Jo Fletcher Books chooses Heitz's Doors trilogy

Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus Books, has acquired German author Markus Heitz's Doors trilogy. 

Jo Fletcher, publisher, bought world rights (excluding the US and Canada) from Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur, via Roman Hocke and Claudia Von Hornstein at AVA International.

The Doors trilogy will play with the idea of reader choice through three novels, Doors: Colony, Doors: Field of Blood and Doors: Twilight. 

Each book will begin with the origin story: a disparate band of people, all with very different skills (and very different secrets) have been hired by a millionaire industrialist to find his daughter, who is lost in an underground cave system under the family’s old estates. Readers then have a choice to choose one of three "doors" to go through. If they go through the door marked with an exclamation mark, they will find a story in the Middle Ages. The door with a question mark takes readers through to 1944, but in this world, the Germans have capitulated, and Britain and America are planning to destroy Russia. The final door, marked with an X, opens the way to a future where one’s own nightmares are real.

The trilogy will be published on 4th March 2021.

Fletcher said: "What I loved about this idea is there is no correct order to read the books, number one, two and three. Each stands alone, and our hapless protagonists take very different actions, resulting in very different futures. Markus reinvigorated fantasy with his internationally bestselling Dwarves series, and turned Elfdom on its ears with the companion Älfar series. He welcomed the old gods back with the dark mystery series AERA: Return of the Ancient Gods, and now he’s set to turn things on their tail again with Doors. Which door will you choose?"

Heitz commented: "There are three novels with the same characters, but in three different worlds. There's a lot going on, and all storylines are unpredictable. The idea behind it was: What if the group did not make that decision and the readers press the rewind-button to change the decision again and again. Nevertheless, I had to make sure that there is no repetition and that there is new information in all three novels: about the doors, the adversaries, the characters and backgrounds. Only those who have read all three novels have a 100 per cent overview. At the same time, readers who only read one Doors book will have the same fun and excitement."

Heitz's Dwarves series was published by Orbit: The Dwarves (2009), The War of the Dwarves (2010), The Revenge of the Dwarves (2011) and The Fate of the Dwarves (2012). His Älfar series was launched with The Triumph of the Dwarves in 2018.