Publisher Scholastic has announced an increase in their initial print run of Suzanne Collins’s Mockingjay. The third volume in her best-selling YA “Hunger Games” trilogy will debut with 1.2 million copies—up from the originally announced 750,000 (see this article)—on 24 August. The audiobook version is scheduled for simultaneous release.
The $17.99 hardcover is already available for pre-order on Scholastic’s site for $9.99, from BarnesandNoble.com for $8.99, and from Amazon.com for $8.45.
Presaging Mockingjay is the trade paperback release of the first book in the series, The Hunger Games, which will go on sale in North America on 3 July, with a 500,000-copy first printing.
The YA trilogy is set in a post-apocalyptic North America. Scholastic offers this description of the series:
Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death—televised for all of Panem to see.
Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.