J.K. Rowling Announces First Adult Novel, ‘The Casual Vacancy’
J.K. Rowling is leaving the world of wizardry for her new book “The Casual Vacancy.” Rowling, the author of the incredibly successful “Harry Potter” series will release her first novel for adults later this Summer.
Rowling announced today that “The Casual Vacancy” will hit store shelves on September 27th.
Her publisher, Little, Brown, also revealed a few details about the novel. It will be set in a town called Pagford, a small English town “with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey.”
The Guardian reports that the events in the novel are set in motion after the unexpected death of Barry Fairwather, the town’s parish council. The empty seat on the council “becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen,” with “teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils.”
The Little, Brown Book Group said that Rowling’s first post-Potter novel will be “blackly comic.”
The NY Daily News reports that the new book will be available in both traditional formats and as a digital book. It took Rowling more than a decade to put the “Harry Potter” series into a digital format.
Potter, of course, didn’t need any help from the digital market to bring in sales. The seven Harry Potter novels have sold more than 450 million copies.
