High concept YA trilogy to Hot Key

Hot Key Books, part of Bonnier Zaffre, has acquired a high-concept YA trilogy by debut novelist Holly Race.

City of Nightmares, a working title for the trilogy, moves between the real London and its dream version, Annwn, a place infused with Arthurian legend.

Georgia Murray, commissioning editor at Bonnier Zaffre, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, including e-book and audio, from Simon Trewin and Anna Dixon of WME.

She said: “I loved this story from the reading of the very first pages, watching our protagonist scramble over the rooftops of a dream London, when I knew that we were in the hands of a very special writer. Holly has a gift for extraordinarily imaginative world-building and storytelling and City of Nightmares is the most exciting YA I have read in a long time.”

Hot Key will publish the three books in February 2020, October 2020 and July 2021 respectively,

Race is a development executive in the film and TV industry, most recently with Aardman, and is a Faber Academy graduate.