About a month ago, when J.K. Rowling announced that she was moving publishing houses and penning her first novel that wasn’t a part of the Harry Potter series in some way, that was pretty much all we knew. Little, Brown would be putting the book out, it wouldn’t be tied to the Boy Who Lived, and it was going to be written for adults, rather than the children’s or young adult market.
Today, however, Little, Brown has delivered a synopsis, release date, pricing and even a hint at how long the book is going to be on its own website. So read on, for some juicy details on J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy.
When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?
Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.
Vacancy will be out this fall, being published internationally and simultaneously in words on paper and digitally; and as audio on CDs and downloads. Little, Brown even goes as far as to say that it’ll be approximately 480 pages long, although I’ll believe it when I see it. (Not because I don’t think Rowling is capable of writing a hardback that isn’t a doorstopper, but because I expect the book is still being written and so the page count is based on speculation.) The British market is the only one for which Little, Brown has pricing information for just yet, clocking it in at £20 for the hardback and downloadable audio book, £11.99 for the ebook, and £30 for the audio CDs.
I’m pretty sure I’ve stripped the listing of all its relevant information, but if you’d like to take a look yourself (of course you do) you can right here.
(via Flavorwire.)
