Scholastic UK signs Lisa Thompson for three more books

Lisa Thompson has signed a deal for three more books with Scholastic UK. 

Lauren Fortune, fiction publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to three middle-grade novels from Adam Gauntlett at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. The first title, The Graveyard Riddle, will be published in January 2021. 

The Graveyard Riddle is a companion novel to Thompson's The Goldfish Boy (Scholastic, 2017). The story is narrated by Melody Bird, who discovers an abandoned house in the corner of a graveyard with a mysterious boy, Hal, hiding inside. Hal tells her that he is a spy on an undercover mission to survey a local criminal. However, Melody's friends don't believe that a teenager would be entrusted with a secret mission and the tables turn on Hal as they start to spy on him instead. 

Thompson commented: "Working with Scholastic for the past four years has been an absolute joy and I'm incredibly excited to be writing more books with them. I'm especially looking forward to returning to Chestnut Close and to some of my favourite characters from The Goldfish Boy. I can't wait to introduce my readers to a new and mysterious character called Hal, who may or may not be who he says he is..."

Fortune added: "I’m delighted to have signed up three more books by the brilliant Lisa. Her stories are adored by many thousands of young readers: her wonderfully drawn characters truly make you care and no one writes plots as propulsive and endings more uplifting for a middle-grade audience."

Thompson has previously published several books with Scholastic UK, including The Goldfish Boy, The Day I Was Erased (2019) and The Boy Who Fooled The World (2020).