Eoin Colfer’s Highfire

It’s time for a cover reveal for Eoin Colfer’s new adult fantasy novel, Highfire. Here’s the link to order it on Poisoned Pen’s page. Eoin Colfer. Highfire (Harper Collins $19.99)

Harper Perennial Coordinating Cover Reveal with Indies

Eoin Colfer

At noon Eastern time, this Wednesday, August 21, independent bookstores across the country are unveiling the book jacket for Eoin Colfer’s Highfire, which will be published by Harper Perennial on January 28, part of a cover reveal coordinated by HarperCollins and the American Booksellers Association. As part of the initiative, booksellers are encouraged to invite customers to pre-order the book from them.

The ABA has been encouraging indies to emphasize pre-publication awareness of titles among their customers as a way to increase their share of pre-orders and early book sales, much of which has been going to Amazon.

HarperCollins did a similar unveiling campaign earlier this year with a children’s title, Adam Silvera’s Infinity SonHighfire is the first standalone adult novel by Colfer, best known for his Artemis Fowl series. He has also published two adult crime novels, Plugged and Screwed.

Harper Perennial will provide digital assets, suggested copy, and hashtags to participating stores to help them spread the message. Stores should plan to share the final cover on social media between noon and 3:00 p.m. on August 21. Booksellers who haven’t signed up yet for the cover reveal for Highfire can get more information here.

ABOUT HIGHFIRE:

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Artemis Fowl series comes a hilarious and high-octane adult novel about a vodka-drinking, Flashdance-loving dragon who lives an isolated life in the bayous of Louisiana—and the raucous adventures that ensue when he crosses paths with a fifteen-year-old troublemaker on the run from a crooked sheriff.

In the days of yore, he flew the skies and scorched angry mobs—now he hides from swamp tour boats and rises only with the greatest reluctance from his Laz-Z-Boy recliner. Laying low in the bayou, this once-magnificent fire breather has been reduced to lighting Marlboros with nose sparks, swilling Absolut in a Flashdance T-shirt, and binging Netflix in a fishing shack. For centuries, he struck fear in hearts far and wide as Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie—now he goes by Vern. However…he has survived, unlike the rest. He is the last of his kind, the last dragon. Still, no amount of vodka can drown the loneliness in his molten core. Vern’s glory days are long gone. Or are they?

A canny Cajun swamp rat, young Everett “Squib” Moreau does what he can to survive, trying not to break the heart of his saintly single mother. He’s finally decided to work for a shady smuggler—but on his first night, he witnesses his boss murdered by a crooked constable.

Regence Hooke is not just a dirty cop, he’s a despicable human being—who happens to want Squib’s momma in the worst way. When Hooke goes after his hidden witness with a grenade launcher, Squib finds himself airlifted from certain death by…a dragon?

The swamp can make strange bedfellows, and rather than be fried alive so the dragon can keep his secret, Squib strikes a deal with the scaly apex predator. He can act as his go-between (aka familiar)—fetch his vodka, keep him company, etc.—in exchange for protection from Hooke. Soon the three of them are careening headlong toward a combustible confrontation. There’s about to be a fiery reckoning, in which either dragons finally go extinct—or Vern’s glory days are back.

A triumphant return to the genre-bending fantasy that Eoin Colfer is so well known for, Highfire is an effortlessly clever and relentlessly funny tour-de-force of comedy and action.

Eoin Colfer is the New York Times best-selling author of the Artemis Fowl series as well as two adult crime novels, Plugged, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Screwed. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.