An Abbotsford teen has signed a three-book deal with a U.S. publisher.
Mary Johnson, 16, has signed with Lodestone Publishers for a young-adult trilogy called Other Horizons.
The first book in the series, The Boundary, relates the fictional tale of Penny and her five friends, who have been kept inside an eerie estate for their entire lives.
They have had no contact with the outside world, with their only windows being a handful of books, a sinister master and a secretive housekeeper.
Fed up with living a mystery, Penny begins breaking all the rules and finally tries to escape, but what she uncovers is far more devastating than she could have imagined.
Johnson said the book is expected to be released early next year, and it will be available in most major bookstores.
She said The Boundary took her four years to write, and she had four publisher rejections before being accepted by Lodestone, whose U.S./Canada headquarters is in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania.
The following two books in the triology follow the friends’ journey, spanning five years.
The series is aimed at 13- to 17-year-olds.
Johnson was born in Huntington in the UK and lived in Ottawa for a few years before moving to Abbotsford nearly five years ago.
She is a Grade 11 student at Robert Bateman secondary and hopes to study for a bachelor of arts in English when she graduates.