Here is another update for the Books to Watch list.  WOW!  So many interesting titles coming out in 2010 and 2011. Starcrossed sounds amazing and like a sure hit.  I’m sure Sylvia Day’s new series will be tops.  You can view my previous Books to Watch posts here.

Synopsis (Publishers Marketplace):

1. In a major pre-Bologna acquisition, Laura Arnold at Harper Teen pre-empted North American rights to a debut YA trilogy by Josephine Angelini. Mollie Glick at Foundry sold the series–the first book is called Starcrossed–and said she pitched it as “a Percy Jackson for teenage girls.” Foundry’s Stephanie Abou and Hannah Brown Gordon will be handling foreign rights at the Bologna Book Fair, and film rights are being handled by Angelini’s manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment.

In Starcrossed, which brings Greek tragedy to high school, a shy Nantucket teenager named Helen Hamilton attempts to kill the most attractive boy on the island, Lucas Delos, in front of her entire class. The incident proves more than a bit inconvenient for Helen, who’s already concerned that she’s going insane–whenever she’s sees Lucas (or any of his family members) the image of three crying women appear to her.

The murder attempt does have an upside though, as it ultimately leads to Helen’s revelation that she and the local heartthrob are, in fact, playing out some version of a weighty ancient love affair. (Said female apparitions are, in fact, the Three Fates.) So Helen, like her namesake, Helen of Troy isn’t going crazy, she’s destined to start a Trojan War-like battle by being with Lucas. This then begs the unfortunate question: should she be with the boy she loves even if it means endangering the rest of the world?

The second book in the trilogy, Persephone’s Garden, follows Helen’s journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, chronicles the final battle between mortals and the gods. Harper Teen is planning to publish Starcrossed in summer 2011.

2. NYT bestselling author L.A. Banks’s untitled fallen angels series, in a two-book deal.

3. Author of EVE OF DARKNESS Sylvia Day’s ANGEL ENCHAINED, book one in a dark and sexy paranormal trilogy, in which angels, vampires, and lycans are all vying for power, at auction, in a three-book deal.

4. VAMPIRE SUNRISE author Carole Nelson Douglas’s SILVER ZOMBIE, her fourth Delilah Street novel, in which the 24-year-old Las Vegas paranormal investigator returns to Kansas to battle silver screen zombies, weather witches, and demon drug lords, and to investigate her own troubled history, in a two-book deal, for publication in November 2010.

5. Maggie Stiefvater’s FOREVER, the final book in the bestselling SHIVER trilogy, plus three new stand-alone fantasy titles, in a major deal, for publication summer 2011.

6. Lauren Oliver’s debut middle-grade novel THE STORY OF LIESL & PO, pitched as in the tradition of Kate DiCamillo, the tale of a girl, a ghost, two boxes, some ashes, some magic dust, and a magician’s apprentice, and how these seemingly random elements come together over the course of one week to restore feeling to a world gone gray and heartless, in a major deal, in a three-book deal.

7. Chris Bradford’s VIRTUAL KOMBAT, in which a young boy is selected as a games tester by the creator of ‘Virtual Kombat’ – the most realistic martial-arts video game ever invented – with devastating consequences, for publication in 2010.

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