Celebrity chef, author and Food Revolution host Jamie Oliver has jumped to HarperCollins’ Ecco imprint after working with Hyperion on earlier books.

Ecco will publish the first book in fall 2014 with another book coming one year later. The publisher did not reveal the subjects of the books. According to the release, the chef sold more than two million copies of 30-Minute Meals in the UK. Oliver had this statement about his change of publisher:

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have worked with such a supportive publisher in Hyperion but I am really excited about this new relationship.  It is an honor for me to join the company of the great chefs on Ecco’s roster.  Many of them are my friends and I look forward to this partnership.

A 40-year-old unpublished Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in storage, and Open Road Integrated Media and InkWell Management will team up to publish the book.

The Eternal Wonder will be published on October 22, bringing the Pulitzer & Nobel Prize-winning author’s newly discovered work as a digital book and paperback. Open Road already publishes 28 backlist books by Buck, including The Big Wave and The Good Earth. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

The Eternal Wonder, an Open Road E-riginal, is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Writer Maria E. Andreu has landed a deal for her “largely autobiographical” young adult novel, The Secret Side of Empty.

Perseus’ Running Press imprint will publish The Secret Side of Empty in the spring 2014 season. The Writer’s House literary agency negotiated the deal on Andreu’s behalf.

According to the release, the book “tells the story of ‘M.T.,’ an undocumented teenager living in fear of exposure and deportation. The plot loosely follows the life experiences of the author, who earned her citizenship through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.” (Image via)

Erotica romance author Maya Banks has inked a “multi-million dollar deal” with Berkley Books for a new trilogy.

Trident Media Group executive vice president Kimberly Whalen negotiated the deal with Berkley executive editor Cindy Hwang. Here’s more from the release:

Berkley will publish simultaneous digital and trade paperback editions of each book. Brilliance Audio has acquired audio rights in a six-figure deal … The new trilogy will be set in Houston, Texas amidst a world Banks originally created for the Sweet Series. Focusing on the lives and friendships of a closely intertwined group of people, the series will explore the friends’ tragedies and triumphs as well as their darkest fears and secrets.

Read more

Jenny Han has inked a deal for her “semi-autobiographical” young adult novel. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers will publish To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before in April 2014.

Publisher Justin Chanda negotiated the deal with Folio Literary Management senior vice president Emily Van Beek. Executive editor Zareen Jaffery will edit the manuscript. Here’s more from the release:

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters…

Read more

Hachette Book Group’s new Redhook imprint will release Iain Banks‘ The Quarry on June 25, the publishing dates set quickly after Banks’ terminal cancer diagnosis.

Hachette’s Orbit imprint has published science fiction novels written by Banks. Here’s more about The Quarry:

Kit doesn’t know who his mother is. What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer. Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends—or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death. Paul, the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robbie, corporate bunnies whose relationship is daily more fractious; Pris and Haze, once an item, now estranged; and finally Hol; friend, mentor, former lover and the only one who seemed to care.

Prolific writer Mitch Albom has landed a three-book deal with HarperCollins’ Harper imprint, leaving his old publisher.

Albom’s next book will be a novel entitled The First Phone Call From Heaven. The storyline will focus on characters who receive phone calls from those who have passed away. Editor Karen Rinaldi negotiated the deal with literary agent David Black.

According to Albom’s Facebook page, the publisher plans to release the book on November 12, 2013.

Read more

After selling 500,000 combined copies of Ian Fleming and Ed McBain backlist, Amazon Publishing has acquired books from the Saint series by Leslie Charteris and the Mrs. Bradley series by Gladys Mitchell.

Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint will publish digital editions and print editions (“where rights permit”) later this year. Jane Gelfman from Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents negotiated the deal for 49 Saint series books. A TV pilot for the classic series about a mysterious thief is now being produced.

Read more

Journalist Masha Gessen will write about the Tsarnaev brothers, tracing their family history from Chechnya to the horrific bombings they carried out in Boston. In the video embedded above, watch Gessen speak on The Daily Show.

Riverhead Books will publish the book, coming from the author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A Russian-American journalist, Gessen lives and works in Moscow. Here’s more from the release:

The book will explain who the brothers were, where they came from, what shaped them, and how they came to do what they appear to have done. From their displaced beginnings, as descendants of ethnic Chechens deported to Central Asia in the Stalin era, it will follow the brothers from strife-ridden Kyrgyzstan to war-torn Dagestan, and then, as new émigrés, to the looking-glass, utterly disorienting peace and order of Cambridge, Mass. Most crucially, it will reconstruct the struggle that ensued for each of the brothers, between assimilation and alienation, and their alleged metamorphosis into a new breed of home-grown terrorist, with their feet on American soil but their loyalties elsewhere, a split in identity that can be the breeding ground for a deadly sense of mission.

J.J. Abrams will work with Mulholland Books on S., an book idea conceived and developed by Abrams but written by Alive in Necropolis author Doug Dorst (pictured, right).

Abrams (pictured, left) is the producer, writer, and director behind projects like Lost, Star Trek and Super 8. He will support the book through his Bad Robot production company. Check it out:

[S] is Abrams’s first foray into publishing and will be released by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company on October 29, 2013. At the core of this multilayered literary puzzle of love and adventure is a book of mysterious provenance. In the margins, another tale unfolds—through the hand-scribbled notes, questions, and confrontations of two readers. Between the pages, online, and in the real world, you’ll find evidence of their interaction, ephemera that bring this tale vividly to life.

(Via Sarah Weinman)