News: Egmont USA & 2 Publishing Deals for Hot Key Books

Some more YA news from Friday's Booktrade: Egmont USA is up for sale, and details of two publishing deals by Hot Key Books:

Norse fantasy and dark psychological thrills abound in two exciting debut acquisitions for Hot Key Books: BIRDY by writer Jess Vallance, and THE YELLING STONES by twenty-six-year-old historian Oskar Jensen.

BIRDY is a troubling and deliciously dark thriller about the all-consuming friendship between two teenage girls. Vallance works as a freelance writer and has written articles on everything from business accounting to embalming a body. Hot Key acquired BIRDY in a two book deal.

In a very different genre is Oskar Jensen's Nordic fantasy THE YELLING STONES. Set in the Danish court of Jelling, Astrid, a Viking princess, and Leif, a brave poet, must unravel the mysteries of their ancient land in order to protect it from a dangerous force. Rich in historical detail, THE YELLING STONES echoes Rosemary Sutcliffe's classic storytelling and Rick Riordan's sense of adventure. Jensen's Danish heritage inspired him to write THE YELLING STONES. He has spent the past seven years at Oxford, reading three successive degrees in History, and is now a post-doctoral researcher in the Music Department of King's College London.

Oskar Jensen says: "I wrote The Yelling Stones because of two stones I once saw standing in a Danish graveyard. This is a world of beauty and of poetry, magic and death all mixed together. It's a world that really existed, and it thrills me to the core that I get to share it."

THE YELLING STONES will be published in paperback in April 2015, with BIRDY following in paperback in July 2015.

Read the whole article here.