Nick Johnston at Quercus has acquired world rights (excluding Australia and New Zealand) for Will Elliott’s Pendulum trilogy – comprising PILGRIMS, SHADOW and an untitled third volume. The deal was conducted with John Berlyne of the Zeno Literary Agency in association with Lyn Tranter at Australian Literary Management. Quercus plan to publish the first title in 2011. HarperVoyager will publish in AUS/NZ.

‘I am utterly thrilled to have acquired Will’s trilogy,‘ says Johnston. ‘Pendulum is the most exciting and original new fantasy I have read in years, and this prodigiously talented young writer is arguably the jewel in the crown on our fast-growing genre list.‘

Will Elliott’s remarkable début novel THE PILO FAMILY CIRCUS (also published by Quercus) won the inaugural ABC fiction award beating 900 competing works. It went on to win the Golden Aurealis for best novel, the Australian Shadows Award, the Ditmar, the Sydney Morning Herald “Best Young Novelist Award” for 2007, and was short-listed for the 2007 International Horror Guild Award. It was published in a limited edition by PS Publishing in 2008, with John Berlyne (at that time merely a fan of Elliott’s work) providing the introduction.