The Archived

The gripping first novel in a dark, dazzlingly inventive new YA fantasy series.
Disney*Hyperion, January 22, 2013

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was, a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da’s death was hard enough, but now her little brother is gone too. Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

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Rights have sold to Russia, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Brazil.

Also, I’m delighted to announced that Disney*Hyperion has already picked up the sequel!!! From PM:

Author of THE NEAR WITCH Victoria Schwab’s untitled sequel to her forthcoming THE ARCHIVED, in which a teenage girl must uncover the secrets that lie at the heart of the labyrinthine supernatural library known as the Archive, to Abby Ranger at Disney-Hyperion, by Holly Root at Waxman Literary Agency (World English).