Readers who desire a bridge from young adult to new adult titles learned today that Hachette Book Group reciprocates their longing. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has launched Requited, HBG’s first new adult imprint, to snag a maturing YA audience with stories beyond high school age. The boutique imprint will publish 10–20 titles per year.
Lisa Yoskowitz, VP and executive editorial director at LBYR, will serve as Requited’s editorial lead. Yoskowitz’s team includes senior editor Alice Jerman, who worked on Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm and joined LBYR from Entangled Publishing in December 2024, along with senior editor Ruqayyah Daud, who’ll acquire for Requited as well as the whole LBYR list. Requited’s inaugural list, scheduled for winter 2026, will include Jordan Stephanie Gray’s enemies-to-lovers romantasy, The Wicked Sea; Gray’s YA debut, Bitten, a werewolf fantasy edited by Daud, comes out in September from LBYR. Additional Requited titles will be announced in the year ahead.
LBYR president and publisher Megan Tingley acknowledged the passionate crossover YA and adult audiences for Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books—now celebrating a 20th anniversary with deluxe editions—Kerri Maniscalco’s Kingdom of the Wicked series, Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s Inheritance Games books, and Adalyn Grace’s Belladonna series. “Everybody is aware that this category is growing rapidly,” Tingley told PW, but “there’s been a hesitation in young readers’ groups or children's book departments” to venture into new adult content.
Tingley added that YA authors may have an exciting project that breaks out of the youth category, and they don’t know how to broach the subject with their agent or editor. “They want to stay with their editorial team,” Tingley said, but they need an adult department. “That was part of the impetus for us to create a home focused on this market. We can have this nice trajectory for people who want to start in YA, then grow with their readers.”
“Novels are meant to speak to a particular period in someone's life,” Yoskowitz said. “It took years for YA to develop into a recognized and respected category, even though books for teens have always been published.” She views the late teens and early 20s as a “new coming of age. You’re out on your own for the first time, you’re maybe allowed to be messy, you're learning the ropes.” Requited will represent the unique life experiences of people who are out of high school but still seek the drama and thrills they recall from their YA favorites.
Romantic feelings stir in the name of the imprint too. “All of my favorite books capture the experience of longing or yearning,” Yoskowitz said, “whether in a romantic sense, for another person, or for who you want to be, the things you want out of life.” A strong romantic thread has been “a hallmark in many of our most successful YA crossover titles and successful adult stories,” so Requited promises “escapism and pacey page turning,” with strong love affairs and complex friendships.
Requited is a natural for LBYR’s in-house staff, too, Tingley said. “When we talk about books we want to acquire, there are so many young women on our team—marketing, publicity, design, editorial—who are fans of this [new adult] genre,” she said. “We have a really great brain trust right in our group as we form the imprint.”
“We’re excited to be officially launching,” Yoskowitz agreed, because LBYR’s backstage buzz has been building around new adult authors and readers. “This definitely seems like the moment to move forward.”
