HCG signs three new books in Townsend’s Nevermoor series

Hachette Children’s Group (HCG) has acquired three more novels in Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor series, bringing the total to six.

Editor-at-large Helen Thomas acquired world English language rights, together with Hachette Book Group USA and Hachette Australia, from Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency.

“Nevermoor is a world that’s ever-expanding – in leaps of fantastical imagination through Jessica Townsend’s extraordinary talent, and in this real world, it’s going from strength to strength in the market,” said Thomas. “Book three is set to build on already significant success and brilliant reading experience. We’re even more thrilled that Morrigan’s arc will develop considerably and give us all a treat with three new books.”

The third book in the series will be titled Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow and will be published in February in 2020. In the book Morrigan and her friends have earned their places in the Wundrous Society but a strange illness has taken hold of Nevermoor, turning ‘Wunimals’ into ‘Unnimals’, and it is up to Morrigan to find a cure.

The first book in the series, Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, won a Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2018 and has sold 400,000 copies in the English language, according to HCG. Film rights have sold to Fox.

Townsend told The Bookseller in an interview she has plot outlines for nine Nevermoor books in total.