David Mitchell’s ‘The Bone Clocks’ pubs Sept. 9; plus 3-book deal

British writer David Mitchell’s next novel will be “The Bone Clocks,” publishing on Sept. 9, 2014, his publisher Random House told the L.A. Times on Monday. The announcement includes new details about “The Bone Clocks” as well as news of a three-book deal with Mitchell, a two-time Booker Prize finalist.

“The Bone Clocks” will be, Random House writes, “a stunning epic that follows Holly Sykes, who runs away from her home in Southwest England in 1984 and 60 years later is raising her granddaughter on the coast of Ireland, as almost everything about her world has changed forever. In between Holly and the people who love her move between the Swiss alps in 1991, war-torn Baghdad in 2004, and New York a decade in the future, where she joins a band of vigilantes in a supernatural war between a predatory cult of immortal soul-stealers. The novel is a monumental achievement that will thrill and entertain its readers while asking profound questions about mortality, legacy, and the future of the world.”

Some of the elements of the “The Bone Clocks” — different locations and time periods, including a strange future — are common to Mitchell’s best-known novel, “Cloud Atlas.” The 2004 book, a hit at publication, became an unexpected bestseller in 2012 during the run-up to the film version made by the Wachowskis and Tim Twyker.

The new book deal with Random House includes two additional novels and a sequel to the nonfiction book Mitchell translated with his wife, KA Yoshida, originally published in Japan: “The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism” by Naoki Higashida. “The Reason I Jump” hit bestseller lists in this country and the UK in 2013.

“I am indecently proud to be continuing my relationship with Random House in the U.S., perhaps the most venerable yet dynamic publishing house in America today,” Mitchell said in the release. “Everyone I’ve been privileged to work with in the Broadway offices is a talented and committed professional, and in David Ebershoff, with his bifocal view of fiction as both astute editor and gifted novelist, I am truly, crazily blessed. So here’s to the next three books and to the future.”

Mitchell’s other novels are “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” (2010), “Black Swan Green” (2006), the Booker Prize-finalist “Number9Dream” (2001) and “Ghostwritten” (1999).

In the release, Ebershoff, Random House vice president and executive editor and Mitchell’s longtime U.S. editor, added, “I remember David Mitchell’s first reading in New York almost fifteen years ago. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people in the audience but it was clear to all of us David was a talent unlike any we had ever countered before. I have watched him go from unknown British import to cult-favorite to global phenomenon. I look forward to publishing ‘The Bone Clocks’ in September and with this new deal extending David’s relationship with Random House into a third decade.”

The sequel to “The Reason I Jump” will be published in 2015. Mitchell’s two novels are slated to be published sometime before 2021.

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