Final Discworld novel and Stieg Larsson sequel poised for release

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett and The Girl in the Spider’s Web, continuing Stieg Larsson’s crime series, are both due out on Thursday

High volume sales expected ... Terry Pratchett. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Alison Flood

Wednesday 26 August 2015  The Guardia

Two very different heroines are poised to return to the nation’s bookshelves: Tiffany Aching, teenage witch and protagonist of the late Terry Pratchett’s final novel, and Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo dreamed up by the late Stieg Larsson.

Both Pratchett’s The Shepherd’s Crown and David Lagercrantz’s continuation of Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, are published on 27 August, and booksellers are bracing themselves for the influx of fans desperate to get their hands on the heavily embargoed titles. A midnight opening at Waterstones in Piccadilly in London will mark the release of The Shepherd’s Crown, with events planned up and down the UK. Pratchett, who died in March after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2007, completed the novel last summer. The 41st title in his bestselling Discworld series, it will be the fifth to feature Tiffany.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web UK cover

“We’re hugely, hugely excited,” said Kate McHale, teenage and science fiction buyer at Waterstones. “But it is going to be a bittersweet moment, as this is the last novel from one of British fiction’s great writers.” With titles including Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and EL James’s Grey already released this summer, “it has been an incredible year for fiction, but this is certainly one of the biggest,” said McHale.
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