It’s time! I can finally share the cover for my second novel, The Last Beginning. Thank you to Maximum Pop!, littlebookwormig, the.literary.omnivore, prettybooks, sarahlikesbooks,pollyandbooks, mynovelexperience, living.in.the.library, tilly-and-her-books and nikkireads for helping me do this reveal. You’re all stars.

I’m not going to keep you waiting any longer. HERE IT IS.

The epic conclusion to Lauren James’ The Next Together series about true love and reincarnation.

A love that transcends time. A secret that could destroy the future.

Sixteen years ago, after a scandal that rocked the world, teenagers Katherine and Matthew vanished without a trace. Now Clove Sutcliffe is determined to find them. But where do you start looking for a couple who seem to have been reincarnated at every key moment in history? Who were Kate and Matt? Why were they born again and again? And who is the mysterious Ella and why does she keep appearing at every turn in Clove’s investigation?
 

The Last Beginning will be published by Walker Books in the UK and Australia on 6th October 2016. It will be published in Fall 2017 in the USA by Sky Pony Press.

Amazon UK | Book Depository | Goodreads 

If you would like to review The Last Beginning, you can request a review copy here. You can also subscribe to my mailing list for updates.

Some links with more information:

• Posts about The Last Beginning 
• Why the sequel to The Next Together has an LGBT protagonist 
• #novelaesthetics
• Meet Clove 
• Meet Ella
• Playlist
• Extract

SO PRETTY. SO, SO PRETTY.

Ella is on the left and Clove is on the right. Clove is wearing a special suit which is relevant to the story!!

I also have to share this tweet.

@AliceOseman dream book covers with @Lauren_E_James  7:57 PM - 22 Sep 2015

That’s a tweet from Alice Oseman back in September of last year, when we were sketching dream covers for our books. Look at mine. Now, look at the real thing . . .

Whaaat! The designer, the lovely Jack Noel at Walker, has never seen my drawing. That is pure chance. This cover was meant to be. And isn’t it beautiful?!?

(Thank god he’s better at drawing than me, though. My attempt was very terrible.)

Non Pratt @NonPratt @AliceOseman @Lauren_E_James is one of the people wearing a dressing gown on TNB? There aren't enough people in dressing gowns on covers.
8:07 PM - 22 Sep 2015

Finally, I promised you guys a special announcement today, alongside the new cover. I’ve been posting clues about it all week, and 8 of you correctly guess what it was (congratulations, you clever sleuths! You can officially call yourselves my biggest fans. (I mean, only if you want…..no pressure.))

Lots of people have asked me why Kate and Matt talked a lot about one of their other past lives in The Next Together, where they stopped a murder at Bletchley Park. That story isn’t part of the book, but lots of you (including my editor!) were absolutely desperate to know what happened. And I listened. So …..

For anyone who doesn’t know, Bletchley Park in England was the secret location of a code-breaking team during World War II. The mathematicians and scientists worked to break the code which the Germans used to send each other messages, and when they cracked it, they significantly helped the Allies to win the war. With the messages they decoded, the Allies learnt details of upcoming German  tactics, and managed to work against them.

It was the topic of the 2014 film The Imitation Game, where Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing, the scientist who cracked the Nazi’s Enigma code.

I had so much fun visiting Bletchley Park and researching this story, where Kate (known in this story as Kitty) and Matthew work at Station X at Bletchley.

Here’s the blurb:

Winter, 1940: there is a murderer on the loose at Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain’s most daring codebreaking operation against the Nazis. Can two young codebreakers Kitty and Matthew catch the killer?

This standalone short story can be enjoyed by new readers and existing fans of Lauren James’s The Next Together series.

And here’s the cover (I know! SURPRISE DOUBLE COVER REVEAL! MWAHAHAHAHA. I feel like Beyoncé, dropping a surprise album.)

Again, Jack has completely overpassed my greatest expectations with this. It’s so stunning that I think I’m going to have to print out a real copy just so I can have it on paper to match the books.

And if you were wondering what the clues all meant, here’s your answer:

Clue 2 – A dispatch worker’s motorcycle which was used to take decoded Nazi messages back and forth from Bletchley to Winston Churchill and other military leaders in London.

Clue 3 – One of the huts at Bletchley Park

Clue 4 – The lake and mansion at Bletchley Park

Clue 5 – A machine used to decode messages written with the Enigma machine

Clue 6 – Documents and signs from Bletchley Park

Clue 7 – The Bombe machine and a Wren operator cracking the Enigma Code.

Did you guess it? If so, congratulations!

You can add Another Together on Goodreads, and I will let you know when it’s available to preorder on Amazon and other eBook providers in the UK, Ireland and Australia / New Zealand. The eBook will also contain the first chapter of The Last Beginning, so hopefully this will tide you over until my second book is released (138 days!).

ENJOY, GUYS.