Lemony Snicket's Daniel Handler sells five new books to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Daniel Handler (better known as children's horror author Lemony Snicket) signed a five-book deal with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The deal was negotiated between LBYR's Publisher Megan Tingley and Editorial Director Jennifer Hunt, and Handler's Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency.

As Lemony Snicket, Handler wrote the 13-volume A Series of Unfortunate Events, which HarperCollins published in the US and Egmont published in the UK. His editor at Harper was Susan Rich, who is now an editor-at-large with LBYR. Rich will again be the editor on the new books, which include four new Lemony Snicket titles (the first due to be published in 2012) and a young-adult stand-alone novel (to be illustrated by Maria Kalman) which should appear in 2011.

Egmont had previously purchased British rights to the new Snicket books in August.