The Maze Runner author James Dashner has signed a 3-book deal with Random House Children’s Books’  Delacorte Press imprint. Executive Editor Krista Marino negotiated the deal with Dystel & Goderich Literary Management vice president Michael Bourret.

Starting in fall 2013, Delacorte will publish the titles of The Mortality Doctrine series for North American readers. Book one, The Eye of Minds, will come out in both print and eBook format simultaneously. Dashner (pictured, via) has also written original short stories to accompany this series; these shorts will be released in eBook format.

Here’s more from the release: “The series is set in an exciting — and frightening—world of hyper-advanced technology, cyber terrorists, and gaming…The VirtNet is total mind and body immersion, and it’s addictive. Recent reports claim that there’s a gamer going beyond what any gamer has ever done before. He’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet, and the side–effects are horrific. His hostages have all been diagnosed as brain dead—and no one knows what his goal is. The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael.”