In a competitive six-house auction, Putnam Books for Young Readers has acquired The Escape Game, a YA mystery thriller co-authored by Lunar Chronicles author Marissa Meyer and Lintang series author Tamara Moss. Jill Grinberg at Jill Grinberg Literary Management sold North American rights for the two-book deal to Putnam senior executive editor and publishing director Ruta Rimas and editor Gretchen Durning. Publication is scheduled for April 2026.
Meyer and Moss, longtime critique partners, were looking for an opportunity to collaborate when Meyer, who loves escape room puzzles, came up with an idea. While solving a Mona Lisa heist puzzle with her family, Meyer imagined a murder mystery involving an escape-room-themed game show, a million-dollar prize, and an unsolved crime from the show’s past season. She suggested the possibility to Moss, and they both began plotting clues and twists.
Because Meyer lives in Washington state and Moss lives in Perth, Australia, their correspondence took place at all hours. Meyer is an “avid outliner, and this worked great for a collaboration,” Moss told PW. “Living in different time zones meant I would write my pre-planned chapter while Marissa was sleeping. She’d read it during her day, make a few edits, write her own chapter, and send it back so I’d wake up to new material.”
Meyer said, “One of my favorite things was going to bed, knowing that work was still happening on the other side of the world. Even with our plan in place, sometimes we would start writing a chapter and realize it needed to be something different than what we had in mind. We spent a lot of time figuring out how and when to insert various clues and red herrings, and which viewpoint character made the most sense to reveal them. When we got stuck, we would have a Zoom call to talk things through.”
They also depended upon one another’s storytelling strengths in their co-writing process. “I’m not much of a romantic these days,” Moss admitted. “I love writing deep friendships and chemistry between characters, but if you’re swooning, that’s Marissa. She’s also the brains behind most of the codes and puzzles, whereas I focused on the murder mystery. I go heavy on character work; she’s a superstar at plot structure.”
Meyer agreed “100%,” calling their approaches “complementary. Working with Tamara pushed me to think more deeply about characterization and backstory.” She loved “being able to brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other as we worked through the more complicated elements.”
Not only is The Escape Game a dual-author project: it’s a dual-editor project with Rimas and Durning sharing editorial duties. The two have worked together since 2019, when Rimas arrived at Penguin and Durning served as her assistant, and their projects have included Sabaa Tahir’s National Book Award-winning All My Rage, Ginny Myers Sain’s Dark and Shallow Lies, and Jessica Goodman’s The Counselors.
Rimas, who said she grew up on the “heart-racing” novels of Caroline B. Cooney, Lois Duncan, and Christopher Pike, felt an immediate excitement for The Escape Game. “I considered this manuscript a drop-everything-and-read submission the moment Jill dropped it into my inbox,” she said. “It absolutely blew me away with its clever plot, interesting characters, and spectacular twists.”
Durning, an Agatha Christie fan, appreciates “knowing there’s a right way to fit all the pieces together, and the satisfaction when it all falls into place—whether or not I correctly guessed the killer on my own.” She said that besides its central mystery, The Escape Game has “a lot of smaller puzzles to figure out,” plus “a snappy pace” and a set of game-show contestants that include a mathematician, an escape room designer, a cryptographer, and the victim’s sister.
Putnam BYR president and publisher Jen Klonsky called The Escape Game “an absolute must-publish for us here at Putnam Young Readers. I’ve admired Marissa for years, with her long and impressive career in the YA space, and after reading this book, I know Tamara is poised to reach the same heights.”
