wing walkers, and a look at gender roles and the spaces queer girls carve out for themselves.
Nonfiction
J. Albert Mann’s untitled YA biographical novel about Margaret Sanger sold to Simon & Schuster’s Atheneum imprint for publication in spring 2019. The biography follows the early life of the women’s health and rights activist and the founder of what is now Planned Parenthood.
Ally Carter’s Dear Ally, How Do You Write A Book? sold to Scholastic for publication in fall 2018. The nonfiction guide highlights writing-related questions from teenagers and shares advice from YA writers.
Genre Unspecified
Pilgrim Playwright Genie Guard, written by #OwnVoices disabled authors and edited by author Marieke Nijkamp, sold to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for publication in 2018. This YA anthology of short stories featuring disabled teens will feature Kody Keplinger, Francisco X. Stork, Fox Benwell, Keah Brown, Katherine Locke and more.
Adriana Mather’s untitled YA series sold to Knopf for publication in spring 2019. November is shipped off to a secret boarding school with an eye-for-eye punishment system – and when a student is found murdered, November is the main suspect.
Kathryn Ormsbee’s The Great Unknowable End sold to Simon & Schuster for publication in summer 2018, with a second untitled novel to follow. In 1970s Kansas, a NASA-loving girl and a commune-dwelling boy form an unlikely bond during a series of increasingly peculiar events stirring up speculation and panic in their small town.
Jason Reynolds sold four books to Simon & Schuster’s Caitlyn Dlouhy Books imprint. No other details are yet available.
