Publishers Weekly is reporting that Josephine Angelini sold her debut YA trilogy to Laura Arnold at Harper Teen via agent Mollie Glick at Foundry. Glick told PW she pitched the series as “a Percy Jackson for teenage girls.”
HarperTeen expects to publish the first book in the series, Starcrossed, in Summer 2011. In the first volume, Greek tragedy comes to high school, as “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?”
Book two, Persephone’s Garden, will follow Helen on her journey to the Underworld, and the third book, Ilium, will focus on the final battle between mortals and the gods.