Just two days after John Flanagan’s internationally successful Ranger’s Apprentice series “officially” came to an end with the release of the 10th book, The Emperor of Nihon-Ja, Penguin has announced the fall 2011 publication of a collection of Ranger’s Apprentice short stories from the Australian author. Ranger’s Apprentice: The Lost Stories will be published by Philomel on October 4, and will answer questions about the fates and origins of certain characters from the series. Penguin says that the collection is being published “in response to fan requests.”
“From its very inception, Ranger’s Apprentice has been a gift meant to inspire—as a series of short stories written for John Flanagan’s son, Michael, who had grown uninterested in reading,” said Philomel president and publisher Michael Green in a statement. “Now, as the epic series draws to a close, John Flanagan is once again offering a gift—a collection of ‘lost’ tales that fill in the gaps between Ranger’s Apprentice novels.”
Flanagan’s series has sold more than three million copies in the U.S. and is available in 18 countries. In 2008, United Artists paid seven figures to option film rights for the series—so The Lost Stories may not be the end, either.
